Wasilla in the fall, as seen from a Ford Taurus while driving to and from a coffee kiosk, the long way, shooting with the point and shoot

 

Boy on bike.

I hope this coming winter is real, like winter used to be and sometimes still is.

Some people stop here to pray.

As you can see, my windshield is cracked. That's how life is around here. You drive, your windshield gets cracked. That's just how it is.

Shrock Road.

Shrock Road.

A leaf dances in my wake.

Progress in the neighborhood.

Back in the house, a fire burns in the woodstove. Jacob and Lavina are toasty and cozy.

My daughter carries two signs in protest at the Delaney Park Strip in Anchorage

Driving to the Palin Protest...  

Not them - me. I'm the one driving to the Palin protest. I don't know where these two are driving to. They just happened to be in an open-cockpit, yellow, jeep that pulled up behind me when I stopped for a red light, so I photographed their reflection in my rear-view mirror.

On the day before - Friday - my flight on Alaska Airlines left Barrow at 8:00 PM Friday, landed in Anchorage just before 11 and Margie picked me up. By the time I retrieved my luggage and we made our way through road construction traffic diversions, stopped at Taco Bell and then continued on to our house in Wasilla, it was nearly 2:00 AM. I had been looking forward to spending Saturday at home, being lazy, doing whatever I damn well felt like doing, but after I entered the house, I learned that Lisa, my youngest daughter, had made signs and was going to carry them in a protest against Sarah Palin to be held in Anchorage the next afternoon.

So that's why I drove to Anchorage and wound up stopped at a red light with these two behind me.

The protest was scheduled to last for two hours, and I arrived after it had been going on for about an hour and fifteen minutes. I looked around for Lisa, but I could not see her.

The protest was aimed at Palin's recent maneuverings to derail "Troopergate," investigation launched by a majority Republican vote of the Alaska State Legislature to try to determine why she fired Walt Monegan from his job as Public Safety Commissioner. When the investigation was launched, Palin promised that she and her staff would cooperate fully with the investigation, that they would be completely open and forthright in every aspect of it. She changed her mind after she became McCain's VP candidate. 

When her husband, Todd, and some of Palin's top aides received Legislature subpoenas to give testimony to the investigator, Attorney General Talis Colberg instructed them to ignore the subpoenas.

Unhappy protesters called for Colberg to be fired and disbarred for obstructing justice, and Palin to be impeached.

According to the Anchorage Daily News, about 1000 people participated in the protest, although the crowd was notably smaller than that by the time I arrived. I thought it should be easy to find Lisa. I spent most of my time wandering around, looking for her, reading signs, looking for the two that she had told me she made. I could not find Lisa. I could not find her signs.

There was a speaker's platform with many people crowded together. As I had not found her elsewhere, I thought maybe I would find her there. I put myself in a spot where I could study the crowd, a spot where Lisa would likely see me if I did not see her.

But I did not see her, nor did she appear to say, "hi Dad! I'm over here."

So I took a few pictures of this guy as he read a speech for another guy who had been unable to attend.

 

Then I turned to the side, and shot these people.I looked hard, but I did not see Lisa... and yet, had I just been a little more observant... look to the top and right of the picture... see the top of the head, the forehead, and the nose of the young man who is mostly hidden behind the older man wearing glasses? That head and nose belongs to Bryce, Lisa's boyfriend. 

Lisa had momentarily stepped away from the crowd. If I had noticed Bryce, or if he had noticed me, he would have told me that Lisa would be right back.

But I did not notice that it was Bryce. Bryce did not notice me. I continued to search in vain for my daughter.

I wanted to call someone, so I reached into my pocket, only to discover that my cell phone was not there. I could not have called Lisa anyway, as she is temporarily without hers. So, again, I roamed through the crowd, looking for my protesting daughter. I did not see her, but I saw geese coming. I am still using the point and shoot, and I knew that at best I could get two frames of the geese as they passed over.

So, I quickly sized up the situation, shot this frame, then turned toward a man who who held an anti-Palin sign high over his head. Quickly, I framed the picture so that his sign would be prominent below as the geese flew overhead. He saw the geese, too; he saw my camera pointed at the sky behind his sign, where the geese were about to fly. 

He was polite. He dropped his sign, so that it would not obstruct my view of the geese, leaving me only a picture of geese in an empty sky.

"Why did you drop your sign?" I scolded. "It was part of the picture! Do you think I come to a protest rally just to take pictures of flying geese?"

He felt very badly. I felt ashamed that I scolded him.

"It's okay," I consoled. "You were trying to help. You didn't know."

So I walked back to where I had parked the car, about three blocks away, to see if maybe my cell phone was in it. It wasn't. I turned around and headed back to the protest. Along the way, I spotted this cat as it crossed the road. It jumped up onto this fence. What could I do? I had to stop to take its picture.

The protest was focused on a small amphitheatre positioned just behind this statue of a soldier, one who represents all Alaska military men and women who have died fighting for the United States. Freedom of speech is one of the rights these soldiers fought for. On this day, my daughter, Lisa, and her boyfriend exercised their freedom of speech.

