Columns 2015

There was a time when America’s endless war was the Vietnam War. Like our current wars, this war was a quagmire of deception, obfuscation and tragedy. We achieved nothing, which is not surprising since our stated goal of stopping communism came smack up against people who were sick and tired of colonial powers using them as pawns.

When President Nixon was questioned about just how far our war in Vietnam went and whether it now included the neighboring state of Laos, he unequivocally denied the presence of any American troops on Lao soil. And for once he was telling the

And I have my usual sinus infection so am operating at half speed. Which is why I am going to be lazy in the blog for the next few days and run the pieces I was doing on Facebook about my travels to Cambodia and Laos. Hope you enjoy them if you don’t follow me on Facebook. And if you do, sorry for the repetition but everything in my head is swimming and this is the best I can do until the antibiotics kick in.

No, not mentally. I’m leaving for a quick two week jaunt to Cambodia and Laos. On the assumption that high speed Internet… or much of any Internet… will be available there, I’ll be taking a two week break from the blog. I’ll be back the end of October.

It was a pretty horrible week, one that even the distribution of dividend checks couldn’t save. After all, we know the state is broke, our checks are likely to never be bigger than this year’s, and we will probably soon be using the Permanent Fund to keep state government afloat. So while our legislators pondered how two minus four somehow equaled plus zero, the rest of the country looked on in horror at the latest school massacre. And a vast majority of liberals who thought the pope was in their back pocket found out, to their extreme dismay, that he

Amal Clooney, famously the wife of George, is also an international rights lawyer. Recently, I watched a piece about her on E. 3/4 of the coverage was about her outfit and its cost. 1/4 showed her walking into a room to give testimony relating to her job. Approximately twenty seconds were given to a sound bite about the Maldives. 

Three days until I leave for Asia. It’s about now that I wish I were more organized and had done my preparations sooner than three days prior to departure….

Deet anyone?

Today is Fran Tate’s 84th birthday. Send good healing thoughts her way.

There are times in each year when we tend to stop and take inventory of our lives. For many people, this inventory happens on New Year’s Eve. But for me it happens on Oct. 1. That’s the day, 43 years ago today, that I first set foot in Alaska.

I don’t know what expectations I had when I arrived. I’m guessing I was too busy sobbing from homesickness to really articulate any, even to myself. Being a New Jersey-New York-Pennsylvania hybrid, I would assume I arrived with a rather jaded attitude towards this whole Last Frontier shtick being tossed at

I read with interest the recent article about the whale taken in Kaktovik that was found to have an old projectile embedded in its body. But even as I read it I could feel my stomach tightening. Discussion of traditional whaling often gets caught up in the question of how anyone could kill these noble creatures.

Sure enough, last week’s Letters to the Editor contained a letter questioning how subsistence whaling can still be allowed and why those darn Natives don’t just hop into the modern world and leave that barbaric killing behind. I have to assume the letter writer

Let’s agree on a few things upfront. For one, Christianity is hardly under siege in America. You can’t be under siege and have your religion’s holy days celebrated as national holidays. That just doesn’t add up. Also, if this clerk refusing to issue licenses to same sex couples was Muslim and refusing to serve women whose hair wasn’t covered because it violated her religious beliefs, announced candidates for US president would not be standing by her side and proclaiming her a hero. Further, most of us do not get to pick and choose those duties of our job that we