Kalib flicks dirt into Melanie's face - is he outgrowing the spatula phase? Branson graduates; Margie goes and I am left alone again

Melanie showed up late in the afternoon and gave Jim a pet as Kalib slyly observed.

This is the shoe Melanie wore on her left foot. The one she wore on her right foot looks pretty much the same, except that the toe tapers in the opposite direction.

When next I observed Melanie and Kalib, they had moved to the front yard. Kalib was busy observing something himself. What could it be?

It was ants. Fat, black, ants.

Not long afterward, I found them back in the back yard, a bit beyond the spot where Margie had placed the dinosaur boots that Kalib had muddied in the swamp the day before out to air dry after she had cleaned them.

But what are Kalib and Melanie up to in the background?

And what is that in Kalib's hands?

Oh - the thing that Kalib holds is a weed plucking tool. And right there in front of him is a dandelion, yet to bloom. Melanie is helping him shove the weed plucker beneath the dandelion so that he can yank it right out of the ground by the root.

Kalib yanks the dandelion from the earth and sends it and dirt flying straight into his Aunt Melanie. This turned into a big game - one that the two repeated time and time again, until all the new dandelion plants had been rooted out.

Even so, those dandelions will pop right back up again.

I view Kalib plucking out a dandelion from another angle.

Dandelion and dirt come flying right toward me.

As usual, Kalib brought his spatula to the house with him - but not once did I see him carry it or play with it. I only saw it sitting here, atop the classifieds on the coffee table.

Margie says she saw him play with it. She said he used to flip junk mail like pancakes. There, lying on the floor, you can see one of the pieces of junk mail that Margie saw Kalib flip.

Still, he basically left it alone.

It makes me wonder if he is outgrowing his spatula phase?

If so, the thought makes me a little sad.

It has to happen, sooner or later, though.

Later would be okay with me.

The original plan had been that Jacob, Lavina and Jobe would come out and pick Kalib up Sunday afternoon. Instead, Lavina called to say that Jobe was still sick and to ask if, instead, we could bring Kalib home and then leave Margie there to babysit Jobe for a day or two or a week or however long it would take until he was well enough to return to daycare.

Since Melanie had come, she drove Margie and Kalib back to town with her.

And once again, after just three days and nights together with Margie, I am left alone with the cats. Caleb is here, of course, but he works all night and sleeps all day, except for when he goes out to hit golf balls.

Now I back up to an earlier point in the day:

Branson Starheim, of Metro Cafe, just graduated from kindergarten Thursday night. I promised Carmen that if she brought him and his diploma to Metro Cafe I would take a photograph to commemorate this landmark achievement.

So she did and I took a pretty standard study of Branson and Carmen, posing with the diploma as Branson sat on his bike, but afterward I took this one of Carmen helping Branson don his crash helmet and I like it better.

Following the diploma photo session, Branson, the graduate, zooms past me on his bike. Branson calls me, "Uncle Bill."

Now - about that delayed Arctic Series that I had promised to run this week: I am going to! Starting tomorrow. It's just that I did not know that Kalib was going to spend the weekend with us. He did, and I had to post a few pics  for all of his many fans from Alaska to Arizona to India to see.

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Kalib gets his shoe stuck in the mud; straight "A" college student

Once again, Jobe had been feeling under the weather with his respiratory infection, so Margie and I went into town, picked Kalib up and brought him home to spend the weekend with us in order to make it easier for his parents to care for Jobe and do all they needed to do.

After he got up in the morning, Kalib laid lazily back down upon the couch.

He didn't stay lazy for long, though. Soon he was out in the backyard, gathering golf balls.

He knew just what to do with them.

Then he wandered down to the back part of the back yard.

Kalib, at the edge of the woods.

Soon, he wandered off into the trees. I wanted to follow, but I had let Jim out. I needed to keep my eye on Jim.

So Margie went off into the woods with Kalib while I kept my eye on Jim. Jim had not been out the whole time that I had been traveling, as he only goes out when I can watch him and make certain that he does not wander off and get eaten or run over.

It drove me a little nuts, though. 

I wanted to see what Kalib and his grandma were up to.

