Columns 2008

My sister is not exactly a bird lover. She lives across from a migratory bird sanctuary but over the years some birds decided to build nests in her front yard instead. Daphne Duck returned annually for about five years. She’d lay her eggs and then defend her clutch against anyone trying to get up the front stairs. Having a cool summer drink on Judy’s porch while watching the sunset on the bay took on a whole new meaning when accompanied by a mad mama duck trying to attack you.

This year, a robin chose to build a nest in a

I’m guessing that when I was in high school there were educational institutions where senior pranks occurred. After all, the tradition had to start somewhere. But I can tell you for sure where it stopped. It stopped at the front door of Holy Spirit High School. It was stopped there by the mere presence of the sisters and priests who ran the school. It was stopped there by the mere thought of parental reaction to anything that would damage the school. It was stopped there, ultimately, by sheer fear.

My parents had no problem using fear as a tool in

Two of my favorite times of the year in Anchorage are spring before the mosquitoes come and fall after they’re gone.  I can daydream to my heart’s content while walking, knowing nothing is sucking my blood while I’m not paying attention.

So there I was recently, dogs in tow, wandering the back woods of South Anchorage, mentally singing about April showers bringing May flowers. I’ll grant you that in Anchorage April showers might be snow instead of rain, and the flowers come closer to July than May, but you get the picture.  I wandered and daydreamed and listened to the

A couple of weeks ago, a columnist in this paper said we should not confuse health insurance with health care. Excluding references to Paris Hilton having no discernible talent, that may be the biggest understatement to ever appear in print.

Having health insurance, even something like I have which is considered a fairly comprehensive plan, is actually not much more than a placebo meant to lull you into a false sense of security.  Once you actually need to use your insurance, you find it has more holes in it than George Bush’s WMD argument for invading Iraq.  And if you

I used to wonder where my intensely adverse reaction to cell phones originated. I always feel queasy when asked to handle one. Then the light went on one day as I sat in a restaurant with a friend. His cell phone rang. He interrupted our conversation to check who was calling. His face lit up and he announced it was a mutual friend. He answered the call.

I sat there wondering if I was the only person in situations like this that feel as though they are there to fill the time until something better comes along.  I remember one

Every once in a while, I am forced to face the fact that the war on drugs is an abject failure, yet lack of a spine in way too many politicians has made a rational, national discussion of this issue practically impossible.  Which is just pathetically sad because the billions of dollars and thousands of lives lost to this hopeless war could have been much better spent in treating people with a problem, to say nothing of how much we’d save if we emptied our jails of people whose only crime was pot.

This issue comes to the forefront again

It was sometime in the early or mid nineties. My sister and I were in a Tibetan monastery outside of Lhasa.  We were there only because the Chinese government realized it could not subsidize this region forever. Tibet needed to contribute to the national coffers.  So China allowed some monasteries to reopen as a draw for tourists.

We sat in front of a shrine of Buddha.  Tucked in every nook and crevice in the wall behind the Buddha were pictures of the Dalai Lama.  A very old monk brought us each a cup of yak butter tea. Maybe it was

When my mom died, my sister, brother and I cleared out some closets in the back of what had been our family grocery store. In one, I found the old ledger book that my father used to keep his finances straight when he ran the store.

Back then the only computer available was in his head. And despite the fact that math has always been a skill glaring in its absence among me and my siblings, the one skill that seems to have survived through multiple generations was the ability to add and subtract in our heads.  Granted, calculators have

I think I will spit up if I have to see the picture one more time – a seemingly contrite politician who has been caught with his pants down apologizing for his betrayal of the public and his family’s trust. And behind him, circles under her eyes, grim expression on her face, stands his wife.  Why, if she isn’t an accomplice, does she have to do the perp walk with him? Why, when he has already embarrassed and humiliated her in the worse way possible, is she now expected to publicly stand by her man and become a victim twice

Excuse me, but I just have to say this. Darn that Sarah Palin!  And believe me, when that phrase first popped into my head, darn was not necessarily the euphemism that came with it.  I know life is not necessarily fair, but this is ridiculous.  I look more pregnant when I’m constipated than Palin looks two months before delivery.  Where is the fairness in that? I have friends who swear they looked more pregnant seven minutes after conception than she does now.

This woman was doing shoots for Vogue magazine when she was at least four or five months pregnant,