All Wasilla: study of the young writer, Shoshana; the girl who walked away from the school bus; raven hops off dead tree

It has been a long time since I have run one of my universe-wide famous Studies of the Young Writer, Shoshona - so here she is:

Study of the Young Writer, Shoshana, #1,000,003: she stirs my Americano.

This is the girl who walked away from the school bus. The temperature soared to 44 searing degrees today (6.7 C). Snow is melting fast.

I spotted this raven perched atop this dead tree. I stopped and waited to see if it would hop off and how it would look when it did.

Sure enough, the raven hopped off. And this is how it looked when it did.

And be sure - I have at least two more White Mountain Apache stories coming and at least four or five more from India. I intend to finish them all before the end of next week - but none tonight. 

Physically, I still feel very strange. It is still hard for me to function. It is just about 11:00 PM right now - still pretty early for me, but I cannot keep my eyes open. I cannot think. I cannot write. I will go to bed soon. Then, if tonight proves the same as every other night that I have been home - almost one week now, I will fall asleep almost immediately - a rare thing for me, but something I have done maybe every night. Then I will wake up sometime between 12:30 AM and 2:30 AM and I won't be able to go back to sleep. Tomorrow, I will once again feel like hell, just as I did today, as I did yesterday. I take Melatonin almost every night, but now it occurs to me that I ran out of Melatonin after I reached Phoenix, before I returned to Wasilla.

Maybe that is why I can't adjust.

I had better buy some Melatonin tomorrow and see if that makes a difference.

Lazy mode in three locations: WM Apache - Blue Bird, jet, fire, dog gets teeth brushed; Wasilla - Allie's poem; Carmen and guests; India - girl in temple

Boy! This is the worst case of jet lag ever. It should be all gone by now, but this is the hardest day yet. I can barely function. I went to sleep fast last night and slept soundly for about two hours, then came wide and desperately awake about 2:00 AM and that was it. I stayed in bed, hoping to go back to sleep for another six hours or so, but just stayed awake. This is not how one gets over jet lag.

So I continue in lazy mode, but I exercise just enough ambition to remind readers that I now have three story locations to thread together: White Mountain Apache, India and Wasilla.

So here is a picture I took in Carrizo, Arizona, the Apache community where Margie was born and her mom and several siblings still live, along with other relatives.

People make a lot of bread here, from fry bread to tennis racket bread to tortillas and some other kinds, too. Blue Bird flour is very popular and Blue Bird flour bags are most useful.

Margie stands behind the bag.

A jet, passing over the White Mountain Apache Reservation community of Hon Dah, where Margie's sister LeeAnn hosted us.

White Mountain Apache fire crew truck, Hon Dah. 

LeeAnn brushes Alfie's teeth.

OK - Wasilla: Today I had breakfast at Abby's again. Margie was in town, babysitting.

Allie poured me a cup of coffee...

This is the picture of her poem that I did not run two days ago because I did not want to publish her poem without her permission. Today, she gave me her permission. Allie just won a local poetry slam. Abby's niece Amber did the art work. 

In the afternoon, I pulled up to the drive-through at Metro Cafe. Carmen posed with her brother-in-law, Ron, and Carol, a very good customer. Barista Elizabeth politely tried to get out of the way, but didn't quite make it in time. I took some more after she did, but I like the picture better with Elizabeth in it than out of it.

Girl in a temple at Chittaurgarh Fort, Rajasthan, India. I was not going to post any more of my India photos until I had made a decent edit of them all, but I still have not begun to edit and I want to keep India present in this blog until I can edit and figure out my stories. I don't think this picture crucial to any of the stories I most want to tell, so here it is, in lazy mode, just to remind readers that I was just in India and have some India stories coming.

If I decide later that this picture should be part of one of my stories, then I reserve the right to include it, anyway, but I don't think that will happen.

Branson and his 6-9 year-old Avalanche teammates play on Aces ice - part 1: Branson, pre-game

One Friday night when I was in the middle of the process of putting together my David Alan Harvey Loft workshop series, I took a break to drive to Anchorage where Branson and his Alaska Avalanche hockey team of six-to-nine year olds was about to compete in a six-minute, running-clock, exhibition game on the same ice where the Anchorage Aces would take on the Stockton Thunder.

Branson arrived early with his dad and mom, Scot and Carmen Starheim, owners and operators of Metro Cafe. Here is six-year old Branson with mom Carmen at the gate to the Sullivan Arena. Dad Scot had disappeared to take care of some task that needed taking care of.

Once inside, the family accompanied Branson to the VIP room, where he got to dine on diced beef, pasta, salad and corn chips. Afterward, he needed to pick his teeth.

In the VIP room, Branson engaged a very tall man in some hockey talk. Clearly, the man was impressed. Branson knows his hockey talk.

