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…
One of our town’s most sublime experiences is a meal in the Hotel Halsingland dining room, followed by a drink in the bar perhaps and a walk around the Fort Seward Parade Grounds on a warm summer evening. For a short spell, a person can escape the grit, callouses and heartbreak that come with living year-round in a small town…
A mystery of consumer economics is that a new handle for a garden shovel in Haines costs $23, more than twice the $10 cost of a new shovel. Admittedly, a $10 shovel doesn’t come with a lifetime guarantee. Its blade is stamped out of cheap sheet metal, not forged from quality steel. Its bulky handle likely hides a core of…
What is it when tears well up and leak from us during moments of great emotion? And why are we so uncomfortable with this natural, biological function? I recently had cause to cry a lot, sometimes in public, and I was surprised by the reaction of those around me. An adult crying evokes a response in strangers that can be…
Nearly 40 years ago I stood in a factory parking lot in South Milwaukee, listening to presidential candidate Ronald Reagan address a crowd. Religious radicals in Iran held 52 Americans hostage, and the nation was frustrated and angry thanks in part to a TV show titled: “The Hostage Crisis,” which covered the story daily, even when there was no…
Family tragedies drew me back to Media, Pa., my hometown, for two months. My time out was an education in areas ranging from depression, suicide, and grieving to hospital care, probate and freeway driving. Little of it was fun and most of it was like flossing, a necessary bother. A sizable part of my time was spent navigating family politics,…
Editor’s note: To date, this website has been solely dedicated to my own writing and thinking. But if this medium – the Internet – is good for anything, it must be about supporting free expression and protecting dissenting views. The following opinion piece was written by Libby Bakalar, an elections attorney for the State of Alaska who on her own…
Sorting through my father’s personal affects following his death, I came across a small bible and inside, a lock of black hair, tied with a ribbon. The bible once belonged to my grandmother, but there were no clues to the origin of the lock. Was it hers? Had she sent it off with my grandfather, inside the bible, as he…
Life imitates art, they say. Take the Jan. 22 story in the Anchorage Daily News headlined, “Handgun Fired Accidentally in Coffee Shop Injures Woman.” The story said a group of friends met at a Kaladi Brothers coffee shop in Soldotna Jan. 20 and one of them, a 76-year-old man, pulled out a 9-millimeter pistol he’d brought inside, for reasons the…