Macy - a cat of Barrow; a young woman of India who loved cats remembered on this day

Here is Macy again, peeking over the knee of Gabe Tegoseak.

In August of 2007, I made my first trip to India to attend the Hindu wedding of my niece, Khena Swallow, to Vivek Iyer of Bangalore. In their tradition, the reception takes place the night before the wedding. There, I met scores of Vivek's relatives, beginning right away with his cousin Ganesh, who immediately befriended me and shortly thereafter brought his sister, Soundarya, to my table. Upon seeing her, I felt a special connection, as though she were not a stranger but someone I had known forever. I dismissed this as nonsense. There was a third sibling there, Sujitha, of classic beauty.

I wanted to know all three, Soundarya especially, due to this feeling of connection. Yet I reasoned that the short minutes we would spend visiting this night and possibly a few more at the wedding the next day would be all we would ever spend together. I would return to Alaska and that would be that. The next day after the wedding feast, Soundarya invited me to take a walk, but called herself "Sandy." On that walk, we met a kitten and that was that.

We stayed in near constant contact after and became close confidants. She often sought my advice in her search for love. I lack such wisdom but did tell her a few relevant stories about courting Margie. I promised her that when she found her man, I would return and photograph her wedding. She found him. I kept my promise. And always, somewhere, there was a cat involved.

Three years ago yesterday, her husband Anil Kumar, lost his life in a car crash. Three years ago today Soundarya Anil Kumar, my beloved soulfriend and muse, chose to follow him. In March of 2012, I returned to India for Sujitha's wedding. Although nothing has come together yet, Ganesh, who I inspired to became a photographer, hopes to marry soon.

Somehow, I hope to return to photograph his wedding, too.

Gabe and I do simultaneous selfies together beneath the whale

It is 5:05 PM and the Iñupiat Heritage Center has closed but there are a few people still lingering in the office and I have a couple of minutes to borrow their wireless and make this quick post. A little bit ago my young and talented friend filmmaker Gabe Tegoseak stopped by to return a battery and battery charger I had loaned him and Dustinn Craig for a short satirical movie Gabe created and Dustinn is helping him with. Gabe took a picture of us together out in the main hall of the Iñupiat Heritage Center and I took a picture of his camera with us on it as he did so. I got the background in better focus then I got us, but that's okay because we all live in the background anyway.

I might note that one of the best joys I get as a photographer is when I walk into someone's house and see one or more of my pictures hanging on the wall. I get that joy when I walk into this place, as I am greeted not only by the big whale hanging overhead but by photos of elders I took in the early 90s, maybe a couple from the late 80s. Most of them are gone now. Viky Solomon, heritage Center receptionist strolled through just at the moment Gabe and I took our pictures together.

Text posted at 6:03 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 55 and counting.

The story Dustinn must tell

Anyone who watched the one hour documentary "Geronimo" on the PBS American Experience series has seen the work of Apache/Navajo filmmaker Dustinn Craig. Dustinn has also done a fair amount of work with the Iñupiat here on the Arctic Slope and came up one day ahead of me to do some shooting for Iñupiaq filmmaker Rachel Edwardson. Last night, at about 8 PM, I went to visit him at the home of Rachel's parents George and Debby Edwardson. We stayed up talking until nearly 1 AM.

Do you recognize the Apache in the photo on Dustinn's computer?

Few Americans would recognize Alchesay, although just about everyone who knows even a tiny bit of the history and lore of this nation would recognize Geronimo, Chiricahua Apache. Dustinn would like people to know about his fellow White Mountain Apache, Alchesay, who, to preserve his nation, organized and led the Apache Scouts, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery and valor and became Chief of the White Mountain Apache Tribe. Whatever preconceptions or stereotypes anyone might hold about who the Apache Scouts were and why they fought, based on the western movies or the superficial telling of Native, drop them. Wait for Dustinn's movie about the Apache Scouts. He's been working on it for quite awhile now and he has a long way to go and could use a lot more financial resource, but it will be worth the wait.

It is a story he wants people to know - most importantly his own White Mountain Apache, who can go into their own cultural center at Fort Apache and find a variety of books about the Chiricahua Geronimo, but of Alchesay only a postcard.

