Thursday, May 31, 2012 at 9:20AM ;)
Now I take a quick hop back to India. Although my recent Return to India series was fairly extensive and sometimes intense, I focused it almost entirely upon the preparations for Sujitha's wedding, the wedding itself, and the search
Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 11:09AM ;)
When I took Margie to the airport to go to Arizona not quite two-and-a-half weeks ago, we stopped by Jacob and Lavina's house and there were still patches of snow in their yard - this despite the fact Jacob had shoveled most of the snow off.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012 at 7:30AM ;)
I was very discouraged. For one thing, I had been roaming about with my camera and I had taken some brilliant pictures, fantastic images, probably the best I had ever shot in my life, images that
Monday, May 28, 2012 at 10:21AM ;)
I had to go to town to pick Margie up from the airport. I had not yet had a chance to see Charlie's raven show, so, an hour before Margie's flight was scheduled to arrive, I picked Charlie and Melanie up and we headed over to the Midnight Sun Brewery to take a look and have dinner.
I remain amazed at what Charlie has done with his raven photos. Everybody who reads this blog regularly knows that I photograph ravens when I happen upon them, but Charlie has gone beyond that. Some time ago, he gave himself a mission: to photograph a raven and a stranger every day.
He has done good.
;)
Charlie had a little placard up and in it he gave me the credit for inspiring him to take up a camera and do what he has done. That was nice. He and Melanie should now be driving south, towards Homer, where they are going to join Rex and Cortney on a boat ride to Halibut Cove and then camp out in a cabin for the rest of the week. I hope they catch lots of fish and share with us.
Rex made a kayak and they are taking it, too.
;)
I have written a few times before about how desperate Margie gets for Arizona during the winter, how badly she wants to go back. As always, when I picked her up at the airport, she was happy - no, thrilled - to be back in Alaska.
Of course, winter is over. The sun shines. She would soon greet her grandsons.
;)
Big Thomas was on the go.
;)
The sun does shine - today. But not yesterday, not when I drove to town to see Charlie's ravens and pick Margie up.
;)
Yesterday, it rained.
;)
Dad, top row, third from left, who died on Memorial Day five years ago. May you, your fellow B-24 crew and all the others who fought alongside you for this nation, in this war and others, so many to die in the fight, never be forgotten.
Sunday, May 27, 2012 at 9:28AM ;)
This guy shot past the Ford Escape in a flash. This one was through the open window, on the Parks Highway, pointed toward Anchorage. All that follow are through the cracked and dirty windows, in Wasilla.
;)
As I approached Wasilla Lake, I was shocked to see this sign ordering the great AK (Alaska) not to feed old hippies. Some of my readers may not know this, but there was a time when I believe I had the longest head of hair of any male student attending Brigham Young Unversity. This was in the days when cops would pull you over for having long hair, hamburger/soda shop owners would come at you with a baseball bat to drive you out of the friendly gathering places they had created for upstanding youth with short hair (yes, I did experience these very things and, in its way, it was fun) and Mitt Romney would lead a posse gang and forcibly cut the hair off a fellow student who had long hair and was rumored to have been gay, too - although in those days, they would not have called him "gay." They would have called him, "queer," and other epithets I do not care to repeat here.
So, in a way, that experience at BYU makes me an old hippy - and now someone had posted this sign here, telling Alaska not to feed me. Boy! Was I angry! Hungry, too. Angry and hungry.
I should add that one day I got called into the office of one of the BYU deans, who warned me that if I did not get my hair cut within 24 hours, he would expell me from BYU. I can't remember for sure, but I believe his name was Dean. Dean Dean.
So I got my hair cut.
But I grew it back out again, just as fast as I could.
Which wasn't all that fast.
And then I went on a mission and got nearly all of it cut off.
I looked pretty respectable at that point. You would have never known I was a hippy.
;)
I was very pleased to see that this old hippy had seen the sign and then positioned himself right beside it so he could defy it. He even had a pretty good sign of his own made up, asking Alaska passersby to feed him a peach. If you could see all the lettering, this is what you would read:
"This old hippie says AK feed me a peach." A bit more follows of course, but that was the basic message. This guy wanted a peach. I don't know why he wanted a peach and not a chunk of moose meat or salmon, but a peach was what he wanted.
I would have given him a peach, too, but I didn't have one. I did have a bean burrito, but he didn't want a burrito - only a peach.
He claimed to be a friend of Lyndon LaRouche, who apparently backs up the quest of old hippies to be fed by the great AK! It is nice to know there are still compassionate people in this country, state and town.
As for the focus, in this kind of situation I must let the camera decide what it wants to focus on and it chose the mountain.
;)
I saw walkers, walking.
;)
Next I saw a family out for a pleasant Saturday afternoon outing in Wasilla.
;)
These two played, "caboose."
;)
The heat was searing - maybe 52 degress F (11 C) under cloudy skies and soon I was parched. I went looking for a Pepsi and found a truck load.
I drank it all, but was still thirsty afterward.
Did you notice how green it suddenly is around here?
Isn't it amazing?
Pepsi, fourwheeler in Alaska, Motorcycle, Wasilla 
