My girlfriend and I are launching C & C Foster Home, a place for animals in need. We feel we can help out as many animals as we can when we can. Currently we are fostering a seven-month old pup named Cleveland. He might soon have a foster brother as well. They both need forever homes!

Last week was a whirlwind when we really realized what we were getting into.

Carrie found a pair of dogs loose on the street near where she teaches in Nashville and picked them up. Their profiles were posted online at various sites, but no one has stepped forward to claim them. They are both tan dogs, stout and very well-behaved. We named the younger one Bobo, while the momma was named Hazel because of her pretty eyes. It’s obvious that the younger one was a pup from the older one’s previous litter. They were inseparable. The vet estimates that Hazel is about 2 years old while her older pup is about 7-12 months.

The mommy dog was also pregnant again when found, though. In the few days we had them, the momma gave birth again. So we had puppies – four of them! It was quite the experience.

A local animal organization called Noah’s Ark Society stepped up and helped us out. They took over both older dogs and the puppies. The mom and puppies are placed in a wonderful foster home and information on them will be available on our new website. Bobo might get to hang out with us for a few more days as he prepares to move into his own foster home. Hazel and him are excellent together and we’re hoping someone is willing to take them both when the time comes.

C & C Foster home became official without us really knowing. I created the website and will have constant updates on the pets we have and information on others that need forever homes. Please check out the site here. You can also read about our current foster dog, Cleveland, here. It has pictures! Also, there is a photo gallery of the puppies when they were about two days old!

It’s a neat feeling to help out. If Carrie hadn’t picked up those loose dogs in East Nashville – who knows what would have become of them. Now they are properly cared for and have a bright future ahead of them. It’s our hope that they never feel neglected or hungry again.

As we get more established, we will be taking donations so you can help, too! It can be expensive to help animals, but through sponsorships and other aid, we can make it work. Check out our site when you can and like our Facebook page as well by clicking here.

After months of sitting and more than two years of trying to find a fulfilling purpose, charlespulliam.wordpress.com may have finally carved out its niche. This site’s purpose will be to supplement my online presence as well as a place for potential employers and anyone else intrigued by my work to research my talents as a multimedia reporter.

As I have time, I will be adding work here. I manage a Tumblr site for my iPhone posts here (iCharles). I’m active on Twitter and Facebook as well. This will be the anchor to my online postings. I imagine it like the lighthouse in the fog. On Tumblr, I’ll post everything from pictures of my meals to funny and sometimes overly majestic captures of the cats. Twitter is more of a news outlet, but you’ll find sports rants, primarily about basketball, and interesting tweets about my life. It’s too foggy to describe my direction on Facebook. If you’re my friend there, you understand.

This site will act as the organized pillar of my thoughts and online posts. It will contain somewhat evergreen content refreshing and informative to visitors. Friends, employers and family can use this to keep up with my transforming media skills and as a personal news site. I plan on posting more stories with my free time. They will consist of my Alaskan roots, my Aleut heritage and my new media endeavors.

The site currently has been revamped. Previous posts will stay, but I’ve switched up my pages on the left. I will consistently update my online resume here with links to work and up-to-date contact information. There are also embedded photos and videos with dedicated pages available for searching.

I’ll stay on top of this and keep it as my online representative lighthouse. Check back from time-to-time and even subscribe so you don’t miss new posts.

As my first full post from the Music City here in Nashville, Tenn., I hope you come back.

Be sure to follow all my social media posts about the horrific tornado in Joplin, Mo. I set up this storify account to group everything together: http://storify.com/cspulliam/my-time-in-joplin

I’ve spent the last few weeks getting a crash course in Photoshop, both CS4 and CS5 formats. It’s been a struggle to say the least.

These two panoramas are part of a photo assignment in my digital photography class. The class assignment was to make several panoramas. These are two I made of this really neat bridge in Shelby Park in Nashville, Tenn. I’ve never really attempted panoramas, but I’m proud of the way these two came out.

I feel like I’m looking for interesting photos like this now. I learned a lot about Photoshop and know panoramas aren’t so intimidating anymore.

NASHVILLE – Cars were double-parked in the small lot entering the boxing gym located in the basement of an old building in East Nashville off Main St. It was boxing day at the gym, known as the Boxing Resource Center. Seventeen bouts were scheduled between amateur boxers from around the region.

A rugged exterior with no windows greets the young fighters. The weathered building has seen better days.  Competitors enter through a heavy metal door that requires a nudge to get in.

