After hanging out in Barrow on the Anchorage waterfront, I pass by a moose on the way to Rex's birthday party; Larry Aiken and Mona

I had spent the day on the Anchorage waterfront, hanging out in Barrow, where I had experienced a great temptation to go into Pepe's and order some tacos, but wound up beneath a bridge, eating Cajun food instead. I know this makes no sense and I do not have time to explain today.

I can't explain tomorrow, because I have already committed tomorrow's post to Friday's mysterious flurry of activity. So I will explain Tuesday - just before I leave for Barrow on the Arctic Coast.

The most important thing about yesterday for this family is that it was Rex's birthday. So I left Barrow on the Anchorage waterfront about 5:15 PM to drive to Jacob and Lavina's, where the family would gather to throw Rex a small celebration.

As I drove over, a moose calf trotted across "C" Street.

I did not see a cow - only this calf. Still, a cow could have been nearby, lurking in the shadows, watching her baby run through traffic.

When I stepped onto the stairs that lead up to the living room, I could see Kalib looking down at me. "Who is that?" I heard Melanie's voice in the background. "Is it Charlie? Is it Uncle Rex?"

No.

It was just me.

Upstairs, I found that everybody in the living room was absorbed in one exciting activity or another.

In the kitchen, I found Lisa and Bryce, eating five can stew. I was already stuffed with the Cajun I had eaten down in Barrow on the Anchorage waterfront, but I ate a little more, anyway.

In time, the birthday boy himself arrived, with Charlie. Rex. Thirty-two years old. Or is it 33? It gets harder and harder to keep track of these kind of things.

This past year - it has been a tough one for him. Hence for us all. The wife that he so loved and adored divorced him.

Yet, things have gotten much better. He now has his new friend, Ama, and he is going to go spend Thanksgiving with her and her family at Lake Tahoe, California.

Afterward, the first week in December, they are going to drive back to Anchorage.

This worries me a little bit.

Have some 60 degree below zero sleeping bags, I told him, plenty of extra blankets, lots of warm clothing and a Coleman heater.

He said they planned to.

I don't know how Jobe got the little scratch between his eyes - probably he scratched himself - but, just before I took this picture, he had done a little crying. The tears had flowed down to his chin and now they were hanging there, in a big drop.

Jobe reminds me a lot of Rex at the same age. Despite the tears, Jobe is almost always happy. He is optimistic, bright and alert. He studies everything around him with wonder and eagerness.

Just like Rex at the same age.

Kalib observes as Bryce lights the candles on the cake that Melanie baked.

Kalib turns away to avoid the oncoming blast of air as Rex prepares to blow out his candles. We were all a little surprised to see Kalib turn away, as he has always seen it as his role to help blow out the candles on anyone's cake.

With one mighty blast, Rex blows out all the candles but one.

Kalib then leans forward to blow out that one last candle. I guess he was just waiting for the right moment, when his breath could make the greatest impact.

Caleb helps Kalib devour cake and ice cream. I sure didn't need any, but I ate some, anyway.

I missed where it was that they found them, but Melanie and Charlie gave Rex a set of Star Wars glasses from the year 1980. Rex, for those who don't know, Rex grew up with Star Wars and is a huge and loving fan.

A better gift I cannot imagine.

Muzzy had been out on the back porch, complaining. So Jacob let him in. You see no pictures of Lavina in this post, because she was flying home from Nome.

They are watching a video about a kitten getting wrapped up in paper.

Shortly after the party began, it ended, because these three had a rock concert to go to.

Then, leaving Margie with Jacob and the grandsons, I set out to pay a visit to Larry and Mona. I soon came upon this scene, where someone had been rear-ended badly.

I found Larry playing an online video game with a friend in Barrow. This has been a challenging week for Larry. His treatment has sometimes been painful and has often left him exhausted. Yet, whenever I see him, his spirits are good. His desire to do whatever it takes to live is strong.

