Margie and I take Kalib and Jobe for five days, part 4: We walk with dinosaurs

Very early in the summer, or maybe it was even late Spring, Jacob bought a bunch of tickets to "Walking With Dinosaurs - The Arena Spectacular" and made me promise that, no matter what kind of project I had going on, I would be home on August 23 so that I could go to the show with my grandson. Like most little kids, Kalib has always loved dinosaurs - even as he has feared them. 

So, not quite an hour before showtime, Caleb, Lisa and I headed to the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage to see the dinosaurs. Once we passed through the gate, Kalib suddenly feared the dinosaurs more than he loved them and he did not want to enter the arena - which was quite dark and there were huge teeth at one end of the floor.

Yet, with encouragement from his Uncle Caleb, Kalib did enter. 

We took our seats, right in the middle on the very front row.

As you can see, Kalib was still a bit apprehensive, but curious, too.

I was a little worried, because I remembered how the roar of the jets at the Arctic Thunder air show at Elemendorf had frightened him at first and I knew the dinosaurs would be big, loud and they would be charging about, flashing and snapping their teeth. Yet, the show was designed with kids in mind and Caleb told me he had heard that it started out kind of fun and gentle, so as to put the little kids at ease.

Just before it started, the MC told us to turn off our cellphones. He said they wouldn't do us any good, anyway, as we were in the age of dinosaurs and there would be no cell phone reception for 165 millions years to come.

I thought about the dinosaurs running around 165 million years ago, right in the middle of their time, in what was the present. It has been the present ever since and soon another 165 million years will have passed and it will still be the present.

Anyway, Caleb was right. The show started out in the Triassic Period, 245 to 208 million years ago, with the focus on a nest filled with eggs and soon two, very cute, baby dinosaurs popped their heads out from the those eggs. This scene was almost entirely blocked from our sight, but because no one would have a clear view of everything that would happen it was also being shown live on large video screens hanging above the arena.

So it started out cute, and all the nervous children were set at ease. All the children loved those baby dinosaurs.

Suddenly, the carnivorous and vicious Liliensternus charged into the scene, ran around the mountains set up in the center of the arena, grabbed one of the baby dinosaurs by the head and devoured it.

All throughout the arena, little children began to scream.

Actually, I made that part up, for dramatic effect. I didn't hear any children scream, but it's possible that some did, but a scream would have been drowned out by the roar and voracious chomping of the ravenous Lilensternus.

This is the mother, Plateosaurus, at 29 feet the largest dinosaur of her time. She was very upset to discover what had happened to her baby. She had one left and was determined to protect it.

Although Kalib had a very expensive seat of his own, he would observe the entire show from the lap of his Uncle Caleb.

And then we were in the Jurassic Period, 208 to 144 million years ago, and there was Stegosaurus...

...and Allosaurus, who wanted to eat Stegosaurus, if only he could get past the deadly spikes on his swinging tail!

Kalib was very brave.

And then along came 72-foot long Brachiosaurus, who stood nearly four stories tall and liked to graze from the tops of trees.

Long though it sounds, the time of the dinosaurs zipped by quickly. Suddenly, we found ourselves in the Cretaceous Period, where Ornithocheirus roared onto the scene...

...a mean, nasty, trio of Ornothocheirus. We in the audience all loved them.

Kalib observes.

The Ornithpcherious gang would have liked to eat this guy, Torosaurus, but that was easier desired than devoured. Although we didn't get to see them, Torosaurus had a harem.

But another Torosaurus wanted the harem for himself. So they fought and the old guy lost. I felt kind of badly for him. Although I am descended from some of the original Mormon polygamists, I never got to have a harem. If I had have, though, it just wouldn't have seemed right to have some young tough guy come and take them away from me.

This is the vegetarian Ankylosaurus, built with armor like a tank - no cannon, but a huge club on his swinging tail.

Who could possibly eat him?

We're looking the gal who could...

It's Tyrannosaurus Rex! T-Rex could eat anybody... one bite and she could swallow 150 pounds of flesh, just like that.

T-Rex was frightening.