After a quick scan of the gym most boxers have seen many times, they greet one another and mingle freely among the two boxing rings and dozen or so dangling punching bags inside.

Coaches, often the parents of competitors, give fist pounds to one another happy to see familiar faces. Some fighters wear shirts and ties for the occasion, while others look like they just rolled out of bed. Most have at least one ear bud from their iPod attached like an appendage to their bodies. All frequently put up their fists and shadow box.

The youngest fighters – ages 9-12 – make use of the foosball table near the door.

“I have issues,” reads one of their shirts.

The dull murmur of a vacuum cleaner hangs in the gym. One of the many volunteers here is cleaning the main ring where several young fighters stand watching.

They eye the ring with pride; it’s their stage, their inspiration.

Host Christy Halbert, a saint to many in the sport, owns the gym. Her ties to boxing go back to when she was a professional fighter and one of the first to make a stand for amateur women boxers in the United States.

She has done wonders for the sport nationally, but is even more known internationally. One of her premier goals – getting women’s boxing recognized as an Olympic sport – is turning into a reality. The International Olympic Committee said in August of 2009 that women’s boxing would be included in the Olympic games for the first time in 2012.

“They still need more weight classes,” though, Halbert says. It will happen with her and her counterparts consistent pushing. Regardless, it’s a start for women to get equal representation alongside their male counterparts in the sport.

Today, Halbert scrambles to get young boxers matched up with proper opponents while setting up chairs for spectators and doing just about everything else you can imagine.

Only one boxer is fighting for the first time at this event, while most are already established fighters. Several will be fighting against opponents much heavier. Regardless, it’s a bout.

“It’s always a good time,” Halbert mutters while on the phone trying to find out why one of the scheduled teams is running late.

She announces weigh-ins and boxers line up at the scale at the back of the gym stripping clothes as they walk.

About the same time Gene Reese appears with his wife, who will work as the timekeeper during the bouts. She likes to ring the bell, she says.

Reese, who just turned 80, will be one of the three officials at the event. He’s been officiating boxing since 1962 and has reffed in 26 countries, he says. Everyone in the gym glances at him, few greet him with a handshake and a smile.

“They took away my license because of my age,” he says, “That’s age discrimination I said.”

Reese found a way to get back into the sport on the amateur level. He and his wife travel nearly every weekend from their home in Chattanooga to events like this.

“They are a hoot,” Halbert says smiling.

Reese’s “old-school” approach is refreshing to the dynamic sport. He knows the rules inside-out and enforces them at every level treating all competitors fairly.

One teen boxer has remnants of facial hair Reese notices after his weigh-in. He must have shaved with an electric razor. Reese has an eye for this.

“That’s not a clean shave,” Reese says as he grabs the arm of the bewildered boxer. “I have something just for that.”

After dragging the boxer over to where his briefcase is, Reese reaches in and pulls out two dull razors that look like they were used in shaving commercials from the 1970s.  The boy’s eyes widen.

“Which one do you want? I picked out my two dullest ones for those that didn’t shave,” Reese says.

The boxer doesn’t respond, so Reese puts the dirty-yellow looking one into his right hand. He puts an old bar of soap in the other hand and sends the fighter to the restroom.

“That’ll teach him,” Reese says after the boy leaves. Rules are rules.

Bouts begin soon after.  The one fighter who had to shave won’t stop touching his face. It probably burns.

The boxing is superb at each level. Each fighter’s training surfaces and bouts are evenly matched across the board. Coaches shout orders and parents and family members stretch to get the shot with their cameras. They are the only ones with a camera besides a volunteer, who takes pictures of the fighters after a fight. Together they will produce the only record of the event most likely.

Halbert always pleads for coverage locally. She rarely gets it. At least they have fights.

From Eugene Collins, who fought in the 10-year-old, 85-pound fight in the early going, to Caleb Plant, an 18-year-old amateur fighter with sights set on the Olympics, who closed the event, it’s obvious Nashville has a tight-knit community dedicated to boxing. And boxers with talent.

The state produces some of the best and the small gym attracts them all to learn from one of the best in the sport – Halbert.

It’s a family, but more importantly, they are a growing family. Join them; be inspired.

The next event is Feb. 18-19 at the Boxing Resource Center off Main St. in East Nashville. It’s a Golden Gloves event and will be a regional qualifier for the state event.

