Elise Sereni Patkotak

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

When the history of George Ahmaogak’s reign as North Slope Borough Mayor is written, I imagine there will be as many pros as cons cited.  He was first elected in 1984. He is still mayor.  He was twice elected to two successive terms. Arguably, his influence on the North Slope will be felt and debated for many generations to come.

But there is one thing that can’t be debated about him. He revived and re-invigorated Inupiat dance traditions through his resurrection of Kivgiq, a dance festival now a staple of wintertime fun on the North Slope.

Inupiat dance has always

Whatever happened to that idea of building a domed capital? Not a domed capital building, but a completely domed capital city. 

I always liked that concept. It somehow seemed fitting to put people who often seemed to be working in isolation from reality actually into a city that was physically isolated from reality. Politicians always seem to be screaming that the sky is falling and that’s why we need to enact whatever their latest quick fix is. They could use the fact that they are in a domed city as their excuse for not realizing that, in fact, the sky

Sometimes life bewilders me.  In fact, I sometimes feel as bewildered as my old dog looks when I wake him up to go out before he goes to sleep.  You can almost see that little wizened brain of his thinking, “God, lady. What did it look like I was already doing?”

When I read that Governor Murkowski was introducing a bill to once again make the possession of pot totally illegal in Alaska, I felt that bewilderment.  I wondered how many times we could travel down the same road, come to the same ending and not accept that we are

When I first arrived in Barrow in 1972, dentistry was an “almost there” service.  One dentist, usually paying off a government loan by working in an underserved rural area, handled the whole North Slope.  What this meant in reality was that dental care in villages outside of Barrow was pretty much non-existent and dental care in Barrow consisted of the fill it or pull it variety.

I’d never seen the results of poor dental hygiene until I saw my first almost toothless 20 year old. I had no idea what baby bottle mouth was until I saw the first child