On the day that Nelson Mandela died I drove to Anchorage on icy roads through freezing rain to bring home my beloved

Note: I originally prepared this as the first post in new Squarespace 6 blog I had planned to launch at this same address, to include all the work I have done in this Squarespace 5 blog. But things went wrong. I have asked Squarespace to refund the money I spent on the new blog and am bringing my Squarespace blogging to a permanent end, save for the upcoming holiday post referenced above. I do not want this post to go to waste and so have transferred it from the new Squarespace 6 blog that now never will be to being an archive, at this same address. While much of what it says no longer applies, I leave it just as I prepared it for the new, canceled, blog"

This is the first post I am putting up in the new Squarespace 6 blog. At least, I hope I am putting it up. As regular readers know, I have been running a

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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.

We drink coffee and speak of history

Matu and Eileen showed up at Abby's right after I placed my order. During spring and summer, I would see them here frequently and we would often eat together but now it had been quite a while. We spoke mostly of history, how the Native side of it has pretty much been neglected in the history books students are taught by. Matu noted how so many of the early explorers and others who came to the Arctic and whose exploits are remembered, survived only because his Iñupiat ancestors rescued and kept them alive. This, he lamented, is not written in the history books.

Without specifically trying to, he gave me what I believe to be a great idea as I go about trying to reconstruct this little history project I am putting together for the North Slope Borough School District. He also sought to bolster my confidence and to assure me that, however complicated it might seem at the moment, he knows I will get something good together in the end. 

Text added at 9:59 AM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - Day 44 and counting.

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.