Goodbye, Jim cat, I'm bound for Barrow - see you later!

Shortly after I came to this morning, I found Jim lying across my upper chest with his paws resting on my right shoulder. I did not want to disturb him, so I lay there for probably another 15 minutes. He felt warm on my chest and I found comfort in his presence. I spend much more time with Jim than I spend with any human. Right now, he is sitting atop my computer tower, in easy reach of my left hand.

When I am home, he is pretty much with me all the time. If I am in the office, he is, too. If I go into the house and watch a bit of TV, in no time at all, he is sitting right beside me or on my lap. When the weather is good, we often go outside together for lunch. He provides the shrews. I decline to eat them.

It used to be that the three of us were always together... Jim, Pistol-Yero and me - except I did not take Pistol outside, as he would have freaked out. Chicago would and does join in to sleep and for naps, usually near my feet, and sometimes to watch TV, too, but she never comes into the office and we often don't see much of her during the day and she never goes outside.

So now it is pretty much just Jim and me, all the time. Margie spends her weeks in town, babysitting. Caleb and I cross paths for maybe five to ten minutes a day - if that much.

When I leave, as I will within two hours, I hate to say goodbye to Jim. There is just no way to explain. From his perspective, one day I am here and he is happy hanging out with me and then I am gone, sometimes for long periods of time and he has no idea why or when or if he will ever even see me again. Margie tells me that she can see the stress he goes through when I do not return for awhile

I often think about that day when I was in Jaipur, India, when Pistol-Yero curled up under my desk, closed his eyes and slipped away into eternity. He was always with me, too, and he really depended on me. I was his number one and perhaps the only one he recognized as his true friend. Over four weeks had passed since he had last seen me. He had no idea why. No one could explain it to him. 

This will be a very short trip to Barrow. I plan to return Saturday night. I would stay longer, but I have a commitment Sunday, one that I made last August. I must keep that commitment. If things go well, then, come August and beyond, I could be spending quite a bit of time on the Arctic Slope - my second home, where I have not set foot now since early October, 2011.

I missed what was by far the most successful whaling season since we came to Alaska. There was nothing to be done about it. We were broke, could not pay all our bills, let alone buy a plane ticket and I had no job to take me there. I got calls and messages from whalers in every spring whaling village inviting me to come up and join them, but I couldn't do it. If this trip I am about to make proves successful and leads to what the folks bringing me up and I hope it does, then maybe next spring will be better and I can return to at least one of my Arctic homes for whaling season. 

Something waits ahead that I got to get through first.

Moose in wrappings; moose wrappings minus the moose; the man who made me stop on the road

I took this from my bicycle as I pedaled by a little after 10:30 PM, under heavy

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While sipping coffee in the Escape, I find the Gutter Sheiks, singing about a woman who looks down at money and swears like a sailor when she shaves her legs

As usual when I am not roaming, yesterday afternoon I roamed over to Metro Cafe and left with a

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At Scot's birthday party: an old Chevy truck, food, kids, horseshoes, cute puppy, piñata and cake

Scot smooched Carmen as Branson smiled politely. The cake was decorated with a

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Gunfight at the birthday party

Margie and I went to a birthday party yesterday, not for a kid, but for an adult - a man, one regular readers of this blog are familiar with. Although there is a strong, look-alike, clue in this picture, I am not going to identify this man for now, as I have not yet had time to look at the pictures from my take, let alone edit, process, post and write about them. I will, hopefully by tomorrow, and then, if you don't already, you will know who the man is.

There were a lot of kids at the party and so, before I sat down to make this post, I pre-determined that I would post a single picture of a kid and I would not do a search for it, but would grab the first one that caught my eye as I scrolled down from the top of the thumbnails. This is it. I doubt that when I get down and search closely through everything, I will find any that I like better. Maybe, but I doubt it.

It would be better in black and white, to neutralize some of those distracting colors, but I shot it in color and so I am going to leave it in color - for now, anyway. Maybe not forever.

I've got a Winchester lever-action 30-30 of my own, just like the one in this picture, except that it is not a toy. For 15 years, it served as my airplane gun. By law, pilots who fly cross-country in Alaska must carry a firearm as part of their survival kit and this is the one I chose to carry, because it is light-weight, will bring down any kind of game animal one might encounter in a survival situation - and it looks cool.

In my opinion, it is the coolest looking rifle ever made.

I suppose somewhere out there will be some who look at this picture askance. The fact is, though, no matter what any adult does, boys are going to play with toy guns. You can refuse to give them toy guns, you can ban them from borrowing toy guns and when you are not looking, they will pick up sticks and use them for guns.

It is genetic. It is inside us. I remember my own dear, long-suffering mother trying to convince us kids that we should not shoot each other, but we did, even if we had to do with sticks, and it was great fun - some of the funnest times of childhood.

And I grew up to be a non-violent, peace-loving man.