I realize my morning conversation was particularly boring today. I apologize that you had to listen. I will try to spice it up tomorrow.

Some dogs view vacuum cleaners as the enemy, a scary and frightening beast to run from as quickly as possible. But not my Carm. My Carm views it as a rival for all the food my birds toss out of their cages. When I bring it out to sweep each morning and evening, he goes nuts trying to stay one step ahead of it so he can get to the food before the sweeper eats it. The sweeper always wins but my Carm never stops trying!
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I suspect that if Jesus and Mohammed were to return to earth, the first thing they’d do is put out a tweet that simply said, “Please stop killing people and using us as the excuse.”

One of the newest members of our family.
Take one look at the expression on that baby’s face and tell me if anyone will ever dare say no to her.
Her grandfather doesn’t stand a chance.
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There is something dramatically wrong with life when I have to wear mosquito spray to work in my office. I have screens. I have screen doors. They sneak in during the few seconds I allow for the dogs to come in and out. They sneak in and now my office walls look like a blood bath as occurred.  Bring back winter! Please, oh please, bring back winter.

I was writing to a friend, whining about the horror of this year’s mosquito crop, when I looked up at the wall above my desk and saw three of them just sitting there looking at me, quietly contemplating how much of a tasty meal I was going to make.
They are all dead now. And my dogs are hiding on their bed in fear of the crazed lady who was running around with a magazine in her hand, climbing up and down on desks, rocking chairs and other unsafe surfaces while screaming, “Die, you bastards! Die!”.
Is it almost time for winter yet?

I made a comment in last week’s column that when we read about a crime as horrible as the one allegedly committed by Jerry Active on May 25th, we almost hope to find horrible abuse in his childhood to explain the monster he seems to have become.

I know nothing of his family so I have no idea whether he had an idyllic childhood or not. Some commenters who seemed familiar with the family felt that he had not had a good start in life. They questioned, as so often seems to be questioned, how the state can leave children and young people in homes that are clearly dangerous to their physical and mental health.
It’s a question I’ve certainly asked over and over again during my years as a social worker and guardian ad litem. I watched children bounced like basketballs between foster homes, group homes and their family home.
The question of why we return these children time and time again is not easily answered. Even though our legislature passed a law restricting the amount of time children could spend in out of home custody before permanent plans were made for them, kids are still bouncing.
I think part of the answer rests in the fact that as a society we are somewhat loathe to enter another’s home and make value judgments that could potentially severe all family ties between parents and children.  We seem to have no problem with the invasions of government listening to our phone calls, companies mining our purchasing habits or strip searches in order to get home for the holidays. Heck, some don’t even have trouble mandating what tests a doctor performs on a woman even when it means invading the most personal part of her body. But messing with a family still give us pause.
The isolation of Bush villages in Alaska means that services are either sporadic or non-existent. Before a family problem rises to the level of being reported in a small village, it has to get pretty bad. Even after the report, the services provided are extremely limited by the amount of funds available to get them to an isolated location.
In this particular case another legitimate question being asked is why he didn’t get the treatment he needed for alcohol and sexual abuse while he was incarcerated for the crimes he’d already committed. The answer to that is much simpler than trying to untangle the dynamics of a troubled family. When state revenues started declining a few years back, some of the first things on the chopping block were substance and sexual abuse treatment programs. Once they were widely available in many of our penal institutions. Not anymore.
In fact, despite the amount of alcohol and sexual abuse in this state, funding for programs to treat those problems has steadily declined over the years. The theory seems to be we should just lock up everyone who commits a crime and throw away the key. Mr. Active, unfortunately, is a poster boy for that theory.
Keeping someone locked up for life costs society both in the expense of the incarceration and the loss of productivity that individual may be capable of offering if treated. Treatment might prevent a tragedy like that allegedly perpetrated by Mr. Active upon his release. Removing kids from terrible home situations and giving them a chance in a sober atmosphere is perhaps an even better solution. If we don’t stop the problem at the source, we’re merely ensuring a steady flow of damaged individuals filling every jail cell we can build.
So whatever the reality of Mr. Active’s childhood, the reality for many prisoners is that they never stood a chance because they were raised in a dysfunctional family that received sporadic treatment at best while the child was like a yo-yo on a string being jerked up and down between foster care and family. That system guarantees there will always be people like Mr. Active in our midst.
We can either bite the bullet and fund successful programs for troubled families that do not allow the child to be the bouncing ball in the middle of the mess or we can continue to fund more jail cells to hold more offenders who will do horrible things before they are jailed. Either way, we pay.

First of all, that’s a rhetorical question so would all my family please stop trying to type a response to it.
I am speaking about how much I don’t like sunshine. I like cold. I like snow. I like gray days. I even like rainy days. But give me sunshine and I run into my house and try to hide in the darkest, coolest corner I can find.
I have a feeling that is not a normal reaction to sunlight.

Here’s a note one of our amazing volunteers from Bird TLC sent out. It should be noted that a lot of his expensive tools were stolen when we had the break in at Bird TLC a few weeks ago and he still is asking that his birthday gifts be donated to the organization instead of trying to recoup his personal loss. Some say he’s crazy. I say this is the kind of crazy that makes the world a little easier to live in.

From Dave Dorsey:
OK, most people know that I’m a Bird TLC volunteer. One of the things I really enjoy is assisting my fellow volunteers releasing bald eagles back to the wild after the eagle has been rehabilitated. One of Bird TLC’s ways of raising money is by selling eagle releases. For a $1000 you can release an eagle back to the wild. So, I bought one at our last fundraising auction in April. Go figure. Well next Saturday, June 15th at 1PM, I’m releasing a bald eagle back to the wild in celebration of my birthday. I’m inviting family, friends and whoever would like to experience this awesome release with me.

