Scribblings

OK Anchorage, here’s the thing

I have family actually coming to visit in February. Some of them are already pretty convinced that I lost my mind years ago and that’s why I still live here. If they arrive and find that Philly has more snow than Anchorage… if they arrive and find our sidewalks and parking lots and driveways are useful as ice skating rinks… if they arrive and see all the ugly stuff we usually bury under successive layers of winter snow… oh crap, oh crap. I’ll never get another relative to Alaska.

Wait… is that really a bad thing?

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Columns 2014

Reality app diminishes our world

I realize that the younger generation has never known a world without the Internet. They’ve never known a world in which they were not connected at all times to all people. To them, this is as natural as breathing. Yet every once in a while, I read something that causes me to think all these advances might in someway actually be causing future generations to miss out on some of life’s greatest adventures. The very thing that was supposed to open the world up to us is, in fact, closing it down around us.

These thoughts occurred when I read

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Scribblings

Note to NCIS producers

Please do not let Gibbs make out with or fall in love with any woman on the show. It interferes with my fantasies.

On the other hand, it’s ok to let Dekes from NCIS:LA make out with Kenzie. Given my age and his, even in a fantasy that’s gross.

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Scribblings

Why I love Alaska

These two stories ran on the same day in Alaska Dispatch. How can you not love a state that produces them?

1. Fueled by soaring stock market, Alaska’s net worth climbs to $103,000 per person

2. Nearly naked inmate flees Dillingham jail, briefly (Followed by this opening line… and remember, it’s winter in Alaska) A 20-year-old man managed to escape police custody in the Southwest Alaska village for a very short time, wearing nothing but underwear. He was captured when he solicited a ride from an off-duty officer.

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Scribblings

D’Ear departed

The Alaska Ear has departed, gone off to sow seeds in her garden and enjoy life without political intrigue.  For those of us who turned to the Ear column first when our Sunday paper arrived, it is a sad day. Even if the ADN manages to find someone to take over the column, no one will ever be able to equal Ear’s humor and deadly accurate ability to call a spade a spade even when it’s trying to disguise itself as a heart.

Go plant your garden, D’Ear. You’ve earned the rest.

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Scribblings

oops

I’d apologize for not having an entry done earlier but quite frankly, I slept in until 10 AM after staying up past 2 AM to read and play words with friends. One of the joys of retirement is no one cares when you go to sleep and you don’t have to get up to be anywhere most days. On the other hand, when you do sleep in and you have dogs, you find all kinds of little surprises all over the house waiting for you. At least they’re polite enough to let me sleep in and deposit their surprises on

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Scribblings

You’ve got to love the US Postal Service

Yesterday, my mailman delivered a magazine cover to me. No magazine inside. That had apparently long since been separated from its cover. But for some reason, the Post Office felt obligated to faithfully deliver the empty front and back cover so I could see what I was missing. Thanks, PO. 

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Columns 2014

Ah Jersey, my Jersey

As a Jersey girl by origin, I simply can’t let the fiasco of blatantly idiotic political retribution currently happening in my old home state go by without at least a cursory node to the brilliance that is Jersey politics. I have always felt a debt of gratitude to my childhood state for preparing me for whatever Alaska politics threw at me. After New Jersey, it’s hard to be impressed by others

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The simple truth is that when all else fails, New Jersey politicians manage to keep the state in the headlines. For those who wonder how the characters on

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Scribblings

To be bluntly honest…

I’d rather die in my bed than falling off a mountain while climbing, being hit by a car while biking or having a parachute fail while sky diving. All of which, I think, is proof positive that god really doesn’t want us to exercise.

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