I was talking to my Republican friend on Friday’s ferry to Haines. Out the window, seagulls were clamoring above Lynn Canal. A week of north winds had churned up to the surface the big-eyed lampfish and maybe some other bottom-dwellers. The gulls were getting them while the getting was good. My friend was sitting at a cafeteria table alone, looking…
Joe Biden is promising to unify the country and certainly that needs doing. All Joe has to do is rebuild the middle class. Unity problem solved. No kidding. I know this because I grew up in a unified, lower-middle class neighborhood in the 1960s, and this is how it worked: All the guys on our street had jobs. They were…
The headline in the Anchorage newspaper read, “In Haines, Divisions Recede as Community Members Rally to Help after Landslides and Flooding.” The story remained on the paper’s website for weeks, proving it was a popular one, generating clicks. It’s a feel-good story, the kind people like to read about folks setting aside differences to help each other during a catastrophe.…
A long time ago aboard a state ferry that may no longer be around someone mounted a display of black-and-white photos of Sitka in winter. They were outdoor night scenes of wet houses and piles of slush, bicycles under an eave, lit by streetlights and illuminated windows. The photos were as somber as they were starkly beautiful, conjuring up this…
Credit the Haines Sheldon Museum for coming to its own rescue. Then fill out the flier that went into your post office box last week and buy a museum membership. The reason you never needed a membership previously was that the Haines Borough and museum were flush. Now both are struggling and your help is necessary to keep the doors…
It wasn’t a big surprise to read that in addition to not knowing how to swim or to drive a car, Adolf Hitler couldn’t dance. Donald Trump can’t dance either. He moves like a man who never had to court a woman. Dancing isn’t particularly difficult, but it’s impossible for control freaks, as it requires a person to momentarily let…
“We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return – prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.” Henry David Thoreau “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” Friedrich Nietzsche “Destinations are downers.” Author Ken Ilgunas, after walking 1,900 miles across the Great Plains…
The good Republican boys and girls in Congress are saying that maybe President Trump should be sent to his time-out room at Mar-A-Lago or maybe even be put on double-secret probation. Whoop. Dee. Doo. The mad president orchestrated – or, at the very least incited – a violent and fatal attack on the leadership of the United States government. That’s…
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…