Columns 2003

Well now, here’s one of life’s more amusing moments.  The federal government, that bastion of financial accountability, is questioning whether Alaskan Native non-profit health organizations are making efficient use of their federal dollars and providing quality services. This from the same government that houses the BIA, a group that seems to have misplaced about a gazillion dollars in trust fund moneys they were supposed to be holding for Native American tribes.

And the pundits said that irony would die after 9/11. Clearly they didn’t have enough faith in the feds.

I arrived in Alaska in those faraway days when Alaska

In case those of us with a weight problem didn’t have enough to worry about already, we now find that being overweight also increases our chance of developing certain forms of cancer.  Just when I thought it was safe to attack another cheese cake.

One of the other things that caught my eye in the recent spate of stories about obesity was the issue of the larger portions now served routinely at restaurants, homes and concession stands. I am no slacker in the food consumption category, but even I have to question if anyone can really drink some of those

When I was in kindergarten, I was briefly in the kindergarten band. It consisted of tin horns, a few drums and some triangles.  I was given a triangle. Clearly the nuns had already figured out my spectacular lack of musical ability.  This was confirmed every time the band played and I once again showed I could not even hit the triangle with the little stick in time to the beat.

Up in Barrow, though, there is a mighty band, the Barrow High School Band, with talent and dedication at work on each instrument.  Last month, that band won first place

Once again gambling has reared its head in Alaska as a painless way to start dealing with the fiscal crisis we face.  I remember when my hometown of Atlantic City went through this debate in the early 70’s.  Gambling won. Anyone who goes to Atlantic City now can attest to the fact that the operation was successful but the patient died.  Atlantic City is a ghost town where once vibrant, if somewhat seedy, neighborhoods thrived. But Atlantic City also has money now, lots of it.  So the ultimate goal for legitimizing gambling was definitely achieved.

Here in Alaska we aren’t

Here’s how you define a true friend.  They get out of bed late at night because you’ve called them and are hysterical and they drive you and your bird to Pet Emergency.  Not only that, but they sit there with you for two hours, long after the crisis has passed, and are actually still willing to have a civil conversation with you while you wait. That’s the kind of friendship that Alaska is famous for. That’s the kind of friendship that makes survival in the Bush possible.  That’s the kind of friendship that allows you to live far from your

Thanks to the unrelenting persistence of a good friend who thinks that exercise will help keep me alive, I am now the proud owner of a bright red recumbent tricycle with a basket on the back and a little bell on the handlebars covered in an American flag motif. As I go down the back roads of South Anchorage on this trike, I imagine I look like an aging Easy Rider hag reduced to pedaling a recumbent three-wheeler around to get my excitement quotient for the day.

My dog is conflicted about this whole trike idea. He can now do

As the budget process wends its painful way through the halls of Juneau, I figure I might as well throw in my two cents.  It’s inevitable that as state revenues continue to decline, cuts will be made and additional financial commitments will be required of us no matter how much people yell and scream. No matter what you call it, when you propose taking money out of people’s pockets, they are going to be very vocally dismayed.

As cuts are pondered, let me offer this suggestion to our legislators. If you are going to cut the substance abuse rehab programs,

As has become the sadly usual routine in America, only about 30% of the electorate voted in our recent election.  While we fight a war half a world away to bring the freedom to vote to the Iraqi people, the American voter is lethargic at best and apathetic at worse when it comes to one of the greatest privileges our country offers and our constitution guarantees.

I voted.  I had no choice. I have too many relatives in heaven watching me to not vote.  They’d curse me with the Italian evil eye in a heartbeat if they thought for a

Robert Sakkaaluk Aiken Sr. died last week.  I first met him when he worked in maintenance at the Indian Health Service Hospital in Barrow in 1972. Most people are more familiar with his son, Big Bob Aiken, who has been a central part of the Eskimo Indian Olympics since the days when he could carry what seemed like a dozen men around the gym without getting winded.  Big Bob came by his strength, both physical and spiritual, from his mother and father.

Robert Aiken Sr. was simply the biggest man in Barrow in both the physical and spiritual sense. Although

There seems to be a whole lot of angst swirling around the Pledge of Allegiance lately.  What many people don’t know is just how young the pledge itself is. It was written in 1892 by a Baptist minister named Francis Bellamy who was subsequently forced out of his ministry because of his socialist beliefs.

At the time he wrote the pledge, Bellamy was the chairman of a committee of state superintendents in the National Education Association.  He left the word equality out of his pledge, despite the fact that it is one of three ideals this country represents – liberty,