Columns 2009

It’s hard to get enthused about the future of mankind when you are confronted for two weeks in a row with the lowliest of human behavior. First we had the punks who got some twisted thrill out of picking on a street person because he was Native. Now we have some equally bottom-feeding types who broke into the vehicles of fire fighters and not only trashed them, not only stole from them, but urinated on what they left behind.

Makes you wonder if it isn’t the apes that should be insulted by the idea of Darwinian descent.

Perhaps I’m extra

Probably the most pathetic thing about the recent attack on a Native street person here in Anchorage is that it really wasn’t about racism per se. No, it was really about two losers who could only feel better about themselves if they found someone they could somehow feel superior to.  In Alaska, our Native people are all too often the group these losers pick on when they have to find someone to make their sad little lives look better. So long as they can pretend there is someone lower on the social ladder, they believe they aren’t the bottom of

So here’s the thing. You may be able to see Russia from Wasilla, but you really can’t see Alaska from Anchorage. This is not to disparage the beauty that surrounds Anchorage. Or to take a cheap shot at the ugliness that pervades so much of our fair city due to the absence of any credible attempt to keep strip malls and tire shops and residential neighborhoods and dump sites (which some may call their front yard) from co-existing in uneasy harmony. No, this is to say more about how vast, beautiful and wonderful our state is and how easy it

Here’s the good news and bad news. The good news is that getting someone off the street and physically separating them from their drug of choice is going to save their life by simply removing their chosen method of death. The bad news is that forced detoxification and treatment programs are not a cure and, for many, the return to their drug of choice will occur before they clear the block the detox center is on.

Addiction is a multifaceted monster that is never totally conquered. The best outcome for any addict is to defeat the monster enough to regain

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that health care reform is in trouble.  The insurance industry is a powerful group and very clever at blowing smoke to hide the real issues. For instance, there is a commercial running on TV in which we hear a voice over from a woman purporting to be Canadian. She says she had a brain tumor and, because Canada has government health care coverage, she was told she’d have to wait six months for a medical appointment. So, she intones in a very solemn voice, she came to America and received immediate treatment from the

It was one of those news stories I read with my mouth agape in total bewilderment at what we now worship in America. Steve McNair, a married football player, was killed by his girlfriend who thought he was cheating on her with another girlfriend.  No mention of where his wife and two sons were when he was shot to death while he slept. Despite this, people came to his funeral service from far and near because of his fame on the football field.  I stopped reading about this whole icky episode when the news turned to the fact that his

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. Fish are jumpin’. And the cotton is high…” Gershwin’s paean to this season contrasts greatly with my current level of whining over the heat, the mosquitoes, the heat, the sun, the heat – well, you get the idea.

On the other hand, there are about 3000 residents of Anchorage for whom the summer does connote easier living in that it’s a guarantee that they won’t freeze to death while living on the streets and in the woods of our fair city. I guess when you have so little, you learn to be grateful for

Well, this has certainly been an interesting few weeks. First Ed McMahon dies and then, in rapid succession, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Karl Malden and Robert McNamara. Our celebrities are dropping like flies and, despite beliefs fostered by saturation coverage of Jackson as possibly being the second coming, he did not rise on the third day.

Then we have our politicians falling like flies, some of their own volition (see The Lovely Sarah Resigns and other fun fairy tales) and some because they find it ever so much easier to legislate morality for us little folk than actually following that

Americans can sometimes seem to be quite a contradictory group. Or at least, certain segments of the population are.  For instance, the segment that purports to represent the Moral Majority seems to have as much trouble as other political parties in knowing when to keep their pants zipped. Those same Americans who brandished guns and American flags after 9/11, bragging that those terrorists had met their match when they took on America, seem to be some of the same people squealing with fear over the idea of some Gitmo detainees being brought to America. We’re apparently that scared of them

It occurs to me that Father’s Day came and went without any acknowledgement on my part to the many dads I know. This is probably because I have now lost all the dad figures in my life. For the first time ever, I didn’t even have an uncle to call.

So I spent Father’s Day wondering whom I’d call to wish a Happy Father’s Day if I could call anyone I wanted. Much to my horror, the name that kept coming to mind was Dick Cheney.

Yes, that Dick Cheney. The man who seems to exist in a world of