Elise Sereni Patkotak

I come from a long line of frugal people.  Actually, by the time the family genes from my parents mingled, some would say frugal is a mild term for what resulted.  So, despite what I recently paid for a pair of original Beatles-styled sunglasses from the sixties in almost mint condition for my sister’s 50th birthday present, I usually am on the side of caution in spending.  I pay off my credit card every month and spend a lot of time reassuring myself that I do not have more debt than I could pay off instantly if required.

So when

There’s a new picture with my column today.  After resisting for years the idea of seeing how much I’d actually aged, I felt like my life was starting to imitate “The Picture of Dorian Grey” in some perverse, reverse way. Ergo, the new picture.

One thing that you will notice missing in the picture is any teeth. My mouth is firmly clamped shut.  That’s because I don’t have the Chicklet teeth of movie stars.  I have the rather normal, somewhat yellow teeth that most of us end up with even after years of good dental care.

What we look like

Summer has arrived at my house with the first contingent of friends and relatives up to fish Alaska’s rivers and streams.  In this case, it was two young cousins and four of their friends – in all, six young men in their mid twenties who kept me laughing and shaking my head in wonder for four days.

When they took over an hour to cook steaks that were still raw in the middle despite catching fire, I found myself hoping they’d end up with good and patient women who will see the bright interior under the strange exterior. Otherwise, those

My cousin Therese recently adopted a pound puppy she named Stella after losing her first pound puppy Jerusalem at the ripe old age of 16. Well, we think Jerusalem was real.  No one could be sure.  Whatever had happened to him in his previous life had apparently left him very nervous about people – all people, all the time.

So most of us never saw much more of Jerusalem than two eyes staring at us from under whatever piece of furniture Therese was either standing by or sitting on at the time. 

This meant that Jerusalem needed little more than

It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this column even semi-regularly that I am a bit of a bird nut.  OK, perhaps I zoomed by “bit of” and went right to “totally crazed” about twenty years ago. Either way, the reality is that birds are a passion of mine.

That’s why I’m so excited about some events coming to Anchorage the week of May 16th.  It’s a chance for people who aren’t bird crazy to mingle with those of us who are and learn why we have the passion we do.  These events may never convert you

I grew up a reader.  It’s not that my parents pushed me into it.  I was raised way before the concept of reading to your child to make your child a reader came into vogue.  No, what worked in my family was the idea that books were part of the very special privileges enjoyed by adults and that the only way I’d be able to enjoy those privileges was to grow up and learn how to read.

This was perhaps even more special in my home because my parents were the first literate generation on either side of my family.

In most small towns in America, two professions stand out as receiving the most respect and admiration – preachers and teachers.  While there are obvious exceptions to this rule, for the most part people rely on these professions to maintain certain ethical and moral standards.

After all, you trust one of these professions with your immortal soul and the other with the development of your children’s minds.  What could be more important?

Teachers and preachers in Bush Alaska definitely fall under this mantle of respect.  In fact, in many Native villages they have historically been exalted to a pedestal they

I find the proposed new law on children’s issues currently being debated in the state legislature to be very interesting.  The law calls for more openness in these cases and allows either the state or the parents to request a jury trial in a termination of parental rights case.

While I still find myself concerned about the reaction of children to the sordid stories of their family life becoming public, I also find myself thinking that it could have some very interesting, if unexpected, consequences.

Those of us who work in this field are used to a certain level of

Terry Schiavo is dead and all of us who participated in making her death a public spectacle worthy of the Roman Empire at its most disgusting should be ashamed. And I do mean everybody.

For starts, the politicians from both sides of the aisle who abandoned all pretenses of high moral ground and fed into the howling mob on the hope of banking political capital for the future. Will any of us soon forget Senator Dr. Bill Frist contradicting overwhelming medical evidence to the contrary and making his own diagnosis based on a few minutes of video footage?

How easily

Usually kids assigned to me through my work as a Guardian Ad Litem stay on my caseload for two or three years at best.  Most are able to leave within that time to either be re-united with their families or to start life again with a new family.

But there is always a hardcore group of kids who end up being raised in the state system despite everyone’s best efforts.  Some of these kids come to me through Juvenile Probation (JPO) at 12 or 13. Some are as young as 7 or 8 when they enter the system through the