Contemplating the future of this blog, part 1

On a painful day in the recent past, I wrote of how I once heard a teenage girl speak a name and immediately fell in love with the woman named, a woman who I had never yet met but who would become my wife and the mother of my children.

The girl who spoke Margie's name was Martyna White Hawk, Lakota of Manderson, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

One week ago, I received a Facebook message from Martyna in which she told me that on January 25, she was going to hold a memorial walk for the three children of hers who had been killed one year before in a terrible traffic accident. MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Driving - was going to walk with her and she hoped that the Lakota Times might come and cover the event.

As soon as I learned this, I just wanted to drop everything and go. I wanted to be there.

Yet, the total sum of my business and home checking accounts, plus the one cent still left in my savings account, did not add up to the required airfare from Anchorage to Rapid City, or the rental car that I would need from there.

I checked my frequent flier miles and came up 10,000 miles short.

I sent an email to an important person in the photographic world who works at a national blog that has plans to soon feature some of my work to see if by any almost impossible chance he might be able to help me get there.

He responded that he was moved by the story but did not have any resources available to help me do it.

So I had no choice but to resign myself to the fact that I could not go and to hope only that the Lakota Times would show up and they would do a good story and that I could read about it there and post a link here.

The night before the walk was scheduled to take place, Margie had gone to town to babysit Kalib and Jobe and so I had stayed up almost all night, pittering away at my computer. When she is gone, it is very difficult for me to make myself stop what I am doing and go to bed. Even so, as has so often been the case these past couple of months, once I did go to bed, I was only able to sleep briefly before I awoke, exhausted, yet unable to sleep further.

So I got up, thinking maybe I would walk to Family Restaurant - but that would be close to an eight-mile walk, roundtrip, and while I could use an eight-mile walk, I didn't have time for it.

Just as I was about to cook oatmeal, Caleb pulled into the driveway, home from his all-night shift at Wal-Mart. "You can take my truck," he said.

So I did. And here I am - at Family Restaurant, once again, eating breakfast and photographing reflections in the window.

The day must come - IT MUST COME - when this blog and its evolution gains enough resource that if I suddenly find I have the need to drop everything, hop on a jet and go to South Dakota, I can go. 

In one month, Sujitha and Manoj will experience a formal Hindu wedding in Bangalore. Those who have been with me since the day that I mentioned how Martyna spoke Margie's name know why it would be important for me to be there.

Last winter, my dear and best friend down in Arizona, Vincent Craig, lay in a hospital bed, battling cancer, and I wanted to drop everything and go see him, but I couldn't, until late May, and then I got there and stepped into his hospital room just hours before he died.

While I was glad that I made it, I should have been there in time to sit down with him, talk with him, joke with him, laugh with him, cry with him, but I didn't make it and I will regret that for the remainder of my days.

And then all that happened in India in November - I want to say that I should have been able to hop on a jet at the first notification to scoot right down and then maybe that could have changed at least the final, tragic, outcome but, you know what?

After someone dies in India, things happen so fast that even if I had left on the next scheduled flight, it would have all been over by the time the plane touched down in Bangalore.

Yet, still I should have been able to jump on that plane and if I had possessed the resource, I surely would have and maybe... maybe... I can't be sure... but maybe just the knowledge that someone was coming from Alaska could have forestalled and then prevented the outcome which has now become destiny - but it did not need to be destiny.

Destiny only becomes firm once it has happened and then it seems as if it was always going to be destiny and that it was just beyond anyone's ability to change it. But before any one destiny becomes set and firm, other destinies abound in endless possibility and this could have come to a different destiny.

Anyway, I am rambling, going off track. I did not mean to go here. I only meant to state that this blog must find a measure of self-sustaining independence so that when the need arises, I can get up and go to wherever it is that I need to go at the time.

Or, if I just need to stay home for awhile, I can stay home. I can't always do that, either, you know. Sometimes, I want to stay home, but I must go.

The kids in this bus, btw, might have wanted to stay home on this, the morning of Martyna's memorial walk, but they had to get up, get dressed and go.

Not a single one of them were thinking of Martyna, or of her children, but I was.

I fear that I have rambled too much, and have missed the opportunity to delve into today's headline, "contemplating the future of this blog."

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about different options that I might pursue to find the means to fund this blog and to build it in to what I want it to be, but I think it is time for me to stop just thinking about it, to write it down, and start coming up with a plan to achieve it.

It can be done - I am certain of it - but not if I just keep going as I am going.

