Write what you know

I read this last night in John Grisham's "Sycamore Row: "He was working in a bar in Juneau, Alaska, in a seedy section of town where sailors and deckhands and roustabouts gathered to drink and shoot dice and blow off steam. A couple of ferocious bouncers kept the peace, but it was always fragile."
     Now, I have only been to Juneau maybe four times, but in those times I don't recall ever seeing a "seedy section." However three of those four times I approached from seaside and after weeks at sea, the sleaziest bar on earth could look like heaven if the beer was cold and the women were hot.
     Still I don't believe there is a seedy part of Juneau, unless as some might suggest it's the places where legislators hang out during sessions.
     More I think Mr. Grisham should have at least done a little research or at best spent a day or two there.  The third choice might have been Ketchikan when the Rock was rocking and Creek Street was in full bloom.
     Except for that, so far I am enjoying the book tremendously.

A comment from Facebook:

Sharon Wright I lived in Juneau in 1971 and lived in the "seedy" area of South Franklin Street with Phil Haney in an apartment in a run down building. We were right above the Top Hat Bar, one of those hallway bars with a long bar the length of the hall with single tables for 2 against the other wall. Yes, there were rough characters doing shots in that bar. Never saw any sailors or deckhands there. Just old men. I'm not going to get into it now, but one night going home, a couple of scraggly ugly drunk native men tried to drag me away from Phil & he had to get into it with them. He made them run up one of the hillside staircases. So, yes, Juneau actually had a "seedy" stretch of blocks. But the seediest area IMHO was up at Baranof Hotel where the legislators gathered to drink & make deals.

I feel most fortunate

I realized a milestone the other night. I have reached the extent of my mid-life crisis. It came about this way. I was watching an episode of the old TV show Northern Exposure. Yes, that's right, I have the whole series on DVD and am slowly working through it. I liked it when it first came out and I like it now despite the "Alaska errors" and the outlandish supposedly Alaska plots. As a writer of fiction I can see many of the adventures in "Exposure" happening here with just a slight push from a writer's imagination.
In this episode Holling Vencoeur, owner of the Brick bar, learned of an uncle's death at the age of 110. Holling at 63 went into a mid-life crisis believing his life was half over given the longevity of the his male relatives.
How old was I when I thought my life was half over? Right, it was around 36 when I started looking at the life I was living and the life I wanted to be living.Thus began my adventure into the woods, onto the big ocean and through six books.
Holling dealt with his by rounding up every potato in Cicily and heading out to his still which had been owned by his father and his father before him. He began distilling vodka and if we are to believe this, it seemed like he drank most of what he made.
I went about it a different way. I knew I was going to build a cabin in the woods at some point. So I made a list of the tools I would need and every time I took home a paycheck I bought something off that list.
So between me and Holling, in my mind our mid-life crises were resolved. With that resolution, my mind jumped to the present, sitting here in the deep woods and contemplating life and then the realization, "holy crap," I am twice that old now. I've outlived my mid-life crisis, lived two halves of an average life and here I am. What am I supposed to do now?
For one thing, with only two days to go it looks like I will survive 2016. If anybody's been paying attention that's been no small feat at my age. So many great musicians died this year you would think someone was killing them off. Writers, actors, politicians, so many people we loved and then Princess Leia … and her mother.
The world seems emptier without them. And unfortunately it's not over. Most of the rock musicians I grew up with are in their 70s now so bracing for continued announcements.
So what is my good fortune? I lived through this horrible year. I am still standing or sitting anyway but at times now I feel like Slim Pickens riding that nuke earthward shouting Yahoo all to the tune of "I'll see you again, don't know where, don't know when."
And there is this: Keith Richards reportedly is still alive. So maybe it's all right to look forward to another ride around the sun with some measure of optimism based on having.survived the past year.

An addendum: Until I read the comment below, I hadn't considered the glass half-full/half-empty paradigm. I suppose as the years pass the glass grows larger and the volume of the halves changes as does the total for the whole glass. It's almost a catch 22, as you get closer to a full glass, the glass increases in size making it impossible ever to fill it. I guess we keep striving, despite the futility of it and that's all right particularly for anyone with a creative nature. The day you accept anything you've done you're finished anyway. There is a quote credited to the great impressionist Renoir on his death bed. At 94 when asked what he thought of his body of work, he said, "I begin to show promise." In other words his glass never filled to the brim, at least not to his satisfactison, despite his best efforts. And, look what he accomplished. What hope is there for the rest of us? Perhaps the answer lies in the very real threat at the end of the comment which should give us more reason than ever to strive on.

You couldn't live with yourself if you didn't at least try

A friend sent that to me in a facebook message today. It's a conclusion I had come to since the election.

