http://mwebphoto.photoshelter.com/image/I0000HOgMwqQ5ybk

I’m going traveling again next week and when I get back, I am going to try to restrain myself on my blog and use most of whatever spare time I can muster or steal to work on my first iPad book. It will be all about cats. Cats in Alaska – all across Alaska, from the Aleutian Islands to the tip of the southeast panhandle, Prince William Sound to Bristol Bay; up and down the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers, deep in the Brooks Range Mountains, within the shadow of Denali and, it goes without saying, along the Arctic Coast.

This iPad book will make me rich and famous. I will be able to do whatever I want afterward – even buy Burn from David, should so I so choose. But I won’t. But I will commission that whale submarine you suggested.

In the meantime, I just posted part 4, the final to my Barrow fall whaling series. I know you will see it, anyway, but should anyone else read this and be curious, here is the master link to all four parts and the preview:

http://www.logbookwasilla.com/logbookwasilla/category/2012-barrow-fall-bowhead-hunt

And yes, thanks to you, I have made a master index for each page.

Young Tom Hyde – Would you please plop down $375 and buy Ray’s A Laugh and send it to me here in Alaska? It’s getting pretty dark up here and the darkest days are still ahead. A good laugh will brighten my day.

oi,oi…no further comment…:)))))))))))))))))))

Look dude, I don’t ask for much. You know that. But I just walked by that independent little bookstore on main street, the one that sometimes smells like weed in the back, you know, next to the tattoo parlor and piercing joint? I know you know the one, I saw you sitting in the back reading through the zine library with your purple John Lennon glasses on and your funky leather boots up on the desk, the typewriter at your elbow like your ready to make up that naughty and nice list but you’re too stoned so it’s Morty the Dog comics for the next few hours. So hey man, they got a nice hardbound editon of Ray’s A Laugh in the window, marked down even. It’s only $375. Just sayin’. I’ll leave the special cookies out.

Happy THANKS GIVING to ALL…please,don’t forget to say thank you and I love you…
everyday…every single day…first to yourself…
THANK YOU CIVI…hiii!!!

May the ouzo be good and my hangover be cured…Ole!!!

So that’s where I’m coming from, but I still presume to offer small bits of advice, or simple wishes, however you choose to consider them. I can see how difficult it is to photograph the whale culture. Have you considered commissioning a small submarine manufactured and painted to look like a whale? With one of those you could hang out unobtrusively and no doubt get some incredibly enlightening photos. But if that’s somehow unfeasible, you could consider researching and writing about the Bowhead culture. You write so well about the Iñupiat, particularly when prodded. Photographs can only go so far. Some stories need writing to make them whole. I think you’re definitely the man for the job. I’d love to see you approach it systematically. I know you’re up against the health concerns. Maybe you could take some time for writing and save the photography for when you’re more physically able?

I’m rooting for you. It’s a great story and it’s obvious that there’s no better person to tell it than you. If there’s ever anything I can do to help, please let me know.

mw

http://instagr.am/p/SVciQ-hrRZ/

(Love your kids the most)

I do what I can to photograph the lives of the whales, but it ain’t easy. I get little glimpses, here and there. As to documenting the people who are trying to help the whales, I have done a bit of that as well. Those people fall basically into two categories – the Iñupiat themselves and scientists. The Iñupiat, because more than anyone else, they have spearhead the search for funding and establishment of the census and scientific effort that has made the bowhead the most studied whale in the world.

They have created the facilities for the scientists to work out of and have been their eyes and ears, because, for the most part, with a few notable exceptions, a scientist is a helpless creature in the Arctic without Iñupiat nearby – same for a photographer, I confess. There are a number of tagged whales being followed by satellite and, yes, you guessed it, it is Iñupiat whalers who have tagged them. Unfortunately, I have missed out on this so far, but hope to get it on the future. I have photographed the scientists at work to a small degree, because they do their work at the same time the hunters hunt.

You are right in that it would be good to document this effort more thoroughly and I hope to figure out a way.

As to what you saw in the movie – don’t believe it. It was fiction. The Greenpeace character was loosely based on Cindy Lowry, who I became friends with during the rescue. She came to Barrow not in opposition to Iñupiat hunting but in full support of it. Just about everybody, scienctists and otherwise, who comes north and puts in serious time with the whalers and whales leaves in support of the hunt. She and Greenpeace did what they could to influence what went on at policy levels involving the federal government and she did most of this from land. She rarely went onto the ice and she never dove into the water with the whales.

As a practical, year to year matter, Greenpeace really does not do that much of true benefit to the bowheads, other than a bit of public awareness. The Sea Shepherds – nothing at all.

As to the culture of the whale, it has been intertwined with the culture of the Iñupiat for how many thousand years? It took a big hit when the Yankee commercial whalers came in from the mid-19th through early 20th century. The big scientific and census effort that has been ongoing over the past 30-plus years shows a healthy and growing bowhead population. The hunt is closely watched worldwide and is regulated according to intensive scientific data.

The big question now is how the offshore oil exploration and pending development is going to affect the whales. The federal government has placed very stringent rules on the industry but Shell sure had a lot of problems this summer. This is an aspect I want to do some heavy coverage on in the future. I badly wanted to do so this summer, but damnit, I was laid up all summer long from my surgeries. This fall series was the first I got out and did and maybe it wasn’t too smart of me to do it, but I did.

Now I’ve got to have third damned surgery and trying to put it off until 2014, both so I can be free all through next spring, summer and fall to get out and do what I need to do, and so maybe I can get some insurance again once Obamacare kicks fully in.

I don’t know if I will make it though. There are days when I do not know if I will make it another week.

I just posted part 2, btw.

http://instagram.com/p/STTaCmMjEW/

:)))

Viva EVA,AUDREY,LAURA…DIEGO…aha,MR.BURN…MICHAELCB…oh,so many…

THANK YOU…I miss u ALL…

as IMANTS says…
your plucking chicken

P.S…FROSTY stay strong…ROBERTA,PAUL,CARLO,THODORIS,AKAKY…oi,oi…you are so many…
together we can do miracles…cause the Universe is working…
circle of friends…souvlaki on me…hmmm,or maybe just olives…

Really? ;-)))) joking joking….

But now I’m confused…I thought this was only going to the favelas. Will there be a small run for sale?
I remember DAH talking about it earlier this year or was it last year?
Hopefully I will see it here in Miami.