So, I was going to begin that effort, right here, today. I was going to write down some of what I hope to do and to contemplate the possibilities of getting me there. While I do not expect any readers out there to have the answer for me, if any had any input or ideas after reading what I thought would write about today, then I would have been very glad to read those ideas.

But I have used up all my blogging time and then some, and have already written more words than most readers are likely to read.

This is a cat, by the way - a black cat that has just crossed the road in front of me. So maybe some good fortune will come my way.

One thing that bothers me about this blog is how small the horizontal pictures appear.

So small that the cat barely appears at all.

This is the same frame, cropped. Now you can see the cat better, but I prefer the full-frame, horizontal image. It just does not work so well on this blog. It works a little better in slide show view.

Anyway, since I blew it today, I will change the title of this post to "Contemplating the future of this blog, part 1." I will continue this discussion tomorrow in "part 2".

I have run out of time to even jump into my India folder to randomly grab an image. Even so, I have been posting the India images to accomplish a specific purpose, and in this post that purpose has already been accomplished.

This image, by the way, is from the drop-in to Metro Cafe that I made with Margie the other day.

View images as slides

Margie and I drop in to Metro Cafe - she drives on to Anchorage, I walk home; boy takes precarious seat overlooking the temple and the sea

Jacob and Lavina had something to do Monday night, so they called and asked if Margie could come in to babysit and stay for the night.

This meant that I would be without a car. So we agreed that Margie and I would leave together at coffee break time, we would stop at Metro Cafe, go inside, enjoy a cup and cinnamon roll together and then she would drive on to Anchorage and I would walk back home.

So here is Elizabeth, seen not through the window from the outside, but from the inside, preparing our coffees.

And here is Elizabeth serving one of those coffees. As you can tell by the punch card lying on the counter, the coffees this day still came courtesy of the generous reader in North Carolina. Even with a card, I still lay down cash for the tip.

In past posts, I have lamented about the ironic fact that when we were young and she possessed all of her exceptionally exquisite youthful, beauty, Margie would almost always refuse to let me photograph her. Most of the exceptions involved the kids also being in the picture. 

As I have pointed out, Now that we have grandkids, she has somewhat relaxed about it - especially if the grandkids are in the pictures. No grandkids were with us at Metro, but she did tolerate a photo. As you can see, "tolerate" is the exact right word.

And then my eye got distracted and my lens pulled away from her beautiful face by this four-wheeling guy and his dog, as they whizzed by. The dog is kind of hard to see, but if you look close, maybe you can find it. If you can't see it here and it is important enough to you, you can try again in slide show view.

It's really not all that important and I won't feel bad if you don't.

Inside the Metro Cafe, Carmen study, #13,496: Carmen poses with Margie and me

Were I to take the most direct route home, I would need to walk about two-and-half miles. That route follows two busy roads - Lucille and Seldon streets. I did not want to walk along busy roads al the way home. I wanted solitude. So I chose a route that would add about one mile, but in which I could find more solitude.

Even that route started out on a busy road, Spruce Street, which is where I walk right here.

Two ravens flew over as I walked down Spruce Street.

In 2002 or 2003, not long after I had made the leap from film to digital cameras, I managed to purchase a bulky, professional, Canon 1D camera body that shot an 11 mp image - the highest resolution available at the time - for just under $8,000. Funny - that I could manage such a purchase then, but now that I am more established and better known than ever, it would be impossible.

One morning, as I waited for my next flight during a stopover in Boise, Idaho, a gentleman who was then about the age I am now took note of my camera. He was impressed, his face full of smiles.

"I'll bet that digital photography is great for you," he gushed. "You can make your pictures better than ever - like, if you take a picture and there are powerlines in it, you can take them out."

"I wouldn't do that," I answered. "If there are powerlines there, they are there. They are part of the scene. I won't take them out. That would be a violation of my journalistic ethics."

This really angered and offended him. He became so indignant that his face turned red and his nose damn near popped off. His voice turned sharp, rasp and sputtery.

I tried to tell him that it did not matter to me what he did with his, that I did not apply my ethics to him, but that I was a photojournalist and a documentarian and that it would undermine my credibility if I started removing powerlines, just because I could. If I were doing ads or a different kind of art that is not documentary, an art in which the literal does not matter, then what the hell, it would be okay.

He did not buy this. He felt personally insulted and let me know it.

I imagine that he probably has a digital camera now - assuming that he still lives and is healthy enough to take pictures.

Perhaps he now takes the powerlines out of his pictures. If so, I'll bet that each time he does, he thinks of me and gets to feeling all indignant all over again.

