Elise Sereni Patkotak

I think people from all political stripes agree that America needs to get its financial house in order. The breakdown in finding a solution stems from those who think that raising taxes on the richest two percent of this country is immoral but that balancing the budget on the back of grandma and her Medicare is not. They are opposed by those who feel raising taxes on the upper two percent is very moral while balancing the budget on grandma’s back isn’t.

The conservative position seems to be they will not raise taxes on the top two percent because they

Why is it I never notice how messy my house is or how many stains are on the rug or how much bird seed is wedged in strange places until I have company coming and then it’s way too late to really do anything about it except blame the birds?

Sarah Palin’s movie opened to almost completely empty theaters this past weekend. If that doesn’t make you feel as though there is hope for taste and common sense in America, then nothing ever will.

On the other hand, how to explain Michelle Bachman except to say that to be a female Republican candidate with party support, you have to be both pretty and empty headed so you don’t threaten the manhood of male Republicans.

It is the day of calm before the storm. Tomorrow the summer company descends. For the next month my birds will think they died and went to hell because I will not be here all day waiting on them hand and foot. It shakes up their world view in which they occupy the center and I travel the periphery anticipating their every want and need.

It’s actually kind of fun to watch in its own perverse way.

I was in the left hand turn lane. A truck on the road in front of me got their green arrow first and started turning into the lane next to me that was for traffic going in the opposite direction. But this young lady was apparently busy with other things as she turned and couldn’t be bothered to keep her eyes on the road. In fact, she leaned down below her dashboard as she turned so you couldn’t even tell anyone was driving. So she turned straight into me. All I could see was this big truck coming at me

Living in Alaska means my Newsweek subscription just arrived yesterday after most of the rest of the nation had time to ogle over its cover of the lovely Sarah, breasts thrust forward, head thrown back… my god, Marilyn Monroe would have been proud to pose that way. And honestly, the more I watch the dysfunction that is our US Congress and President working “together” to solve our national problems, the more I think that maybe having a pretty, if empty headed, piece of froth in the White House wouldn’t be all that bad. She could keep us amused while the

As I was scrolling through news stories on the Internet, I saw this headline. “What diabetic dog owners need to worry about”. Thinking they meant that the dogs were diabetic, I clicked on the story to see what might be new in treating diabetics dogs since I just lost my diabetic dog Blue over Christmas. Imagine my surprise when it turned out the story was about diabetic people who owned dogs who chewed their toes off while they slept at night and they didn’t feel anything because their feet are numb. It said diabetics who sleep with their dogs should

During the summer we get a lot of orphaned baby birds at Bird TLC. Some have fallen out of nests, some had an unlucky encounter with a cat or window, some are the result of a motorist going too fast and killing their mom as she tries to cross the road.

We do our best for these little ones. Songbirds are fostered out to people who have taken a course in the care of baby birds. This program is the best sex education any parent could give to their teenager. Baby bird parents take a clutch home and care for

Friends who will soon be visiting Alaska expressed concern about driving to Talkeetna without any address to put into their GPS to guide them. I explained there is one highway heading north out of Anchorage and the only time they would have any decision at all to make would be at the Wasilla-Palmer intersection, where the could chose to go north towards Talkeetna or east towards Glenallen. I found myself saying that since Sarah Palin gets it right every time she drives from Anchorage to Wasilla, I was sure they could navigate that intersection successfully also. And I realized that

This is starting to become one of my favorite Anchorage summers to date. No unreasonably high temps… meaning nothing much over seventy and in the sixties most of the time… cloud cover to keep us cool but not a lot of rain… just enough to feed the lawn and not have to take the sprinklers out. Yep, doesn’t get much better.