It was a Sunday 33 years ago almost to the day, and we spent all of it at the Harbor Bar, a dozen bachelors, cheechakoes, alcoholics and the like, sipping drinks, telling stories and shooting pool. No one got drunk but that wasn’t the point. We were there sponging up heat from Jack Martin’s furnace. The thermometer on the bank…
If any more COVID money drops into this town unexpected, or some worldwide cataclysm causes a surge in the oil prices or even if neither of those happens, the Haines Borough should consider painting the place. It would be an easy way to improve our look. In Southeast Alaska, our dominant color is gray. Gray comes at us for days…
The temperature at my wife’s house on Lutak Road reads two below zero, it’s snowing hard and that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is a prediction of rain on what Haines meteorologist Jim Green says is a downtown snowpack of 46 inches and what happens next as a result. Sub-zero temperatures and heavy snowfall are two…
There’s an apocryphal story about Ben Franklin, arguably the most pragmatic leader in colonial America, and a disastrous shipwreck. The wreck claimed the lives of many of the passengers aboard and distraught mourners asked that a chapel be built on the site in remembrance. When the question was put to Franklin he said, “No, build a lighthouse.” We are surrounded…
The notary public embosser used by Sol Ripinsky was returned to the Sheldon Museum last month, but half of the die – the part that sqeezes a piece of paper into a raised insignia – is missing. The embosser came from a house, an old Army building on Union Street that Richard and Mary Manuel had spent decades filling shoulder…
My very limited time with Jenae Larson makes me think she was gifted a rare acceptance of the world. I was at her mom Kim’s house, writing a story about invasive plants and wanted to photograph her with her damnable hawkweed. “Use Jenae as your model,” Kim told me. Jenae, like no other teen-ager, agreed without a word to be…
It has become embarrassingly obvious that the downtown boat harbor expansion is an unnecessary monstrosity, a huge and ugly pimple on the once pristine face of our stunning waterfront. That this project was driven by hubris and vanity – not by need or by prudence – is nowhere as evident as in the Haines Borough’s recent decision to seek $20…
The people who pushed the Haines Borough to save Mosquito Lake School are now looking very, very bright. With only five students enrolled, the Klukwan School is in jeopardy. Like what happened at Mosquito Lake, with fewer than 10 students, the village school is now facing the loss of state funding needed to keep it open. If that happens, the…
Many people in Haines will respond to news of $20 million to rebuild Lutak Dock as great news and a Christmas present from Uncle Sam. They’re wrong. It’s neither of those things. The taxpayer bailout of the dock amounts to a corporate subsidy to Alaska Marine Lines and others in the shipping and freight business. It’s also a huge slice…
My friend Pizza Joe is overworried about Fort Seward. Our local government, on the other hand, has been underworried about the Fort for about 70 years, so things have a way of balancing out. Joe is particularly concerned the Alaska Indian Arts building will decay past saving. That’s not likely. AIA has been empty now for a couple years, but…