I had reached a point in life where I felt I have been fighting something or other forever and where I am tired. It was like in Fellini's movie, "The Clowns." His camera crews traveled around Europe contacting and interviewing all the famous clowns from European circuses. As an aside if you watched carefully you would see the crews pull off some of the great clown tricks. There is a scene where they pull up to an address in a small car and before you realize it, 20 people have come out of the car carrying all manner of movie-making equipment. But the point of telling this is the last scene
in the movie where Fellini staged a grand circus parade under the big top. But as the elephants and the acrobats march around the tent, we notice three of the clowns sitting on the ring itself. Asked why they are not in the parade one of them says, "not any more, I am just too tired."

I could take that as a reason not to fight or like Chief Joseph of the Nez Perse said after defeating the U.S. Cavalry and then trying to lead his people into Canada, "I will fight no more forever."

In the Fifties, believe it or not, we objected to complacency, not a big fight, but still. In the Sixties came the Vietnam War and civil rights, and for a bit more spice, women's liberation. After that came the whole environmental movement. By the Eighties  I was driving a boat in Alaska waters and seemed to be far from the battles. About then SeaWorld came to Alaska to capture our whales and then Exxon spilled oil all over our ocean and shores. Those took care of the Eighties, Nineties and 00s.

After that I put in a sitnt at a newspaper and that's a place you are constantly exposed to the world's battles, all of them, on a daily basis. Choose your medicine. It never goes away.

Some time after that I thought I could enjoy retirement as I felt I had reached a point where I could say I did what I could and now when I was tired and would fight no more forever.

Then came the 2016 election. I was one of those naive persons who could not envision Trump winnning. I might as well have been punched in the stomach when he did. And even since, every time I think of it I react physically. On top of that there are those people who now have a majority in both houses of Congress who want to cut Social Security and Medicare. I depend on both of these and would be pretty much reduced to poverty if they succeed. I am outraged. I have been paying into Social Security for more than 50 years and now they want to take it away from me because they hate  Franklin Roosevelt.

I stewed over it for some time until I realized that's not going to help. Also I can't just write about it. If I am not going to sit by passively and let it happen to me I have to do something. But what? A blog post doesn't do much, after all most of the people who read my blog agree with me. So, I made a start. I sent a serious email to all three of Alaska's representatives (all in-line Republicans) in which I pointed out that 83,000 Alaskans receive Social Security benefits, most of them retired people. That was a start.

The missing senator wrote back first. What I got was a condescending (it might as well have started out "Dear Stupid) note explaining what the GOP says is wrong with Social Security. Our other senator said she was examining the issue. I never heard back from our only U.S. Representative, but then he says he only represents those who voted for him.

So, that was a start. Obviously more needs doing and fast. At the moment I am in the deep woods, a good place to devise a plan. Unfortunately I am stranded by a broken-down, brand-new snowmachine so I have a lot to contemplate, but I am thinking through what I can do in the fight to keep the benefits we've earned. I guess I will fight at least once more forever. So thanks, Shelley, for the kick in the pants. I just hope it doesn't kill me.

A COUPLE OF COMENTS FROM FACEBOOK
10-4. my sentiments exactly. retired. moved back to the woods to live on a very small income but lots of time to do art, meditate, walk in the woods and smell the roses. also thought no way in hell america would elect an utterly incompetent, psychotically narcissistic baboon. but we were wrong and now we have to fight again and again until we die in the trenches. this time the battlefront is so multifacetd it's overwhelming: social security, economic freedom for lower and middle classes, racial
and LGBQT rights, women's rights, environmental survival. .... anon.... there is no moral or just cause this satan-spawn isn't attacking. my experience w Dan Sullivans office to phone calls is the same----yawn. who cares about what you peasants think? and Young, of course , is like Trump---- he feels
he was divinely anointed and overtly hostile to constituent opinion. i will continue to call them, donate $ where i can, and just be the squeaky wheel. anything else that occurs to me is illegal. mostly i plan to just live long enough see these jack-offs in their graves after they have destroyed everything – GRETCHEN SMALL

Gretchen Small that matters except what is inside my soul. like Gandhi. "i will not obey. you can kill
me but then all you have is another dead body. you still will not have my obedience."

Former congressional staffers tell how best to influence members of Congress.

It's so easy anybody can do it

KGB enlisted young Trump in Soviet Cold War operation – sources

Author: Carlos Nodonaldo

Dec. 13, 2016  Inconsequential News Service

       Federal agents this week revealed partial results of an investigation into Donald Trump that has unearthed what they say is proof he was and likely still is an agent of Russia, either as a willing participant or as an unwitting mind-controlled automaton who was awaiting instructions from deep inside the Kremlin

The investigation centered on almost three years in which Trump's whereabouts were unknown.