Before I had arrived, they had positioned themselves by the side of the road, along with many other protesters, so that passing motorists could see what they had written on their signs. Some of the passing motorists flipped them off; some said, "f--- you!"

These people also exercised their freedom of speech - in a way meant to intimidate, to strike fear into my daughter, so that maybe she would think twice before she exercised her freedom of speech again in the future.

Interesting conundrum. 

"Dad!" I finally heard her voice. "I've been looking for you." That's her, towards the right, just in front of the flag pole, wearing the Chicago Cubs hat. Lisa loves the Chicago Cubs. She attended their season opener in Wrigley Field and wants to return to be there when they play in the World Series - hopefully, this year.

This is the other sign that she made and wore. "If I put these pictures of you on the blog," I told her, "some people are going to be very angry with you. They might say mean and threatening things to you."

"I know," she said. "That's okay. They already flipped me off; they already said, F-U!" Also, she has an Obama bumper sticker on her little Chevy Cavalier. Since Palin was put on the ticket, she has noticed that she is often tailgated by the drivers of much bigger vehicles, especially when she drives into Wasilla.

She is tailgated more than she ever was before.

"Tricky Dick" was there. He claimed to support Sarah Palin in her effort to stonewall the Legislative investigation.

After the protest, Lisa, Bryce and I went to Kaladi Brothers Coffee Shop on Fifth Avenue. We hung out there for about an hour and half and laid out the solutions to a good many of the world's political problems - if only the politicians would listen to the three of us! And then act upon what we say! Then we went to the house of my other daughter, Melanie, and fed her cats. Melanie is down south, in Texas, headed to Canada. Next, we went to see, "Tropic Thunder."

Finally, I headed for home, but I had to stop and get gas before I left town. As I filled my tanks, this was the scene before me.

I had wanted to take Lisa and Bryce to dinner, but the coffee and the movie popcorn and what have you killed their appetites, so I did not. I was not hungry, either, until I got to Eagle River. Then I suddenly wanted a taco and a burrito, so I pulled off the highway and drove to Taco Bell. 

I ate my food in the parking lot, then left. I soon had to stop at a light. In front of me, I saw more freedom of speech being exercised. And yes, when the opportunity appears before me, I will be just as happy to shoot a pro-Palin rally as an anti-Palin. I'm sure it will happen. Wait and see. I'll still vote for Barack Obama, but even so, were I to get the chance to interview and photograph Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain and Sarah Palin, I could lay it all out in a most even-handed manner.

Even so, John McCain, a man whom I have long admired and respected, back when he acted like John McCain, would say that I was being biased and unfair, because that is the tactical position of his campaign. 

As the hour grew late, I drove back into Wasilla. My town.

Defeated by slow connection/squarespace

For the past hour, I have been sitting at the table in my hotel room in Barrow, Alaska, trying to create this journal entry.

The wireless connection here is slow, but even so I was able to load the photos into another blog that I keep on Google's blogger. I'm afraid that for this squarespace blog, however, the photos do upload so that they can be seen in the workspace at whatever size you want them, but the process never completes itself and I am faced with an interminable "please wait" message, through repeated tries.

So, I cannot post my photos. This blog is a photo blog.

I guess I must wait until I arrive home - an event that will happen late tomorrow night.

Traveling - will post soon

I write from Barrow. I have been traveling for three days now. I thought I would have had time to post before now, but I was wrong. Will try tomorrow night (Thursday 9/25), hopefully.

The chicken crossed the road, but the rooster got shot

 

Not long after I lit out on my walk the other day, I happened upon this chicken. It crossed the road in front of me.

Two or three summers back, at the house from which this chicken so confidently began its stroll across the road, a rooster came to live. Shortly thereafter, life became hell. You know how roosters like to crow when daylight breaks the night? This is Alaska, and in the summer the night never does get dark. That rooster would crow all night long and would wake me up every damn time.

Fortunately, I spent most of the summer traveling out into what we call "The Bush" because that is where most of my work as a photographer takes place. Margie, however, stayed home and whenever I would return, I would find her living in a state of exhausted exasperation. 

Still, I had to return every now and then and one night I found myself lying in bed, listening to that rooster. It was somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00 AM. Then the rooster made a loud "cock-a-doodle do!" followed by a sudden gunshot. It sounded like a .22. Nobody ever heard another crow from that rooster after that.

Silence ruled the rest of the night. I suspect that it was the owner - but the owner has never proven amenable to conversation, so I fear to ask. I think, though, that if a neighbor had shot the rooster, there would have been a ruckus, as I doubt the owner would have remained calmly inside his home.

I think the owner might have been desperate for sleep; I think too that he might have wanted to announce to the neighborhood that he was taking care of this problem and that is why he used a gun and not a hatchet. 

He could even have wrung its neck, but he shot it. At least, that's what I surmise.

Summer's definitely over. More on this in the next post. Too lazy to post today's "new mountain snows" images right now.