I’ve been in Nashville, Tenn., for about two weeks now. I’m starting fresh; looking for a new path. I’m attending Belmont University, where I will finally wrap up several pesky credits to officially graduate. I’m considered a “visiting scholar” through the Freedom Forum’s Diversity Institute for which I am greatly honored. However, I know how loosely-fitting the term “scholar” fits a gentleman like myself. I’m doing my best to at least try to rise to such a level.

I left Montana several days after the three-year anniversary of moving to the state. I moved there in early January of 2008. I called Big Sky Country home for a long time. It was hard to leave such a beautiful place, but now I’m off on my own (well, with my two cats, Apollo and Loki). I’m – we – are looking for a new direction. We have plans through May to stay here and wrap up college, then are open to whatever opportunities may arise.

As for my forgotten blog, I’m working on its direction as well. Hang in there. You’ll come back to life soon.

She grew up in the native village of Port Graham, Alaska. It’s on the tip of the Kenai Peninsula, land-locked and about a 15-minute flight in a single engine plane or an hour away by boat from Homer. Homer is the end of the road for Alaska Interstate 1.

We talked about her early years, getting raised by her grandparents and helping raise her brothers and sister. She experienced so much poverty early on, but it wasn’t viewed as bad – it was just life.

Her parents became alcoholics. She grew up in a make shift, one-room home with dirt floors. She was barefoot with hand-made clothes from scrap pieces of cloth. They hauled water and they didn’t experience simple things taken for granted today, such as electricity, until the early 1970s.

The village was like a time capsule. While everything was changing and the modern world was expanding outside of Port Graham, her world stayed much the same as it had been for hundreds of years. But as she got older, those same new things were being introduced to her village.  They still fished. They still hung to speaking their native tongue. And they still were accustomed to life without all the wasted commodities we now experience daily.

It was an interesting conversation. I knew of it, but never really understood what it was like. My mom’s generation was a very unique one. It was one where education started to become a focus, but at a K-8 school in Port Graham, to attend high school, kids had to leave home and attend nearly all-white schools in Alaska’s bigger cities. They were met with hundreds of obstacles and forced to mature at an early age if they wanted to make it in school. When they spoke in their Aleut, they were “disciplined.” My mom said she still doesn’t like seeing yard sticks.

“They used to hit across our hands if they caught us speaking in Aleut,” she said, holding out her hands with open palms. “Teachers would smack our palms or right across our knuckles.”

I never met her parents. They died when she was 22, long before me. I can only imagine what alcohol did to them. I’ve seen it even now. I see it in some of her family today. I’ve also visited reservations in Montana and other villages in Alaska. Alcohol is like a plague, snaring its victims in ways very few understand.

I never met her grandfather either, who was a key figure in her childhood. I think he was her father-figure. I saw a picture of him for the first time this summer and somehow he looked exactly the way I thought he would.

He was small in stature, probably about 5-foot-2 with an aged face and deep, dark eyes. In the picture he is standing beside my great grandmother. They compliment each other so well. I did meet and know her. Through my early years up until middle school I knew her. She was “Umma” to me, which is the Aleut word for grandmother. She was embedded in old ways. She spoke only Aleut, but understood some english, because I know she could understand me when I spoke to her. She seemed so frail but in the 8-10 years I remember, I never thought she changed.

I have to admit, maybe because of my childhood, that she was very intimidating from an early age. It’s hard to describe because she was so small in stature – just a hair taller than 4-foot-8 with a very quiet demeanor. Maybe I just didn’t understand her style of living.

She lived off of fish and other native foods, such as seal and her specialty – seagull eggs. Her home was tiny, made by her husband my mom said. It was red on the outside and still stands today in Port Graham. It’s miniature in my eyes. Everything is smaller. The ceiling is short and it’s just one bedroom, heated by a wood stove that also serves as the oven. In her 80s I can still remember Umma cutting up small pieces of wood and using some of her many saved cardboard boxes to start fires in that stove. Cardboard boxes was what was used for insulation in her bonya (like a sauna).

I miss stopping by to see the place. It was  always a place for us to stay when we were in Port Graham. My parents and I used to stay in the extra room there, all sharing one bed. It looks rugged today, less taken cared for and it has always been empty since Umma passed away. My mom’s uncle used to care for the place very well, he has since passed away, too.

Umma’s bed was always made and the blankets covering her couch were always folded neatly and the pillows were always placed purposefully. She never had dishes to be done and used the same big pot for everything while cooking.