But really, I do not care what he or anyone else does. I will not judge them for it.

As for me, the powerlines are simply just part of the picture.

Life has powerlines.

I continued on. A jet passed in the distance. I got a call from a friend, in tears, to tell me that her aunt had just died. I spoke what words of comfort to her that I could.

I walked on in solitude. As darkness slowly deepened, I passed beneath a street lamp and it cast my shadow before me. If it appears that there is a spirit accompanying me, then I must note that it is only a scuff on the trail left by someone who gunned their snowmachine right here and spun the track as they drove over this spot.

Yet, this does not mean that a spirit could not have been walking with me, or perhaps gliding along beside me. If the thought should frighten anyone, let me assure you, that spirit would have been a good one. Troubled, perhaps, but good. Simply, fundamentally, purely - good.

I don't know about spirits - if they truly exist or if they are just a creation of the human mind, a fiction, a survival mechanism to help us bear that which does not seem to be bearable. Yet, if spirits do not exist, then why do I so often seem to feel a spiritual presence? In something so simple, perhaps, as a sudden, unexpected, solitary, gust of wind in my face, at just the right moment?

And this one from India

A youth took a somewhat precarious seat overlooking the Mamallapuram temple grounds and the Bay of Bengal and then asked me to take his picture.

So I did.

View images as slides

I take a blurry iPhone photo of Melanie and Charlie and see the impression of Mom; Little Miss Vaidehi: Eight studies

In midafternoon, I received a call from Charlie's cell phone, but after I answered, "Hello Charlie," I got this response:

"It's me, Melanie."

And indeed, it was. The two were just driving out of Anchorage with Charlie at the wheel, headed for Vagabond Blues in Palmer. Melanie asked if Margie and I wanted to come to Palmer and join them for coffee.

I said, "sure," but I could not get Margie to leave the house so I would have to go by myself.

I took a shower first, and then suddenly discovered that I was going to leave later than I intended.

I rushed out of the house and when I got to Vagabond, was shocked to discover that I had forgotten my camera.

This left me with only my iPhone, the lens of which is hopelessly smudged.

That was okay. I would go for the impressionistic effect.

Boy. When I look at Melanie in this blurred picture, the impression that I get is of my mom. Physically speaking, Mom really seeped through me into Melanie.

But Mom would have never joined any of us for coffee. The thought that we were even drinking coffee would have broken her heart.

As it happened, in the end, although she never saw me take a sip of coffee, her dedicated Mormon heart was thoroughly broken anyway and that broken heart took both her life and Dad's thereafter.

Afterward, Melanie rode with me back to Wasilla and Charlie joined us here. We ate Spam chunks for dinner, mixed with rice and veggies. It was pretty good.

Then Jim and Charlie hung out for awhile.

Chennai, India: Eight studies of Little Miss Vaidehi

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 1: With my lens cap

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 2: With her mom, Vidya

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 3: With her keyboard

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 4: She reaches for the ball

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 5: From the arms of her father, Vijay, she marvels at the girl in the mirror

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 6: With her Auntie Mel from Alaska

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 7: With her grandmother, Vasanthi

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 1: With her dad, Vijay

To anyone who would like to see a more contemporary version of Vaidehi on YouTube, as recorded by Vijay, here you can find her laughing or singing.

View images as slides

Rex, Ama, Chicago and the burning man; Yes, we have bananas, we have lots of bananas today

We had not seen Rex and Ama since Christmas. Late yesterday afternoon, they dropped in for a visit. Chicago could not believe her happy eyes. She stepped onto Rex's lap and looked him in the eye. "Where the hell you been, bro?" she asked.

"I've been to Tennessee, cat," Rex answered. This was a lie. Rex had not been to Tennessee. He hadn't even been to Texas. 

Margie and Ama cooked up a stir-fry vegetarian meal in the wok that Jacob and Lavina gave Margie for her birthday last September. I went out to take a look.

"What would you add, Bill?" Margie asked.

I took a whiff of the scent and it suddenly seemed that orange would be just the thing.

"An orange," I said.

But we were out of oranges.

"I've got one in my pack," Rex said.

So he got it. It was a very red "blood" orange.

Margie put it into the stir fry.

The zing of the orange proved to be quite tasty in there.

Then I went and sat back on the living room couch. Chicago left Rex and came back to me. 

Late each August in northern Nevada, a very strange community of about 50,000 people comes together on a hot stretch of absolutely barren, alkaline, desert - a place where not even cactus, snakes, or spiders live. They call it "Burning Man" in honor of the huge, log, effigy of a man that is put up there every year and then burned to the ground at the end.

