This is Rudy. He is Toby's best friend. He is also a dinosaur, though the specific variety of dinosaur he is cannot be precisely determined. He is of the bipedal variety, he has large teeth, and he is orange. I’m not sure if the current best thinking in paleontologic circles has determined that any dinosaurs were really orange, but I doubt the makers of Rudy were dues-paying members of the Paleontological Society.

Rudy comes from the large and ever growing collection of dinosaurs in Jacob’s menagerie. Jacob likes the highly realistic dinosaurs and likes knowing their scientific name. But Rudy is not very realistic looking. He doesn’t have a scientific name. He looks more like a dinosaur Matt Groening would draw. He looks like a doofus. But Toby loves him and carries Rudy around everywhere.

Toby can be loud at times. We have had many lessons about screaming, and shouting, and banging. And Toby really wants to be good, it's just that he can't always help himself. Recently, I heard Toby being exceptionally loud and banging. I strode into the room prepared to correct him when he announced, "It's okay, Daddy. Rudy was being loud, but I told him to be quiet." That Toby. At least he knows. 

When Jacob plays with his flying dinosaurs, Toby knows Rudy is a flying dinosaur too. Even if flying requires a felt cape hand sewn by Mom. When Jacob plays with the swimming dinosaurs or with his sharks and whales, Toby knows Rudy is a swimming dinosaur. Recalling the cutting of moose meat in the kitchen, Toby routinely lays Rudy down on his side and talks of cutting off various parts of him in order to cook him and eat him. Rudy gets shot by fighter jets. Rudy gets buried in sand only to be “discovered” again. Rudy is all things to at least one little boy. Jacob can have his ranks of diplodocus and deinonychus.  Toby has Rudy. Rudy is important to me because he is important to Toby. And Toby is my dearest boy. 

New Year’s Day is one of my favorite holidays. I really like the idea of making a resolution to begin again, to be a new person, to do things differently, to change one’s life. I am a an untiring fan of new beginnings.

Occasions are also important. I fear things would never get done of there were not a specified occasion to do so. Enter Nablopomo. Nablopomo is just a bastardized version of NaNoWriMo, an intention of some fellow fiction writers to set a goal of writing a full novel, at least a draft, in a month. It’s a effort to light a fire under one’s self and get moving. I love that.

And so, though my effort and enthusiasm for this space has flagged a bit, here’s an occasion to renew my effort, and a new beginning in search of enthusiasm for it. 

My grandmother was the chronicler of our family history, and she did this with photographs. She documented the vacations, birthday parties, and weddings over many years, and archived these photos in albums numbered one through [something like] forty, each one labeled on the spine with its number. When she found a particular style of album that she liked, she would buy five or more at a time, whatever she could afford or however many the store had on hand, knowing that she would fill them over time. The result was an ever growing catalogue of the life of her family.

As a child, I remember being in my grandmother’s house, and as I waited for those adult conversations that seemed to last forever to finally pass, I would entertain myself by pulling down an album from the shelf and leafing through the glossy plastic pages with images of myself and of my brother, or of exotic locations and family members only distantly known. Her practice of taking pictures and keeping albums has undoubtedly influenced my own practice of doing the same.

These albums have acquired a sacred status in our family. At least that’s my perception, being one of the last, and that is youngest, members of the family. Since her passing a number of years ago, the question of the albums has been one most commonly asked, and perhaps the set of objects most coveted.

A few years ago, I was trusted with a few of these albums, and my intention was to scan each image and return the albums quickly. Good intentions, but four children, two job changes, and two moves later, the task was still not done. I’ve been working on the project again lately, and after four years I’ve finished that small part. The four albums scanned so far can be seen here. 

The work of scanning, cropping, and labeling each picture has been enjoyable. It has given me a lot of time to slowly and deliberately reflect on the people in these images, mostly of my family. It has also caused me to spend a great deal of time thinking about my grandmother, seeing some very small slice of life through her eyes. These are the subjects she chose to point a camera at. These are the images she chose to include in an album. Her hands slid each of these photographs into its sleeve. I am in a sense following in her footsteps down this short path.

Her choices have been interesting to revisit. Pictures of familiar family members are always a fascinating to work on. Pictures of her then coworkers, various pets from childhoods past, snapshots of landscapes, and old and ancient relatives whom I do not recognize are much less so.

Many questions also come to mind as I peer through each small window. Where was this taken? Who’s sandaled foot is in this picture and also in this one? What was the occasion? Who are these people? Most of the pictures in our photo albums have been taken by me, and it makes sense to me that Betty is the one who took most of the pictures in her albums, but there are some events and some styles of photographs that make me wonder whether she took them or if they were taken by someone else; if so, by whom?

There are many of pictures of our relatives in California. This is curious to me because the pictures make it look like my grandparents traveled to California with some regularity. But I also understand that they were what today we would call “low income.” How could they have afforded it? Is it also possible that such trips are overrepresented in the albums because more pictures are always taken when traveling than of daily life?

The words of Paul Simon’s Kodachrome also come back to me: “they give us those nice bright colors, give us the greens of summer, makes you think all the worlds a sunny day.” Conflict, hurt, ignorance, and broken-ness, all of those messy aspects of real life are absent in photos. Only intelligent and capable expressions, smiling faces, and birthday parties make it in to the album. It looks like anything less than pure happiness and contentment are utterly absent from the lives of everyone pictured. It is a good way to remember.

Four albums done. Thirty six to go. 

And now, suddenly, it’s fall time. The air is crisp and cool. The rain has come on steady. Leaves are beginning to turn. I see cranes and geese flying in formation every day. The fair started this past week, and everyone is gearing up for the restart of the school year next Monday. It is an exciting time.

