Elise Sereni Patkotak

My sister flew up to Alaska on US Air. Was supposed to get in at 12:30 AM. Finally got here sometime after 4 AM.

Then, as we were leaving for the airport the night she was departing, she got a notice her flight had been cancelled and she could not be rebooked for TWO days. No explanation. No sorry for the inconvenience. No concerns about her job that she had to get back to or her connecting reservations on another airline.

There is nothing gracious or civil left about flying in general and US Air seems bent on making all

At Bird TLC’s property above Potter’s Marsh where the old Rabbit Hutch used to be on Old Seward. Come one, come all. Today from 9 to 3.

No, not my summer guests. They were wonderful. It’s the birds I was worried about. And while they did their best to drown out our conversations on occasion, they were not as bad as I feared. Of course, I’m used to them so my company might have a different take on this. But they didn’t bite anyone. Didn’t scream for longer than ten minutes at a time. And they actually let us sit up late in the living room laughing and talking while they were in their sleep room and didn’t start screaming to come out and join the conversation.

I recently found a channel on TV called ID: Investigate Discovery. This channel is devoted to true life stories of murder, kidnapping, child abductions… all those wonderful things that make us afraid to go out our front door. And I am somewhat ashamed to admit that it can be positively addictive.

I also located the Bio channel that runs much the same material but calls it a biography. It was under those auspices that I one day tuned in to a story about a Philadelphia mob figure with connections to my hometown of Atlantic City.  I was more listening than

There was a scrape in the new paint on my bedroom door due to pushing one of the birdcages in there in order to achieve some peace and quiet while company was here. I came downstairs to my computer and happily clicked on my very organized list of what paints went where in my house when I repainted and then got the small sample jar of the color listed for my bedroom door and bounded up the stairs to repair the slight damage. As I slapped the paint on the scrape I couldn’t help but notice that it didn’t seem

I know this is almost blasphemous to say in Alaska, but thank god for summer visitors. Without them, I would never discover some parts of this amazing state that are right under my nose but I wouldn’t explore without the impetus of what to do with my sister when she visits. Took a canoe trip to a glacier the other day. Breathtaking. Even better, our guide was a young man who is best friends with one of my favorite kids, Ben. So it took a leap of faith to accept that I was putting my life in the hands of

The big “compromise” on the debt ceiling and the national debt, as announced by a “bipartisan” group of six seems to involve taking away the mortgage interest deduction, the tax break on your IRA and the tax break on health care costs. Hmmm… ok, let’s see how they plan to make this all equitable so that the richest 2% for whom those items aren’t a splashed pebble in their money pool will give up something too. Oh wait. They won’t. In fact, under the guise of making up to the middle class for removing tax breaks, this plan will lower

Went to the Tap Root Cafe to see Whitekeys’ Whale Fat Follies. Wow. How I’ve missed him. And I didn’t realize it until that music started and I was suddenly happy again. Way to go, Whitekeys! You haven’t lost it. In fact, you’ve just gotten better with age.

I had five people stay at my house recently. It’s a big house. Yet it felt very full. And I wondered how our parents and grandparents lived in such large numbers in such small spaces as the houses and apartments of the past used to be. Then I remembered reading Little Women and how Jo would go up to the garret and eat apples and read. Once I realized that garrett was an impressive word for attic, I thought how isolating that must have been. And now I understand why she did that. It was the only place to get

The news story said the the new bishop of Philadelphia was picked because he was very conservative and extremely outspoken and it was a signal that the Vatican planned to play a big role in the moral issues of the day. Hmmm… so how come I’ve heard nothing from the pulpits about politicians raping the poorest of the poor through cuts to programs that barely give them a minimal quality of life while promoting even more money for the richest two percent in this country. How is that not immoral? How can they think that Jesus would not have had