Except for water, coffee and tea, no concessions are allowed. Community members must bring in all their own food and supplies - and for many, that includes their own alcohol and drugs. People pedal about on the bare earth on bicycles and ride about in tiny vehicles that look like cupcakes. A hot wind blows, and dries out and dehydrates everything in sight. There is a big car that looks like a cat.

All kinds of sculptures go up. When it is over, everything must be removed so that all that is left behind is desert, looking like it did before the event.

Ama has been going to Burning Man year for years and last summer introduced Rex to it.

Now he is applying to Burning Man for a grant that would fund what he needs to build his own, large, sprawling, sculpture there, one that includes a life-size concrete replica of the largest salmon ever caught - nearly six feet in length.

I hope he gets the grant.

And now I want to go to Burning Man, too.

See what is says at the top of this blog?

One photographer's search for community, home and family...?

I think this very strange event would qualify.

And Margie, who usually shies away from adventure these days, says she would like to go, too.

I kind of doubt that we will be able to pull it off - but watch this space and find out. If not this year, then maybe next.

All I've got to do is get this blog and electronic magazine up, running and cooking along the way I want, generating income, funding itself, funding my work, being my work and then, if I want to run off to someplace strange like Burning Man just to take some pictures and blog about it, well, by hell, I can do it!

Rex and Ama are both doing Burning Man things in this picture, BTW. He is refining his ideas and she is pulling up Burning Man pictures to show Margie and I. 

From India: Vijay feeds us bananas

Here we are, in the Chennai fruit store where Vijay has brought us so that he can buy bananas and feed us - as I have noted before.

Look at all that fruit! There is probably more fruit in this one store than in all of Alaska!

Well, maybe not than "all of Alaska," but there is a lot of fruit.

Many varieties of bananas were available and Vijay wanted to give us as wide an experience as possible. He picked his bananas very carefully.

The fruit store includes a little juice bar, where you can buy fruit drinks of many types, so Vijay bought fruit drinks for Melanie and I.

And now I must say that I am very surprised and a little disappointed in myself. In my mind, I remember taking many pictures, like of Melanie getting served, the juice baristo handing my drink to me, of Vijay and such, little kids passing by on motorcycles and observing us as we drank. I intended to include a few of these in this post - but this is the only image from the fruit store juice bar that I have!

How could this be?

I am wondering if I was using two cameras and somehow forgot to download the images from one camera, because it just doesn't make any sense that I would photograph just this static scene and then quit shooting.

I also wonder if they really had Washington apples there. India grows many apples in the north and they are very good. And all of the fruit at this store, apples included, were very cheap in price compared to what the same items would cost here - just pennies on the dollar or maybe in some cases a nickel or dime.

I don't think Washington State apples would be all that cheap after having been shipped all the way to India.

I wish that I could remember the names of all these banana varieties, but I can't. In the upper right hand corner is the banana most like the ones we usually find in the store here. Those little tiny ones - they were my favorite! So sweet and tender and good and after you eat them for awhile and then come back to the states the bananas here taste kind of bland. 

The green bananas are supposed to be green. They are ripe when they are green like this.

Anyway, we ate them all. Every banana. Afterward, both Melanie and I were stuffed, but Vijay wanted to feed us more food.

I toast Vijay with a banana. The situation here is the same as the juice bar. I could swear that I took many more pictures, including ones of Melanie and Vijay eating bananas, but what you see here is all the banana photos that I have.

And that just isn't like me.

It's okay, though. Just the other week, Vijay told me that when next I, and anyone who might travel with me, come back, he is going to treat me to another banana feast, with even more varieties. Remembering how I came up short here, I will be certain to take more pictures and to tell the story right.

So just consider this to be a preview.

And this is little miss Vaidehi, daughter of Vijay and wife Vidya. In the background is Vasanthi, Vivek and Vijay's mom, who brought Melanie and I to Chennai by bus. She paid for our tickets, our lodging and all of our food except for what Vijay bought us. She would not let us pay for anything.

That's what hosts in India do - they assume complete responsibility for your survival. It is a different kind of concept for an American to grasp but that is the kind of generosity that is built into the culture and you must put aside your pride and accept, respect, and be grateful for it.

And don't argue about whose going to pay, because you will use that argument. And if by chance you see an opportunity to sneak in and pay for a lunch before your host can do so - don't do it. Because afterward you will look into their eyes and see that they feel badly. So be gracious, and accept the hospitality.