He had been reading a book written by a cancer survivor who faced a similar ordeal to the one he is going through. Part of what got her through her treatment was the natural food of indigenous societies. 

One of the best foods of all was salmon, rich in oil, skin and all.

Larry took a break while Mona got on the computer to search for nearby places that might have some good, oily, salmon.

Afterward, I drove them to Carr's, where they bought some smoked salmon.

On his Facebook page, Larry says this:

"Today I have cancer and pray everynight that I wake up each morning and when I do I pray and thank God..I think of my family, father, mother and sisters that I love very much... and I do think of my nephews and nieces too and they belong in my heart."

I then returned to pick Margie up and bring her home for the first time in six days. I found Kalib throwing a ball at his dad and brother.

I then drove Margie home. We reached downtown Wasilla at the same time as did this train, but we passed it in the dark and were soon ahead of it. This upset me and left me hoping that we would have to stop at a red light. My wish was granted. The train caught us there, rolled into the light of the intersection, and chugged on towards Fairbanks.

Truly, this was one of life's good moments.

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Shortly after yesterday's flurry of excitement, I see blured kids through a school bus window

I came upon a bit of excitement yesterday, a bit after noon. I photographed it, alright, but the only image that I am going to post today is this one, taken shortly after the excitement had ended, about two miles away from the scene.

Actually this was pretty exciting too, and Kalib would have really been excited if he could have been with me. "Bus!" he would have shouted. "Bus! Bus!"

Kalib just loves school buses.

For now.

As to the big flurry, I will wait to post my documentation of it until Monday. I wait because the number of visitors to this blog tend to fall down a bit on weekends and so I will save it for Monday, when those readers who disappeared to recreate or whatever come back.

I will give you a few clues as to what the subject matter might be:

You know that most days when I am home, I stop at Metro Cafe and then go driving on roads that this time of year can be icy. I often see trucks on those roads, even Kenworth trucks, and I pass horses and sometimes, even people riding horses. Sometimes, perhaps, there could even be a famous person riding a horse and I might not even know it. You know, too, that I took this blog to India for Soundarya's wedding, and found that the highways there can be very scary, and you know that just last week, all the major news and propaganda networks were also busy in India.

So there you go. With clues like that, you should surely be able to guess what yesterday's flurry of excitement was all about.

I sneak Margie out on a date, eat raw fish, drift with ravens and spot a cop and a driver-less car on the Wasilla highway

As you know, this past Sunday afternoon I was happily working away in my office when Jobe suddenly appeared at my door, snatched Margie away from me and took her back to Anchorage to stay with him and Kalib for the week. This was because Lavina and Jacob were each traveling during different times of the week and so they needed Margie there, to care for Kalib and Jobe.

I do good alone, don't mind it, much, because as long as I have a camera, a computer or something to write with, I am never bored. I always have something to do.

More to do than I can do, in fact.

Even so, come Wednesday afternoon, I found myself longing to see Margie - to see a movie with her. We used to go to movies every week, when I would be home, but we have fallen off.

So I jumped into the car and rushed to town.

Whoever was in this car was headed into Wasilla even as I was headed out, Anchorage bound.

I snuck her out of the house. We then went to the movie, "Hereafter" and after we went out to dinner at Samurai Sushi, where we had never eaten before.

Margie doesn't care for sushi, so she ordered Teriyaki chicken. I ordered this plate of sushi and sashimi. For a moment, I was hesitant, because our bank account is once again just about tapped out - and we have an auto-withdrawal payment coming Monday that is bigger than the combination of all the funds left in all three of our bank accounts combined.

On the other hand, I had submitted an invoice the day before, which hopefully will be paid in time to cover everything, I had not been on a date with my wife in a long time and that sushi looked really good.

Here is my sushi and sashimi, as seen through my iPhone.

Oh, damn! It was good!

How do these Japanese chefs make raw fish taste so good?

If I take a fish and cut it up and eat it raw it is not going to taste like this.

