... happiness at my age is a doctor’s visit where the scale thinks I’ve lost three pounds since the last time there. I may have to celebrate with a big meal. After all, I now have a three pound leeway.

A few days back I described an encounter with a moose on my front lawn. The query came in as to why there was no picture to accompany the story. It occurred to me that in today’s world, everyone’s cell phone takes pictures so everything is - or can be - instantly documented. Although I can think of more than one time where I would not have wanted instant documentation of what I was doing, I guess I can see where that impulse comes from.
The thing is, I don’t own a cell phone. Don’t want one either. So I have no instant camera. And, as it turns out, no other kinds of camera either. This means I am forced to rely on my memory of an event and my ability to describe it in words. It’s a system that has worked for me for a long time. It keeps my brain flexed and active.  I think I’ll stick with it and paint my pictures with words instead of cell phone shots.
It’s my little Luddite rebellion moment for 2010.

Speaking of athletes, it will soon be Olympic time and I’ll once again sit like an overstuffed potato on my couch watching young people with impossibly perfect bodies doing impossibly difficult tasks gracefully… things I could not have done in my prime no matter how hard I tried because - truth to be told - my sister does NOT have the market on klutz. I think it’s a general family gene which is why our family has never produced one outstanding athlete… though we have apparently produced one outstanding sports announcer back in Philly. 
Pour me another margarita. It’s going to be a long two weeks of awe and envy.

Here’s what I will never understand… the lure of racing dogs 1000 miles in freezing cold weather with no amenities. Don’t get me wrong. I love the race. I love the cold most days. But I rarely get up on a day when its below zero and think this would be the perfect day to run 1000 miles. Usually I just think it would be a great day for a SHORT walk and then a BIG blaze in the fireplace with a warm cocoa.
I guess it takes all kinds.
Long distance mushers have my absolute respect… if only because I think they must all be a little nuts.

Sometime, amidst all the noise and clamor of recessions, lost jobs and rancorous political fighting, we forget what’s really important. We forget those things that get us from here to there, from today to tomorrow. We forget the people and actions that make life happen with some modicum of peace and comfort.

Then something occurs to remind us that amidst the chaos, there is light and love. And it comes to us not from the politicians who claim they will make our lives better. Nor does it come from the personalities whose lives, marital turmoil and relationships fill People Magazine weekly.
The light and love comes from the neighbor who takes a moment to close your garage door when he notices you forgot or who calls to make sure you made it in the house when the moose decided to bed down in your yard while you took a walk.  It comes from the distant friend who sends you a birthday present only you and she will understand because of the years of history you share and the other friend who drives you to your eye appointment and patiently waits for two hours to give you a ride home because your eyes are too dilated to see. Our daily world is enhanced with the love that is behind a million and one kind moments given to us by those who share our lives.
These thoughts run through my mind as I watch some people very dear to me deal with multiple tragedies that have tumbled into their lives in a very short span of time, from the way too early death of their mother to the recent loss of a home in a devastating fire that also took their beloved pet to a much more tragic and personal loss that occurred immediately after. I found myself wondering how they can continue to stand after so much has fallen about them.
But this family has the good fortune to live in a small Alaskan village where nothing happens to you that doesn’t also happen to your whole community. And your whole community closes ranks around you and provides you with the strong shoulders and hearts you need to make it through today and into tomorrow. Whether it’s emergency housing or clothes or kitchenware or simply some coffee cups for your morning cup of java, within hours of losing it all you find yourself surrounded by all you need.
I find myself wondering why these same villages that can love, support and carry you through any tragedy that strikes can’t harness that power of love and compassion to make life in their villages better on a daily basis. Where does this strength to face the worse of tragedies come from and where does it go to hide in-between those tragedies?
As the debate continues about the long-term viability of our small villages in an economy that seems to make living in those villages more difficult with each passing day, I find this sense of community one of the things that would be the hardest to translate into a larger setting. I know that here in Anchorage we have distinct communities like our South Pacific Islanders who come together to carry each other over the rough times. But there is a substantive difference between that and being in a village where the entire village is that community. Whether they are your friend, nodding acquaintance or someone who normally dislikes you, when you need support they will provide it, even if tomorrow they go back to not acknowledging you when they see you in the store.
Our villages face such tremendous challenges, ranging from non-existent economies to overwhelming alcoholism, domestic violence and sexual abuse, that it is hard sometimes for me to mentally juxtapose these two radically different pictures of communities that are, in fact, one and the same.
The power of community carries us through times when we feel as though we can’t possibly get up and put one foot in front of the other. If we could harness that energy to deal with the problems destroying these villages, if we could get people to understand that these community problems are daily tragedies that can be averted if they pull together, there would be nothing our villages couldn’t overcome.

Happy birthday to my wonderful godchild.  I hope your little family… including the dorky kid in the orange glasses… makes this day as special as you deserve it to be. Go nuts and have a TRIPLE shot latte… you earned it.