So, you want to give me a birthday present. How sweet. My friends say I’m tough to buy for because I go buy what I want when I need it. I haven’t bought that red Maserati yet, but if that’s not what you had in mind, go to http://www.birdtlc.net/youc.html and pick from the Bird TLC wish list. All of the donations go to their hard work. No wrapping or bows required. We’ll just put them in the back of Lucille and take them to the clinic after the release.

You can’t make it but still want to give me a gift? You’re the best. Go to http://www.birdtlc.net/adopt-a-bird.html and adopt one of Bird TLC’s education birds. There are all kinds of levels you can adopt at, from $200 a year for my great friends to $25 a year for my cheap friends. Hey, all joking aside, the money all goes to the birds.

So, come on out and bring the family, kids and friends. No pets please, unless you intend to feed them to the eagle. Help me celebrate my 49th birthday (again) and also support Bird TLC.

Dave

I think of the banality of most phone conversations most of us have and wonder if the federal agents in charge of listening in don’t want to blow their brains out halfway through their shifts.

Go to: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kendall-Auto-Alaska/215418495496?ref=ts&fref=ts
Vote for Bird TLC and if we get enough votes, we’ll get $5000. As in Chicago, you can vote early and often. In fact, you can go back to the site and vote every day.
Help us help Alaska’s wild birds. Don’t let the scumbags who stole what little we have win.
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Alaska Public Media (you may know them as KSKA and KAKM) is holding its summer picnic on its campus from 3 to 10 today. Hot dogs and popcorn free. Beer and soda cost just a little. And there are no tote bags involved. No asking for money. Just a thank you to the public for supporting our efforts. I say “our” because I’m a proud board member.
Oh yeah… and there will be live music from local Alaskan bands from 4 til 10. So bring a chair. Bring a blanket to throw on the grass. Bring the family. Food, drinks and music. And the weather will hopefully hold up and continue to be amazing.
What more can you want on a summer Saturday?

John Oliver is good but he’s not Jon Stewart. The sun has dimmed a bit for my summer. 

I grew up in a neighborhood of extended families. Everyone had dozens of first and second cousins, aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles as well as grandparents living within a short distance of each other. It was not at all unusual for your best friends to also be your relatives because that’s who you spent your holidays and summers with; that’s who blew out the candles on your birthday cakes from the day of single digit candles until… well, in my case, until today when I refuse to put that many candles on any cake. The faces that surround me when I go East are the faces that surround every memory of my childhood.

When I read about the horror that visited a family here in Anchorage last week, when I read of the deaths of Touch Chea and Sorn Sreap and the assault on their great-granddaughter, my heart twisted in my chest. Their names may be hard for me to pronounce and their culture might be something I’ve never experienced, but the concept of family is something people share universally. I felt that tug of familiarity because I too grew up with a close, extended family.
My grandmother lived with us for most of my childhood. Without her, I would have had few links to the “Old World” - our euphemism for Italy. I would never have known of my family’s journeys. I would never have known that she once picked coffee beans in South America or that one of her most precious memories was of the day when her father was caring for a beautiful white horse that she got to ride. I certainly would never have heard about how she met my grandfather while she was hanging her hair out the window to dry.
My grandmother’s English was spotty. But these were stories I understood and held close because they connected me to my past, a past that children of immigrants can all too quickly lose.
Touch Chea and Sorn Sreap endured a world that was not always kind to them, from the killing fields of Cambodia to refugee camps to that long journey they had to take to a strange land. But they did it. They endured. They made a life for themselves and their children here in America, just as my grandparents did so many years ago. How terribly sad it is that their collective memories of a way of life no longer lived by their offspring will now inevitably fade.
Their private memories of what they did and what they sacrificed and the courageous fight they fought to not let the world defeat them was ended in one horrible night of unspeakable depravity. It is almost unbearably ironic that they survived what they did only to be brought down by one perverted human being seemingly bent on satisfying a twisted need that normal people can never comprehend.
I would almost hope to find that the alleged perpetrator was horribly abused in his childhood. That might at least give some reason to his actions. But, as monsters like Ted Bundy and Ted Kaczynski have shown, some people are just born twisted and there is not much society can do to untwist them. The best we can do is to separate them forever from the rest of us.
One of my dearest cousins had open-heart surgery last week. In about a month or so, my brother will have essentially the same procedure. It’s scary for me to think of a world in which they are not a phone call away. I held my breath the entire day of my cousin’s surgery until I heard he was in the recovery room. Then I started holding my breath all over again knowing that my brother was next. I am profoundly grateful to still have them both in my life.
I can’t find the words to express how sad I am for the family of Touch Chea and Sorn Sreap. The little girl will heal and, with love and support, be able to live her life normally. But she’ll never know her great-grandparents. She’ll never know their love and gentle touch. She’ll never hear them tell their stories to her. More than anything else that monster took from her, this was perhaps the saddest – he took them from her.

I guess, the more I think about it, even without Sarah in the race, Joe alone will provide endless amusement. Sarah apparently will have to go some lengths to prove she’s still an Alaskan if she wants to run. Then she’ll have to do something about her less than stellar (last time I checked in the low 30’s) favorability rating. Poor Mead Treadwell. He’s apt to get lost in the excitement.