Elise Sereni Patkotak

So if you are a woman of a certain age and live in Anchorage or the surroundings, I strongly urge you to go see Menopause, the Musical.

I went last night and my 32 year old friend Greta was the youngest person there by decades. The audience is overwhelmingly ladies of a certain age and beyond along with the occasional brave male who I think was there to try to figure out what the hell was going on with his wife.

I can remember being in the middle of the worse of menopause. I stood in the doorway of my Continue reading →

I grew up in a small apartment over my dad’s grocery store in an Italian immigrant neighborhood of Atlantic City called Ducktown. My bedroom would probably barely qualify as a walk-in closet for today’s homes. It had a radiator that hissed steam and the smell of damp clothes drying on it all winter. There was a small window that opened to a 2 ft. wide alley and then the solid wall of the building next door. For some reason, it had two doors, one to a hallway and one to the living room. I never understood that. And in all Continue reading →

Yep, my city done me proud. Voted down Prop 1 or, as I refer to it, the “let’s codify hate” proposition. And they re-elected Ethan Berkowitz. I mean, seriously, is Anchorage becoming an island of blue in a sea of red or what?

As for the people who put forth the hate prop, please go away. Go back to whatever dark hole from a previous century you came from. Go back to a time when your prejudice, ignorance and hate were the norm. They no longer are. People who may or may not call themselves Christians actually do believe in Continue reading →

It is friggin’ amazing how much work you can fit into a day when you get up at 6:30. So far, I’ve made my doc app’t.; stripped my bed down to the mattress and washed everything; bought a new blanket for the bed because the one I had on the bed had been barfed on by Carm one too many times and I could no longer ignore the smell; mailed my brother his birthday card and gift; pick up my meds; went shopping for groceries; fed all the animals; swept out the bird room like a mad woman; and now Continue reading →

The return of the sun has, as it always does, shown me where all those places are I don’t notice in the winter that have perhaps become a tad dusty and dirty. OK, more than a tad but less than a barrel full.

I am, at best, a reluctant house cleaner. I’ll do the birds room because I don’t want mice to be attracted to their droppings. But beyond that, well, let’s just say I approach the rest of the house with all the enthusiasm I reserve for dental surgery. But then the sun comes out and I am horrified Continue reading →

Here’s my Easter message… the hypocrisy and schizophrenia so blatantly visible in most of the world’s “great” religions are mind blowing for those of us who believe the persons at the center of those religions would find their current incarnations a disgusting bastardization of what they preached.

Christians and Muslims both purport to exemplify a religion of love, mercy and peace. They will then kill you if you don’t agree. You know, just like Jesus would have done.

Since I don’t know many Muslims, this is about evangelical and conservative Christians mostly, though I’m pretty sure there are as many Continue reading →

Jimmy Carter may not have been the most effective president we ever had but he sure in hell is one of the most decent and honorable. His biggest personal scandal was admitting that sometimes he had lust in his heart. Seriously, his biggest personal failure was to have sexual urges about women other than his wife that he never acted on. Yep, kids, you read that right. Men who are honorable and decent may see a woman they find attractive, may even have a little fun fantasy about her, but they don’t act out every animal impulse that hits their Continue reading →

I am 71 years old and still waiting for the sex talk with my mom… who is deceased so that has become a much more unlikely event.

When I “became a woman” – that’s what we called starting menstruation back in the day when we all pretended it didn’t exist and if it did, it wasn’t messy or smelly –  anyhow, when that momentous occasion arose, my mother sat me down, handed me a booklet from the Kotex company explaining how to use the belt with pins that were state of the art protection back in the day. And they Continue reading →

I read a piece in the paper yesterday… yes, I still read newspapers, even the sad remnant of what used to be the ADN if only for Ask Amy and the comics… anyhow, read an article about dogs and vets. Apparently there are all kinds of categories of what I think of as helper dogs – some are service dogs, some are emotional support dogs, some are mental health dogs, the list goes on. The article discussed the program of training dogs to be with vets with PTSD. Apparently a whole bunch of money is going into funding research into Continue reading →

Alaskans like to pride themselves on how independent we are – how we live in a harsh environment with nature and never cry uncle – how we don’t need no stinkin’govment telling us how to live our lives or what to kill for dinner or how big a gun we need to kill it.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? In actuality it is a thin skin on a balloon of hot air that can be easily deflated with one small prick – and I am not talking about the genitalia of the current POS sullying the WH. I’m referring to the Continue reading →