The young golden eagle that Bird TLC has held at the flight center since last fall is now ready to be released.

Please join us at Palmer Hay Flats Cottonwood Creek Trailhead this Saturday, April 20th at 12:30 pm to watch him return to his home in the sky.

In case of poor weather, we will reschedule for Sunday.

One of the reasons given for the switch in popular opinion from negative to positive on the legalization of pot comes from the fact that more and more senior citizens are using it. Now that the kids are grown and (mostly) out of the house, many are reverting to an amusement from our youth that we felt compelled to abandon when the kids were at home.

This change finally answers a question that has longed troubled me. If all the people in my generation who condemned pot and swore they never used it were telling the truth, then who were all those people sitting in smoke filled rooms with me?
Americans can be very hypocritical on issues such as condemning fast foods while voluntarily consuming vast amounts. But the ultimate in hypocrisy has to be our War on Drugs that has cost an untold number of lives and billions of wasted dollars. Quite frankly, I’ve never understood why the Mexican government didn’t just legalize drugs decades ago, tax the product to make up for lost American aid, and enjoy the peace that came when drug lords no longer ruled their land.
I sometimes wonder how long the war on drugs would have lasted had the carnage visited on Mexico happened in America? I’m betting we would have long since decided that a war with so many casualties and so few positive results was hardly worth the billions thrown at it.
I know a lot of people who have used pot their entire adult life while living fully productive and good lives. I know people who have a drink every night but are not considered alcoholics and who, in fact, also live full and productive lives. I’ve know people who have used cocaine and walked away from it totally voluntarily, simply because they no longer wanted to use it.
Conversely, I’ve known people with such pot addictions that they can’t get up in the morning without a puff to get them going. I’ve know people who put a shot of alcohol into their morning coffee and keep it going all day so they never have to be totally sober. And I’ve known people for whom cocaine was the first step on the road to hell.
The common thread here is addiction. And addiction, as sad and destructive as it is, should not be a crime. It is a medical problem. Granted it is a very intractable medical problem that frequently takes multiple attempts to finally put in abeyance, but failing at treatment should not be a crime.
What should be, and is, a crime is driving under the influence of anything that impairs your ability to safely handle a large machine going at a fast rate on a public street. What should be, and is, a crime is giving any intoxicant to a minor. What should be, and is, a crime is trying to use any level of intoxication as an excuse for behavior that should be criminal under all circumstances.
What shouldn’t be a crime, and isn’t, is having a drink with dinner. Or, for that matter, having a drink with breakfast or getting flat out drunk if that’s what you want to do. That behavior is no one’s business but your own unless you negatively affect those around you because of it. If you want to sit in your living room and smoke pot until your lungs burst, you should not have to worry about morality police breaking down your door and making you a criminal. If you want to drink until your liver hoists a white flag of surrender that is no one’s business but yours unless you inflict your behavior on society.
If you’re diabetic and eat sugar every night, you will die sooner rather than later. While friends and family might have the right to tell you that you should stop, whether you do or not is a personal choice. And when you make yourself so sick that you need to go to the hospital to have your legs amputated, a truly compassionate society provides the care you need, not a jail cell and a morality lecture.
A drug, be it alcohol (legal), tobacco (legal), sugar (legal) or pot (illegal) is just a thing. Criminalizing its use is not good public policy.

You are now 68 years old and I still don’t know where your nickname Sippy came from.... our childhood street perhaps? Mississippi Avenue? Who knows. I called you Fou Fou. Your friends called you Abendale… and who the hell knows what that ever meant… and mom and dad called you when they needed orders delivered for the store by whatever name got your attention at the moment. I don’t know about you, but my favorite was when mom would stutter our the beginning of all our names as she vainly searched for the right one and then finally, simply, said, “You… you with the hair on your head. I’m talking to you!”
Happy birthday, big bro. May you always remain older than me so that I never have to be the oldest in the family.

Isn’t it wrong that at my advanced age I still look better than Lindsay Lohan?

I even gave myself permission to skip a Monday entry. Wow. The Salesians who taught me in childhood are cringing in horror in heaven at my laziness.

BuddhaBubba casts those pathetic eyes on the nearest soft touch and VOILA! Suddenly she has a pink fleece coat with bell to match on the off chance she ever actually touches feet to ground during a walk. It’s my understanding that rarely happens as she does pathetic so well that she gets carried everywhere. But now she will definitely look sharp and styling as she is transported in someone’s arms with that look of imperial disdain that says, “This is the life I was meant to live. All you other dogs can keep on sniffing each other’s butts if you want, but my nose was clearly meant for something better.”
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I was brushing my teeth one morning when I turned around to see what the dogs were doing. This was what I saw through my bathroom door.  One has to wonder what is holding him up?  Negative gravity? Abs of steel?  Either way, he looks kinda suicidal, don’t you think? Maybe he was just trying to hide from Carm…
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Vegas won again. How does it keep doing that?
Meanwhile, retirement will again be pushed back while I search for more pennies in the couch cushions.