My respect for my dog Blue grows with each passing day. Having reached an age with her illnesses where too much movement is difficult for her - her back legs don’t work well, her eyes are clouded with cataracts - she calmly surveyed the situation and decided that the best solution was to camp out next to Abdul’s cage where, at any given moment, food might fall from above.
So Blue’s life now consists of lying right next to the cage, periodically lifting her head from her nap to take a sniff at the bottom of the cage next to her in case some goodie fell when she was asleep, stretching her tongue and neck to get said goodie if it did fall and then putting her head back on her paws and go back to snoring ten seconds later.
Now that’s a life!

“For the Birds” Live & Silent Auction will be held at the Sheraton Anchorage Hotel Ballroom on March 20,2010. Tickets are available at the Bird TLC office or on the Bird TLC website at http://www.birdtlc.net/

I was at the end of my walk, trudging up my driveway, dogs by my side, totally lost in a daydream in which I marry a very rich man who takes me away from it all… whatever all might be… when I realize my dogs have stopped dead in their tracks and I’m having to drag them. I know it’s not because they don’t want the walk to end. They are happy at the end of the walk because that means their treats are soon to come. So I stop daydreaming long enough to long around at what might be spooking them. I find myself staring into the face of a fairly large moose that has apparently decided to make its bed for the night on my front lawn right in front of my door.
My choices are two. Walk for a while longer and hope he really isn’t going to stay the night. Or give him as much room as possible in walking around him to get to the front door and then get in before he decides to be annoyed.
I chose number two and dragged the dogs along with me, even though they clearly thought number one was the better choice.
The moose never moved except to lazily raise his head for a moment. Apparently I neither annoy nor scare him. He’s comfortable. I’m now inside and comfortable. My dogs have had their walk and their treat and are comfortable. And all is right with the world here in Anchorage Alaska at my little circle.

Sometimes you don’t really appreciate what you have until you lose it. Phoenix, our little baby osprey who managed to survive a fire that destroyed his nest and brought joy and laughter to all who knew him, died unexpectedly and suddenly this week. We still don’t know why. I suspect that god decided she needed more beauty and joy in heaven and so took Phoenix.  We will all miss him more than words can say.
Fly free with the wind, Phoenix. And don’t forget those of us who cut up smelly fish for you during your short and brilliantly lovely time on earth.

There is nothing that plunger can bring up from that toilet that I might have (accidentally, of course) put down there that can touch me now. I just hope grandpa doesn’t need this back… ever.

Why is it that I feel so much better about life when neither the state nor federal legislature is in session?  This question kept swirling through my head as I watched my dog adrift in a fog of painkillers with an anesthesia hang over from some minor surgery. She had that look on her face that clearly said all was quite wonderful in her world. In fact, if a dog’s lips could actually form a grin, she was grinning from ear to ear.

But I wasn’t. At a time when I’m already feeling as though there is no one representing me on any level of government, the Supremes come along and declare that corporations are legally people and can spend as much money as they want to promote one candidate over another.
If you thought your input had minimal impact on your legislators before, this ruling basically removes even that vestigial shred. Unless you can afford to mount and fund an independent campaign for the candidate of your choice, your influence over the electoral process has just been downgraded to something lower than my dogs’ votes on what kind of treats I buy them. I have the money, so I have the power. It’s a very simple equation.
Will politicians continue to pretend they care what you think? Of course they will. But what you think will now be influenced more than ever by campaigns run by corporations with a vested interest in the outcome.  How you view a candidate will be formed by what that candidate says or does. But to a much greater extent than before, you will also be influenced by the kind of PR campaign a large, multinational corporation is able to create to get someone favorable to them into office.
In other words, Bill Allen was merely a few decades ahead of his time.
We need to put all candidates on an equal footing by public funding of campaigns with no other campaigning allowed. That way, the candidate who has sold his or her soul to a corporation does not get an unfair financial advantage over someone with actual morals and ethics.
I also thing campaigning should be limited to only one month prior to the election. That would keep me from running through my house with my ears bleeding from the incessant, loud and rude ads that seem to run for three to four years before any election. If you can’t tell me what you stand for in one month, then you don’t have a clear enough concept of what you stand for to merit winning office.
There are very important topics in our public life that are quite complicated and take more than thirty days to truly grasp. If we are the involved voters we should be, those are issues we’ve already explored. I don’t look to a candidate to explain the intricacies of energy legislation and its tax implications for industry. There are all kinds of policy wonks who do that for a living. I look to a candidate to tell me where they stand on that issue and why. If they can’t come up with a clear answer, then they should go back to the drawing board and run again when they do.
The debacle over health care reform that has kept us captivated and horrified over the past year should be lesson enough in what overwhelming influences large corporations already have over our elected representatives. The bastardized mangle of unintelligible phrases that was horse-traded into existence and called health care reform protected those health care industries that made major contributions to the people crafting the law.  The reason no one could put that mess into simple declarative sentences was because if they did, we would have been so outraged over what was given away at our expense to these large industries that we would have openly revolted. And now the Supremes have handed those industries even greater influence.
You and I, my friend, do not stand a chance in that arena.  Public funding of campaigns and limited campaigns periods are the only logical way to start reclaiming a government that is purportedly by, of and for the people.
And I don’t care what the Supremes say, corporations are not people.

I can’t believe my big brother would lie to me about how to use this.

So just back off with those damn training pants. This is your last warning, mom.