And, of course, that is Melanie who Vaidehi is so fascinated to meet.

This will do it for today, but tomorrow I will include a range of studies of little Miss Vaidehi. Her mom will be included in these studies.

View images as slides

Two months later: the slow emergence from darkness; the moment she became Muse

Once again, after having slept for just a few broken hours, I found myself awake and unable to sleep further. I quietly got up, punched the remote to start the car so that it could warm up, dressed, quietly slipped out of the bedroom without disturbing Margie, came to this computer, checked emails and then drove to Family Restaurant to eat an early morning breakfast in solitude.

It is now two months to the day since Muse and soul friend Soundarya chose to follow her husband Anil into the "thereafter," whatever the "thereafter" might be.

I put "thereafter" in quotation marks because Anil once used this word in an email to me to describe how long the journey that he would take with Soundarya as her husband would last - "life and thereafter."

Today is also the first day since November 18 that the sun will completely rise above the horizon in Barrow. A few days ago, I began to read reports from Facebook friends there that the top arch of the sun had been spotted peeking over the drifted tundra, but today is the first day that it will arise in its entirety.

I wish that I could be there to witness it.

Early in this process, I resigned myself to also living with an inner darkness for all the time that the Barrow sun would remain below the horizon. I most certainly have.

Now the sun is coming back.

What I always remember about the winters that I spent completely or mostly in Barrow is how, after the sun would come back, that was when the really deep, bitter, brutal, cold would set in.

I don't know. In my mind, I had imagined myself writing many things about all this in this post, but now that I am sitting here, I don't feel like it. I find that once again my eyes are moist and I feel a trickle on my cheek and I don't want to say or write anything.

I don't know why I am. To write in all circumstance is just who I am, I guess.

I feel so tired. So very, very, tired.

And I am not getting anything done. Except this blog. It is the only thing that I am getting done.

In many ways, this blog has helped me to get through, but I have found myself incapable of doing my work. I open it up and I try, but I just stare at the computer and get nothing done. For some reason, I can always blog, but I can't work.

I have accomplished almost nothing since I last returned from Barrow.

No, that's not true. Besides this blog, I also have a novel that I am working on. I started it quite awhile back, made some progress, stuck it aside, picked it up later, made a little more progress, stuck it aside again.

In the fall, I picked it up again and resolved that this time, I would stay with it, if even for as few as 15 minutes a day, until it is done. I figured that might take ten years - if I live and have a mind for ten more years.

Then, when Anil and then Sandy died, I quit working on it altogether.

But I picked it back up again a couple of weeks ago and I have worked on it every day since.

I set out to do 15 or 30 minutes but often wind up going anywhere from one to three hours. So I am making progress there.

But of course, that puts no money in my bank account.

Amazingly, thanks to the donate button that I have put up on the side bar, this blog does put a little money into my bank account. Nowhere near enough to live on or to allow me to become a full-time blogger, but enough to give me hope that such a thing might actually be possible.

If I could increase my regular readership 100 fold and have support come in at the same level percentage wise that it has been coming in, I could do this blog full time. Then, I could really create something here. Right now, it is just a whisper of what I envision it to become.

Surely, for every individual who does come here on a regular basis there must be 100 more who would if they could somehow be brought into it?

See, all I want to do now for the rest of my life is to work on my books, this blog and the electronic magazine that I plan to add to it.

I suppose that I have rambled like this before and this all sounds redundant. But its true. And that is how the rest of my life should be spent.

This picture, by the way, is me driving back home after breakfast - although I suspect most of you have probably surmised that already.

There are two other things that have helped me get through the darkness so far. One, my family. I don't talk about it much to them, but just to have kids and grandkids swing by now and then, to come around, to go out and get coffee, to carry a spatula everywhere, to look with adoring baby eyes into my eyes and to feel the often sad but sweet spirit of my wife who has endured through this insane, risky, always insecure, forever teetering on financial destruction, life-stye that living with me these past 37 years has subjected her to.

And there is Soundarya's family, which is also my family. Her brother, Ganesh, my nephew - he credits me for introducing him to the fact that he is a photographer. He is a natural and has the potential to be great. In our communications, although she is always there, we do not talk about Sandy much, but rather about pictures, and about what we are going to do in her memory, namely to take a long hike in the Brooks Range.

Then there is her sister, Sujitha - Suji - my niece, who has appeared in this blog, who loves Jobe and Kalib and who leaves a comment or two here now and then. In so many ways it is she, who has been hurt so very, very deeply, more deeply than I can even hint at here, who has helped me to the deepest degree, just in the communications that we share back in forth.

