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Heading home

I’m heading home and hoping my dogs will be glad to see me. The birds will be. They like me because I’m the only one they can’t intimidate. Like with most bullies, they only respect those they can’t bully. Plus, I wear a lot of protection when their eyes are flashing red as I am well aware of that danger signal.

But my dogs are another story. They get to spend my absence with a lady who treats them as the royalty they know they are. They get attention and walks and treats and more attention and more walks… well,

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Fat and flying

I have spent most of my life overweight so I am particularly sensitive to slurs against fat people. I spent my childhood listening to the taunts of mean children who would take my name Elise and contort it to Elsie and then call me Elsie the Borden’s cow.  So I know how it hurts to be fat.

But there comes a point where you have to look at yourself realistically and accept that being fat means there are somethings you can’t or shouldn’t do. Riding a pony if you weigh 300 pounds is just cruel, for instance. Or buying one

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Finally the secret is out

I’ve been squirreled away at my sister’s home for a week so that I could be the surprise at the surprise sixtieth birthday party for my cousin held on Halloween.  I went dressed as Sarah Palin with a full face mask, chest waders, a toy rifle and a toy stuffed moose with a sign around my neck that said, “Vote for me or the moose bites it.” Despite the fact that my surprise appearance somehow slipped out at least in suspicious whispers to some, most were unaware I was here until I unmasked at the party. It was actually a

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Speaking of Sarah

Pardon me if I want to go screaming into the night at the idea that she got over one million dollars for a book she for dictated and some poor schlub wrote for her – that’s more than I’ll make in a lifetime of actually writing my own stuff which is way better than hers… except, of course, I can’t quite wink like she does.

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How many?

Will Sarah win the contest tonight for the most imitated person on Halloween? Her masks sure seem to have been selling out like crazy.  And god are some of them butt ugly! Even Sarah deserves a better mask than that.

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Johnny Carson

Letterman is good in his own way.  Leno is boring.  But Carson… oh lord, watch some of the retrospectives of his best work and you see why he was king – and always will be.

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Columns 2009

Electric cars will work in Alaska

Just about the same time that Sarah Palin was opining in the Oct. 16 National Review that, “Electric cars might work in Los Angeles, but they don’t work in Alaska, where you can drive hundreds of miles without seeing many people, let alone many electrical sockets,” I was drafting some material for Ilisagvik College in Barrow. Interestingly, part of the background material I received included the fact that an instructor and students at the college celebrated the successful conversion of a car to electric power by driving the car from Ilisagvik to downtown Barrow.

According to the information I received,

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Why I’m grateful for my health insurance

Because I can see my doctor as regularly as recommended to keep my health problems under good control. And because when he asks if I’m having any difficulty paying for the prescription meds, I can smile and say it’s not a problem because I have a wonderful plan.

My dream is that someday all Americans will be able to answer the same way because we will have seen the value, compassion and ethics that make health care coverage for everyone a no-brainer.

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Plane travel

Those of us of a certain age can remember when plane travel was considered glamorous. Only the rich could do it. You were served like royalty, even in coach. Your bags went along for free. No one strip searched you behind a screen that wouldn’t hide a birth mark from the public gawking on the other side as they pray they are not the next to be pulled out.

Sigh…. those terrorists have a heckuva lot to answer for.

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