Finally, I got Caleb to take Jimmy into the house and I went off to find Kalib and Grandma. I found them returning from whatever adventure they had been on.

Then Kalib turned around and took off back in the direction from whence they had appeared. Margie followed. I followed, too.

Kalib left our property altogether and went out into what we still call "the swamp," or "the marsh." Dodd Shay, the friendly property owner, does not like me to call it "swamp" or "marsh."

"Meadow," he insists. "It's a meadow."

Perhaps he is right now. But for the first 10 or 15 years that we lived here, it was a swamp. If Kalib had been where he is in this picture, he would have been emerged in water to his hips - especially this time of year, when the snows have been melting.

Still, the swamp is not completely dry. A bit of water and a bit of muck still remains out there. Kalib scurried off to this four wheeler track, left by vandals who ignored all of Shay's signs telling them to keep their machines out of the meadow because machines damage it.

It looked to me like Kalib had stuck his foot into mud. "Kalib," his grandma and I both shouted out to him. "Don't put your foot in the mud! Take your foot out of the mud."

He just stood there, keeping his foot in the mud, smiling mischievously at us.

Finally, he pulled his foot out of the mud. We called him to come to us, but he would not. He just stood there with a troubled expression on his face.

No matter how much we called, he would not budge.

Finally, I walked to him. When I saw that he now wore only one of his little dinosaur boots, I understood the troubled expression. Look to the right of the frame. There you will see the little dinosaur boot that goes on his left foot - stuck in the mud.

His grandma came, pulled the boot out of the mud and helped him back into it.

Kalib did not want to walk in his mud-filled boot. He wanted to be carried. I offered to carry him, but he would not let me. Only grandma would do. Kalib is grandma's boy.

Then he got down and walked.

How did he get his knees so muddy?

Come night, Kalib and his grandma sat on the couch and reminisced about the day's grand adventure. They watched movies with Uncle Caleb.

A little after 10 PM, Kalib fell sound asleep in his grandma's embrace.

Yes, Kalib is Grandma's boy.

Grandpa then carried him into bed, tucked him in and there he slept for the next 11 hours.

Wow!

While I was traveling, Lisa completed all her class projects, took her finals and wound up with straight A's. It had been a very tough semester for her. She carried a full load, worked full time, and had to take on extra tasks such as dog sitting to make ends meet.

Once, we found her in tears and tried to give her some money to make it a little easier, but she would not take that money. She wanted to do it on her own and she did.

Right after she graduated from high school, Lisa went excitedly off to college in Durango, Colorado, but the year proved disastrous for her. She had an alcoholic roommate and she grew so homesick that when the year ended, she came home and dropped out of college.

But now she knows that college is something she needs to complete to go where she wants to go.

We are very proud of her.

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Encounters at the Post Office: an aging dog, the man who loves the dog even more than he loves cameras and the anonymous woman coffee buyer; health benefits of coffee

I spotted them the other day at the post office as I was walking back to my car, the man still in his car with the dog. I thought, "I should photograph these two before the man gets out of the car," but I was feeling very lazy, tired to the extreme, worn down by all my recent travels and sleepless nights.

If I took the picture, then it would only be right to show it to the man and dog and tell them what I was doing, but I did not feel like explaining anything to anyone and I already had a tremendous amount of pictures to deal with, so I let the moment pass.

Just before I got into my car, the man stepped out of his car and commented on my camera. He wondered if it it was film or digital and if one could even still buy film at all.

He still had an old film camera, he said, but the camera didn't work anymore. He loved photography, he loved film. He had misgivings toward digital.

So I told him I would like to photograph his dog with my digital camera and he said sure. He wondered if he should roll down the window so that I could see the dog better but I told him "no" because if he left it up I could get both the dog and him in the picture - he by reflection.

The dog is Sleater, and she is 13 years old. She has cataracts and diabetes. Jerry would like to buy a new camera, but he spends a lot of money on Sleater's medical bills. There is not enough left to spare for a new camera.

Through the Metro Window, study # 4997: Discussing the health benefits of coffee

At the post office, I also came upon someone else. I am not quite certain who. A woman. Was it the woman driving a pickup truck who parked in the spot next to mine? Was it the woman who came through the door right behind me, so instead of letting it shut in her face I held it open and she walked through and smiled and said "Thank you?"

