A big dump turned our old, jaggedy gray snow all new and smooth and white again, which counts for some kind of redemption at this time of winter, if not cause for celebration. An old truism goes that on any job, the first 90 percent of work takes the first 90 percent of time and the last 10 percent of…
I bumped into Sarah Palin yesterday while streaming Randy Rainbow videos on YouTube. There she was, our former governor, on an Internet infomercial advertising the services of some investment counselor. Using her Alaska credit card, Sarah was comparing investing in the stock market to hiking in the wilderness, pleading with viewers that they might get mauled on Wall Street without…
Living in Las Vegas for six months, I got to know some of Sin City’s landmarks, most notably its signs. Vegas is a town full of implausible solicitations like “Loose Slots!” and “Breakfast: 99 Cents!” My favorite was one above a strip-mall storefront, in giant block letters, reading: “Free Money!” You can’t fault Vegas for not understanding what people want.…
To understand Alaska politics, it helps to know the politics of capital projects. Big projects – the Susitna Dam, the Juneau Road, Ketchikan’s “Bridge to Nowhere” – consume more than their share of government business in this state. That’s also true on our local level. Consider the numbers of meetings spent talking about boat harbor expansion, rebuilding the firehall, and…
A friend asked the other day whether American soldiers were still dying in Afghanistan. Shamefully, I didn’t know. The responsibility of citizens in a democracy is to keep up on issues and participate in decision-making and there’s no government function more important than deciding to kill people, our people or ones from elsewhere. So why didn’t I know? Because I…
If I hadn’t met Dick Carlson in person, he would have had to come to me from the pages of a novel. He was close to 70 when I knew him, with a shock of unruly silver hair, eyes like sapphires and a rocking gait from a lifetime working on uneven terrain. Leather boots, a flannel shirt, jeans and suspenders…
“Their greatest value no doubt lies in the universal interest of the public in seeing and photographing them in their natural habitat, and since they can be observed along most any good salmon stream when the fish are running, they provide a wonderful tourist attraction. For the sportsmen seeking a trophy, however, other areas in Alaska offer larger and more…
For his birthday party Tuesday, Pizza Joe invited friends to the skate park to play pickleball. About a dozen people showed up. The games went on for six hours. A week previous to his birthday, Joe was out at the fairgrounds with a fire hose in single-digit temperatures, putting down layers of ice at the makeshift rink there. Parnell has…
At a party a few years back I got into a disagreement with a rich man about the meaning of the American Dream. The man, who had earned his fortune honestly, said he’d achieved the American Dream by becoming wealthy. I told him that he needn’t have gotten rich, as the dream isn’t so much about riches as it was…
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…