And there was a big battle, T-Rex going after poor Anky, who was also pursued by her baby, even as Anky tries to club baby to death.

Action was taking place on both ends of the arena at once.

The final fate of Anky was a bit unclear. Did he get eaten, or did he escape? Whatever, once the fight was over, Momma T-Rex and baby T-Rex did some cuddling.

I wonder about this. It is hard to imagine T-Rex's cuddling. But there it was, happening right in front of me.

After, the MC and baby T-Rex took a bow. They really did bow, too, but, sadly, I had set my shutter speed down to 1/10th of a second for a Kalib shot and forgot to to set it back up to the 1/60th I was using for the action and I recorded the bow as a hopeless blur.

That's my excuse, for not showing you the bow.

When we stepped outside afterward, we damn near went blind. I had never seen such a bright day in all my life. It was almost like we stepped out onto the surface of the sun. Meanwhile, behind us, dark rain clouds prepared to burst.

In time, though, our eyes would adjust.

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Margie and I take Kalib and Jobe for five days, part 3: We bring them home, Kalib phones a kiss to his far-away mom, they grow sleepy

In time, we arrived home. Jobe was happy to be here, but I know he misses his mom. See that bottle on the table? That is her milk. I don't know how she managed to provide a supply for the whole five days that we will have Jobe with us, but she did.

Love, I guess.

As I was working on my computer, Kalib came into my office to feed the fish. Soon, Margie came in with the phone. It was Lavina, eager to talk to her eldest son. Kalib took the phone and looked at it. He heard his mother's voice.

Kalib didn't have much to say, but he gave her a kiss over the phone. Did you feel it, Lavina?

In the evening, Jobe grew very sleepy. Margie put him in the Apache cradle board that his great aunt LeeAnn made for him. He fell asleep.

Jobe, asleep in his cradle board.

Caleb returned home. Kalib was overjoyed to see him.

Caleb and Kalib. As usual, Kalib insisted that we turn the Christmas lights on.

Soon, Kalib grew tired, too. 

We all grew tired. We all went to bed. Margie and I didn't really sleep all that much, though, as Jobe kept waking us up. I remember how hard it was when our children were babies and we had to get them through that time when they would wake us at all hours with needs that had to be met. It was hard and I longed to sleep. It seemed at the time that there would never again come a night that we could sleep all the way through. Yet, such nights did come - and, oh, so rapidly.

Jacob and Lavina go through this on a daily basis now, yet still get up and go to work.

It was tough last night, too. I just wanted to sleep. Yet, what I now know is what an honor and privilege it is to be woken up at night by a little person fully dependent upon your care.

Soon, some of us will go see some dinosaurs. Margie does not think she will go. She plans to stay here with Jobe.

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Margie and I take Kalib and Jobe for five days, part 2: We dine on Fourth Avenue hot dogs, where Kalib and I intimidate a security cop

As explained in the first post of this day, Lavina had left early yesterday morning to attend a work conference in Las Vegas, I had driven to town to pick up Kalib, Jobe and Margie to bring them back to Wasilla, and Melanie had showed up to drive Jacob to the airport so he could join Lavina at her conference, but Jacob had not yet returned home from work.

Soon, he did return. He kissed his boys goodbye and then he left with Melanie for the airport.

Anchorage's seemingly interminable, record-breaking streak of consecutive rainy days - 33, I believe - had finally come to an end. It was a wonderfully warm, sunny, and beautiful day - the perfect kind of day to go downtown and buy hotdogs from a Fourth Avenue street vendor.

Margie agreed. I wanted to leave immediately, but Kalib had gone down to the family room, where his parents had put up a tent for him with a tubular passage to the entrance.

So many people have given Kalib so many amazing gifts that I can't get over it.

I found him in the tent. We spent a little bit of time throwing little plastic balls back and forth through the passageway.

Then Kalib had to do a little bit of golfing.

He golfs in the style of the great masters.

Kalib - the golfer.

Finally, we headed for the car. Before he got in, Kalib found a pretty flower, plucked it and held in in his hand.

