Elise Sereni Patkotak

I admit it. I am totally addicted to the best and worst dressed lists that are posted after every event in which pretty people are dressed by a designer who wants their product seen on someone pretty and impossibly skinny.

Nowadays, people who weigh more than 80 pounds are allowed to be dressed in nice attired on the red carpet. In Hollywood that’s considered progress – fat people (defined as anyone over a size 5) are also allowed to consider themselves attractive.

But I don’t voraciously devour these lists because of any political content. No, I do it because I Continue reading →

Want to get on Netflix – you need a cell phone so they can send you a text to get the process started. Download Samantha Bee’s latest app? Need a text to activate it. Want to make an appointment with a dog groomer – text because if you call it will take them two or three days to answer.

I don’t have a cell phone. I don’t want a cell phone. I’m very content with people only being able to kind of contact me by phone at home. And I say “kind of” because I screen all my calls on Continue reading →

If I hear one more person trying to compare Trump’s possible impeachment with Bill Clinton’s, I’m going to scream. They are not the same. They are not even in the same category. They are barely in the same universe.

Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about an affair. His affair hurt no one but himself and his marriage. Nothing else. Not national security, not our international reputation, and not our country’s honor.

Orange Peel, on the other hand, did all those things with a bang. His holdup of money gave the Russians free rein in Crimea while the Continue reading →

I’ve been involved in social services and health care my entire career in Alaska. So you’ll excuse me if I tell you how tired I am of hearing about all the programs that are going to be funded to prevent sexual and physical abuses in our villages. While some may have worked a little, most don’t work at all. Women still flee if possible to Anchorage or Fairbanks to get away from it only to find that it can be hard in those cities to stay safe too.

You know how to stop that kind of violence in the villages? Continue reading →

This is the routine in my home. I get up in the morning, make coffee, read the paper, feed birds, give dogs each half a treat in the kitchen while making toast. Sometime late morning or early afternoon I come down to my office. The dogs each get half a treat in the office from a different container. And that is pretty much it for treats as Rizley is getting a bit of a potbelly.

Today, the morning routine was followed up to the point where I went to my office to work and the dogs got a treat before Continue reading →

Promised myself I would blog everyday but that was before I was asked to make something for Thanksgiving that I’ve never done before.

It’s hard. Continue reading →

People seem to be startled by the fact that Republicans can sit and listen to the testimony about Orange Peel’s extortion of a foreign power for his own political gain and still claim he’s not guilty. Well folks, here’s the reality. The Republicans don’t give a damn – and that includes the Republicans that represent this great state.

Between the incompetence of Mike Dunleavy and apparently anyone he hires to the disgusting silence emanating from our congressional delegation, it is clear that Trump could kill that person on Fifth Avenue in NYC and the Rs would still defend him.

It Continue reading →

I am retired. I retired from working for the North Slope Borough starting in 1975, which means I am part of the Tier 1 PERS retirement system. And that means that when a doctor tells me I need a medication, I bring the prescription to the pharmacy without hesitation. I don’t have to hesitate because I have a retiree health plan that provides drug coverage. And that provides a peace of mind that simply cannot be quantified in any meaningful way.

I remember going to the pharmacy with my mother to get her blood pressure pills. She had Medicare by Continue reading →

Nov. 22, 1963 I was in the fall of my senior year in high school. I went to a small Catholic high school in an old building that was shared with a grade school. We had our school play in the same gym/auditorium/whatever room as the grade school. The day my class graduated, the buildings were condemned and the next year the school was in a new facility with it’s own gym and cafeteria and football practice field – something you don’t tend to have when your highs school is in the middle of the city.

We were in final Continue reading →