These guys really know how to cut fish.

Margie's chicken teriyaki was delicious, too.

I know, because she let me sample a chopstick full.

I then drove Margie back to drop her off Jacob and Lavina's house until Saturday night. Do you remember that feeling you sometimes had when you were young and you had taken a girl you liked out on a date or maybe you were that girl and you were with a guy you liked and then the date was over and you were pulling up to her parent's house to drop her off?

That feeling of how good it felt to be with this person, how much you had enjoyed the date and now you still had the good feeling, but a little ache, too, because this girl with her parents and then go?

That was the very feeling that I had as I pulled into Jacob and Lavina's driveway with Margie beside me, after our date.

Only I wasn't taking back home to her parents.

I was taking her home to our grandkids. 

Jacob had returned from his travels and Lavina would not leave on her's until the next day, so they were both home.

Kalib was watching Dragons - probably for the 10,000th time. I got between him and the screen to take a picture of him. He peered around me to the left so that he could continue to watch.

I shifted left, to try again. Kalib peered around me to the right.

I shifted to the right. He was getting a little disgusted with me.

It's okay, though. He has all the scenes memorized. And he's probably seen them ten times since then.

Jobe was hanging out with Muzzy.

Maybe Jobe will go to Arizona some day and be a bull rider.

I don't really want him to be, but it might just be in his blood, so you never know.

Then Jacob caught me and Jobe together. Jobe loves me. Jobe loves my beard. One day, I want to take him out in a canoe and catch fish with him.

Maybe by then I can learn how to cut them right and then we can sit on the bank and eat sushi and sashimi, as fresh as sushi and sashimi can be.

"Grandpa," he will say. "That was damn good raw fish. I sure hope that some day, I can grow a beard just like yours!"

So that was Wednesday. This was yesterday, back in Wasilla. I had to go to Wal-Mart to pick up some medications.

There were ravens there, waiting for me.

Wal-Mart raven.

Then, as I drove home, I saw ravens surfing the updraft, over the railroad tracks.

It was a windy day. Ravens love windy days.

I love ravens.

For those unclear about the difference between ravens and crows, they are related, but ravens are bigger. Much bigger. 

Ravens make a stronger impression on you than crows do.

Sometimes a raven will say, "never more."

A crow would never say that.

Never.

While I was stopped at the light on the corner of the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highways, I noticed a cop car pull into the left turn to my right with lights flashing. Then the cop stopped, right there in the left turn lane and got out of the car.

This seemed to me to be a very curious place to make a traffic stop. Then, as my light turned green and I had to go, I noticed that the car the cop had stopped behind did not have a driver.

It was empty - just sitting there unmanned in the left turn lane. Nor I could I see anyone just standing around, who might have once been the driver.

Just another of the usual strange sights that one gets to see just about everyday, right here in Wasilla, Alaska.

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Five veterans: Gilbert sees bodies pile up in Korea, Iñupiat mother Irene stands with pistol on hip and baby on back to face Japanese, Strong Man returns from Iraq to walk again; two more

Once in awhile, I still dream about the war* Gilbert Lincoln of Anaktuvuk Pass says of his experience in Korea. “I always be tired when I wake up. I don’t tell my wife about it. I don’t tell my children. I don’t want to worry them.”

Lincoln turned 21 in 1952, was drafted into the Army and sent to Fort Richardson, where a rifle was placed in his hands. Born in Noatak, he had grown up with guns. As a boy, he had followed his grandmother out reindeer herding. He attended school in Noatak, and spent much time, rifle in hand, roaming about the countryside, hunting.

This rifle had a different purpose.

After basic training, Lincoln was sent to San Diego. “They were calling for volunteers, so I volunteered. I guess I volunteered for the wrong job. The next thing I heard, they were shipping a bunch of us guys out. There was a lot of people on that boat. We landed on Parallel 46, not too far from Peking and right by Seoul someplace.