While it may be difficult for some to understand this deep, platonic, relationship that I share with her sister, still, now, even in her death as I did in her life, Sujitha does understand and she lends comfort that could only be lent by one who understands and is hurt and grieving to the maximum degree herself.

The maximum degree. Yet, she helps me. I am happy that little Jobe, in particular, helps her. And from 9000 miles away.

It looks like Suji and Manu's wedding will happen late next month. I wish that I could be there, but I see no way.

There is also Kavitha, or Cawitha, Soundarya's cousin. I met her only one time and that was at Sandy and Anil's wedding. We do not exchange emails all the time, but every now and then and, except for those that came with announcements of death, I always enjoy receiving them. Kavitha is a trekker. She treks in the Himalayas, she treks about southern India, she treks into dark caves.

She plans to come on the Brooks Range hike.

I hope the rest of us can keep up with her.

One thing worries me a little bit about this hike. My Indian relatives are all vegetarians. We can carry a certain amount of dried food, maybe even enough to get us through with some fairlly significant weight loss, which will be good for me, but I would kind of like to supplement our diet with at least a few fish and maybe some ptarmigan. If there are enough of us to eat it all, maybe even a caribou. But I can't feed fish, ptarmigan and caribou to vegetarians!

We will have to carry a gun or two, both for protection and as a survival mechanism, should it come to that.

I think we will figure it all out, though.

Last night, I dreamed that we had just left on this hike. We were very unprepared. Margie had packed my pack and I did not even know what was in it.

When I opened it up, I found a suit, white shirt, tie and a pair of shiny, black, shoes.

The above image, by the way, is Metro Cafe as I drive by on my way home from breakfast.

There is a folder within my pictures folder labeled, "Ravens for Sandy." It has many photos in it, many that I sent her and others that I did not, but that I placed in the folder to hold until the day that I would.

And all these ravens that continually appear here, I still photograph them for Sandy. I no longer put them in that folder, but only here, in my daily blog folders, but still I photograph them for her.

I photographed this one yesterday, as I walked to Metro to get my afternoon coffee. Both Kalib and Jobe had fallen ill, could not go to daycare and so Margie had gone to town to babysit them. I was left without a car and so I walked.

I am a little surprised to realize that I took no pictures while I was at Metro.

I don't know how that happened. I had my camera. It just never occurred to me to take a picture while I was there. 

And this was one of those rare times when I was on the inside, at a table, slowly devouring a hot cinnamon roll as I sipped and savored the coffee - not on the outside, looking in through the drive-through window. Maybe I am beginning to lose it.

Hey - just a couple of weeks ago, it would have been completely dark at the time that I took this picture.

So the light is coming back. It feels kind of strange - as it always does when the light first manifests itself in the new year. We have had plenty of cool weather in the sub-zeros here in Wasilla, but we have yet to experience any true, deep, cold this year like we can get in this neighborhood this time of year.

I guess we had better brace ourselves. It ought to be coming any time now.

The moment she became Muse

Although I have been running this little series of India pictures in memory of her, I have not been including pictures of Sandy herself.

Today, I make what I believe will be my one exception, because I did not explain this muse thing quite well enough. I did explain how, after my first trip to India, I began to photograph the world that I live and work in here in Alaska with the goal of producing images that could explain it to a young woman in India and thus she was my muse.

But this is the moment - the very moment - she became Muse.

In the early 1990's, at the request of Melanie and Lisa, whenever I would travel, I began to photograph cats wherever I could find them. If I went to a new community, village, city, state or country, I would always seek out a cat and photograph it for my daughters.

So, when my sister's daughter Khena and Vivek planned their wedding and it became clear that I was going to go to India, I immediately began to imagine the cats that I might find to photograph there.

But Khena told me that in all her travels with Vivek in India, she had not seen a single cat. She did not believe that it was common there for people to keep cats the way they do here. Vivek could think of no cats, either. When I got off the plane and met his parents, they did not know about any cats.

And then, after the wedding feast where two soul friends from who knows how far back recognized each other, Sandy invited me to walk and so we walked.

We talked of other things and did not speak of cats.

Then all of a sudden she squealed with delight. She had spotted a cat - this one. She hurried over to the fence. She did not know the lady but asked her to hand her the kitten and let her hold it for awhile. The lady picked up the kitten and lifted it over the top of the fence. I raised my camera.

Hence, Soundarya! Muse!

May her memory live forever.

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