I strapped both of my grandsons into their car seats - Kalib facing forward, Jobe facing backward. Seeing them strapped in like this made me think about the ever-present dangers of the road. I would be driving with precious cargo. I might encounter another driver or two or three or more who might do something stupid, something to make one's blood boil.

If so, I would just have to ignore it and drive on as steadily and safely as possible.

Then we were downtown on Fourth Avenue, where we were fortunate to find a parking space just 30 yards or so from RA hotdogs. Margie and Jobe stayed in the car while Kalib and I got in line.

This uniformed gentleman got in line behind Kalib. Naturally, I wanted a picture with him standing behind Kalib and it would be best as a low-angle shot, but I did not feel like crouching and getting down on my knees. One neat thing about the pocket camera is that I can hold it quite a ways from my face and still see what it sees in the lcd.

So I held it down a bit below my waist, framed the scene and then just as I pushed the shutter, Kalib moved, halfway out of the frame. This was okay - I like the picture this way - but I still wanted to get a frame with the uniformed man standing behind Kalib with Kalib's face visible.

So I tried again and I sort of got it, but on a bright day when I am holding the pocket camera a ways from my face, I can see the relationships of the more prominent shapes to each other, but some of the little details disappear, such as light fixtures in the background.

And so I wound up taking this image, with the light fixture appearing to be a goofy hat atop his head, or perhaps a bizarre implant.

I had to try one more time.

I decided that the only way that I could be certain to get the image as I wanted was to drop down to one knee so that I would be looking directly into the LCD and could clearly see all the detail.

At the moment that I dropped down and raised the camara, however, the uniformed man stepped backwards, in the belief that he had just exited the frame.

"You're part of the scene," I protested, "you don't need to step out of the picture."

"I really shouldn't be in the picture," he said.

But he is.

A close look at the shield patch on his shoulder reveals that he is a private security guard - for whom I do not know - not a municipal policeman.

I ordered Kosher beef with onions and potato chips for Margie, Kosher beef plain for Kalib and Kosher Polish with onions and chips for me.

It doesn't really matter to me if a hot dog is Kosher or not, but the menu was exclusively Kosher.

Margie and Jobe joined us on a nearby bench. The food proved excellent, the conversation stimulating. Kalib held up a potato chip and mused with wonder as to how such a thing ever managed to be created in a universe so vast, diverse and ALMOST entirely empty of potatoes as ours is.

Kalib grew quite excited when a formation of military jets, presumably from Elmendorf AFB, came flying by. "Jehhh! Jehhh!" he shouted as he pointed at the jets. Actually, he is pointing a bit in front of them. The jets are very difficult to see in this tiny reproduction. If you look very closely at the somewhat larger version in the slide show, a bit over the roof to the right of Kalib's finger, you can barely make them out as tiny dots.

They show up a little better in the original, full-resolution image, but even there they are tiny.

After the jets had flown by and we had finished our hot dogs, we burped politely and then climbed into the car headed towards Wasilla and home. Along the way, I was surprised to see that one traffic officer had pulled over another. I wonder if he had been speeding?

I'll bet he felt a little silly when he asked his fellow, "could I see your license, please?" They have probably known each other for years, perhaps decades.

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In part 3, Kalib and Jobe will arrive at their grandparents home. They will grow sleepy. I may post it tonight or I may post it in the morning. I am kind of sleepy myself and I have other things I need to do.

Margie and I take Kalib and Jobe for five days, part 1: Kalib takes a bump

Lavina had to go to a work-related conference in Las Vegas that lasts all weekend through Monday and Jacob took a couple days off work to go with her. Margie and I agreed to take care of Kalib and Jobe while they are gone. So, late Friday morning, I climbed into the Escape and drove off to Anchorage to pick Kalib, Jobe and Margie up and bring them back home to Wasilla. Remember - Margie has been spending her week days in Anchorage, babysitting Jobe.

I pulled into Jacob and Lavina's driveway and saw Kalib, greeting me through the living room window.

I went inside, where Margie and Kalib were watching something on the TV. Jobe was napping.