Or was it the one who held the door for me and I said "Thank you," to?

Or just one I passed in the hall?

There was one more who I remember seeing as she walked on the sidewalk to the post office door and then went inside well before I reached the door? She returned to her car even as I was still getting my mail.

These incidents happened on a couple of different days and I cannot quite sort which ones happened on the very day that I pulled up to the window at Metro Cafe and Carmen said my coffee was free, that a woman had seen me at the Post Office and so had bought this coffee for me, plus a pastry and she had even left one dollar for the tip.

This left a quarter in change, so Carmen gave me the quarter.

Whichever one of these ladies you might have been - thank you!

I also heard a story on NPR about coffee and health and in particular, prostate health. A study had been done and it found that men who drank a goodly amount of coffee were 60 percent less likely to get prostate cancer than men who did not. 

Those who drank a modest amount of coffee, 30 percent less likely.

And it noted that due to the anti-oxcidents in coffee, there are many other health benefits to be had from drinking coffee.

In my upbringing, to drink a cup of coffee was to sin - and to sin big.

I developed prostate problems very early in life. These problems caused me a great deal of pain and discomfort. I had to get up two or three times a night - sometimes even more.

I did not start drinking coffee until I started to hang out with Iñupiat whale hunters. 

It took a lot of years, but those prostate pains and problems all seem to have gone away.

Most nights, I do not have to get up even once now.

I did take some medication for awhile and it helped a lot, but I had to stop because I could not afford it and the insurance company that charged me cadillac premiums for clunker service and eventually drove me off their rolls before health care could pass would not help with the medications.

Yet the problems went away after I quit the medication.

Coffee?

I don't know. Maybe. Could have been.

In this picture, by the way, Carmen, Shoshana and I are having a serious discussion about the health benefits of drinking coffee, vs. religious taboos against drinking coffee.

In some ways, I still feel like I am committing a grave sin everytime I drink a cup of coffee, but I enjoy the coffee and maybe, just maybe, it is helping to keep me alive.

The story said that for maximum benefit, one should drink six cups of coffee every day. 

I would, but I fear that if I drank that much coffee every day, it would kill me.

When I am with whalers, I sometimes drink that much coffee but when one is on the ice the body metabolizes everything very fast.

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They'rrrrrrre baaaaack.... in the blog: Jobe, Lavina, Kalib, Jacob and Margie - in that order

How long has it been since this face has appeared in my blog? Six weeks? Something like that. And look, in this, the very first frame that I shot of him upon our reunion, he is just standing around. STANDING around. Not wobbling shakily. Standing.

As though it is no big deal at all. As though it is just something that a little kid would be expected to do.

Jobe. 

Standing around.

And he walks around at will, too.

I was worried that after all this time, he might have forgotten his grampa. Remember how he loved me? How he adored me?

Has he now forgotten me?

After a brief period of study and contemplation, he walked right over and sat down on my lap. He had not forgotten.

And then he went out to play with Martigny. Martigny did not not want to play with him. Maybe it was the "woof" on his shirt that scared her away.

I'm afraid Jobe has been sick the past couple of days. Respiratory infection. 

Jobe needed rest.

Still, he gets up and moves happily around. He is getting better.

Then Jacob called, to say that he and Kalib were coming home from their walk and would soon reach the nearby park. I went out to see and this is the first frame I shot, right after they came into view.

Last time I saw them, there was a still a good amount of snow here. Now the leaves have come out.

Kalib went straight for the slide. As he started down, he looked up at his dad to see what his dad would do.

His dad came sliding after...

Kalib threw some pebbles into a slide chute and then watched as they tumbled and slid back down.

Then he ran off and his dad chased after.

Soon, they were in the house, eating popsicles. When offered a variety of colors, Kalib chose the green one. Then he saw his mom pick a red one for herself and decided that the red one would be better instead.

I also had a red one.

The red ones are best.

Although the green is pretty good.