I took the kids to the fair on Saturday, and then we all went together as a family on Wednesday night after I got home from Chitina. It was one of those achingly beautiful days, and I’m glad we went when we did, because it turned rainy after that, and has remained rainy and cold since. The fair ends tomorrow.

[As I am typing this, Stephanie has directed my attention to Jacob, across the room from me, sitting in front of Stephanie’s computer, clacking all eight of his typing digits on the keyboard lightly but furiously, stopping every few moments to run his finger around the track pad, and then back to “typing.” He’s copying me, Stephanie is pointing out. Although he isn’t producing anything, he is typing on the computer just like dad. Do I furrow by brows like that?]

It shouldn’t be surprising, but I can’t believe how much money we spent at the fair. I had a free ticket, and the kids were young enough to be no charge, so it only cost $10 for Stephanie to get in. We bought $20 in tickets for rides, gave Jamiee $20 to go disappear with, spent another $10 on two games each for the boys, $30 in food for the five of us, cotton candy, ice cream. It didn’t seem like a lot, but very suddenly, we’d spent $107. Unreal.  Nonetheless, we had a really nice evening together.

On Monday, I headed back down to Chitina to get fish. It was my last chance for the summer. I had planned to go several times before, but something kept coming up to thwart my plans. We were looking at a summer of not getting any fish, and it was making Stephanie and me both nervous.

I made it down there, better prepared with the right gear this time. Everything went pretty much as I remembered it from last year. I was alone this year, in a very small nook in the canyon wall. Despite my experience last year, I was still filled with skepticism that fish would just swim right in my net. It seems absurd, and I wondered if I was wasting my time. And so I waited in doubt. It occurred to me then that this is how I am with God as well. God has been so faithful to me, providing for me in abundance. And yet how often am I gripped with fear that this time things won’t go as well. I doubt. But on this day, as in my daily life, the salmon came. One at a time, they came.

Chitina is almost, but not completely, at the end of the road. After Chitina, there is a dirt road that leads to McCarthy and the abandoned Kennicot Copper Mine. The Kennicot mine is something I have always wanted to see and to photograph. I somehow got it in my mind that it would only a thirty minute drive, so even though it was getting late, I set out. After an hour, down the roughest road that can still be called a road, I felt  invested enough in the trip that I didn’t want to just turn around. After two and a half hours I arrived at a footbridge about two miles short of the mine. I would have walked it, but it was late in the day, cold, and rainy. I earmarked it for another day, and turned around and headed North again. Five hours after I’d left, I was back in Chitina.

The drive could have been a waste of time if it wasn’t such profoundly beautiful and powerful scenery. It is without question some of the most beautiful country I have seen so far in Alaska. Just when I thought I had seen all that Alaska had to offer, the land outdid itself once again. The road followed what was a railroad bed that had once served the mine. It crossed one iron railroad trestle, and paralleled another wooden trestle that was rotting and sagging in places. I was so tempted to climb up and walk across this, but the rain and the dark dissuaded me. Another day. I love this country, and I expect to return to this area soon. 

After passing thought Chitina again, I drove on toward Fairbanks through the night, sleeping on the side of the road when I was tired, and pressing on after short naps. One unexpected treat as I drove through the night: the Perseid meteor shower spit a handful of bright shooters across the inky night sky when I was furthest from city lights. As the sun came up, I saw what a crime it was to drive through the Alaska range in the dark of night, not seeing what was around me. In the morning light, the snow capped peaks of the Alaska Range blew my mind as I wound my way home. 

Now that the boys are playing “dog fighting fighter jets” all the time, Jacob is always the self-declared "good guys." Nonetheless, whenever he comes running at Toby with missiles armed, Toby yells in quite genuine terror, “The bogeys are coming, the bogey’s are coming!”

Stephanie and Jamiee had a little “girls weekend out” and drove down to Anchorage to shop for back-to-school clothes. This I don’t understand. I can rattle off half a dozen stores in Fairbanks that sell clothes, and I don’t know why a person would have to drive six hours just to shop for school clothes. In their defense, I think there are literally six stores from which to chose, and one of those is Wal-Mart, so….

That left me being primary caregiver this weekend. I don’t mind. I really enjoy it. On Saturday, we all loaded up and went to the Tanana Valley Fair. Ahhh, fair time. Fair food, ‘60’s era carnival rides, slicer-dicer hawkers, rain, unsupervised youth, outrageous prices, etc.

Being single me, I couldn’t escort Jacob and Toby on the rides and watch Sarah too, so Jacob and Toby had to be brave and go it alone. They did this pretty well for their ages. The first ride was on a small train. Poor boys were terrified. Each boy held the other’s hand and the rail in front of him with a death grip and grim expression. You’d think they were off to Bergen-Belson. When it was over, though, they were both beaming, and we had a celebration dance there in the grass.

Jacob wanted to go down the really tall slide so badly, but Toby did not. Jacob begged me to go with him, but I explained again and again why I couldn’t. I encouraged him to go by himself. He was very reluctant, but his desire to slide won out. He climbed those stairs, carrying his sliding mat and his plush killer whale for courage, like he was climbing the gallows. Finally at the top, he sat down and – and can’t believe it – pushed himself off, unsmiling. He slid all the down in a grim swoosh, neither smiling nor crying. Only when he saw me whooping and hollering did he climb down from the slide and run to me, grinning broadly.   

Incredible day today. Rain overnight pulled down all the smoke. This morning, the clouds parted to reveal bright sun and clear skies. Cool temperatures and crisp air feel like fall.