Soon, Melanie showed up. Lavina had left in tears early in the morning - something like 5:30 AM - because she did not want to leave her babies behind. After putting in a good morning's work, Jacob was going to catch an afternoon flight and Melanie had come to drive him to the airport.

As she waited for Jacob, Jobe awoke from his nap. She went and got him.

Soon, Kalib came running, laughing, to crash into his aunt, but he bumped his lip on the armrest of the chair. He began to cry.

Kalib cries, grips Melanie's hand and pulls it toward his wound. Jobe is unmoved by his brother's plight.

Kalib feels his wound and gives his Aunt Melanie a pleading look.

He studies the thing that hurt him.

Aunt Melanie extends a hand of comfort.

He looks up into her eyes.

Soon, the pain is gone. Kalib is happy, laughing again. He sees his aunt walking across the dining room floor and launches a surprise attack.

After striking from the back, he cuts in from the front.

The attack comes to a joyful end.

Next, Melanie is amused by Jobe.

In my next post, which could go up in as little as half-an-hour and as much as four, five, six, seven or more hours from now, we will see Kalib golf, we will all go downtown, where Kalib and I will intimidate a cop, to eat hot dogs.

I don't know how many posts this series will include. Seeing as how we have these two until Tuesday afternoon and tomorrow we expect to see some dinosaurs, it could be several.

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The black cat arises, no train passes by Family; the state of my in progress books; Melanie on St. George Island

I had planned to discipline myself and to eat oatmeal this morning, but sooner or later it happens after every trip that I make - I collapse. It happened this morning. I woke up at about 6:30 and thought about getting up. I woke up about 7:30 and thought about getting up. I woke up at 8:30 and thought about getting up.

At 9:30, I woke up again and then noticed that Jimmy, my good black cat, was sleeping atop my left rib cage. "I will sleep a little longer," I thought to myself. "When the black cat gets up, I will get up."

Jimmy got up at 10:12 AM. I didn't feel like following, but I did, because I had said I would, so I figured I had better. Plus, I had gone to bed early the previous night, just before midnight, and so I figured I really should.

After I got up, I thought about cooking oatmeal - the steel-cut variety. But I didn't want to. It takes about 15 minutes and the oatmeal has to be stirred often. I did not want to stir it.

So I thought about eating cold cereal -Oatmeal Squares. Same thing, right? Except you don't have to cook it - all you have to do is to spill it into a bowl and pour milk on it, then grab your spoon.

But I didn't want to spill it into a bowl, pour milk on it or grab a spoon.

"Given our finances, there is no way I can justify going to Family Restaurant," I told myself.

But I wanted to go to Family Restaurant. Even though I was now awake, I wanted to continue on in the pleasant state of collapse that had kept me in bed until 10:13. I figured that I could do that better at Family Restaurant than standing by the stove, stirring steel-cut oatmeal.

So I went to Family Restaurant. The lady who seats people tried to usher me to a table alongside the east wall, but I did not want to sit by the east wall. I wanted to sit by the south wall, because through the south wall windows I could see the train if it were to pass by.

So, reluctantly, she sat me by the south wall.

No train came by, but this couple did.

Now they will be seen all across Alaska, elsewhere in the United States; India. Who can say what all places they will be seen from?

Then this guy zipped by on a bike. He was carrying a box of some  kind - maybe a tool box. On the other hand, there is a nail and pedicure place just beyond Family Restaurant. Maybe that is where he was pedaling to. If so, then perhaps this box was filled with nail polish, and little brushes with which to apply it.

There were a couple of dogs in the back of a Toyota truck in the parking lot. When this guy left the restaurant, he went straight to the dogs. He petted them. I thought he would then get into the Toyota and drive off with the dogs, but he didn't. He got into another vehicle and left them behind.

The dogs got kind of excited when they first saw this guy coming, so I thought maybe he was their man. He wasn't. In fact, those dogs were still in that Toyota when I left. I thought about going over there to give them each a pat myself, but I didn't.

The hopes of those dogs had already been raised only to fall in disappointment enough. I didn't want to give them more false hope and then disappointment them all over again.

