Coffee break time

Evalina, Metro Cafe. Now I will drive home and drink my coffee as I go. I won't go the long way, because I've already been to Anchorage and back today.

Note, 5:05 PM: To any readers who may have checked into this blog in the past 50 minutes only to see very strange things, like this post repeated multiple times but with no image included, or to see one, two, or three empty posts, all titled "Y," I apologize but also put the blame squarely upon my blog host, Squarespace. I will not bother to explain, only to note that, using the app, I tried to post the full post multiple times and each time Squarespace failed and mucked it up.

Honestly, this Squarespace app is far and away the worst app I have dealt with. More often than not, it fails one, two, or three times before it succeeds. Sometimes, when it fails, it posts nothing. Sometimes, it posts the text with no picture. Sometimes, a single attempt will result in two separate posts of the same text, each with no picture. 

This time, I must have tried at least 15 times and it failed every time and never uploaded the picture even once, although it did sometimes upload text and sometimes not. I could not complete the post with the image included until I returned home and did so the old fashioned way.

SQUARESPACE!!!!!!!

Advised to the contrary, Carmen intends to stay at Metro Cafe

When I reached Metro Cafe, I found enough inspiration to take another picture. Carmen. She was my inspiration. She is telling me how a financial adviser advised her to leave Metro Cafe behind now that Scot is buried, and just go be a hockey mom. But no, she plans to do no such thing. "Metro is my life," she told me. It is where she feels comfortable. It is where her friends stop in to buy coffee and visit and chat. It is the place Scot built for her. Were she to leave, Wasilla would be a diminished community.

Carmen remembers the burglary - and the tears that flowed at the last hockey game her husband ever got to watch their son play

I back up to this morning, just after Shoshana served my coffee to me. Carmen came in. I had hoped we might have a nice chat, but all sorts of people kept coming in – Amanda the hockey mom; Jay, my fellow pilot and lover of airplanes, Ollie Kent, Carmen's four-year-old neighbor who came with his mom; others whose names I do not know. Some of the talk was about the burglary, and how violated Carmen and Shoshana felt to have had someone smash his way into their space, and then snoop about doing whatever he wanted in there.

Here, Carmen describes a much more joyful moment, yet a moment ringed in a halo of deep sadness. It was Branson's final hockey game of the past season – for state championship - and the last his father would ever see him play. His father knew it, too.

Branson's team was one goal behind and the game was drawing to a close. With just seconds to go, little Branson knocked in the tying score. Tears flowed from his father's eyes – tears of joy, of pride, of gratitude; tears of sorrow and of longing for all those future games death would force him to miss. Tears flowed from the eyes of all of Branson's teammates and their parents. Only Branson did not cry. His father had taught him to be strong and he was going to be.

They lost the state championship in overtime, but this could not diminish that special moment Branson had given to his team, his mother and his dying father.

Just four months after Carmen loses her husband to cancer, someone smashes into and burglarizes her Metro Cafe

I stopped by Metro Cafe this afternoon and saw Carmen for the first time since late August, before I left for Nuiqsut/Cross Island. She was not feeling too happy – someone had broken into her coffee shop once again. Friday morning. He threw a rock through the drive-through window, the rock crashed into the counter, damaged it and then he crawled into the café, rifled around looking for money, found none and turned to leave. Then he realized he had forgot to turn the light off, so he turned around, came back and turned off the light. All this was captured on her security cameras. I could see how shaken she still is.

Just four months ago, after Scot's long, hard, bitter fight with cancer, with Carmen fighting alongside him all the way, she lost her husband. Now this, even before her tears can stop falling. But Carmen is tough, she has many friends and she gives much to this community. She will do much better than will the poor, hapless, damaged, soul who did this cruel thing to her.

Kassie's camera was stolen, but she still loves my mug

I didn't do a very good job on this one, but I will post it anyway. I just now drove through the line at Metro Café and was very surprised to see Kassie Rae there. Kassie was thrilled to see my lens mug. She is a budding photographer, no longer working here on a regular basis because she moved to Anchorage. Her photography career has suffered a little setback, because someone stole her camera.