Elise Sereni Patkotak

I am not a holiday person. Not Christmas. Not New Year’s. Not my birthday. Not the Fourth of July. You get the picture. But here’s the thing. A lot of people don’t.

This is probably because my experience has been that most people do like holidays and like celebrating them. They cannot imagine not wanting to. But I don’t. And I’m not alone. I’m just brave enough to say it out loud for the world to hear. Most of us hide in the closet afraid to speak our true feelings because we will be mocked, at a minimum, and shunned Continue reading →

I arrived in Alaska after crying all the way up in the plane while my parrot cursed loudly at all that she had to endure with me. Here’s two pics. The first is me before I got to Alaska. The second is me weeks after arriving in Barrow. Those Barrow ladies really know how to sew.

There has been a lot of conversation over defined benefits packages for state employees. It seems to come from everyone except a person who is actually a beneficiary of that program. So here I am. I am a defined benefits retiree of the Alaska State system. You may pause now as you gasp at the thought of someone making that much free money from the state who is willing to say it out loud.

I don’t know about the rest of the retirees who are on the defined benefits package because I don’t see or hear much from any of Continue reading →

We should not be spending the summer watching our democracy fight for survival in November. So, let’s have some fun right here and now. Let’s compare what used to be to what is.

For instance, in 1960 a family entered the White House like no family ever before. They were so photogenic. She was so beautiful. The children were so cute. Their whole family played together. President Kennedy even hired his brother as his Attorney General – for those who have forgotten, it’s the original Robert Kennedy – you know, the one without a brain worm.

For a very brief Continue reading →

I arrived in Utkeagvik in 1972 to nurse at the Barrow Indian Health Service hospital. We weren’t a big facility. 13 beds plus one bed for pre and post delivery and a small area for babies. Our lab tech did x-rays and blood work and anything else they could throw at her. We all did everything else you could throw at us. We had to. There were only a couple flights a week in and out of town. There was no North Slope Borough or medivacs through the Borough’s Search and Rescue Department. And there was no blood bank that Continue reading →

Let’s get something straight from the start. I see nothing wrong in posting the Ten Commandments in a classroom – any classroom – though I would not want to be the teacher explaining to a kindergartner why they can’t covet their neighbor’s wife. While these commandments do not represent every culture in any given classroom anywhere in America, they do represent the general gist that most cultures provide in one manner or another on living together as a community in peace.

The Ten Commandments are not civil law except for a couple. If they were all the law, one of Continue reading →

AI is in the news a lot nowadays. It’s viewed as the second coming by some. I’m not one of them. In fact, I think the initials AI, which when pronounced properly sound like a scream, are most appropriate for it. Every time I encounter it, I want to scream.

It seems that recently I encounter it more and more. Every time I call a company for service, AI answers.  And if it isn’t AI making me scream, then what the hell is on the other end of the phone? It certainly isn’t human.

It’s not very far into these Continue reading →

I’ll admit it. When I came to Alaska in 1972, I was a flaming hippie with an unbelievably big and unruly Afro. Yep, I was doing cultural appropriation long before anyone had even put those words together. I came here from a world of unrest in America. Campuses around the country had erupted in the sixties in protest of the Viet Nam war and support of the civil rights movement. Despite being in a very conservative Catholic women’s college, I managed to participate in a lot of the activities of the sixties.

But then something seemed to happen in America. Continue reading →

Voting by mail is easy. All you need to do is mark your choice and stick the ballot in a mailbox or drop box. Easy-peasy.

Of course, you can also go vote in person on election day if you are willing to risk what has become a scary task. Given all the grief and threats that election workers now face, I’m surprised there are any left who are willing to risk life, limb, and reputation to keep America a freely voting nation.

Maybe it’s because I’m old and was raised in a day and age when going to vote was Continue reading →

So, this is for newcomers to Anchorage. Yes, we do a lot of strange things. We wear shorts while there is still snow on the ground and insist if it’s April, it must be spring. We pull out more fishing gear from our garages than is seen in most 3^rd world countries. And we hold elections in the spring.

Why, you may reasonably ask, do we do that? Well, if I remember rightly, Anchorage had a big discussion about how its elections were lost in the furor of state and national elections held in the fall. So, local elections Continue reading →