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…
In Juneau, a 59-year-old man pushed a 54-year-old man through a second-story window, killing him. In Sitka, a drunk school bus driver steered into the opposite lane, smashed into a car and drove up on a sidewalk, with 21 students aboard. In Haines, large, pro-Russia placards were erected on Main Street, saying “Russia De-Nazify Ukraine” and “Disband Nato.” Then they…
“I didn’t expect civilization to collapse quite so quickly.” – popular Facebook meme Quite frankly, neither did I. History tells us no one ever does: Empires and civilizations just kind of bumble along as they slowly degrade into depravity, lawlessness, authoritarianism, vice and barbarity. Eventually, Vandals breach the castle walls and we’re all eating gruel for 1,000 years before…
I was a freak for the Olympic Games from the moment I first saw them. An early memory was dragging a mattress outside and using some boards and nails and mom’s clothesline pole to fashion a high-jump pit in our backyard. Fortunately, I married a fellow fan, a former women’s hockey player who was paid real money to teach cross-country…