October 29, 2003

• Doug’s
  Day
  Out

  
  

  We had been planning this for months.  For my son Doug’s birthday around the end of July, I took him to an AA meeting.  Okay, it was more than that.  It was the regular monthly “Saturday Night Live” inter-group potluck dinner and speaker’s  meeting, but still basically a 12-step meeting.  I didn’t try to pretend that I was doing anything special for Doug.  I had volunteered to supervise setting up tables, etc., because it was our group’s turn to host the event.  I asked him if he would be willing to go along and help out, in exchange for a free meal.  He went for it.  The meal, he said, wasn’t the attraction.  He just wanted to get out of the house.

  
  

  Except for our trips every week or so to the spring to fill water buckets and jugs, and occasionally on one of those trips a mile or so further to the general store to pick out a video to rent, Doug’s trips away from home are infrequent.  He goes out and walks around alone sometimes; sometimes he takes the dog.  Once in a while in summer, he rides his bike the mile to his dad’s cabin for a visit.  When it is freezing cold, or in summer when there is no rain to fill the pans under the eaves that collect water for the feral cats, he takes water every day to the cats and checks their food supply at the old place across the highway where we lived for most of his life, since he was two years old. 

  
  

  Fifteen years we lived there without running water or any connection to the power lines.  We had a little generator and a dim 12-volt electrical system, but no computer, no web connection.  Now only that colony of feral cats that was there before we moved in still lives there, and only Doug visits the place with any regularity.

  
  

  It wouldn’t be completely correct to say that Doug is anti-social, but most of his friends are online buddies.  I guess he’s somewhat of a loner.  My perspective on this is not quite objective because I’m also  somewhat of a loner and so is my husband Greyfox.  Although all three of us love people, most people’s social lives seem to us to be so busy as to leave little time for the solitary pursuits we enjoy. 

  
  

  In school Doug had a few close friends.  They’ve gone away to the military since graduation.  Doug had no interest in the military and his myopia makes it doubtful that they would have much interest in  him.  At the time he graduated from high school, I was extremely ill and Greyfox was frequently in a drugged-out state.  Doug stuck around and kept things going.  He did all the heavy physically demanding work such as splitting and carrying firewood.  He helped me with tasks such as repairing the roof (I posted a series of photo blogs of that a bit over a year ago) and he was supportive of my efforts to deal with the drunken Greyfox, and to persuade him to sober up.  He has been relieved, happy and supportive since Greyfox got clean, and he consistently reminds me that the junk food he eats is not on my diet every time I reach for it.  Life would be a lot harder around here without him.

  
  

  He stayed  here all summer while I made those trips up and down the valley staying over a night or two each time at Greyfox’s cabin.  He kept the animals fed and cared for.  When it became cold enough to need a fire, he kept one going.  I cannot overstate how comforting it is to pull into the driveway after one of those drives, and see smoke coming out that stovepipe up top that he helped me install last fall.

  
  

  I suppose I’d love the kid anyway, just because I’m his mother, but he has many admirable qualities and I do admire and respect him, as well.  So, when he expressed some restlessness this summer I asked him if he’d like for us to go on a special outing sometime after Greyfox shut down his stand for the winter and moved back in here so that he could keep the fire burning, be the cats’ doorman and keep Koji company while we were gone.  Naturally, he agreed.  We started then discussing what we would do and watching the papers for suitable events.

  
  

  Both of us have always enjoyed museums and have visited many on our two long road trips across the U.S.  The Anchorage Museum of History and Art is a local favorite that we have been back to several times.  When we learned that it is hosting a traveling exhibit of Sue, the South Dakota Tyrannosaurus Rex, we decided to take our outing during this time period.  A few weeks ago on one of my drives to town I heard a radio ad for the Moscow State Circus, and that narrowed down our time window for the Anchorage trip.  I bought tickets earlier this month and yesterday we went to the big city.

