We learned to make balloon animals at the Kid’s Stage of the Southeast Alaska State Fair this year, the secret being a small plastic pump to inflate those long balloons that defy most everyone’s blowing capacity. So some knowledge was gained amid the chaos that results from combining sugar-addled youngsters with tempera paint, glitter, and hot glue. Also, my apologies…
It’s no big surprise that garbage rates are going up again. Like utility charges and taxes, the cost of getting rid of stuff never goes down. During a proposed doubling of garbage rates in the mid-1990s, one lifetime resident told the Chilkat Valley News, “Whatever I can’t burn, I’m flushing down the toilet.” And so it goes. Local waste handler…
The summer of 1987 was a heady time in Haines journalism, or it seemed that way to me. I was sole reporter for the Chilkat Valley News when Mike Sica and Barnaby Dow of KHNS covered area news like white on snow. Dow, the Haines reporter, was building a journalism resume impressive enough to get him out of town before…
My high school English teacher wrote recently, discouraged by the state of the nation, as are so many of us. Pizza Joe, our town’s street-corner philosopher, says it’s because we believed the lies we were taught as children. George Washington could not tell a lie. It took until midway through the Trump administration and much hand-wringing by the establishment press…
Under police chief Heath Scott, you will never be safe enough and you will never stop paying more for it. Now the police are into the pot of money that pays for the public library, Chilkat Center Haines Museum and swimming pool for $177,000 and more each year. That’s right. If you can’t get into the pool or museum, it’s…
Judging from the state of the world, it’s fair to say that most people should not have children. Most people make lousy parents. Their children, small or grown, are a wreck. They are selfish and self-serving. They are busy killing themselves, each other and our planet, taking many of Earth’s other creatures with them without batting an eyelash. Children are…
The Haines Borough manager is again pushing to close the pool three months, May 8 to Aug. 1. The Haines Borough School District has given $12,500 to keep the pool open, so the borough would only be funding eight months of pool operation. The pool would be closed nearly four months of the current fiscal year. Ironically, the pool is…
About a month ago, 40 Juneau residents boarded the state ferry and traveled to Skagway for the Buckwheat Ski Classic, a decades-old event that attracts visitors from Haines, Juneau, Whitehorse and other towns. For two days, those 40 Juneau folks ate at local restaurants, slept in Skagway lodges, drank in the town’s watering holes and likely deposited about $15,000 into…
When the machine-gun was invented, people said it meant the end of war because such an efficient killing machine would be inhumane to use, even on soldiers. When the airplane was invented, people said it meant an end to war because aerial bombing would kill too many innocent civilians. When the atom bomb was invented, people said it meant the…
(PHONE CALL INTERCEPT, SANTORINI, Greece) – “Vlad, Vlad, pick up. I’m schvitzing over here. The cops changed the locks on the yacht and they took my rugby team and Olga – remember her, the gymnast with the great caboose – she left me for some punk flanker who plays for Manchester.” “Sorry, Boris, I’m kind of tied up with Kiev…