Elise Sereni Patkotak

If Joe MIller is so against government handouts, how comes he’s had more in his lifetime than I’ve had in mine and I’m twice as old as he is?

I stare at the keyboard and wonder what else can possibly be said about the epidemic of domestic violence in our state. If this latest survey from the UAA Justice Center follows the pattern others have, it will cause a stir for a week or so and then, like a dog spotting a squirrel, our attention will be diverted by something shiny flitting by.

When I first arrived in Alaska and saw domestic violence up close and personal, I was told there were lots of reasons for it. It was the darkness, the cold, the lack of activities, the poor

Lloyd Ahvakana came from that courtly generation of Native Alaskan men that I grew to know and appreciate during my 3 decades in Barrow. He was one of the founders of the borough and one of the early fighters for the right of the Inupiat people to govern themselves and benefit from the wealth of their land.

But here’s what I remember about him. One day, early on in the history of the borough when we still did things the way we wanted without too much attention to protocol, an employee (no, it wasn’t me) showed up in Lloyd’s office.

How many people in the peanut gallery are actually aware that there is a race for Alaska’s US House of Representatives happening this fall? OK, how many people actually care? Wow. If I total both responses I still only have to use one hand.

Seems like everyone around me gets hysterical about the fact that I don’t have a cell phone but me. I mean, we are all old enough to remember what life was like before cell phones, right? And you have to admit it was a much more civil, quiet time when you could take a walk and have some peaceful reflection time without being interrupted by someone who had some inane thought they needed to immediately share. Remember when you used to go out to lunch with friends and actually got to talk to them instead of staring at the ceiling

I arrived in Barrow, a sophisticated New York nurse with yellow nail polish, a wig and a parrot. And my first thought was, “Holy shit! What the hell have I done to myself!” Then I found out there were no clothing stores anywhere on the North Slope and I heaved a sigh of relief and knew I was home.

I’m sitting in my office being a good little girl and working down my list of chores. It’s almost 4 PM. For the last half hour I’ve heard this knocking on the side of my house. Since the wind was blowing, I figured some branches were hitting the house. But the knocking seemed too regular and insistent and I wondered if someone was working on my house and I didn’t know about it.

I went to the door where I found three very irate Stellar Jays who had been going from upstairs to downstairs tapping on windows and doors to

…. I put the flannel sheets on my bed. Let the cold commence.

That whooshing sound you hear is Joe Miller furiously backpedaling from his extreme right positions in order to get somewhere near the middle before the election.

While I realize Mr. Miller would prefer we believe that the media has merely screwed up his message for their own nefarious purposes, the bottom line is that his primary campaign left a wealth of written and spoken material that would indicate otherwise. For those of us who thought the most fun of the senate campaign would be watching Mr. McAdams attempt to suck enough oxygen up to at least get a weekly mention

In a race in which Lisa Murkowski and Joe Miller are going toe to toe for the Republican vote in the US Senate race you have to know that Democrat Scott McAdams could run naked through downtown Anchorage and still not get front page coverage in the paper or on TV unless Lisa and Joe spent the day sleeping in.