A Little Background

Marquette, MI, m…

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I don’t know where my notes went so I’m going off of memory. We drove through humbling acres of toasted land in northern British Columbia. More crispy trees. It’s unsettling to think about how much was already burned out over the last couple decades and how much more burned this summer. There, in Alaska and all across the north…

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The Yukon is a place I didn't know I wanted to visit. I did spend a season of my childhood pouring over Jack London’s writings, so I should’ve. (There is a replica of the cabin he lived in, set up in Dawson City). His writing lingered with me…

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I am missing the haunting calls of coyotes in the night (what night). The yips and howls, when they start, make you reach for your pets, to be sure they aren’t on the menu. The night is noticeably devoid of their calls.

I can’t say I’ve heard from wolves either. I did see a nice wolf pelt (and black bear and beaver fur lined gloves) at a lonely diner, Th…

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On the road to Exit Glacier in Seward Alaska, a middle aged Japanese man dressed for the outdoors crossed the road to intercept us. He stood on the yellow lines of the highway in our window and asked in heavily accented English for water. Which we had a bottle of and gave to him. (My immediate thoughts going to the humanitarian a…

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I’m usually studying the landscape, composing my imagined photographs. If not that, then I’m typing notes a…

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I walked around Old Town while Kurt birded.

I found a gallery. It would turn out I knew about it already from artist residency searches, it’s a small world. There were also some murals and an independent bookstore.

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Puffin Maddness

Puffin merch everywhere, but are there Puffins in Homer Alaska? Yes. But. They like this island off the spit in Kachemak Bay and I was told they may or may not come out to play. By spit I mean a tail of land. If any of these names are sounding familiar it’s because this harbor is home to a few of the Deadlies…

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I am getting used to sharing little bits at a time.

I don’t have a ton of thoughts to accompany this set of images. I was tired at this point and vacant. That won’t last, there’s always another opinion and observation to make▪️

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I shouldn’t complain, but after tens days of driving I am done being inside a vehicle. On the bright side I’m feeling better than this time last month. (For anyone unfamiliar I have some back issues).

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I’m quite ready to donate my blood to all the needy Alaskan insects, drink some wine and watch a non-sunset.

I knew the light was going to be weird in theory, in practice it’s bizarre to experience light like this. First, the blues are all a little more red. I started noticing it first on the horizon and then in the clouds, the water and at twilight. Searching the internet for an explanation was impossible, it turned up hits about the northern lights. Silly me wanting to know about anything else at this latitude. The sunrise and sunset also last longer. And the darkest hour of night is more of a twilight. At home near Lake Superior our twilight is a rich dark blue, you could use Prussian blue straight from the paint tube to represent it. Here at 60 degrees latitude it is more purple.

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Now it’s 9:00pm and the sky is still bright and sunset is at 11:27pm. Sometimes while writing this I look at the sky and think turquoise and other times crayola cornflower blue. I’m finding it difficult to sleep unless I’m exhausted, which I am from being on the road. For this reason I may be rambling more than usual.

Once we crossed the border into Alaska there was traffic again. Then everyone stacked up because of the road construction. The road was a nightmare of potholes and dips. Take the worst road in Michigan and make every pothole, dip and unmet transition that much worse. Then imagine hitting it with a fully loaded truck, bam, spine adjusted. On top of that the other people were driving with their egos on the gas peddle. I shook my first at one truck like a crotchety old man mad about his neighbor’s dandelions. What will middle age have me doing next.

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On the Alaska highway I saw the truest wilderness left. A place of unmanaged forests. No fences. Hauntingly spare roads and communities. Sporadic roadside scars from humanity. And few places to get supplies. We relied on an extra fuel tank. Can you believe anywhere is still like this? Part of me thinks close it off now before we figure out how to ravage it▪️

Continued in Photographs III

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I begin again.

I’m soft divorcing from Facebook and Instagram. I can’t abide the roll out of a Meta Ai built from scraping users art and photography. The people at Meta chose to offer opt outs only in countries they had to. This on top of the algorithm suppression of content. It’s too much. Boiling frogs is the analogy that comes to my mind. What next t…

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Let us discuss student loans.

I’m going to describe the experience of a generation through my own experience. If you come here to troll me, this is your fair warning I am not always a well mannered responsible adult, in fact I have teeth. And before you ask, no, I wasn’t raised right. I’m an ill mannered pet with little discipline and no housebreaking. …

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Today’s mantra, after three months of living in the prison of back dysfunction, today’s mantra is:

I don’t have to get it all done today. Not even right this exact minute. Just do a little something.

This maybe seems obvious to some of you but to those of us with different thinking patterns it’s not.

Right now I can’t make up my mind where to begin. I’m …

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I looked at NFT’s and put together the pieces of that mess and decided they were a load of garbage. My initial thought on them was: I can’t imagine adding to this energy sucking commerce vehicle.

So I didn’t. But I almost put out a blog about it. I did my digging into the topic and I found NFT’s were worse than I guessed. They were (are?) a pyramid sche…

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