Elise Sereni Patkotak

Considering the amounts of money raised to run for president nowadays, I say we eliminate the pretense that this has anything to do with a true democracy or one person – one vote and just call it what it is – the buying and selling of the American presidency. Then, instead of voting every four years, we can change the rules to read that no one…not a corporation, not a trust fund, not a coffee shop…gets to send a candidate more than one dollar. And you can only send it once so you have to choose a candidate. You can’t

Is there really anyone in the world left who believes the spam that comes from Nigeria or where ever offering a cut of millions if you just help them out? I mean really, is there anyone left computer savvy enough to be on e-mail but dumb enough to respond to that crap?  The horrifying answer I must come up with is yes, or else why would that junk still fill my spam folder.  Which means there is at least one other person in this world dumber than George Bush. How depressing.

Blue stares gloomily out at the rain, refusing to set foot in the backyard and risk getting wet no matter how much she has to go. But she also sits and stares at the front door, mentally willing me to stop working and take her for a walk as though somehow the weather in the front of the house will be better than the weather in the back of the house. She breaks down my resistance, I put away the document I’m working on, put on a jacket with hood, hook her and Blondie up and head out the door.

OK, Alaskans. Are you reaching the same point I am with the mining ads? My summer TV watching is already limited to sitcom repeats in the morning as I feed the animals and the Daily Show, Colbert Report and Letterman. And even with that restrictive schedule, I find my blood pressure rising the minute those damn ads start up. At this point I don’t care if all the fish all over Alaska die or we poison everyone with what the mines leave behind or if mines are the greatest things to hit the environment since sunshine. I just want the

Who would have thought that a passing comment on the weather would have generated so much interest.  But everyone really just needs to take a deep breath and accept, as St. Francis of Assisi put it so well, what they cannot change.  I view this summer as the Dick Cheney of weather. It’s ugly. It’s mean. It’s gloomy. And it is deadly to living things. But it too shall end…just in time for the snow!

One of my faithful readers told me that she tells tourists who complain about our weather that no one comes to Alaska for the weather.  When I first arrived in Barrow, it was the beginning of October and there was already snow on the ground. I remember thinking how much fun it was going to be because I loved snow. Six weeks later, everything was frozen, it was totally dark and I could write a novel on the frost that had built up on the inside of my kitchen window. The moral of this story is that even if you

It’s gloomy out. It’s been gloomy out. It will continue to be gloomy out. This is Anchorage. This is our summer. So get over the griping and get on with your life.  My plants did and they are the happier for it.

Am I the only person who gets muscle spasms just watching gymnasts?  I need to take extra potassium just to get through the Olympic trials. God help me when the games are actually on.