Elise Sereni Patkotak

Here in my home, my two dogs receive the best I can offer to give them a long and healthy life. For Blue, that means an expensive mix of wet and dry diabetic dog food. For Blondie it means organic, holistic, senior food that has antioxidants, chondroitin, glucoasmine, veggies and other things to preserve her health and teeth. Their “snacks” are organic, low calorie and meant for senior dogs. They get their medicine on time every day and visit the vet so often I’m pretty sure I’m single-handedly putting his kids through Harvard. So what does all this get me?

In last Sunday’s paper, there was a blurb about a man who pled guilty to beating his wife and was sentenced to six months in jail. According to the article, the wife stabbed the husband in the leg with a steak knife when he went for her and he responded by choking her until she passed out and kicking her repeatedly. At court the day of the plea, the husband’s attorney said the incident was “a loud wake up call” for the couple to repair their relationship.

And all I could think was, “Really? You didn’t see any signs that

Yay! We win. America is number one!

No, this is not about finally passing some modicum of health care reform. And it’s not about putting the first man on the moon or winning the cold war or developing a cheese product that comes out of an aerosol can. Well, actually it is a little about a combination of winning the cold war and aerosol cheese.

A recent report out of China states that one out of every ten Chinese now has type 2 diabetes.  Yep, China has joined the big boys – pun fully intended – and caught up with

The Texas school board bans Thomas Jefferson, the man who wrote our constitution, from their textbooks because he is apparently too liberal for them. And they are proud of this. They are proud of their ignorance.

Now I understand George Bush. He’s the perfect Texan…. proud of his ignorance.

For all you Texans out there who this angers, change your school board and put Thomas Jefferson back in your American history books and then I’ll apologize.

I bought strawberry bulbs? seeds? plants? I don’t know. They’re in a plastic bag but the picture shows strawberries. I bought them to plant because it was looking so much like spring that I couldn’t resist. The next day, it snowed.

Thanks a lot, Mother Nature.

The bad news is that with aging comes a definite loss in the ability to remember things. The good news is that you equally forget happy and unhappy moments.

Is it just me or do you see a pattern too? When Bush started his misbegotten war of choice, people against the war held peaceful protests, standing on street corners holding signs and marching… with approved permits, of course. Here in Alaska, that was met by people who supported the war pouring water over the protesters in the middle of winter, a violent act.

So the liberals are peaceful, the conservatives are violent.

Then we have the anti abortion movement. They claim to be pro life and prove it by shooting people and blowing up clinics with people in them.

Whew! One week into health care reform and the United States still stands. We must be stronger than we thought we were. But why, oh why, has Rush not left yet?

Anita Bryant circa orange juice commercials or senior prom circa 1972? And yet appropriate as her politics seem to want to take us back to the halcyon days of the 1950s when all Americans were happy white folk living in clean little communities with nothing more to worry about than the atom bomb.

I was raised an Italian Catholic in the 1950s and 60s.  I spent sixteen years in Catholic school being taught by nuns and the occasional priest or layperson. And while I know that it is considered cool to snicker at that now, I have to say that those were some of the best years of my life.

Sure, I got some strange ideas along the way. For instance, it turns out the pope isn’t the king of the world and the president isn’t the guy who helps him run America. It’s not that I was ever actually taught that as