As for breakfast - ham, eggs over easy, hash browns and 12 grain toast at the end, lathered in butter and strawberry jam - it was good and I enjoyed it, but I would have enjoyed it more if the train had come by.

Maybe I had better go back tomorrow and see if the train comes by then.

I think I will. Then I will drive to Anchorage and pick up Margie, Kalib and Jobe. Jacob and Lavina are going off together on a business trip for a few days, so the little ones will be staying with us. We will go see some dinosaurs.

People often ask me if I am working on another book. By my way of reckoning, every moment that I live I am working on a book. But the truth is, for the past couple of years I have been very laggard about actually transferring any words from head through a keyboard into a form that can become a book. I do have a number of books in progress, plus several about one cat or another that I have finished but which need to be reworked, but they have all just been languishing inside my computer, going nowhere.

Before I got hurt, I had been going fairly hard and heavy on my novel about a Mormon missionary in Lakota country, but I had encountered a huge problem. I had written about 200 pages, yet had only got the missionary off the beach in California where the marvelous, liquid, woman in the blue, string bikini came sauntering by just as he was leaving and then through three days of his mission.

Much had happened in those three days and in my own humble opinion I think I had put down some good material, the likes of which no one has ever written before and if ever completed it would surely go down in annals of great American literature - but I had taken 200 pages to get that missionary through three days in the mission field and he still had a good 720 days ahead of him. It looked like it was going to take about 100,000 pages to finish the book.

So I fell, shattered my right shoulder, got a new one and then stopped working on the novel for awhile. 

Then, in the spring of '09, I started a new book, although I didn't realize it at first. I thought I was working up a proposal for a fellowship that could really change my life - were I ever to win it. I worked on that proposal for months, for a half-hour or an hour just about every day - even when I was out in the field traveling on ice, damn near getting killed on the India highway or chasing caribou on the tundra - and then I realized that I was creating a new book - based on the same material as the novel but non-fiction: words written against the photos that I always take of Mormon missionaries whenever I see them.

Despite all the time I had put into it, when it came time to submit the fellowship proposal, I didn't feel like it was ready, so I didn't submit it. I put the project down early last September and have not transferred any more of it through a keyboard since. The book has undergone some radical changes in my head, changes which have left me confused as to how I should proceed.

For all of this summer, I have felt this urgency to get back to my books, to work towards getting at least one of them done. All summer, I have been telling myself to just pull one back out - any of them - a cat book, novel, missionary book, my book on Wasilla, my book about Missoula, Montana, my White Mountain Apache book, my book about my dead brother Ron, my novel about a surfer working on a ranch in Idaho... any of them... except for one - my Alaska book, my memoir of 30 years roaming Alaska. That one, I could not pull out.

I had concluded that this book will just have to wait until I get the others done. Why????? At best, if I could work on it every damn day for the whole day it would still take me years to finish it - three, I figure. And if I never finish it, if I die before it is done, then at some point someone will sort through all this work that I have done and they will put it together for me.

They will. Of this I have no doubt. The raw material is all there. Nobody else has a package of raw material like this one. Just me. And there is one hell of a story in it. It just needs to be put together and some scholar from some big university could pick it up and do it. Or maybe one of these young Native adults who sometimes come to me and let me know they are writing, taking pictures, who tell me they grew up on my pictures and stories and were motivated by them... maybe one of them could do it.

It doesn't have to be me who assembles this raw material that I have created into a book.

But these other books - if I don't do them, no one will. No one else can. Not a single other person in all this world. Only me. The stories reside in my head and nowhere else.

So last night I said it is time. I must get back to work on my books. One half to one hour a day - even when I am traveling -  as long as I am in a place where I have power and can plug in a computer. But which book to work on?

I created a new folder and labeled it, "Books in Progress." I then moved the various books that I have mentioned above, along with a few others, into that folder and then opened it. I looked at the various titles and said, "pick one - any one - but not the Alaska book." 

Yes, it was the Alaska book that I finally opened. I pulled out Chapter 1 and started to revise. I spent an hour at it and completed one page, which I will probably have to revise at least 15 or 20 times more.

