Columns 2012

I work with Ilisagvik college in Barrow, the only federally recognized Tribal College in the state. It exists because the people of the North Slope have always put a premium on education. Although their educational aspirations may not always have matched reality, they never stopped trying.

While I was researching a piece for the college encouraging local students to become teachers, I heard this story from a teacher in one of the small villages outside of Barrow. This teacher is Inupiat. She is a fully accredited teacher with a four-year degree. She related how, on one of her first days

Given the news we read on a daily basis, one could come to the reasonable conclusion that, as my mother would have so succinctly put it, we are going to “H E Double hockey sticks” in a hand basket and there is little to do but await the wrath of whatever deity in which you believe. Wars, murders, ethnic cleansings, famine, floods, climate change, corrupt politicians, Wall Street avarice, economic meltdown… it’s a wonder most of us have the courage to get up every morning and get on with life. But we do because we have others depending on us

There are some things in life that can’t be fixed. Old age is one of them. You are born, you mature, and eventually you get to be old and achy. Then you die.

So when I got out of my winter’s easy chair, where the most strenuous thing I’d done for six months is take my dogs on walks, and bowled three games using a not totally approved form for getting the ball to roll down the alley, I expected that I might feel some strains and pains the next day. I was very right.

Getting old is not for

You know what one of the hardest things to do is when working with troubled children? It’s holding your tongue and your temper as the child explains to you just how wonderful their parents are. Because apparently, no matter how horrible and horrendous their childhood was, mom is mom and dad is dad and it seems as though the only way these kids can survive emotionally is to convince themselves that mom and dad were pretty special. The fact that they are in state custody is just an inconvenience to be brushed away as something the state has done to

Back in the 70’s when I was the North Slope Borough health director, a man walked into my office one day and announced he was the vet from the Naval Arctic Research Lab (NARL) down the road from town. NARL was in the process of closing its animal research facility and he was heading up the effort. But as things closed down, he found himself with extra time on his hands and wondered if there was anything he could offer in the way of his services to our community.

He had me at the word veterinarian. Barrow had an immense

My family has now lost the one aunt left of my parents’ generation. In many ways, Alzheimer’s had caused her to leave us already in spirit. Only her physical being was still bound to the limits of our mortal world. Now she’s rejoined her family in where ever it is that we go when our spirit breathes it’s last earthly breath.

And now my generation of cousins goes to the top of something I call the death chain. Until she died, there was still one person above my generation in that hierarchy. When she passed, I suddenly felt very alone

Here’s where I get confused.  Conservatives seem to find all life extremely sacred, to the point of interfering with a woman and her doctor during the most private of moments. One conservative state has passed a law that from the moment of conception, an embryo has all the rights of a human being, thus using government to regulate a woman’s reproductive life. Yet these same conservatives simultaneously claim to want government regulation out of their lives. They also apparently want every program that helps the children they insist be born, cut. 

Here in Alaska, Representative Wes Keller held up a

Alaska does democracy and governance a little differently than the rest of the country. It’s like everything else in Alaska. Our attitude is simply that we don’t care how they do it in the lower 48. So when people are disenfranchised by the bumbling way our last election was conducted, our mayor’s response is to smile and say that he would have just won by more votes if more people could have voted.

Well good for him. I mean how nice is he that he lets us vote even though he apparently knows how some are going to vote ahead

Ah breakup in Alaska – streets with puddles deep enough to qualify as Olympic diving venues, cars sending up waves you could surf, potholes that could swallow Cincinnati, and sidewalks covered with water that covers a sheet of ice that sends you sliding a good 500 feet before landing on your petootie. Yep, breakup, that time of year when all real Alaskans already have a plane ticket to somewhere, anywhere, else.

Let me just say that for any faults life in Barrow might have, at least the far north knows how to do breakup. It happens only once a year.

I grew up on the East Coast where political traditions seemed a little different than here. Our politicians were expected to be jovial, convivial, able to walk into a Sons of Italy Hall and know half the people there while shaking the hands of everyone they’d yet to meet. Being honest ran a distant second to being charming, friendly, approachable, and able to get the potholes filled on your street for a simple donation to the campaign.

Politicians from my youth did all that despite the fact that the election had probably been bought long before the first vote was