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Dog fighting

Could there be much that is more reprehensible than torturing dogs so that they become mean and want to fight? What horrible impulse drives that behavior in humans?  It scares the hell out of me.

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Well, we’ve been successful in at least one way

Reading about all the US cash missing in Iraq that seems to have mysteriously found its way into politicians’ pockets, it occurs to me that we have quite successfully exported political corruption there. If only democracy could actually flouish as well. But I don’t suppose Halliburton is as anxious to teach that.

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Columns 2007

On being a fat child

I grew up on the Jersey shore. Spending summers on the beach down the block from dad’s store was the only way to keep cool in a world without air conditioning.  When I was in 8th grade, I was down the beach with friends. A boy I’d been in school with since kindergarten made an unflattering comparison of me in a bathing suit to a large boat. I went home, took my bathing suit off and essentially never put one on again. I announced that I was allergic to the sun and sand and just didn’t want to go there

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It’s like Lovey has returned

My friend Rob was here today. He met Blue and Blondie for the first time. He took one look at Blue and exclaimed, “Lovey”. And in an instant I realized how right he was. Blue looks a lot like Lovey, my faithful companion for seventeen years in Barrow. In fact, Rob was the one who named her when she was just a puppy.  I wonder now if that’s what attracted me to her when I saw her picture on the Friends of Pets website. Did I instinctively react to the resemblance? And then, of course, I got her home and

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Harry, Harry, Harry

It rained in Anchorage all day Sunday which meant I could curl up in my chair and read Harry Potter without feeling any guilt at all…all right, a little guilt because my dogs looked stricken when they realized that they weren’t going to get a walk. But it was raining hard enough that I didn’t care. And so I finished it before anyone managed to blow the ending for me.  I happy about the ending in some ways and disappointed in others. I won’t say much more because I don’t want to blow it for anyone who hasn’t finished.  But

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I’m alone and loving it

My summer roommate is gone for the week and my company left a few days ago. The first night I was alone I spent wandering around in my underwear talking outloud and thrilling at the fact that there was no one here to hear me or think me odd.  OK, maybe the dogs did look at me strangely but once I pretended I was actually talking to the birds, they went back to their evening naps.  Wouldn’t want to keep them awake too long in the evening or they won’t have the strength to sleep all night.

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Lest there be any doubt….

Lest there be any doubt, I am holed up in my house with Harry and will communicate with no one till I have finished the book for fear the ending will be accidentally revealed to me.  Oh Harry, we hardly knew ye!

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Dogs are winning

Every once in a while I give in to the temptation to see if I can outsmart my dogs. This time I tried to fix the side of a bird cage to the back seat of my car so they would be confined to the very back and not get dog hair all over the car…to say nothing of the safety factor when Blue feels it necessary to lean into me every time I start breaking and, in doing so, pins my right arm to my side.  Needless to say, the score is still Dogs: 1million and one. Human: nothing.

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Windshield wipers

Am I the only one who thinks that the person who thought up the intermittant speed for windshields wipers is a genius?  Or is that a product of my soggy brain due to one too many days of rain this month?

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Columns 2007

BushCheney to Special Olympics…not on my watch!

I realize that Alaska has a credibility gap when it comes to science and technology in politics.  I mean, seriously, will Comedy Central never tire of showing that clip of Uncle Ted’s tube explanation of the Internet. Does no one in the lower 48 get that to an Alaskan, everything good comes from a tube, which is just another word for pipe?  Can you say oil pipeline? Can you say gas pipeline?  It was a natural metaphor for an Alaskan to use.

Don Young is a bit harder to explain what with his “there is no scientific proof of global

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