ACS contacted me in response to my rant about the number of phone books delivered to Anchorage homes each year to let me know that their phone book is available on disk if you ask for it. They still haven’t answered my question as to why this information is not widely promulgated or why a consumer couldn’t opt out of the paper version and just have a disk mailed to them. This disk would be a lot more environmentally friendly if it meant not finding a stack of phone books on your porch. Getting them both seems to be over killing the over kill.

In honor of America and everything she has stood for up until the Current Occupiers took office, I think everyone should take a moment today to face towards Washington, DC and extend their middle finger. Now THAT’S American!

I came home one day last week and found yet another plastic bag on my porch filled with the latest overload of telephone books. I took the package, put it in my car and off loaded it at the phone book recycling bins the first chance I got. As I did so, I wondered once again how companies could be so environmentally insensitive as to continue this practice despite the cries from consumers to stop it.

Let’s look at some basic facts.  One, I only have so much room on my desk. I am not about to fill it with multiple phone books.  Two, if I need a phone number for a business, I can look it up on the Internet faster than I can in the phone book. Three, not only can I look the number up faster, but Google also gives me a full address and a little map showing the location of the business. Four, and this is a biggie, I get so angry at the waste these duplicative books represent that I never use them or their advertising to make choices on where to get a service I need.
And I can honestly say I have no idea which book ends up on my desk. It’s a matter of chance. Seriously, is there anyone out there who actually sits down with competing versions of telephone books and does a side by side comparison before deciding which to keep and which to use as a door stop?
I used to think that recycling was a good idea that didn’t necessarily relate to me because I was a single person who didn’t produce much waste. Then I was offered the option of curbside recycling and thought that for a $6 buy in, I might as well give it a try. I did not expect to actually have very much stuff to fill the fairly huge container that was delivered to my home. But lo and behold, I do.
I’d never realized just how much recyclable material even a one person household can generate.  Coffee tins, juice containers, dog food cans, newspapers, even the lid from my daily latte.  While I may not totally fill up my recycle bin every two weeks, I come a lot closer than I ever thought I would.
So if one person can generate this mound of material for recycling, imagine how much waste all of Anchorage throws away every day, waste that will be in our landfills for thousands of years to come. While this could help future archeologists figure out how we managed to completely poison our environment, wouldn’t it be nicer to not kill the earth on which we live?
Which brings me right back to these darn telephone books.  Imagine how many are out there if every household in this municipality gets as many as I do.  And that begs the question of why the telephone companies are still using such ancient technology for this purpose. What about the idea of a telephone book on a disk that can be loaded onto my computer and accessed with ease whenever I need a number? A basic search function would even alleviate the frustration of trying to figure out where to go in the yellow pages to find what I wanted.
Granted that not everyone has a computer so there would perhaps be a need to still print a few books. But I’m betting that more than 90% of the target population would use the disk instead of a book. And they would be able to come home in the spring and summer without wanting to scream because someone had left another steaming pile of telephone directories on their front. The disks could be returned for recycling each year and our world would be saved from a little more junk being tossed on it by a society that is only beginning to come to grips with what its wasteful attitude has done to the environment that surrounds us.  I don’t have kids, but if I did, I’d sure want them to grow up in a cleaner world than we seem to be creating.
Think about it, telephone companies. Because I’m really mad now. And that’s not good for my blood pressure or your business.

Why is must be that sun that everyone talks about.  We haven’t seen it in Anchorage for so long that when it first appeared it scared me. I figured it was a giant spy satellite set up by DickieC to make sure I adhered to his definition of America.

So I’m bringing my trash cans out a few days ago when one of the little urchins from a house nearby peddles his trike over, looks at me intently and then asks if I have any teeth.  So I open my mouth, point in and allow as how I do. To which he replies something about old people not having teeth. To which I respond that not only do I have teeth, but they are all mine (he’s too young to understand implants!). I then smile at him and give him a full view of my pearly yellowish whites. At which point he nods his head and tell me that he can see them now and I have old people’s teeth.  So now I stand in front of the mirror each morning wondering what about my teeth make them old people’s teeth and how much a cure will cost.

So we’re on our daily walk when Blondie suddenly goes into full alert status, staring straight ahead, straining to keep something in sight.  Only she’s the only one who seems to see it.  She continues on full alert as we approach the spot where the invisible seems to be. We get to the spot. She stands there a moment. Looks around.  Then casually wanders off.  And I have to wonder what she saw...what she thought she saw...whether she has finally lost her grip on that small portion of her mind that wasn’t addled already. 

I saw the annual Arctic Thunder air show yesterday here in Anchorage. Am I the only one who left there feeling VERY, VERY horny?  And why is that?

Conservative Republicans scream the loudest about any preferential programs based on racial or gender discrimination. Yet they have no problem with political discrimination being used to get people who mirror their political beliefs jobs in the Justice Department, especially when those people are not as qualified as liberal candidates. So it’s ok to exercise political discriminate against the best and the brightest if that’s what it takes to get your somewhat dumb people jobs at the Justice Department but it’s not ok to use race or gender for the same purpose. I’m just asking because I want to make sure I understand the rules as they apply under the Current Occupiers in DC. Apparently, Justice is no longer blind either in its application or its hiring practices in America.

Why is it that my dogs will be sick all night if I accidentally drop a piece of cooked chicken skin on the floor and they eat it before I can pick it up but they can drink filthy water out of pools along the side of the road when we walk and be perfectly fine? What am I missing here?

