The day ends just as it began…

The day draws near to its end, just as it began - me sitting here at my computer, working away with the help of Jim. I don't like too many of my pictures to get out on the net ahead of the publications I make, but I'm not too worried here because there are a few better frames from this dance, including one I believe to be a true knockout photograph.

How I love this work! I cannot tell you how much I love it! How fortunate am I, ever to have been able to stumble my way into it? I am a stumbler, a bumbler, timid, shy and weak and yet all these wonderful experiences just keep unfolding in front of my camera. I think I will work for another hour to hour-and-a-half and then go to bed.

Hello to all my friends who are gathered in Fairbanks tonight. Wish I could be there too, but it just didn't work out this year. 

Text added at 10:56 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues.

At work, with Jim's able assistance

With Jim's able assistance, I sit at my computer working and that is all I want to do. I don't want to do anything else. I don't want to take pictures. I don't want to make posts. So I might not make any more today - no, I will put up at least one school bus post. This image could almost qualify because there is a converted school bus at the left edge of the picture on my screen, beneath the airplane, but I will post another. I might yet post other pictures, too. No telling how I might feel later today. One way or the other, though, I just want to stay on this and be disturbed as little as possible until I take Margie to the movie tonight.

Text added at 12:25 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues.

Duct tape on the cleats makes this a safer boat

After stuffing styrofoam into the ends in the cleats at the stern of Silook's boat, Isaiah seals the space over and around them with duct tape. He does this to ensure that the rope attaching the harpoon to the float does not get caught by the cleat in the event a bowhead is harpooned from this boat. There is no wireless at the house so I need to take a short walk each time I post. In the event time prevents me from taking this walk before we leave tomorrow, this could be my last post for a week or two or three... I don't think so, but just in case I don't show up here tomorrow, that's why. #boat #boating #harpoon #inupiatwhaling #nuiqsut #alaska

History on the wall above

I took this picture this morning while looking up from the bed in which I slept. Folks up here in the far north have loved pictures since pictures first arrived. The walls of most homes are like visual libraries - family and community history, documented and displayed. 

Final post of the day: There but for a bear go I; I go anyway

I took a short walk and at about 9:30 PM stood at the edge of the village looking down this stretch of road. I just wanted to walk and walk, but earlier in the day a grizzly bear wandered into Nuiqsut - the same bear, I am told, that made a couple of appearances here just barely over two weeks ago when I was here before. I didn't think it would be a good idea for me to walk out there and meet that bear. But my legs could not be stopped. I told them not to do it, but they headed down that road. Out in the tundra grasses, I could hear geese nigliqing. They'll be going south real soon. Despite this appearance of continuing on endlessly this a village service road leading to the dump and does not go very far, just a couple of miles. I turned around before I got to the dump, just in case.