After I returned from Family Restaurant, I pulled the book out again. "Kid," I told myself. "I've got lots to do. I can only work on this for half-an-hour." I worked on it for four hours and revised four pages.

The truth is, anyone with the proper skills can assemble a book from the raw Alaska material that I have created and it will probably read a lot smoother than it will if I do it.

But they can't write the book I will write - not even using my raw material. Even if their work is smoother, it won't be as good. I'm the only one who can do it right. It is time to get it done.

But I can't work on it for four hours a day. I have to discipline myself and work on it for only half-an-hour; an hour max. True, if some grant funder or philanthropist somewhere were to get smart and back me up, then I could work on it four hours a day. I could work on it eight, 12, 16 - knowing myself, there would be days I would work on it all day and all night too and then maybe the next day as well and if afterward I was so exhausted that I could not do anything for the next three or four days, what would it matter?

This is how I naturally work. When I was young, knowledgable people put structures in front of me and told me, "this is how you must do it," but I never could do it that way. And people who manage grants tell me, "this is what you must do in your application if you want us to help you." But I can't do what they say I must. I simply can't. I can't explain why. Other people can do it so I should be able to, but I can't.

Yet, I can produce some exceptional works. It would help if someone with the resources to help me out would come along, someone who would not try to force me to conform to that which I cannot conform to, but even if no such person or institution ever arises, I must do it anyway.

After I spent my four hours working on the book, I took a bike ride.

Then I got in the car. I was hot and sweaty. I drove to Metro Cafe and found Shoshana at the window. She asked me if I wanted my usual - an Americano with cream, and two raw sugars, but I told her, no, it was too hot. I ordered a raspberry frappe. It was cold and it was good.

Just before I left to go to Barrow, Shoshana let me read another piece that she had written. She is 19, but her talent shone in that piece. She is a writer. As of yet unpublished, perhaps, but a writer.

Shoshana, in Through the Metro Window Study, #9232

I drove the long way home, sipping my raspberry frappe. I passed by Mahoney Ranch and looked out to see if I could spot Ron Mancil somewhere. I couldn't, but I did see this dog.

Same place, different dog, other side of the road, coming back. Again I looked for Ron. Again I did not see him. Are you out there, Ron?

As I neared home, I saw this kid, riding his four-wheeler down the bike trail upon which motor vehicles are prohibited. If you look just beyond him, you can see that a dirt trail runs alongside the bike trail. That is the trail four-wheelers are supposed to use.

I kind of hope the kid's parents see this and tell him to use the dirt trail and to keep his four-wheeler off the bike trail or they will ground him and take the four-wheeler away from him for two weeks.

People being people, though, it is just as likely that if they see it they will scold me instead of him.

I am sure he is a good kid at heart. He just needs to learn not to drive his four-wheeler on the bike trail. 

The red truck was still there...

Melanie just returned from St. George Island, way out in the Bering Sea. Before she left Anchorage to go there, she was talking on the phone to Sally Merculief who would pick her up at the St. George airport. "Are you Bill Hess's daughter?" Sally asked.

"Yes," Melanie answered.

As it turns out, Sally reads this blog.

And Alvin Merculief sent me these two pictures of Melanie out on St. George Island.

"For the last week I've had the pleasure of working with your daughter Melanie, operating the excavator for her while she conducted her geotechnical survey of our roads here at St. George," he wrote.

Yes, my daughter is a pleasure to be with.

Thank you, Alvin, for sending the pictures and thank you, Sally, for greeting Melanie at the airport and making her feel comfortable.

As for Melanie, she told me she enjoyed working on St. George, in part because there are no bears there and she did not have to carry a gun. I suppose once in a great while in a heavy ice year a polar bear might hitch a ride on a flow and then hop off at St. George to look around and perhaps sample a seal, but not this time of year.

Given the warming sea and the retreat of the ice, one wonders if such a thing could ever happen again.

For any newcomers here, this blog is a record of the world as I see it through my camera. So, when I post a picture taken by someone else, I try to first take a picture of that picture as I saw it - in this case, on my computer monitor.