Investigators say they have confirmed where they believe Trump was during the years he mysteriously dropped out of sight. No record until now had been found about his location or activities during that span, but now documents discovered recently track his path through the two Germanys and into the heart of the Soviet Union in Moscow.

According to insiders, in a report issued Friday,  Trump left the Wharton School in Pennsylvania in the summer of 1968 and in early 1971 reappeared to take over management of his family's businesses. Where he was during that time has long been a subject of speculation.

Authorities now say they have proof Trump left the country and traveled first to Berlin where for a short time he lived in a youth hostel. From there he disappeared, but recently documents discovered in former East German archives, show Trump crossed into East Berlin and was sighted about a month later in Moscow, capital of the former Soviet Union.

From there the trail went cold until he showed up in passport records as entering the U.S. on a flight from Beirut, Lebanon, in January 1971 at least until earlier this year.

It was those two and a half years out of sight that caught the attention of CIA investigators. In May documents supposedly expunged from KGB records but discovered in an abandoned building being demolished indicated a young American had been turned and was undergoing extensive training and mind-control exercises.

The report and several others found with it were signed by an agent named V. Putinchikov, believed to be a young Vladimir Putin who is now president of Russia. Judging by the information in the reports which is still being kept confidential, insiders say there's no doubt the young American was Trump. According to one source the reports document intense mind-control indoctrination. Documents detail actions beginning in late summer 1968 and ending in the fall of 1970.

Our source cited one document in particular that according to her stated that the indoctrination had been successful and the subject was ready to be deployed.

It is believed that during the 1950s and '60s hundreds of soviets lived in the Untied States as ordinary citizens awaiting orders from Moscow officials to perform duties not specified when they were deployed. The famous Manchurian Candidate was one such effort where an American. serviceman captured in Korea was brainwashed and sent back only to be activated by a psychological trigger to assassinate the president.

The sources believe Trump was among those who were sent to the U.S. as sleeper agents.

In January 1971 state department records show Trump flew into the U.S. from Beirut, landing in New York, and joining his family's firm shortly after that. From then until his election as President and his actions against China, there were no indications of whatever mission the Soviets may have prepared him for, but intelligence experts now speculate Trump could have been triggered recently to stimulate friction between the United States and China in order to further Russian economic interests.

Nothing in this story is true. It is pure satire meant only to entertain.

Snippets

We write them and don't quite know what to do with them. They come to mind and leave just as fast and we are left with a slice of time and circumstance without backstory. Here is one that came up today. This one is different though, I have a place for it.

If a cat lady didn't have cats she woould have been Helen. Surrounded by carefully needlepointed biblical verses on the walls and lace doilies under every lamp on every table, the room could not have withstood the clumsy meanderings of even the most agile cat. Sheets carefully fitted and tucked covereed every fabric surface on every piece of furniture in the living room which was watched over intensely by rows of ceramic animals arranged on shelves by species, rabbits over here, cute bears over there and a lone wolf on what had served as a mantle over a long bricked-over fireplace. Each lamp shade had a plastic coverning and the rugs, some plain and some with intricate patterns, showed signs of wear from three vacuumings a day for years.

That's it, a snippet, beginning middle and end in a paragraph, but as I said I have found a  place for this one.

Best year-end roundup of the year so far: 2016 edition

Beginning on a somber note


And then on to the best we were blessed with from news, sports and television writers and announcers this year.

This may not be the best roundup, but it's the first. Starting out with almost anything Donald Trump said, no need to list them all.

Worst analogy of the day so far: "Snow comes out of the sky like bleached flies."

Best photobomb of the year so far.

Best headline of the day so far: "Denver Broncos' Ryan Murphy sent back to Denver after questioning in San Jose, Calif., prostitution sting." Are you kidding me? This guy is a football player … in the SUPER BOWL … and he can't get laid? (2/2/16)

Best headline of the day so far: China may be using sea to hide its submarines. (2/10/16)

My favorite comment on this subject so far: Justice Scalia died after a 30-year battle with social progress. 2/14/16)

Worst lead on a news story so far today: "NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The socially conservative doctor whose inspirational biography and deeply held faith galvanized the red blood of America this past fall officially announced that he is leaving the campaign trail Friday." Have to wonder who this writer is and how long he's been out of eloquent-journalism school. He's writing about Ben Carson for crying out loud.  Yahoo News 3/4

Best headline of the day so far: "Mitch Landrieu demands oil industry restore damage to coast." (6/2)

Best headline of the day so far: Fitness Personality Hospitalized for 'Bizarre Conduct' (6/5)

Best headline of the day so far (from my friend Carrie Ann Nash): Drones Will Drop Vaccine-Covered M&Ms to Save Ferrets (7/14)

Best headline of the day so far: Homicide victims rarely talk to police 8/2 

          

Dueling death notices from wife and girlfriend.

