So I’m guessing that we can all agree that 2021 was no better than 2020 in most regards. We started off with an assault on our democracy and ended with a whole new covid variant. What could possibly be worse than that? Well, hold on to your hats, folks, because Biden announced he will run for president in 2024 in a breathless rematch between him and he whose name I shudder to mention. Yep, that’s right. For America’s next presidential election, we will be seeing a rematch of the two oldest, whitest men in America. What could be more frightening? Continue reading →
If this actually posts
then that is strictly due to the brilliance and patience of Sonya Senkowski.
I can only thank the goddess that is for the fact that no one – and I mean absolutely no one – expects me to be able to do what she does. Continue reading →
Holidays, family, friends
There is a line in the old TV show, Will and Grace, that I’ve always loved and thought should be heard by every Alaskan who has left their familiar world to search for their own truth here.
“There’s the family you are born into and the family you choose.”
A lot of us here in Alaska come from elsewhere. And if you live in Alaska, elsewhere is always far away. So we gather around us people who become our chosen family to fill in the gaps caused by the absence of our birth family. Sometimes we find out that our Continue reading →
Let them die
Reading about what mostly unvaccinated people are doing to our health care system is one thing. Needing that system and being frightened to use it is another. This is America. We shouldn’t be afraid to go to the hospital.
I recently had an incident where, under normal circumstances, I would have called 911. I didn’t for fear they would want to transport me to the hospital and that scared me more than the incident itself. I may have heart problems, but hospitals in Alaska right now are filled with Covid and I don’t want to be anywhere near that.
Getting better
Healthy people who exercise and watch their diet religiously still die from a heart attack. Someone with my exercise and diet program should have kicked off when I was about 30. But here I am and there is no logical explanation except perhaps that I’ve never taken horse deworming medicine for any health problem.
Having survived both a heart attack and the subsequent surgery, my greatest desire was to get back to my regular life as soon as possible – with the probable addition of some actual exercise and diet restrictions. But it turns out that getting back to the Continue reading →
To live and to die
I came to on my bedroom floor, scratching at it and wondering why it wasn’t my bed. I tried to move and was hit with an intense pain I’d never felt before. I apparently had a heart attack and broken four ribs in the fall. I then did what any sane person would do. I dragged myself to my phone and called Bird TLC to tell them I wouldn’t be in for my volunteer shift. Thankfully, they called 911.
I am now post heart attack, post four broken ribs, post open-heart surgery and wondering when the heck I got so Continue reading →
Ah, honey buckets
Honey buckets… just those words alone can send me into a paroxysm of odors; full buckets in the morning after a party, icy cold seats with the contents actually frozen yet somehow still smelly. And Pine sol – poor Pine sol – what did you ever do to deserve the reputation you hold in the minds and hearts of anyone who ever lived with a honey bucket. It’s not something you can ever clean with again.
All these memories came rushing back when I read that the Leona M. and Henry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust gave $20 million to Engineering Continue reading →
Women keep achieving
I am an unabashed child of the sixties. I marched. I chanted. I tried to levitate the Pentagon and shake all the bad out of it while on a particularly fun acid excursion. Women had dreams for their future that had nothing to do with the way things were done. How big were those dreams, you ask? Well, we actually fought for women to not only have ownership and control of their body but to be able to get a credit card without their father or husband’s approval. Women wanted their place in the world and would no longer have Continue reading →
Duct tape fixes
I recently caused a friend to almost spit food out her nose while laughing after I told her how I fixed my cabinet knobs. For context, I arrived here 50 years ago and was part of the Alaska that couldn’t always get what it needed to fix stuff. So, ingenuity was a prized quality to have when you needed to get your skidoo going again while you were on the tundra in 40 below weather with just duct tape and hope.
(By the way, as an Alaskan who likes to avoid unnecessary conflict, I will be spelling it as “duct” Continue reading →
