Elise Sereni Patkotak

I made chicken on the grill last night. First I had it too high, then I had it too low.  First I had chicken burnt to death on the outside and raw on the inside. Then I had chicken that most closely resembled formed cardboard because it was so cooked.  Even the bones were edible.  I tried to palm the remnants off on my dog who will eat anything including bird poop and she looked at it, looked at me and then walked away.  I think that pretty much sums the whole experience up.

I thought when I had my cataracts removed that the scariest thing would be to look in the mirror and see all the wrinkles on my face that I hadn’t been able to see before. But no. The scariest thing was actually seeing the details of my hair.  Dear God!

So there I am on Sunday afternoon thinking that there is nothing in my house I want to eat for dinner and having no desire to cook something up. So, I decide it’s time to treat myself to that wonderful spicy rice cake appetizer I’ve been thinking about ever since I had it at the Korean VIP restaurant here in town. But I can’t remember what it’s called. I go online and they have no menu there. I check the phone book and they have no menu there. I decide to grab a magazine and drive there and order dinner

Have you heard a test of the emergency alert system on TV recently? Doesn’t it seem as though in this day and age of modern communications that the guy who comes on to announce it’s only a test should come through loud and clear and not sound as though he’s trying to talk through an ancient CB radio system?

I was emptying a plastic tub of green ricotta from the back of my refrigerator into the sink yesterday and was suddenly struck with memories of my mother and her plastic containers. She saved all her ricotta tubs for storage containers. When she died, the freezer was full of them. If you got leftovers from her, they were contained in one. And if she came to visit your house, she would feel no compunction about going through your kitchen cabinets to see if you had any that belonged to her. If she found them, she’d take them home. And each

I sit here at my desk. It’s the middle of May in Anchorage.  I am in sandals and capri pants. I am freezing. But the sun is out, it’s spring and I will sit here freezing until the sun warms the day.  Because here in Alaska, this is what spring is all about.

As most people in Alaska know by now, the Anchorage Daily News will not be renewing its contract that allows the Voice of the Times to publish on their editorial page. I’ve received many wonderful e-mails and words of encouragement from people hoping that my column will be picked up by the Daily News.  I don’t know what the future holds but I will continue to write and publish. The Voice of the Times may make an appearance in another format and I may follow them. Or something else may happen…for instance, a multi billionaire may fall in love with

My eye had to be numbed for cataract surgery which left the top of my head numb for quite a few hours.  What an extremely weird sensation. Suddenly it was the sixties again only I wasn’t asking “What the hell was that??!!”