I spent my first night in Alaska at the old Alaska Native Medical Center. I was so homesick I cried for most of it. I was so scared that every time I heard a sound in the bathroom I shared with another room, I leaped up to make sure the door was locked.  The homesickness I came by honestly. But the fear came as a direct result of a comment made by the woman at the desk when I checked in.

As I stood there in the hospital lobby surrounded by Alaska Native faces that, at that point in my life, were as foreign as kimchee to me, the woman handed me a room key and a set of towels. Then she leaned forward and motioned me closer. I leaned in and she said, “Make sure to keep the door locked that leads to the shared bathroom. You never know who might be on the other side.” All I could think was, “Oh! My! God! I’ve landed in the middle of a bad western and it’s not John Wayne on the other side of the door.”
So when I got an e-mail from people concerned about plans to rezone the area that had once been ANMC, I took a personal interest in it.  It is a place with a lot of memories.  Some are good, some not. You didn’t go to ANMC from the Bush in the early 70s unless you were really, really sick. And if you were that sick, you always worried that you weren’t going to make it home again.
ANMC was the pre-eminent gathering place for displaced Alaska Natives in the city. Whether they were in Anchorage to try and make a living for themselves and their family, or because they were lost on the streets or because they came in for medical care and in between appointments had nowhere to go, ANMC was where you found them.  Take people out of their villages and they re-create them wherever they are.
The rezoning issue is, for the time being, a moot point as the hearing has been tabled due to the resistance of homeowners and businesses in the area. Since the land is on prime earthquake territory, no one wants to put up buildings there.  Which, of course, begs the point of why the Native Medical Center was located there. But I digress.  The city had some idea of zoning it for industrial purposes. The residents wanted something nicer. I’ve got to say that I side with the residents.
This is a big piece of land holding a lot f history for our state and its Native peoples.  This was the TB hospital in the bad days of epidemics. This was where the concept of a health aide program was first brought to fruition.  This was the meeting place for urban Natives looking for a taste, smell or touch of home.  This was one of the last bastions of paternalism in a system that had treated Alaska Natives like children unable to care for their own needs.  Extraordinary convulsions that happened in the business offices across from the hospital resulted in the amazing health delivery system found today in Alaska, in which Native people from all over this state are now firmly in control of their care.
I know this because way back when, I was a health director for the North Slope Borough and sat at meetings in which I was amazed at the attitude of some of the bureaucrats with whom we dealt. They clearly felt that Native people truly were too childlike to ever make adult decisions. I want to emphasize that this was only some IHS employees. Others could not have been more supportive of the idea of Native people taking back control of their lives and being treated as adults.
So here’s my suggestion for the area. Make it a beautiful open park dedicated to all the Native peoples and health care providers who ever passed through those doors. Where there was once a facility in which death was a daily visitor, let’s create a green space in which life is celebrated.  In doing so, we help not only revitalize a neglected corner of downtown, but we also acknowledge a part of our history that is rapidly slipping away.

When you wake up in the morning and look out the window and this is what you see in your back yard, you remember all over again why you live in Alaska.
Photo courtesy of the mama moose and babes in the Landis backyard.

So for a financial donation to its well being, the City of Barrow renamed itself Jolt, USA for the day of the summer solstice. Apparently there were cans of Jolt for everyone to help them through the longest day of the year. And I only have two questions. One, have the kids come down yet from their caffeine high? And two, did anyone mention to Jolt that the sun hasn’t set in Barrow since May so really, the solstice is just part of the longest day of Barrow’s year?

I’m sitting here trying to finish up some work. The dogs want to walk. Blue keeps jumping up and down and heading towards the door in case there is any doubt in my mind about what she wants. And she is doing this with a sunflower seed from the bottom of the bird cage plastered on her nose.  She apparently can’t feel it because she clearly is unaware of just how silly she looks. And i find myself feeling very loving and protective all at the same time because it’s clear that her intellect will not keep her safe in this world.

Alaska’s former chief medical examiner Franc Fallico died last week. This would normally be of only passing interest to me since I didn’t really know him. Except I kind of did.  Soon after I arrived in Alaska in the early 70s, back when I was still under the mistaken impression that I liked nursing, I helped medivac a patient from Barrow to Providence Hospital. As I walked down the hall after the patient was admitted, this doctor passed me by and I had one of those out of body experiences. I knew the guy. He had been dating a nurse, a friend of mine, from Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn which is where I’d been before moving to Barrow. I wondered just how far that plane had flown.
And then I went back to Barrow and forgot all about it and concluded that the guy I knew was probably still in Brooklyn dating Lula and I was just homesick and seeing someone who resembled him sent my mind down a wrong path. And then Franc got a lot of publicity for his stint in Grizzly Man as the doc who explains the autopsy and what it signified went on during the bear attack. And I saw that face again and heard the name again and read a little more deeply and darn if it wasn’t the same guy I used to know from Brooklyn.
In the end, we live in a pretty small world, no matter how big it looks.

I had to buy a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt for a young man in Barrow who was turning 14. Because I knew if I did this alone I’d buy something only a dorky old lady would buy, I brought my buddy Page along who is 16 and very in tune with what should be worn. You could tell how bad my choices would have been from the look on her face every time I picked something up and asked her what she thought. After a while, I just shut up and walked behind her until she handed me a pair of shorts and shirt. I then bought them without a second thought.
At least I’ve grown wise enough to know I have no taste.