Umma would always sit on one of the three chairs surrounding her tiny round table by the main window in the house. It seemed like you can see the entire bay from her perch – that’s probably why she liked it so much. There was never any lights on during the day and even in the night it seemed she used a candle if she needed light. It always felt strange to turn on one of her three lamps. She would sit in her chair and sip tea from her mug. I always thought it was too big for her, but she always managed. She would stare out the window, completely content.

Umma’s house is on a bluff with an even more rugged trail today that leads to the beach. I remember hearing my mom say she used to use that trail to go hunt for octopus and gather bidarkis in the years before me. Even more interesting to me was that both species were more common so close to the village. Yet, I remember the trail. As a young boy, I always struggled trying to climb it and now, its impassable. You had to get on all fours to make it over the top – how’d she do it?

It was a beautiful home. Umma loved it, I know she did. Later in her life she had to be under constant care so she was convinced to live under supervision in Homer. It drained her of life being away from her home. After suffering a stroke the family decided to take her back to Port Graham, so she can die peacefully at home.

She was on life support then, connected to a tube that would keep her lungs working. She coughed out the tube, twice my mom said. They would quickly re-insert it, but then when she did again, clearly uncomfortable with it, they didn’t re-insert the tube.

Umma lived out her life in her home, without much help. That same tube had made it nearly impossible for her to talk. She gained that back, too.

I wish I could revisit those days with what I know now. I would love to have a story in her own words about growing up in Aleut, anything. I miss those day sometimes.

July 16 (A day fit for a King)

It was just my uncle Nick and I this morning. My mom went to Homer the yesterday to check on the place in Ninilchik and get some birthday dinner supplies for my uncle Moose and I tomorrow.

We slept in and didn’t run through the nets until about 7:00 a.m. today. The tide wasn’t running then, so there was no hurry. Yesterday was a long day anyway. The two of us were on the water for more than 10 hours.

We set at mid-tide and just coasted through the nets the rest of the day, catching the tide turns. I liked it. There weren’t too many fish, but we ended the day with about 90 reds.

The weather was perfect again today. This morning we checked the low water rocks around AC Point and couldn’t get an octopus out. There were a couple others, but each had some mighty fortresses. We did see our whales – not like yesterday when we had to herd them away from the nets, btu they still showed up this morning. They haven’t been back in the bay this evening.

The day’s biggest surprise came as we were runnign through the nets for the last time before pulling gear.

The net by AC Point off the big rock at Romanoff’s hasn’t been producing much at all the first few periods. Yesterday we nearly set it between the waterfall and ladders sight, but decided to let it try the tide before making the move thinking maybe the big tides will help out.

It picked up well, getting about a dozen reds on the tide turn and today it produced similarly. Tonight it produced the best catch of the season.

I had just pulled up to the outside buoy with the skiff and shut the outboard off and began to raise it. Nick had already worked down the net a cork or two when he yelled, “Get the net!” I’m sure there was a bad word or two thrown in there too, but that’s all I heard.

Without hesitation, I grabbed the dipnet and rushed to the front of the skiff where he was leaning over holding on to the net. The water was dark. Our light was dimmed because of cloud cover and it was already 8 p.m. or so, which made the water almost black-like.

In the water I could see the slow movements of a big king salmon – the first king I had seen in years. I had forgotten what they look like in the water, huge torpedoes ready to burst away with strength and speed unrivaled.

This one was caught just on the back fin. It had torn a small hole in the net and was nearly all the way through but looked like it was on a treadmill, content to slowly swim in place. All it needed was one forceful thrash of its tail and it would have been gone free.

I quickly scooped the net in front of him (it turned out to be a male) twisting it and pulling back strong trying to lift him out of the water. He gave one thrash and was out of the net and curled into the dipnet. I bent the net bringing him on board because it was at full extention braced on the edge of the skiff, but he was caught and that’s all that matters.

The king turned out to weigh about 40 pounds. It had a scar on one side like a sea lion had just missed it trying to grab it. As a set-netter in lower Cook Inlet, you always want to catch a king.

They used to be much more abundant. Maybe they have been targeted too much. Maybe they just don’t show up in our areas the way the used to, who knows. All I know is it takes just one of these awesome fish to make a fisherman’s day. They sure are beauties.

I told my mom the day before I wanted to catch a king for my birthday (which is tomorrow). And, here it is the night before and I get one.