It was about 10:30 PM now. Margie's flight was scheduled to arrive at 1:38 AM. I had come in early just so I could finally see the boys, but Jobe was now asleep and the rest would soon join them.

That meant I had three hours to wait.

The prospect horrified me.

What I could I do with all that time?

I could go sit in a bar and sip root beer, wink my eyes at honkey tonk women and say stupid things as they danced and sauntered across the floor.

Instead, I laid back on the couch. I sank right into it.

I closed my eyes. The lids were so heavy, I did not feel like I could ever open them again.

I fell asleep right there. At 1:09 AM, I forced myself to get up and go. I drove to the airport and picked Margie up. Her plane had come in half-an-hour early and she was standing there waiting when I pulled up, so I stopped, she put the one bag that she had left with in the back plus the other that she had bought and filled in Arizona and jumped in. 

I took off without even taking a picture.

As regular readers know, it is our tradition to go out for breakfast the morning after either one of us returns from a trip.

So this morning we went to Family Restaurant - no, not Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant but Denali Family Restaurant, just a few miles further up the Parks Highway.

I would not have even known about this brand new restaurant had I not gone to Fairbanks to cover Katie John's graduation, but I saw it as I drove home.

If they had named it, "Mckinley Family Restaurant," I would never have tried it. I would not have walked through the door. I try never to patronize a business that bears the name, "Mckinley." I stick to "Denali."

Inside, it was very much like Mat-Su Family Restaurant. The decor was similar, the menu similar, the food similar and the plates exactly the same. Even all the staff that I could see, including the waitresses, were staff I recognized from Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

So I thought maybe it was an extension, built by the same owner to compete with him/herself.

No. It wasn't. It was built by a competitor and the staff that I could see had all been hired away.

Breakfast was very good - the hash browns cooked just right and, I hate to say it, better than at Mat-Su. 

I will still continue to patronize Mat-Su. It is a bit closer. And Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant has helped me bear some extremely hard mornings. Very hard mornings. Mornings that followed nights of turmoil and grief, nights without sleep.

So I will keep going to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

But I will patronize Denali, too. Good hash browns are a big draw to me.

Margie enjoyed it, too.

It was the first time she had drank coffee in weeks, she said. 

She stayed with her sister, who remains a pretty active, decent and abiding Mormon. She allows visitors to brew coffee for themselves, but Margie did not feel like brewing coffee for just one so she abstained.

Tomorrow, I will discuss a recent NPR story about the health benefits of coffee - particularly for the prostate - and will thank a generous, almost not-anonymous lady who bought me a coffee at Metro the other day.

Margie is glad to be home, but she says it feels cold here.

"I have come back to winter," she said.

This, even though the leaves are sprouting out here and it snowed three inches at her sisters house 6000 feet up in Arizona her final morning there.

Still, it was warmer there than here.

Which it ought to have been.

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(warning - slideshow contains additional photos of Jobe and Kalib not seen in the actual post)

Simultaneous major events - when lone me needed to be three; red pickup truck; Jim

Man! My recent travels and work schedule have left me too exhausted to even make this blog today, but if the pilots above can fly their helicopters when I am exhausted, then I ought to be able to make a post.

As regular readers know, I have spent the past few weeks zipping about the Arctic and Interior by plane and car, shooting from one location to another, bouncing from 0 degrees F to 65 above and doing it all with many nights of little sleep.

Yet, I only accomplished about one-third of what I wanted to, what I needed to. In this time period, three major events that I needed to cover and be present for took place almost simultaneously.

One happened in Arizona, and I had planned to go. I had my airplane ticket. It was the one-year tradtional Apache memorial for my cherished friend, the Navajo artist, poet, song-writer, cartoonist and humorist Vincent Craig, whose bedside I had rushed to on May 14, 2010, only to arrive hours before he died. The memorial would take place on May 14, with preliminary events scheduled for the evening of May 13.

Before I learned of the memorial, I had planned to be on the Arctic Slope at the time, or maybe in the Brooks Range village of Anaktuvuk Pass, but when Vincent's wife Mariddie called to invite me to the memorial, I dropped those plans. I cashed in my miles for an Alaska Airlines ticket to Phoenix, Arizona.