  
  

  After a gas stop in Wasilla where he got an ice cream bar (and reminded me that it’s not on my diet), we stopped in Eagle River at Garcia’s of Scottsdale for lunch.  My kid has grown up eating Tex-Mex:  chili, tacos, burritos, quesadillas, New-Mexico-style enchiladas and other simple items in my repertoire of Mexican cuisine, but hadn’t tried fundidos before.  He loved them, and I enjoyed the first half of my enchilada trio (cheese, beef and chicken).  The rest of my meal is in the fridge right now, waiting for me to warm it up later for lunch.

  
  

  Traffic is one reason I don’t go to Anchorage more often to take advantage of whatever cultural resources it has to offer.  Air pollution is another.  We survived both yesterday, and even had a few laughs as we navigated the nest of one-way streets in the Anchorage “bowl”, the central area of the city, ringed by mountains except for the side that slopes off into Cook Inlet. 

  
  

  The museum turned out to be between 6th and 7th Avenues, instead of between 5th and 6th as I’d misremembered it.  There were also fewer parking meters along those streets, their having been replaced by signs saying, “tour buses only.”  Then I pulled into a Park-and-Lock lot, and learned when I went to pay at the self-service post that during weekdays it is for long-term reserved parking only, and open to the public only in evenings and on weekends.  Finally, we found a metered space on a side street and walked two blocks to the museum.

  
  

  After we took our time going through the three galleries devoted to Sue, a lot of interpretive displays about her (or him or it) and the bones’ discovery, and to some displays of Alaskan fossils (first three photos at top here), I headed immediately to the Artists of Alaska gallery, which houses part of the museum’s permanent collection, and photographed some of  my old favorites such as the Fred Machetanz canvas of the sleeping polar bear, the huge Sydney Lawrence painting of Denali, and the fanciful blue and red moose by an artist whose name I don’t recall (#4, 5 & 6, above).  I also shot some smaller Lawrence’s, but I guess this blog has enough illustrations as it is.

  
  

  As we walked into the historical galleries, the first thing I saw was the moss-encrusted Nunivak Head (just below Doug and those colorful moose, above).  It is a unique artifact whose origin is a matter of myth to the local natives where it was found.  Greyfox calls it the “ouch rock” because of a visionary experience he had when I took him to the museum on his first visit to Alaska in 1990.  I’ll let him tell that story if he wants to.

  
  

  Doug took his time looking over all the historical displays, while I focused my camera on some of the familiar favorites (such as the early 19th century wedding dress made to a traditional Russian pattern from Chinese fabrics and pearls for some classy lady in Russian America. [that's what Alaska was before Seward bought it, y'know?]), and checked out several new exhibits I hadn’t seen before.  The oil-stained suit of insulated coveralls to the left below the lady’s silk dress is part of a new display commemorating the cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

  
  

  Next we wandered into a gallery displaying “Deviant Biology” (above, right), a temporary exhibition of ceramic sculptures by Alaskan artist Carla Potter.  Neither of us had heard of her or seen her work before, and we spent quite a while wandering among the cases marveling at the forms.  It would be hard to pick a favorite from among them, but the one titled “Nest”, at left, would be a candidate for my favorite.

  
  

  We still had twenty minutes or so on our parking meter when we were through there, so we went to check out the Children’s Gallery, down a long hallway lined with these “Wild Ducks of North America.

  
  

  Amid sculptures made from old toys and other “found objects”, the center of the room was an enclosed space big enough for several children, furnished with cushions and art books.  One glass-enclosed display to the side of the room contained a shiny full-sized motorcycle, and a large portion of the floor space was devoted to huge “boards” for chess, checkers and Chinese checkers.  The “marbles” for the last were the hollow plastic balls usually found in “ball crawl” playspaces.  Some of them had been scattered about, and Doug collected them all and placed them in order on the board.  If only he had taken such good care of his own toys, back when….

