Elise Sereni Patkotak

Sonya Hadzima Rogers – best friend who kept me going that first winter in Utqiagvik.

Don’t remember my wedding date. Don’t remember the day I graduated from college. Don’t remember my nursing school graduation. Do remember two things very clearly – the day I lost my virginity and the day I first set foot in Barrow (now Utqiagvik).

It was 46 years ago today. It was cold and snowing there. I was greeted by Dr. Matsutani, the lab tech Grace and a nurse named Sonya. I thought it was so wonderful to have such a welcoming committee until I realized Continue reading →

So the POS currently sullying the White House thinks that this is a scary time for young men. Well, here’s a fun note, Donnie. It’s been a scary time for women – young or old – for centuries. So pardon me if I don’t weep for the fear your sons may be feeling.

I find it amazing that the old white men who run this country have found a way to make this about them, to make this about how this hurts them and how this causes them pain. Guess what, bubbas. You don’t get to bitch and complain because Continue reading →

46 years ago today (and it was a Monday then too) I was on a plane flying from JFK to Anchorage. Two days later, I would go on to Utqiagvik where I’d spend the next nine months falling in love with the Arctic and its people. But on Oct. 1, 1972, the only thing I felt was fear and apprehension. I think I started crying when the plane took off from New York and didn’t stop crying until I landed in Anchorage. Then my poor Adeline, the parrot who moved to Barrow with me, and I spent the night at Continue reading →

Football – Traumatic Brain Injury

Soccer – same plus interesting leg bruises

Karate – kick injuries to growing bodies that result in pain and problems by the time they are 20

Basketball – becoming unhealthily obese when career ends because you still eat as much as you used to when playing

Baseball  – hit in head with bat, arm that is permanently injured from throwing, crotch destroyed by low ball

Golf – one hit by a golf ball and it is coma city

Biking – ego injury resulting from anyone seeing you in spandex

Walking/running – pulled hamstring, attacks by Continue reading →

POS sullying the White House thinks Kavanaugh will make a great Supreme Court justice. Hmmm… this wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that they are both serial sexual abusers who have gotten away with their actions with no consequences so far, would it?

Meanwhile, it being the weekend, on a lighter note I want to clarify some things about my home and what is and isn’t allowed in it.

For starts, if you are not dishwasher safe, you are not welcome in my cupboards. I have cake plates from my mother’s house with gold rim that aren’t dishwasher Continue reading →

If a woman had acted as hysterically as Brett Kavanaugh did during yesterday’s hearing, she would have been declared incompetent to sit on any court, let alone the Supreme Court. Every man in that hearing would have pointed out that she was clearly emotionally unstable and unable to maintain a detached judicial viewpoint when deciding cases.

But it was a man who was hysterical. And so that’s ok.

What the fuck! Continue reading →

I am so tired of the circus that has become our Congress and presidency… sorry, I tried to capitalize the word presidency but given the asshole in office right now, I simply couldn’t. He doesn’t deserve it and the clowns serving him just make the circus more circus-like. And all I want to scream at this point is will someone please do the merciful thing and shoot Don Jr’s cell phone so he can’t tweet anymore? Because, quite frankly, just when you thought his father’s tweets were the most horrible, insulting and fictional pieces of writing in the history of Continue reading →

I’m trying not to smile at another person’s tragedy but… well, I am. I am grinning from ear to ear. If my ears weren’t there, the grin would literally split my face. Bill Cosby in handcuffs going to prison – is there a prettier sight today?

OK, well, yes there is. It’s the sight of that POS currently sullying the White House getting audible laughs when he proclaimed that his administration had done more in two years than any administration had done that came before while speaking at the UN. God bless those delegates. Even they couldn’t hold it in Continue reading →

Bill Cosby is being sentenced as a sex offender and women are coming out from all sides of the spectrum to share their very own Kavanaugh stories – stories that usually involve him being drunk at a party and his penis being shown to any and all at that party. What a wonderful day for men.

As far as Cosby is concerned, he deserves whatever he gets given how he used his fame and power to rape women after drugging them. You don’t report the most powerful man in your field if you ever want to work in that field Continue reading →

I grew up in the Catholic Church and my memories of those days are some of the happiest of my life. This may be why I am so angry now at what I find out the church really is – a cabal of old men determined at all costs to protect the turf they rule as despots.

To be honest, by the time I was in high school I was already questioning a lot of things I’d been taught as Catholic orthodoxy. Do you know what kind of knots you have to tie yourself into in order to justify the Continue reading →