At least three seats will be open on the Haines Borough Assembly this fall, and with luck, some old-timers will throw in their hats. I’m not hoping for Biden-old and certainly not Trump-crazy, but generally the best candidates for local leadership are people who have been around this town 20 or 40 years and have paid attention. Retirees of moderate…
A recent think-tank survey found 42 percent of Haines business leaders “pessimistic,” according to Rain Coast Data, a think-tank based in Juneau. If those numbers are accurate, they’re not particularly surprising given that commercial fishing — a big economic driver in Haines — is suffering a severe downturn in prices to fishermen. A crisis occurs in the fishery about every…
A political tide turned against liberalism in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan and the rise of the New Right. Funded by ultra-rich ideologues, the New Right made a sharp turn away from moderate conservatism – which for a decade or more had supported reasonable advances like abortion rights and environmental protection – and embraced issues it could use…
Are two local governments better than one? Some of the folks who supported consolidation of the City of Haines and Haines Borough in 2002 are now wondering if it wasn’t a mistake. The old City of Haines, with boundaries just around downtown, served as an extension of the Haines Chamber of Commerce, including keeping downtown looking trim and well-maintained. The…
Shelley, 27, was born in China and moved with her family to the United States. She was working at Saturday’s Farmer’s Market, serving up homemade custards and Pavlovas, which were selling well. As a favor to me when I went to speak with friends, she manned my table soliciting signatures on a petition to save camping at Portage Cove Wayside.…
Why are politics in Haines so divisive? Why so mean? Why do so many disagreements in this town become holy wars between crusaders and infidels, where all tactics are justifiable and only total, crushing defeat of the other side is victory? Why so many recalls? Why so many complaints? Why are so many of us so upset? We live in…
The Haines Restaurant Guild met Friday. There’s no such thing, officially. But there was a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce Friday of young cooks, chefs, restaurant owners and would-be owners. On the whole, they’re an energetic bunch, attempting to make money in a famously perilous line of work in a town not awash in cash during an economic downturn.…
Thousands of years ago, people invented rules and governments as a means of resolving differences that didn’t involve bashing each other with rocks. We’re still at it, making rules so we can live in a world where we needn’t pick up a rock — or be bashed by one. The most ambitious form of government is democratic: That is, agreeing…
Bobby Milnes, who’s in charge of snowplows on Canada’s side of the Haines Highway, says it’s snow and wind – not budget issues – that have caused this winter’s road closures. For weeks at a time since December, plow drivers have abandoned efforts to keep open two lanes through Chilkat Pass, instead settling on pilot cars and scheduled convoys to…
The kooks are now talking about civil war. Even the kooks at the coffee shop next to our city hall. War is coming in July, they say, because they read that on the Internet, the world’s largest bathroom stall, an endless wall of shadowy claims, allegations and innuendo to which the feeble-minded have no immunity. We had home-grown kooks stopping…