From spring through fall, I do not like to leave Alaska to go anyplace where the night gets truly dark, but if there was going to be a memorial for Vincent, then nothing could keep me away - not darkness, not work, not any other event... well... almost no other event.

One month ago today, I dropped Margie off at the airport so that she could go to Arizona before me and spend some good time with the Apache side of our family. Afterward, I stopped by the Alaska Native Medical Center to visit my friend, Larry Aiken.

There, I happened upon Bruce Cain, director of operations for Ahtna, the Alaska Native Regional Corporation whose territory includes most of the Copper River basin. Bruce informed me that 95 year-old Katie John would be receiving her honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks at ceremonies to be held in Tok on May 13 and Fairbanks May 15. 

What a quandary! My heart told me that I HAD to be in Arizona for Vincent's memorial. My heart also told me that I HAD to be in Tok and Fairbanks for the honoring of Katie John. I had a history with Katie as well, and the way circumstances had played out had made me the only journalist to cover first hand the final, critical events of her story, particularly when she met with Governor Tony Knowles at Batzulnetas on the bank of Tanada Creek and turned his heart away from what all the major non-Native voices of power, money, and influence told him he must do in the best interest of the State of Alaska and instead toward justice for Katie and Alaska Natives.

I had also spent time in her culture camp. It was while I was landing on the road in Mentasta to cover her victory celebration that I had crashed and destroyed my airplane. After I crawled out of the cockpit, I shook that personal disaster off and I covered that celebration.

With this history, how could I miss the honoring of Katie John - a one-time event in the life of one of Alaska's true heros and most important people?

I couldn't miss it. I had to be there.

I snapped the picture above, by the way, as I walked down Seldon Street the morning after I returned from Katie's honoring.

So I set off to Point Hope and then Barrow with plans to return to Wasilla on the evening of May 8. This would give me time to take care of business, prepare an essay on Katie's history, square some things away and rest up a bit before I drove off to Tok.

Yet, on Friday, May 6, I borrowed a snowmachine from the North Slope Borough's Department of Wildlife Management and made my way across the Barrow ice to the camp of the Saggan whaling crew, captained by North Slope Borough Mayor Edward Itta.

I did not intend to stay beyond one evening. I went there intending to get a single picture, one of the Mayor at whale camp that I could put in Uiñiq along with a statement from the Mayor.

After I took a few pictures from which I could select, my plan was to visit other whale camps as well as the "perch," where scientists and whale counters were conducting a bowhead census.

Yet, after I reached Saggan camp, I saw the good spirit and enthusiasm of the crew. I saw how strongly they desired to receive the gift of the whale and to feed their community. I had no way to know if they would succeed, but if they did, I wanted to be there to document it.

Come Sunday, May 8, the ice conditions made it apparent to me that they would not be able to get their whale before my flight was scheduled to leave. I decided that I could still get everything done that I needed to do if I waited until the night of Tuesday, May 10, to go home.

Come that night, I pushed my departure back one more day, to the night of Wednesday, May 11. This would be pushing it, but would still enable me to get back to Wasilla in time to accomplish the bare minimum of what I needed to do before making the six hour drive to Tok.

Shortly before I left, the lead closed. Saggan crew pulled off the ice.

Sometime after I boarded my plane, Saggan returned to the lead, which had reopened. Twelve hours after I left Barrow, their bowhead came to them and they landed it.

I was thrilled for Saggan, but devastated for me. Utterly, utterly, devastated. I had missed the moment by so little.

Yet, there was nothing to do but my laundry, take a short night's rest and then drive to Tok and Fairbanks to cover the honoring of Katie John.

What does one person do, when three major events that he longs to be at happen simultaneously?

As frustrating as it is, I do believe that I made the right decision.

This honor will come to Katie John but once in a most significant lifetime.

I needed to be there. I was there.

And tonight, Margie will come home. Tonight, I will see my grandsons - who left for New Mexico and Arizona even before she did - in what feels to me like about ten years ago.

So I plan to put them on this blog tomorrow. This also means that I will push my promised posts from my Arctic travels back until next week.

In the meantime, here is Jim yesterday in the backyard, where the buds now sprout into leaves.