Tonight, I stayed put to visit the likes of the late elders Arctic John Italook and wife Allaq-Esther, Elijah Kakinya, Laurie Kingik, Bessie Ericklook…

My time in Barrow is flying. As noted earlier, I made this trip not to shoot photos but to do research. Even so, I did hope to visit many people. Now I find my two weeks here is rapidly coming to an end. Friday, I leave for Nuiqsut, where I will stay through Thanksgiving. The Iñupiat History, Language, and Culture Commission has provided me an iPad loaded with almost 900 oral histories and 16,000 historical photographs. I must make a selection of which ones to have them copy for me to take home for further research. I should just skim, but I skim one sentence and then I want to read the second sentence and after that the third... Then I just keep reading.

This evening, I thought I would read and skim until about seven and then go out and visit, but here it is after 11 PM and I am just now forcing myself to stop. Given the way the histories appear in the iPad library, there is no way to tell what history is what. They all look the same. So I just dropped in at random. The very first history that came up was of Bessie Ericklook, late of Nuiqsut. I then found myself in the middle of variety of Nuiqsut related interviews. Given the three trips I have made to the village in recent months, I was fascinated.

In the morning, I plan to stop all this reading and to just skim. My goal is to make my selections from all 900 histories and all 16,000 photographs by the end of the day. Then, I can spend Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning visiting, talking and eating – and that can be every bit as informative as the research. The bears, by the way, were among the first to greet us when we arrived at Cross Island from Nuiqsut at the end of August. They seemed the appropriate backdrop to photograph Arctic John's interview about Cross Island.

Text added at 11:38 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 58 and counting.