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.

As I frequently tell people who call me at home and are forced to be so old fashioned as to actually leave a message because I have neither voice mail nor caller ID… I like my world. On a good day, I couldn’t care less that I even have a phone. Often, I’m here and I don’t answer. And I think to myself, am I the only person left in the world who can let a phone ring and not really give a damn? The answer is no, my brother is the other person.

OK, so I was wrong and it stood for defusion, not detonation. I liked the bang anyway.  Don’t see why I should have to run away because he’s so darn mad… wait, he’s in the navy. The ocean is no refuge for me.

Let’s see… does that stand for Explosive Ordinance Defusion or Detonation? I think I’ll just hit this plunger and find out....

Perhaps I’m getting fixated on Susan Boyle because she seems to be the one uncynical, real triumph of last year that proves that sometimes dreams simply do come true. I watched her special and it was wonderful. But I still find myself going back to her original moment on Britain’s Got Talent and thinking that she never sounded quite so wonderful as she did then when it all came from the heart. No makeover, no plucked eyebrows, no orchestration. Just a voice that makes angels jealous singing with pure joy. Wow. May we all have at least one moment in our lives even close to that. It would make all else worthwhile.

I can remember running up and down the stairs to our apartment over the store when I was young. My mother’s voice still rings in my ear as she yells at me to slow down before I break my neck. I thought she was SOOOO old to not be able to race up and down those stairs at will, sometimes taking two steps at a time.
Now I go down the stairs in my house at night to let my dogs out before we go to bed and between me and the dogs, the trip takes a good five minutes as we carefully move our old bones so as to cause no pain, falls or broken necks.
Youth… how the hell did I ever let it get away so quickly?

Funny, isn’t it? I don’t see Rush Limbaugh putting on a benefit for Haiti or running numbers on the screen for tell people where to donate to help the people there. I don’t see Sarah Palin using her immense popularity with all those supposed Christians to rally them to help the devastation in that poor island. I see those horrible liberals in Hollywood trying to help. I see, in fact, a lot of godless liberals from the Daily Show to the Golden Globes trying to help. But I don’t see those big mouthed, two faced, selfish conservatives doing anything but complaining about how the disaster in Haiti was somehow made by the devil to polish Obama’s image in the black community.
Shame on them. Shame. Shame. Shame. They do not deserve to use the word Christian because Christ would already be in Haiti holding the bruised, battered and bloodied and offering them the clothes off his back and the food from his mouth.

So Senators Donny Olson and Ralph Samuels want a law requiring parental notification in cases of abortions requested by girls 16 years of age or younger. Specifically, they state, “We believe a law needs to be enacted that will protect the interest of parents, and also to ensure that teenage girls receive wise parental counsel and support at a time when it is most desperately needed.”

The problem, as I see it, is in the words “wise parental counsel”. While we might wish that all children in this state are being raised by parents who can offer that kind of counsel, the reality is that survey after survey produces statistics making it perfectly clear that is simply not true. If it were, we would not lead the nation in cases of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Call me cynical but I don’t think drunker dad suddenly stops beating up mom to sit down at the family table and offer wise counsel to the teenage daughter witnessing the beating who has a hidden problem of her own. And while I understand that this same young girl may go to a judge and request permission to have an abortion without telling her parents, the reality is that the judge is a scary authority figure that she will probably avoid at all costs.
Better to tell her friends about her delimma and let them tell her about a person they know who will take care of the problem cheaply if she doesn’t mind back alleys, dirty tables and reused instruments with no recovery room available.
So I have to assume at this point that if Senators Olson and Samuels are this supportive of a bill forcing a young woman to consult a parent who may or may not be up to offering her wise counsel, they are also going to be as supportive and forceful in pushing through any legislation offered by Governor Parnell to address the problems of domestic violence and sexual assault in this state. And they will offer that same lever of forceful support to any funding needed to get those programs started.
Oh yeah, and we’ll need a lot more social workers and counselors so that any troubled teenage girl whose parents are less than ideal has someone to talk to who can guide her in her decision and help her face a judge. And, of course, we’ll also expect them to support any extra funding the judiciary might need to provide fairly instant hearings in these cases since time is sometimes of the essence in making the decision.
There is another thing, however, that bothers me about this bill and that is the lack of any statistical documentation showing that this law is addressing a real problem in this state. Exactly how many teens have actually had an abortion without parental involvement? How many of them came from violent, dysfunctional families where wise parental counsel is most obvious by its absence?
It’s one thing for fairly intact middle class parents to say they want to be part of any decision like this that their daughter might make. I’m willing to bet that statistical analysis would show those daughters are already going to their parents with their problem, painful though that might be. I’m also willing to bet that a statistical analysis would show that most of those who did have an abortion without parental involvement did so because they came from family in which parental guidance was neither wise nor sober.
So really, this law would mostly be a law aimed at a very specific segment of our society – a segment already hurt by dysfunctional and probably violent families.  In other words, this law would most impact those most helpless in our society who have no one else to turn to.
So if we really plan to put this law into effect, then I want to see these legislators put their money where their mouths are and propose bills to fund the tremendous need this state has for services to protect these vulnerable young ladies in our society. If they can’t or won’t do that, then they should get out of these girls’ personal lives and let them make the best decisions they can based on the best counsel they can find.

Well, I finally got the tiara back in the box until the Oscars or Screen Actors Guild Awards or whatever dress up show comes next as Hollywood celebrates itself on the off chance we forget to.  And I have this to say.
Cher looks like a full size wind up Cher doll with a face capable of no natural movement. And really, when you are in your sixties and have had enough plastic surgery to look like something Dr. Frankenstein made in his lab, you don’t have to add a black dominatrix dress to the mix. It just makes you more pathetic.
Ditto on the surgery when it comes to Sophia Loren though at least her dress was a tad more appropriate.
And would it really be that much trouble to keep the presenters sober until after their presentation.
Highlight of the evening… Every word out of Ricky Gervais’ mouth but mostly the comment about Mel Gibson and Paul McCartney comment about adults who watch cartoons.