Simultaneous vacancies in three full-time Haines Borough jobs – planner, facilities director and grant writer – offer the community a chance to streamline staff and reshuffle priorities in an era of deep government cuts that historically supported our town. The assembly should act on this for several reasons including: 1) It’s very difficult to eliminate a position when it’s occupied,…
Poking into a sand dune last week, looking for shells, my niece uncovered a shark’s tooth. “Watch for pieces of eight and gold doubloons,” I told her, repeating something my mom, a tireless beachcomber, would say while we ambled along the Jersey shore, scouring the surf’s edge. My niece and I were at Ocean City, N.J., one of the dozen…
If you think a proposed charter change to formalize police service outside the Townsite of Haines is a rehash of a matter resolved by voters in last fall’s municipal election, you’re right. Like a zombie, attempts by the Haines Borough administration and its police department to expand police service outside the townsite just won’t die. This year’s proposal is a…
The 50th anniversary of the moon landing has me thinking of Johnny Dusik. Like NASA, Johnny wasn’t satisfied with just sending a ship into space and floating it back to Earth. Johnny had bigger dreams. Johnny was the boy genius of our neighborhood. At an age when the rest of us couldn’t remember the dinner hour, Johnny understood circuitry and…
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H.L. Mencken I don’t blame junior assembly members Will Prisciandaro and Sean Maidy for wanting the borough to take over the trash business and to…
The Haines Community Marching Band was all set to parade down Main Street on Independence Day when someone noticed rebellion in the drum section. We were scheduled to play an arrangement of “Yankee Doodle,” but the drummers hadn’t stuck their feathers in their caps and called it macaroni. In fact, their feathers weren’t anywhere near their caps. They were instead…
Good ships are built to withstand heavy seas. I once sailed as a merchant seaman on a ship on high seas in the Pacific, and I felt the ocean tossing around the 700-foot vessel beneath my feet. With each wave, the ship pitched up then down before righting itself and plowing into the next, oncoming swell. The effect was frightening…
There were blue skies and mountain views in Alaska last week, but you had to go to Tok to see them. I know because I drove from smoky Haines to hazy Anchorage and the town that bills itself as “Alaska’s Main Street” offered the only respite from the grey veil that descended on us. When Tok becomes our showcase, we’re…
There were blue skies and mountain views in Alaska last week, but you had to go to Tok to see them. I know because I drove from smoky Haines to hazy Anchorage and the gas station of a town that bills itself as “Alaska’s Main Street” offered the only respite from the grey veil that descended on us. When Tok…
Former Alaska Gov. Walter Hickel, who was sometimes a visionary, said Alaska one day would be the OPEC of fresh water. Wally dreamed of a pipeline to carry Alaska’s water to the thirsty parts of the American West. His point was well-taken. Oil, as a commodity, is replaceable with new technologies. But there’s no substitute for fresh water. It’s the…