When Dustinn was a baby, a toddler and then a very little boy, Margie and I would babysit him. He often played with Jacob. His father, the late, great, famous-throughout-Indian-Country Navajo artist, cartoonist, poet, songwriter and performer Vincent Craig, was my best friend in Arizona - as good a friend, in fact, as I ever expect to have in this life. When I brought my White Mountain Apache wife to Alaska, we came to stay for good, but we always imagined that one day about this time in our lives we would reestablish a part-time, winter, presence back on her White Mountain reservation - not a place to which her people were driven and penned in, but their true homeland since long before the coming of the Americans.

We would pick up our friendship with Vincent and his White Mountain Apache wife Mariddie right where we left off almost 33 years ago. Just as we had before, Vincent and I would wander about having fun in the great country of the White Mountain Apache, with an occasional jaunt north into the Navajo Nation or south towards San Carlos and Globe. That dream came to an end in May of 2010 when cancer took Vincent away from us. On the night of his father's death, Dustinn and I stayed up talking into the wee hours - just like we did last night.

There are tears trickling down my cheeks right now. I did not expect this. It was over three years ago. I thought my tears had all dried. 

Text added at 10:11 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 53 and counting.

Portrait of a young hockey player, young artist

This is he, Branson Starheim, eight-year-old son of Carmen and her late husband Scot, who I promised to shoot a portrait of tonight. I didn't arrive until near the end of the game, so I did not see Branson score the first goal of a contest that ended in a tie, 2–2. He gets out there to rough it up with 10-year-olds who are much larger than him. He is also the artist who created the the brightly colored, lively, cross held in the hands of his mother in the photo I posted earlier today from Metro Cafe. I am told that at a recent game, Branson made the sign of the cross, looked up, gestured upward with his hand and then skated onto the ice to play this game for his dad, to whom he had just sent his love.

Text added at 8:57 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues.

Saturday evening at Diane Benson's house, part 2: A Tlingit drum played the role of her battle-wounded son

In the dark, wee, hours of that most bitter morning in November, 2005, just after Diane had learned her son had lost his legs in Iraq and was now fighting for his life, she pushed her tears aside and picked up a little red book of her poetry. She then read to me a poem she had written when he was 12. In it, she recalled him as he been from birth to then and described her vision of the war she feared he would one day face. Somehow, even then she had known. This Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Diane will perform a play of her own authorship and choreography, Act 3 of which tells her own story as a mother whose heart and soul suffered the wounds of war as surely as did the legs and body of her only son.

She had never performed Act 3 before an audience but felt a need to do so before she went to London. She invited a few close friends over and so performed her premiere showing before an audience of seven. In Act 3, Diane relates how she named her son Latseen, Tlingit for “Strength.” She knew he would grow to be a Strong Man. When he was 18, he drove off to do a cross-country motorcycle trip in the Lower 48. Immediately after 9/11, Latseen announced he was going to join the Army. He wanted to go to Afghanistan and bring bin Laden and al-Qaeda to justice. Instead, he served in the spearpoint in the invasion of Iraq. He returned safely, his four year commitment came to an end and, just as he made plans to get on with life, he was sent back to Iraq under “Stop Loss.”

In Act 3, she reads the same poem she read to me seven years ago. In the most extended scene of the act, Diane reenacts the flight she made with her son and several of his fellow Wounded Warriors from Germany to the US. She moves from stretcher to stretcher – suspended three high – to speak with, comfort and take comfort from all the Wounded Warriors. She also gestures to and communicates with the Tlingit drum pictured – her son. As they fly, they become as one family, she, the mother, all of them her sons, brothers of her son Latseen.

For all the grief, worry, grief and sadness, Latseen, The Strong Man, has gone on to make a good life and family with wife Jessica and to become a Wounded Warrior Olympics star. Diane will be performing the play as part of Origins: Festival of First Nations under the title of When My Spirit Raised Its Hands, her original name for Act 1, her famous play about Native Rights Activist Elizabeth Peratrovich, Tlingit. Peratrovich's impromptu speech before the Alaska Territorial Senate in 1945 turned the tables on some racist Senators and led to Alaska's Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945.