  
  

  We could have spent more time in the museum if we had had more change to put into the parking meter beforehand, but when the meter ran out we decided to head on out of the downtown area toward the Sullivan Arena where the circus was to be.  It is just as well that we did leave a bit early (like an hour or so), because my initial uncertainty about the parking lot entrance, coupled with Chester Creek which runs through that part of Anchorage and makes for a lot of dead-end streets between the sparse bridges, caused me to do a long and circuitous detour around midtown and come up on the sports complex from the backside.  That got us into the arena in time to get refreshments and enjoy watching the crowd assemble and the performers prepare for the show.

  
  

  Maybe I have been spoiled by the lavish video presentations of Cirque du Soleil, but it seems to me that the Moscow State Circus sorta exemplifies the hard times that Russia has been having.  The skills displayed by the performers were top-notch, and the recorded tekno-rock music added to the drama of the action, but there were more than a few seedy signs of economic pinch.  The entire troupe and crew was quite small, with performers doing double and triple duty helping to set up equipment and doing sideshow things such as face painting, selling toys, and photographing audience members with their big Burmese python (at $10.00 a pop, or $15 if there was more than one person in the pic) during set-up and at intermission.

  
  

  We saw classic circus acts such as trapeze duos, clowns, and the Chinese man spinning plates, above.  Billed in the advance ads as “Taiwanese Acrobats,” the Diamond Troupe at left was ballyhooed by the ringmaster as coming from “Imperial China.”  They were excellent.  In addition to the set I caught here, they also did the big finale with, at one point, all six young men bouncing and spinning on bungees at the same time, around that narrow bar over their heads in this pic.  The shots I took of that act only show blurs, they were moving so fast.  I do need a camcorder, I guess.  Just before intermission, my camera ran out of memory.  I did manage to delete a bunch of substandard images during the intermission so I could catch the finale.

  
  

  One of the most impressive acts occurred while I was out of memory, but that act I didn’t get to capture was one that only video would have done justice to, anyway.  They were a pair of illusionists/quick-change artists.  When they came on I noticed that the woman looked a bit thick around the waist, in contrast to all the other lithe beauties in the company.  By the time she was done dazzling us with her instantaneous costume changes, though, she looked quite a bit slimmer.

  
  

  Our front row seats made it possible for me to get a few decent photos with detail I’d not have gotten from the cheap seats.  However, there were a few problems.  Some of the lights shone right in our eyes, while others partially blocked our view.  Also, most of the acts were performed with the acrobats facing away from us toward a video camera on the other side of the ring.  I’m really not complaining, though, because I don’t mind spending time looking at the muscular backsides of young athletes in action.

  
  

  Unless my eyes deceived me, that complex balancing act above, the one twirling the giant tubular cube contraption at left, and the “Strong Man” acrobatic clown act in the final shot below, were all performed by the same young genius.  He had us all catching our breath and ooohing and aaahing with the twirling and balancing later in the show, just as he had broken everyone up in laughter with the Strong Man act at the beginning.  He had come on in a flowing cape over a floppy costume that looked as if he were wearing mittens, followed by two men carrying a big “barbell” obviously made of foam rubber.  He did a few flips and other moves that I could tell took a lot of strength and coordination, but that didn’t look very impressive in the floppy suit.

  
  

  After several unsuccessful attempts to lift the weight, he did some strutting and dancing around, gesturing to the crowd, encouraging us to applaud.  With every cheer his floppy costume inflated a bit more, until it was revealed as a gigantic muscular “body” suit.  Then his act really became impressive.  He could barely bend over in the inflated suit, but he jumped and tumbled about in it to delighted laughter from everyone and some stunned gasps from those of us who realized the difficulty of the feats.

  
  

  Just a while ago now I asked Doug if the circus had been more fun than the museum.  After a significant pause he answered, “tough call”.  I agree.  Both were wonderful, filled with surprises and great entertainment.  The whole day was an excellent adventure.  If all goes according to plan, Greyfox and I will be back in Anchorage again this Friday for a Halloween dance to celebrate our wedding anniversary.  That will be the first time in over a decade that I’ve gone to the big city twice in one week.  Wow!

  • 7:39 pm
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