“We go into the front, every third week. It is pretty rough. No place to stay. Some people call it a one way ticket.”

In Korea, Gilbert Lincoln discovered the horror of leaving on patrol with eight or nine men and returning with only half. One time, he set out on patrol with 10 men, only to come home alone. Lincoln, who was the lone Iñupiat in his company, became a good buddy with a soldier from California and another from Texas, then lost both in combat.

“After I lost those two, I didn't have no more interest,” Lincoln remembers. “The only strength I got is from my Lieutenant. He said, ‘If you don't shoot, I will kill you.’ I think he was trying to give me courage. It worked real good.”  

In Anaktuvuk Pass, Gilbert Lincoln is known as a storyteller, but he keeps his stories of the war pretty much to himself. “The only thing that keeps you up is the Good Lord, watching down. Like they say, he is right there by you, all the time. I had a pocket sized Bible the chaplain give me. I always read it.”

After the war, Lincoln returned home to Noatak. “I was glad to come home, but it was pretty rough, not too good.” Friends and family did not understand what he had been through and he had no way to tell them. “I would get flashbacks. Sometimes, when you get it, you get real jumpy, kind of nervous. It is hard to get rid of. I was afraid if I stayed in Noatak, I would kill somebody.”

Lincoln moved to Kotzebue, where he worked as a power plant operator for the White Alice Project, a radar program designed to detect incoming Soviet missiles. There he met Ada Rulland from Anaktuvuk Pass. They were married in 1962. Gilbert joined the Alaska National Guard and served as an Eskimo Scout for 12 years.

Ada brought him home to Anaktuvuk in 1972 and he has been there ever since. He and Ada raised six children including two adopted. “It’s a good place,” Lincoln says of Anaktuvuk. “Real good country.”

In Anaktuvuk Pass, Lincoln is known to have the gift of the storyteller.  When he goes hunting, friends and family eagerly await his return, for they know he will have some good stories to tell. He shares these stories over the CB radio. Even before he begins to speak, other villagers sit by their radios and grin, for they know that whatever accounting Lincoln gives them of his adventures with caribou, wolves, wolverines or whatever he encountered will be well worth hearing.

But he tells no stories of his combat in Korea. These he keeps to himself.

“I’m proud of my military service. I’m proud of my country, in fact. My pride comes from serving my country as a US citizen,” Lincoln says, adding that he gets very hurt and angry when he sees news reports of any Americans burning or desecrating the US flag.

“A lot of people die for that flag. I’ve seen a lot of them piled up.”

Something else bothers Lincoln.

“You never hear about Korea,” he explains. “People hardly know about Korea. I would like to see the Korean vets get a little attention.”

In the spring of 1942, the people of Barrow heard that the Japanese were coming to bomb the village.

"We hear seven Japanese planes are coming to bomb Barrow, but they freeze and have to turn back," Irene Itta* remembers. A total blackout was imposed upon the community. All windows had to be sealed off so that no light escaped outside. The famous Major "Muktuk" Marston came to town to help organize the Territorial Guard. A tower the height of a house was built from empty steel drums just outside of town. There, Guard members stood sentry, scanning the skies for Japanese planes. 

Whaling season arrived. The men had no time to stand on a tower of barrels to watch for incoming Japanese airplanes.

They turned to the Barrow Mothers’ Club for help. Irene’s own husband, Miles, was stationed in Nome with the U.S. Army. Still, she did not hesitate when she was asked to volunteer for guard duty.

Irene had a tiny baby girl, Martina, who depended on her. Still, someone had to go watch for the Japanese, and that someone was Irene Itta. Early in the morning, she reported for duty. She wore her parka, and in it, tucked snugly onto her back, was baby Martina. A guardsman issued her a pistol, fully loaded and with extra bullets, and strapped it to her waist.

"He didn’t even show me how to use it," Itta muses. 

At 8:00 AM, Itta took her post atop the barrels. She had been instructed to bang upon the barrels at the first sight of anything in the sky.

