Columns 2008

I know what all the experts say. This is not an unusual summer. The unusual summers were the ones where the sun actually made an appearance once a week or so and the temperatures climbed into the 70s on a few occasions.  A true Anchorage summer is wet, cold, windy and gray.  So stop whining. We are being treated to the true Anchorage experience this year.

But we are Alaskans. Whining and free government money are our two most precious birthrights.  So when I posted a comment on my blog recently about the weather, I received more responses than I

It seems to me that the more money that comes pouring into state coffers, the more services residents should be seeing. After all, if we are the owner state, it is our money. While I understand the need to put some of it away for tomorrow, I don’t see why that precludes our enjoying a better quality of life today.

When money was scarce in those bad old days a few years ago, belt tightening was the watchword on everyone’s lips. The permanent fund could not be raided because it was sacred. It was for a rainy day and the

It’s amazing to me that a country like ours, built on the backs of successive waves of immigrants who came here willing to do the lowliest job for the least wage in order to get a chance at something better for their children, should find itself so divided over the issue of immigration today.  Between who wants to build walls between America and Mexico and who wants to force us to have national ID cards and who wants the cops to be able to compel everyone they stop for any reason whatsoever to have to prove their citizenship, it feels

I came home one day last week and found yet another plastic bag on my porch filled with the latest overload of telephone books. I took the package, put it in my car and off loaded it at the phone book recycling bins the first chance I got. As I did so, I wondered once again how companies could be so environmentally insensitive as to continue this practice despite the cries from consumers to stop it.

Let’s look at some basic facts.  One, I only have so much room on my desk. I am not about to fill it with

I spent my first night in Alaska at the old Alaska Native Medical Center. I was so homesick I cried for most of it. I was so scared that every time I heard a sound in the bathroom I shared with another room, I leaped up to make sure the door was locked.  The homesickness I came by honestly. But the fear came as a direct result of a comment made by the woman at the desk when I checked in.

As I stood there in the hospital lobby surrounded by Alaska Native faces that, at that point in my

So in the end, history this year will be written by an African-American, not a woman. For a lot of women, not just Hillary Clinton, this is a huge disappointment. For those of us of a certain age, Hillary seemed to represent the only chance to see a female president in our lifetime.

There is a reason why this is such an issue for some women, a reason we tend to forget until we watch one of the Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies in which she prances around in pearls and high heels making him dinner while he laughs at the

My friend Earl Finkler had a letter to the editor in the paper last week in which he quoted Robert F. Kennedy as saying, “An America piled high with gold, and clothed in impenetrable armor, yet living among desperate and poor nations in a chaotic world, could neither guarantee its own security nor pursue the dream of civilization devoted to the fulfillment of man.” I wonder how Robert Kennedy would feel if he were alive today and realized that America was both the country piled high with gold and the desperate, poor, chaotic nation at one and the same time?

Here’s the thing we should never do. We should never confuse the government of China with the people of China. That’s why calling for a boycott of the Olympics, as much as I want to show China they can’t just destroy a whole culture without any repercussions, is wrong.  I’ve been to China more than once. I’ve been to Tibet. And the people I met, whether Tibetan or Chinese, were not out to hurt each other. They were just trying to get through the day like you and me, worrying about the kids and what was for dinner.

The first

“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope seems hardly worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a good spin down the road, without thought of anything but the ride you are taking. …” – Arthur Conan Doyle

Doyle may have been on to something with this idea. As National Bike Month winds down, summer here begins. And summer, plus gas prices that will cause you to retch every time you fill up the old SUV, makes for great bike riding time in Anchorage. So I think we should

It’s racing towards summer in Anchorage.  People finally feel safe putting their snow shovels away and getting their wading boots and rakes out. Studded tires are removed and replaced by sweetly quiet regular tires that give new meaning to a smooth ride…unless, of course, you accidentally drop off into the pothole from hell that seems to follow me around town like a puppy.

This is one of those times of the year when you have to be careful what you say to relatives outside if you don’t want to get that awkward silence that always follows when you make a