Columns 2009

I spent this past week with a couple of my heroes. Both are Alaskan women who make it clear that being an Alaskan woman means being independent, strong, inquisitive and intellectually restless until the day you die.

Charlotte, my friend in Homer, is closing in on 90 years old. She and I nursed together in Barrow. Then she moved to a cabin in Homer where she had to ski to her mailbox long after the age at which I can barely walk to mine. As her body aged and betrayed her with its limitations, it looked as though she might

Once upon a time many years ago, when I was occasionally motivated to socialize with other human beings after 6 PM, I found myself at a party with a mixed group of Alaska Natives and non-Natives. Some of the Natives were of mixed ancestry. As the evening wore on and more and more liquor was imbibed, voices started to be raised about past abuses to the Native community. Somehow this devolved into a discussion of people’s ancestors. And at some point, one of the full blooded Natives made a comment about the grandmother of one of the people of mixed

We are a country of civil, not religious, law. Anyone doubting how strongly our Founding Fathers felt about that should remember how carefully they crafted these words in our

Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” Self evident, not god given.

And just as our rights are not based on some god’s beneficence, our laws are not derived from religion either. A quick review of the Ten Commandments makes that crystal clear.

For instance, the first one says you shall have no other god before you. Seems to me our constitution specifically prohibits that commandment from being

The mail I’ve received about the human rights ordinance in front of the Anchorage Assembly has not only been overwhelmingly in favor of ensuring that all Americans have their civil rights protected, but many have come from pastors and other religious leaders. That tells me that we do still have people out there who understand what Christ really stood for. I was beginning to despair that there were any of those Christians left in the world. Now I hope they make their voices as vocally heard at the Assembly meeting as they did on blogs and my e-mails. Bearing witness

According to Jerry Prevo’s letter to the editor in Sunday’s paper, his main problem with the city’s proposed ordinance protecting homosexuals’ civil rights is that it would allow men to dress as women for work. Hmm… isn’t that what Milton Berle did on his TV show in the 50s? And didn’t Tom Hanks get his start as a cross dresser in a sitcom. Then, of course, we have J. Edgar Hoover – there was a man who knew how to make a dress pop.

I erupted in laughter upon realizing his main objection to this ordinance is his belief that

Thanks to the Taliban and other religious extremist groups, I’m probably not the only person around who is starting to have their fill of prejudice and hate disguised as some god’s love. Because of my upbringing, I find this especially heinous when coming out of the mouths of Christians.

A recent ordinance introduced in the Anchorage Assembly would prohibit discrimination against homosexuals. In my world, that should just be a given. None of us should be discriminating against another based on whether they look like us, love like us or have purple toes and green fingernails. Gay people are hardworking,

In keeping with the warm and beautiful weather we’re having, I think today’s column will be about something positive. So clearly it will have nothing to do with Alaskan politics. Instead, we’re going to take a look at some bright spots on the educational scene to counterbalance the fairly dismal reports we receive whenever some group comes up to grade our school systems.

School districts in the Bush are usually singled out for their high drop out rates on these report cards. So I’m here to raise a “Huzzah” to an institution and a person who defied the odds and

A friend of mine recently came back from a funeral. She commented on the different customs that were so apparent at the home visitation before the funeral and how comforting they seemed to the bereaved. Then she asked me what my family did at times like that. As an Italian, there was one simple answer… we ate.

Whether it was a funeral, a hospital visit, the death of a pet or a “sorry your son decided to go into philosophy as a career” occasion, what we did for comfort was eat. Whether the occasion was happy, sad or we weren’t

It seems as though being a politician in America today means needing a legal defense fund. I’m not sure if that says more about the quality of politician we have representing us, in which case shame on us for electing them, or more about the polarization that has occurred in America’s political discourse.

A couple hundred years ago, a group of men met in Philadelphia for less than four months and, despite wide differences in religion, ethics, philosophy and lifestyles, managed to produce our constitution. They used discretion in expressing these differences, confiding in friends and spouses who understood what

So there I was the other night, TV turned to some news channel, chopping up veggies and getting food ready for my flock’s evening meal, when an entertainment news show came on. It’s difficult to differentiate between hard news and fluff anymore because they are both often covered by the same news program. But since the name of this offering had the word “showbiz” in it, I was pretty sure I’d no longer be hearing about the aftermath of the Obama administration’s recent overture to Cuba.

Fine, I thought. What’s the harm in a little light news about my favorite