So she stood there, a baby on her back and a pistol on her hip, atop a tower of steel drums, for 12 hours straight, in the cold, scanning the sky for incoming Japanese airplanes. Fortunately, baby Martina slept a lot. When she would awake, Irene would breast-feed her, there on the tower.

At 8:00 PM, Itta was off duty. She had spotted no Japanese.

"Today, they wouldn’t do that," she states. "They’d probably want to get paid. I did it so the people can have a safe place to go. No one knows about it. It was never in the papers, not on the radio. I always tell my son, when I die, I want a special ceremony. I want a flag, I want a salute, with the guns, because I served my country in the territorial guard."

My post of November 3 included a picture of Latseen Benson who had come to the post election party for Ethan Berkowitz and Diane Benson, Latseen's mother, following their unsuccessful run for Governor and Lt. Governor. Latseen was standing in that picture and I mentioned that it was good to see him standing.

This is why. 

This is Latseen, at Ted Stevens International Airport just before the Fourth of July, 2006. He has just rolled back home into Alaska for the very first time after losing his legs to an IED in Iraq. His wife Jessica stands behind him, his mother, Diane, in blue to his side.

He is greeted by a welcoming group of his people, the Tlingit and Haida.

Williard Jackson of Ketchikan drums and sings for him.

Latseen means "Strong Man" in Tlingit. A few days later, Latseen races his way to one of several gold medals that he won in the 2006 National Veterans Wheelchair Games - held that year in Anchorage.

This morning, Veterans Day, I went to breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, because almost always I see a number of veterans there, identified by the words and symbols on their caps and jackets that tell their branch of service and what war they fought in.

So I thought I would spot such a veteran, or maybe a couple, and photograph them for this blog.

But when I arrived, I could see no obvious veterans at all.

"There were several here, earlier," my waitress told me.

This young man and little girl sat at the table next to mine.

As I ate, I kept waiting for an obvious veteran to appear, but none did.

Then my food was eaten. I wondered - could this gentleman be a veteran?

He looked like he could - but then veterans come from all of us, so anyone old enough to have served could look like a veteran.

"Excuse me, sir," I asked. "Are you by any chance a veteran?"

"Yes," he said. "But I served stateside."

Perhaps. But at any moment, had the need arisen, he could have been sent into harm's way.

This is him, Ray, U.S. Army, who served in the early and mid-90's, all of it stateside. He is with his niece, Amber, better known as Pickles. They were about to head out to see a movie together and were excited to get going, so I asked no further questions.

I was embarrassed to discover that I had forgotten to put a card in my camera. I had to resort to my iPhone. 

And on the Parks, Pioneer Peak in the background, this Marine passed me. I know nothing about him - when he served, where he served. All I know is that he goes by "Semper fi," as noted in his rear window. 

*The stories of Gilbert and Irene are a from a series on Native Veterans, with initial funding from the Alaska Federation of Natives,  that I did over a decade ago. Gilbert, Irene and Miles have all since passed on. Irene got her flag and her burial with military honors.

Sadly for me, I did not learn about her death until after her burial, or I would surely have been there to photograph this honor that she had earned.

I had planned to run a dozen or so such stories in this post, but I just don't have the time for now.

While I took the series as far as the available funding would allow, I never finished it. There were a number of folks who expressed an eagerness to help me find funding, but none succeeded. Still, as the opportunity presents itself, I continue to work on this. 

I will photograph veterans, Native and otherwise, anywhere and anytime that they become available to me. To the degree that they wish, I will tell their stories as well.

I am sad, though, that I was unable to get the funding that would have allowed me to continue seeking veterans out in small villages across the state, because so many, especially from World War II and Korea are gone now. And those from Vietnam are going at an increasing rate.

As the opportunity presents itself, I will continue to work on this project - for as I long as I am able, funding or no funding.

