Columns 2013

George Ahmaogak was recently re-elected to the board of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. Given his spotty legal history as North Slope Borough mayor, and his wife’s current incarceration for embezzling funds from the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, when I heard the news I wondered where else in this country could someone with that baggage get re-elected to anything. Given recent candidate announcements both here in Alaska and across the country, I have to guess the answer is just about anywhere in America.

I don’t know if this reflects more on the poor taste of the American people or their

Before delving into the deeper issue of profiling that is occurring with greater and greater frequency throughout America, let me be selfish for a moment and see how the recent Zimmerman acquittal might affect me personally. Based on what happened in Florida, if I’m walking down the street breaking no law and am followed and then accosted by someone who gets physically violent with me and ends up killing me, that person may, with a totally straight face, claim self-defense. Wow. Even for the birthplace of the hanging chad, that’s quite a breathtaking perversion of common sense.

Now that I

Here is what Malala Yousafzai said on her 16th birthday while addressing a youth conference at the UN. “Let us pick up our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first.”

For those of you not familiar with Malala, this was the 16th birthday that she was not supposed to have. This was the 16th birthday the Taliban did their best to take from her by climbing onto her school bus and shooting her at point blank range

Every once in a while we get a bird into Bird TLC whose story causes me to shudder. I understand the every day vicissitudes of life as a wild creature. Other creatures prey on you. Your misfortune is their dinner. Your successful fight for food might mean another doesn’t get enough. Life in the wild is certainly not a Disney movie. Bears and deer don’t sing and frolic together.

But this past week we admitted a baby gull with a swollen leg. His leg was swollen because he was rescued from a boy who was beating his leg with a

I grew up a child of the cold war. America and Western Europe were good, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), China, Cuba and all other communist countries were bad. South America and Africa had not yet really come of age on the international scene. It was a black and white world. Democracy good. Communism bad.

We learned that in Russia, the government spied on its own people. There was always a collective gasp of horror at that statement. Imagine, a government that listened in on its own people. The rulers of the USSR claimed that if you were

In China, when they want to create a class of athletes to challenge the world, they put them in a school specifically dedicated to athletics. They don’t pretend the school is a university dedicated to the transmission of scientific or literary knowledge. Their universities are not training grounds for semi pro and professional sports teams. Their universities are focused on learning. If you ever wonder why the Chinese are rapidly overtaking us as the world’s leading economic engine, you might ponder that.

I realize that any questioning of the decision by the University of Alaska Anchorage to pay a hockey

OK, let’s get one thing straight. If I’d wanted to have bright, hot sunshine for weeks in a row I’d have moved to Fairbanks or Hawaii or Mexico or, if I was really desperate, Florid.  If I wanted to devote an hour every morning killing mosquitoes in my office before I could work, I’d have moved to a tropical forest. If I wanted to spend my time outdoors batting wildly at my head while screaming, “Get away from me, you beasts from hell” I’d have done a remake of “Bedlam”.

And I know I’m not alone. There are a lot

I made a comment in last week’s column that when we read about a crime as horrible as the one allegedly committed by Jerry Active on May 25th, we almost hope to find horrible abuse in his childhood to explain the monster he seems to have become.

I know nothing of his family so I have no idea whether he had an idyllic childhood or not. Some commenters who seemed familiar with the family felt that he had not had a good start in life. They questioned, as so often seems to be questioned, how the state can leave children

I grew up in a neighborhood of extended families. Everyone had dozens of first and second cousins, aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles as well as grandparents living within a short distance of each other. It was not at all unusual for your best friends to also be your relatives because that’s who you spent your holidays and summers with; that’s who blew out the candles on your birthday cakes from the day of single digit candles until… well, in my case, until today when I refuse to put that many candles on any cake. The faces that surround

Despite their occasional protestations, most kids want the same things in life as they grow up. They want some stability. They want food when they’re hungry. They want to go to the same school dressed basically the same way as their friends. They want their homes to be safe, a place where no one harms them.

Unfortunately, not all kids get to have what they want. Some are brought up in families so dysfunctional as to barely be worthy of the sobriquet “family”. Some are beaten by those who should be protecting them. Some are used as sex objects by