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 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…
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,…