Elise Sereni Patkotak

In most small towns in America, two professions stand out as receiving the most respect and admiration – preachers and teachers.  While there are obvious exceptions to this rule, for the most part people rely on these professions to maintain certain ethical and moral standards.

After all, you trust one of these professions with your immortal soul and the other with the development of your children’s minds.  What could be more important?

Teachers and preachers in Bush Alaska definitely fall under this mantle of respect.  In fact, in many Native villages they have historically been exalted to a pedestal they

I find the proposed new law on children’s issues currently being debated in the state legislature to be very interesting.  The law calls for more openness in these cases and allows either the state or the parents to request a jury trial in a termination of parental rights case.

While I still find myself concerned about the reaction of children to the sordid stories of their family life becoming public, I also find myself thinking that it could have some very interesting, if unexpected, consequences.

Those of us who work in this field are used to a certain level of

Terry Schiavo is dead and all of us who participated in making her death a public spectacle worthy of the Roman Empire at its most disgusting should be ashamed. And I do mean everybody.

For starts, the politicians from both sides of the aisle who abandoned all pretenses of high moral ground and fed into the howling mob on the hope of banking political capital for the future. Will any of us soon forget Senator Dr. Bill Frist contradicting overwhelming medical evidence to the contrary and making his own diagnosis based on a few minutes of video footage?

How easily

Usually kids assigned to me through my work as a Guardian Ad Litem stay on my caseload for two or three years at best.  Most are able to leave within that time to either be re-united with their families or to start life again with a new family.

But there is always a hardcore group of kids who end up being raised in the state system despite everyone’s best efforts.  Some of these kids come to me through Juvenile Probation (JPO) at 12 or 13. Some are as young as 7 or 8 when they enter the system through the

It’s springtime in Alaska and, thanks to global warming, it’s not 40 below. In fact, defying all conventional wisdom, I plan to have my studded snow tires removed this week. I’m going to take a walk on the wild side and live a little dangerously.  I’m going to drive in Anchorage in March on regular treads.

I realize that the last time I did this, we were visited with more than two foot of snow overnight.  But I couldn’t have gotten out of my garage to drive anywhere anyhow so what good would studded snow tires have done me? 

No,

After spending the better part of a week in Las Vegas, I can only say that no one should ever suggest to me again that Alaskan moose nugget jewelry is in any way odd or strange.  For odd or strange, you need only walk down the Vegas strip, the place where neon goes to die.

Within no more than six blocks of the hotel at which I was staying, I saw:

…A woman in Levis and a wedding veil with a t-shirt that read, “Buy me a shot. I’m tying the knot.”

…A covered flat bed truck with a sign

Alaska seems to be having its third or fourth breakup of the winter right now. One can only hope this is the final one. I’m not sure I could stand another freeze/thaw/freeze cycle. If it’s not going to be an honest to god winter, then could it please just make up its mind to be spring?

I think breakup in Anchorage is, by anyone’s standard, pretty squalid and ugly.  There are lakes your car needs pontoons to navigate right where the street was just yesterday. There are potholes swallowing HumVees and gently belching out the hubcaps – one of the

I guess since everyone else has weighed in on the Maggie controversy, I should toss my two cents into the pot.  So here’s my honest opinion on the matter.  I don’t know what is best for Maggie and I really don’t think all the experts and others concerned about her know what’s best for her either.

I think what we have here is a whole lot of people who are totally dedicated to making sure that Maggie has the best quality of life possible. I think that the fact that there are so many competing groups passionately debating this issue

There are moments in history where you can pretty much pinpoint when a leader lost his momentum.  When Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake”, she may not have put the final nail in the coffin of the French monarchy, but she gave that nail its final hit.

More recently, there is that famous moment when Walter Cronkite came back from Vietnam and announced on the evening news that it was not a winnable war. President Lyndon Johnson, on hearing that report, is said to have remarked, “If I’ve lost Walter, I’ve lost the nation”. And it turned out to

What is it about Alaskans when the light returns? Or is it just me?  Suddenly I see dust where all winter I saw none.  I see piles of clutter where once I just saw my closet.  I reach for my credit card almost reflexively as I run to Wal-Mart’s to buy every size and shape of plastic stacking box they sell.

My sister thinks I’m just crazy, especially since we both come from a mother who once scrubbed the spots out of the linoleum in front of her stove and claimed that it was the linoleum that was defective.  She