In case you didn’t notice, you recently lost a little bit of your voice in this town. Public radio station KHNS has decided that you are not so welcome to the public airwaves the station provides access to. Specifically, the station put new limits on radio commentaries open to all citizens. Commentaries now will be limited to two minutes (reduced…
I spent an hour in Haines Junction a few weeks ago, which made me wonder why I don’t visit more often. The temperature was about 95 degrees F., and a lady shopping at the Little Green Apple grocery store announced she was “heading to the beach.” The Junction has a beach and a lot more if you dig a little…
Alarm about E. coli discovered in Mud Bay spring water may give users pause – for about a day, if that long. Not to diminish the hazard. E. coli is a nasty bacteria. If it gets to you, you’ll have the runs for a week, but you’ll survive it. Most everyone afflicted does. The bottom line is a lot of…
We either have a competition problem or a pain problem with our young athletes, maybe both. In my discussion with high school coaches, it’s become a refrain: Our student athletes either don’t want to compete, or they don’t want competition to hurt, or they don’t want to work so hard. They want to participate, and they want to feel good.…
A friend said I sounded flippant when I told KHNS that “it didn’t really matter to me” whether or not the Haines Borough Assembly censured me for mistakenly releasing the names of two officers contained in complaints about police behavior that I made public back in April. (“Censure” means to officially scold.) I apologized, in writing, to the two officers…
I was ready to go all Chuck Norris on the Haines Borough budget this year. Give it a karate chop and show it who was boss. Vote to lop some heads at city hall. Jack up some fees on underpriced services. Maybe lay on some specialty taxes. Much of the rest of the assembly was feeling the same way, as…
After serving about 20 years on the Haines City Council, Chip Lende joked that his biggest achievement was helping to establish an ice rink under Payson’s Pavilion at the fairgrounds. Lende intended the remark to demonstrate how difficult it is to bring change as an elected leader in a small town. But the ice rink – made possible when the…
It turns out that we can say “no” when a Haines Highway resident calls 911 and wants a policeman. In fact, saying “no” was the municipality’s official policy for responding to house fires out Lutak and Mud Bay roads before residents in those parts of the borough agreed to come into fire service areas. Longtime firefighter Al Badgley confirmed this…
Monday’s earthquakes brought back memories of a comparable round of shakers that occurred here 30 years ago. The first came at 6:48 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14, 1987. It was relatively small on the Richter scale – 5.3 – but also very close, just 10 miles southeast of town. Like Monday’s, it rattled folks awake and out of bed, and…
Talk about natural resources. If you attended “Rusty Compass, Dusty Rose” or “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” at the Chilkat Center, you saw a lot besides a great show. You saw the fruit of more than 50 years of effort in the form of Lynn Canal Community Players, and the unselfish dedication of longtime volunteers like Tod Sebens and…