Bye-bye, Barrow sun… I expect to see you again someday…

I had hoped the sky would be clear down by the horizon so I could see and photograph the Barrow sun for the last time this year. Today, the sun rose at 12:45 PM and set at 1:38 PM. It will not rise again until 1:29 PM, January 22, 2014, when it will stay up for 20 minutes and go right back down again. The sun was setting behind those low clouds just as I took this picture of Randy Duncan, doing his part to bring light to Barrow through the dark months ahead.

Text added at 3:09 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 58 and counting.

Dinner with Leroy Oenga Jr. and family, part 7 of 7: Family together

The whole family together: Devean, Freda, Clara, Leroy and Gevin. Thank you, Nephew and family for a great dinner and good company!

Text added at 12:31 AM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 58 and countining.

Dinner with Leroy Oenga Jr. and family, part 6 of 7: Freda's picture; credit for his recovery

After we finished eating, Leroy told me more about his experience in the hospital, which began when a case of double pneumonia went very, very, bad. The doctors induced a coma and then it reached the point I had mentioned before when his mother had been told it was time to pull the plug. Leroy said he had experienced clinical death three times.

I will not try to repeat all the details he shared with me here, save to say what I think would be most important to Leroy for me to say – and that is he gives the credit for his survival to the Lord and to his mother, his wife, his late father and others who prayed for him. The doctors had apparently pretty much given up on him. After he recovered, doctors and medical staff kept referring to him as a miracle man.

Daughter Freda came to the table with a picture she wanted to show me. It is her when she was a baby (left) with a friend or relative, I forget. Leroy can remind me and then I will add the name in.

Text added at 12:11 AM, November 18, 2013. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 58 and counting.

Dinner with Leroy Oenga Jr. and family, part 5 of 7: dinner

We dined on maktak, tuttu soup and Eskimo donuts. Devean dips a bit of maktak in a mix of steak sauce and Tabasco. I was very hungry when I sat down but after two bowls of tuttu soup and I'm not quite sure how many helpings of Maktak I was stuffed. Even so, I kept picking up just one more piece of maktak to dip in the sauce mix... and just one more...

Text added at 11:59 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 57 and counting.

Dinner with Leroy Oenga Jr. and family, part 4 of 7: appetizer

Dinner with Leroy Oenga Jr. and family, part 4 of 7: appetizers. Tiny cuts of caribou and bowhead blubber - eaten together. 

Very tasty!

Text added at 11:26 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 57 and counting.