Branson joins his family in the bleachers to watch the first period of Aces-Thunder competition. Carmen adjusts Branson's hair so that he can be presentable to pose with his grandparents, Tony and Eva Villasenor, originally from a small village in Mexico. They did not move to Anchorage until Carmen was ten. Her early life was spent barefoot on dirt floors. They had no cameras and so Carmen has only one photo from her early childhood in Mexico.

Branson with his grandparents.

Branson with grandparents, mom, aunts, uncles, cousin and friends.

The Avalanche exhibition will be played during the break between the first and second periods. As the Aces skate onto the ice, Branson and his dad point out different players to each other.

The Aces score the first goal. Branson and his dad celebrate.

Soon it is time for Branson to go down to the doors that open onto the ice and to get ready to compete. His dad joins him.

Branson, stick in hand, helmet on head, ready to go do battle on the same ice where the Aces now skate. He and his teammates will compete against each other before the same crowd that the Aces do their own battle on.

I will post Part 2 later today, which will feature not only Branson but his whole team, the Aces, and Boomer -their polar bear mascot.

David Alan Harvey Workshop, entry 5: I determine the location of Mormon missionaries; I take a break to shoot a "young writer study" and drive to Anchorage to get Margie

As my apartment mates and I prepared to head to the loft Tuesday morning, I felt a certain dread. We had all had one shooting day to work on our essays. David now expected us to come back with an edited selection of no more than 10 images to project in contact sheet mode onto the screen, then he and our workshop mates would critique each take, reject most of the images but maybe hold on to one or two - at least temporarily.

My first day's shoot had been a disaster. I had nothing to show - not one Mormon missionary picture for an essay on Mormon missionaries. I did make a couple of selects of the Angel Moroni statue, but I knew they would not make the cut. I did not even want to show them - but I had to show something.

I wasn't at all certain that I had even made the best Moroni selection. The monitor on my laptop had gone bad. Instead of presenting clear images, it subjected the eye to a brain-destroying lightshow of flashing and jumping lines, solarizations, negative colors and lightning flashes.

It was impossible to edit pictures on a such a screen. I had brought my iPad with me, along with an ap I had paid $10 for so that I could enable it as a second screen. I soon discovered that it did not work well at all. In fact, it also proved impossible to work with.

So, after downloading my pictures, I put the compact flash card back into my camera and scrolled through my Moroni pictures, editing them off the camera monitor. When I picked one, I would note the number. Then, with difficulty, I would study the chaos happening on my screen until finally I could pick an image number - until finally I could find the number that matched the one on my camera LCD.

Then I would pull that number into the edit folder. This was not really a good way to edit at all.

In the morning, I again started calling Mormon numbers and soon I was successful at reaching a human being. I told her what I wanted to do. She told me that it just so happened that right now every Mormon missionary in the city of New York was gathering at the LDS Stake center, housed in the same building as the temple, for a mission conference. She told me they were already going into session, but would break for lunch sometime between noon and one.

So I joined my housemates in a cab. The driver took off, I saw this lady looking out this window, shot three frames and shortly afterward walked into the loft for the morning session.

I informed David of the conference. He said I should get down there right now, and not wait for lunch. He did not want me to waste time walking to the subway and then making the long ride from Brooklyn to Uptown Manhattan. He pulled what money he had out of his wallet, asked for further contributions, got a few, then handed me somewhere between $25 and $30 and told me to take a cab.

So off I went. I missed the morning's presentations, I missed the critiques; I did not have to subject my miserable take of the day before to a critique. Perhaps I could really get something today and then have something good to show tomorrow.

For now, I will leave it right there, because on late morning of this day, Friday, January 6, 2012, I had to drive to Anchorage to pick Margie up from her week of babysitting and bring her home. We did not return until early evening. 

So I am going to hold off and begin anew tomorrow.

On my way to Anchorage, I stopped at Metro Cafe and bought a cup of Trail Mix instand oatmeal. As I was eating it, a young writer study materialized right in front of me:

Study of the Young Writer, Shoshana, #22,742: she chats with a customer at the drive-through window.

Here I am, stopped at the light on the corner of the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highways. I took no more pictures after this, because my battery died right here, at this light. Once I got to Anchorage, I called Stewart's Photo and asked if the batteries they have in stock would have any charge at all in them.

"Yes," the salesman told me, "about 25 percent." So I drove over and bought one - but, when I put in in my camera, it had no charge all.

That's okay. Otherwise, I would now have to edit a bunch of pictures of Kalib, Jobe and Lynxton - but now I can't, because I took no pictures to edit.

So I am done for tonight. I can relax with Margie. She has been gone for a whole week. We will catch up on "Hell on Wheels" and eat popcorn.

Tomorrow, I will return and show you what happened once I found the missionaries.