A friend of mine was at Haines Home Building, ordering an oil heater for a home she was building when the late lumberyard owner Bruce Gilbert interrupted her and asked, “An oil heater? What about the Challenge of the North?” Bruce’s implication, as kindly as it surely was intended, was that real Alaskans burn wood. My friend, an office worker…
One day a recreation trail will extend from Carr’s Cove to the Haines Airport. A person can say that with confidence because the route already exists and people are using it in droves – walkers, joggers, bicyclists, skiers, snowshoers and anglers. All that’s left are the formalities, which are considerable but not insurmountable: Getting the Valley of the Eagles Golf…
Hundreds of baboons stormed the U.S. Capitol building yesterday, attempting to seize control of the government, and they got off light. A few died, but had they been black, scores would be dead today. Don’t tell me, gentle reader, to not make this issue about race. It couldn’t be more about race. Race has been the issue all along for…
Well, that was close. Democrats and progressives have reason to be relieved, maybe even jubilant. But that’s tempered by the realization that had President Trump hired just one person to curb his most maniacal statements and behavior, he’d have been reelected. Had he just not hosted a super-spreader event in the Rose Garden, had he just not cleared peaceful protesters…
Australians have a word they use to describe young men long on testosterone and short on brains who drive around late at night, speeding and revving their muscle cars. The word is “hoons.” It’s a word that works on many levels, suggesting a special category of goon, perhaps one so lacking in personality as to be unable to attract attention…
You have to hand it to black pro athletes. They get it. They understand political stakes, and they play for keeps. They could teach a lesson to the rest of us. For three days in August they peacefully shut down the NBA finals and most of the sports world to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake, the black man hit…
“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” George Bernard Shaw All he had to do was look presidential. All he had to do was not rise to Trump’s bait. All he had to do to respond to President Trump’s lies was to say, every time, “That is simply not true.” Then…
In our town’s municipal election, I voted by email, from 4,000 miles away. It was simple, and I have no fear that my vote was discarded, intercepted or altered in any way. Alaska trails the rest of the nation in many areas – social advances, public education, and plumbing to name only a few – but the Last Frontier figured…
Congratulations. You’re in power. Now you must sit down with your fellow assembly members and come to some agreement about what you’d like to get done. This will be your most single most important achievement and it’s not as difficult as it sounds. But it must be done at least annually, perhaps even quarterly, or your leadership will be blown…
Infectious diseases have ravaged human populations regularly since forever. Bubonic plague. Spanish flu. Yellow fever. Tuberculosis. Polio. Measles. Mumps. Rubella. Ebola. West Nile. Most of us walk around with a permanent tattoo on our shoulders left by vaccinations to ward off childhood diseases that in an earlier age would have maimed or killed us. In Alaska, white man’s diseases like…