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From the car, at dusk and beyond: free, hot coffee, a conversation with horses near a place of prayer; a raven blurred

As usual, when I am home, I took a break at 4:00 PM to drive to Metro Cafe to buy a hot Americano that I could sip at while I cruised and listened to all things considered on the radio. When I pulled up to the window, Elizabeth was there and she refused to sell me an Americano.

Somebody else had already bought one for me - along with a cinnamon roll. The gifter was an anonymous person, who refused to be identified.

Thank you, anonymous person.

After I drove away, I took a bite of the cinnamon roll and a sip, but found the coffee too hot to drink. 

So I held it out the window for a minute or so. This caused my fingers to scald and freeze at the same time. 

Interesting sensation.

When I pulled the coffee back in, it was just right.

I drove on, sipping and biting into the cinnamon roll, and then I found myself faced with a dark corridor ahead. I was on Sunrise Drive, but the sun had  just set.

It looked so frightening that I wondered if I should turn around and go back.

But I knew there were horses ahead, along with a place to pray, should it get that bad.

I forged onward.

I reached the Mahoney horses, safely. They were thrilled and delighted to see me again.

"Bill!" they neighed out in unison. "We missed you! Where have you been for so long?"

"Tennessee!" I shouted back. "I've been in Tennessee!"

"Oh... okay, good," the horses said, as one. "Did you see any horses there?"

"Yes," I shouted back. "I saw thousands of horses! Tennessee is trotting with horses. There are horses everywhere in Tennessee. I even saw Tennessee Ernie Horse!"

The Mahoney horses were thrilled. They neighed in pleasure and approval.

It was a lie. I have never been to Tennessee in my life.

And Tennessee Ernie was a Ford - not a horse.

But the Mahoney horses bought it. They believed me.

It made them happy.

I would rather tell a horse a small lie and have him be happy with me than tell him the truth and make him angry at me.

I've had horses get angry with me in the past.

It is no fun at all.

Unless you like that kind of thing.

Getting bucked off of horses, I mean.

In the old days, when I lived among cowboys, I knew plenty of people who enjoyed getting bucked off of angry horses.

I never did like it. It gave me something to brag about afterward, but it was no fun.

Then I pulled in briefly to Grotto Iona, just across the road from the Mahoney horses. I am not much of religious person, yet, when you come into a place where people have buried their loved ones and created a place to pray, it does not hurt to say a prayer and it shows respect, so I did.

I don't think it will change anything, but I said it, anyway.

Who knows, for sure?

It won't hurt.

I turn around and drive the opposite direction on Sunrise, with the sunset at my back.

When I turn back towards the sunset afterglow, I see a raven flying toward me. I catch it only in a blur as it passes over my windshield.

It does not matter to me that it is blurred.

All that matters is that I shared a moment of magic with this raven and if a blur is what I have to remember, I will remember the blur.

I would have lied to the raven, too, but no one can lie to a raven and get away with it.

Ravens are just too smart.

You might think that you are smarter than a raven, but you are wrong.

The raven is smarter than you.

Just try to outsmart one, sometime, and you will learn what I mean.

Later, about 9:17 PM, I was sitting right here, at my computer and I couldn't take it anymore. So I got into the car and drove into downtown Wasilla, wandering if I should get an ice cream cone at Dairy Queen.

Across from the fire station, I saw a man, walking down the road, barely caught in the glow of headlights.

This is one of those pictures that works well seen big not so well at blog size.

But blog size is what is available to me and it is my favorite picture from yesterday, so here it is, blog size. You can see it a little larger in the slide show, if you like. Or you could click on the image, if you wanted to see just this one larger and none of the others.

Personally, I recommend that you see them at all at slide show size. So please go to the slide show.

I did not get an ice cream at Dairy Queen, nor did I get a Taco at Taco Bell. I did check the mail. I got a Sun magazine, and a bill. I don't what kind of bill. I didn't pay any attention to it. I just put it somewhere where hopefully Margie will find it after she returns home.

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