In the course of the past two weeks a woman was beaten to death in front of her two young children and a homeless teenager was allegedly repeatedly raped in Eagle River. A study was released in that same period showing (surprise! surprise!) that Alaska women still earn learn than men for doing the same job but, I guess to balance the scales, are beaten and raped more than the national average. And if you use statistics only for Alaska Native women, you simply want to bury your head in your arms and sob because they are just that awful.

In response to all this, Senator Lesil McGuire has suggested that the Alaska Women’s Commission be refunded and reconstituted to come up with suggestions for ways to deal with the horrific problems women face daily in this state. Meanwhile, during this same two-week period, Governor Parnell again sponsored marches to bring attention to this problem while also promoting legislation that would impose stiffer penalties for perpetrators of domestic violence.
While I applaud both the governor and senator for wrestling with a problem that seems almost intractable in our state, I find it more interesting that Congressman Don Young can suggest that perhaps one of the solutions is to drink alone if you know that you like to be violent when drunk and that remark generated nothing more than a tiny blip on the media screen. But when Don later called Hispanic workers a name so repulsive I will not repeat it here, that remark went viral and caused so many problems for him that he actually had to apologize. Those of us who have had the privilege of knowing Dandy Don for what seems like forever, know that apologizing is not exactly his strong suit, not something that he does easily or willingly.
It is clear that in this state at least, women are still struggling against a second-class citizenship status and far too many Native women are treated as even less than second-class. They are treated as nothing more than a punching bag to keep around because they are an easy target.
How much therapy do you think it will take for that 9 year old girl to grow up with a strong sense of self-worth and dignity after watching her dad stomp her mom to death and then tell her to leave her alone and let her die? Does anyone really think there is any therapy that will actually work? Or will this little girl grow up knowing her place in life is to be the rag on the floor to be walked over and kicked? And why – for the love of god, why – is there not an outrage growing across the state as each of these stories hits the headlines?
Maybe part of the problem is that this has become so commonplace it is almost background noise in our lives, something always there but something we’re only ever partially aware of. Maybe it’s because this problem has such deep roots and is, in so many ways, a generational problem that it seems almost unfixable. Most of tomorrow’s abusers are in a home today watching a daily real life “how to” class on abuse. Or worse, they are young men being abused who figure when they get big enough, they’ll get their revenge.
Equally, most of tomorrow’s victims are growing up in a home watching the men in their family treat the women like they are less than dirt. Is it any wonder those girls will grow up thinking they deserves nothing more than regular weekend beatings?
A woman’s commission will provide the state with nothing that the state and everyone involved in this epidemic doesn’t already know. We need more police protection in villages. We need more lawyers, judges and courts. We need more social workers intervening in families before the children have learned the horrible lessons troubled families teach them. All these suggestions will be in the forefront of any recommendations because they will work. Unfortunately, we have never seen the legislative follow through that funds the suggestions so that an impact can actually be made.
Wouldn’t it be something if our predominantly male legislature actually gave as much time and attention to this epidemic of horror as they do to passing probably unconstitutional legislation on gun control laws? Imagine.

I am convinced I will eventually win my retirement at the penny slots and I plan to keep dumping pennies into them until they respond properly.

I love watching the redpolls gather on my porch to eat. They come in flocks and seem very sociable, even if there are some non-bird lovers who think the sounds emanating from the trees around my porch make it feel like a Hitchcock movie. But my all time favorite thing is the robin who seems to have insinuated himself into the redpoll flock. He tries to be very nonchalant. Tries to fit in. Tries to just be another redpoll, maybe a little taller than most but definitely still a redpoll. He is there every morning and every night with a flock. Just one robin. As I stare at him out the window, you can almost hear him saying, “Nothing to see here. Nothing unusual happening. Just move on now.”

I’m in Vegas. Let it snow in Anchorage as much as it wants. It sure as hell isn’t snowing in Vegas! Now on to the penny slots to win my retirement cushion.

I was rescued by Bird TLC. They saved my eyes (thanks Dr. Karen!) and someday I’ll fly free again. If you buy tickets to Bird TLC’s annual fundraiser on Saturday, April 27 at the Egan Center, you can help keep me in mice until I can be released. And you can help recognize and celebrate Bird TLC’s 25 years of love, compassion and healing of all wild birds in Alaska as well as Dr. Scott’s bottomless devotion to helping my winged friends keep flying.
Go to Birdtlc.net for more info.
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Michael Jackson bought a chimp. Now Justin Bieber has a Capuchin monkey. Putting aside for the moment the question of the care that monkey is or isn’t getting, isn’t this the first sign of the slow descent into drugs and insanity?

My friend Kate is a real cook/baker and actually plans menus each week. I usually stand staring at the inside of my refrigerator at 6 PM wondering if dinner grew there while I wasn’t looking or was I going to have to actually think of something to make with half an onion and limp carrots.