Man’s wife, girlfriend place dueling obituaries in same newspaper 8/5

Best headline of the day so far: One-armed man applauds the kindness of strangers 8/4

Sex pigs halt traffic after laser attack on Pokémon teens

Best headline of the day so far: Church Mutual Insurance won't cover Church's flood damage because it's 'an act of God' 8/2

Favorite headline of the day so far: Latino group begins 'Guac The Vote' initiative to register voters at taco trucks 8/7

Best headline of the day so far: WSJ accuses Hillary Clinton of attending Bill Clinton's birthday party. 9/6

Errant Cannon Fire from Niagara Deflates World’s Largest Rubber Duck 9/8

Man shot dead on Syracuse Street for 2nd time in 2 days 9/13

Best headline of the day so far: Ted Nugent Calls For Native Americans to ‘Go Back Where They Came From 9/15       

    

Best headline of the day so far: Memo warning ministers not to leak memos is leaked

Best tweet of the day so far: (This was in response to someone complaining the Mars rover's tweets were getting boring.)

SarcasticRover ‏@SarcasticRover 18m18 minutes ago

Seriously, after four years on Mars you’re lucky I’m not just tweeting 140 character screams at you all day long. 11/17

Best headline of the day so far: "Apple's new macs come with missing keys" OK, how can you arrive with something that's not there? 10/28

Best tweet of the day so far; love the Bronx Zoo Cobra

Bronx Zoo's Cobra ‏@BronxZoosCobra 2h2 hours ago

Twitter just "happens" to go down on #ReptileAwarenessDay?! Looks like the multinational corporations of Big Mammal are at it again. 10/21

There are a lot of them today but for me, this is the best Trump quote of the day so far: “Every time I said something, she would say something back,” he said. “It was rigged. She kept on bringing up things I said or did,” Trump added. “She is a very nasty person.” 9/27

Best headline of the day so far: "Surfing on a turtle’s tail makes swinging crabs monogamous." 9/23

And from the sports world:

I think they're drinking on the sports copy desk again: "UAA men's basketball dispatches Concordia 93-67 in men's basketball"  Headline on ADN website 2/19

Best sportscaster comment of the day so far: "He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race."  2/21

Best sports comment of the day so far: "Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball." Um, otherwise what are they there for? 2/26

Best headline of the day so far: "NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt. 7/27

Best sports announcer quote of the day: Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium

Best sportscaster quote of the day so far: "It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet." 11/21

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT! 11/19

Best sports announcer quote of the day so far (Jan. 9): "I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

Sportscasters are really at it today. Best comment so far: "It's tough to win on the road when you turn the ball over." Oh, really? Like you can do all right if you turn the ball over playing at home? 10/29

Cliches so imbedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team. 10/23

Best sportscaster quote of the day (seriously, never heard this one before). A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

Best homonym of the day so far: It's all tied. Alabama 34, Kentucky 3. Oh, Tide. 10/1

Best headline of the day so far: "Steve Hooker commentates on his Olympic Pole Vault gold medal." When "comments" just won't do.9/27

Best sports announcer quote of the day so far: This is kind of picking on amateurs, but who could let it pass? Iditarod. "He's certainly capable of the top ten, maybe even higher than that." 11?  3/6

Best sports announcer quote of the day so far: "Atlanta is capable of doing what they're doing." 5/6

Best quote from a sports announcer today so far: "Biyombo, one of seven kids from the Republic of Congo." In the NBA? In America? In his whole country? Oh, his family. 5/15     

      

And again: Best quote from a sports announcer today so far: "Biyombo, one of seven kids from the Republic of Congo." In the NBA? In America? In his whole country? Oh, his family. (5/17)            Said it again (5/23)

Best sports announcer quote of the day so far: "You can't come out and be aggressive but you can't come out and be unaggressive." (5/30)

Waiting for winter in Alaska

A quick, snowless trip down to the river.

A small mountain of new gear and equipment for a an extended stay at the East Pole gathers dust in the living room. A brand new snowmachine, the first in 20 years, chugs juice from a trickle charger for its battery against the day when it can move and an old man grows older by the minute as he anxiously waits for the signs of conditions that would allow him to move.

December 5 the temperature dipped below zero and wavered between negative 15 and negative 7 for the whole night and day, preserving the minimal snow cover in the yard, the same amount of snow that according to friends provides a meager cover on the trail through the deep woods. That temperature range is forecast to prevail at least through the next week without a cloud in the sky that could hold even a promise of snow. For the record a minimum of 20 inches would be best.

Dinner tonight consists of a can of food that was supposed to be consumed in the warm comfort of the cabin at the end of that trail.

A day ago after four inches of snow fell the temptation proved too much and I fired up  that new machine and took a ride around the neighborhood, but the sound of those brand new skis scraping over gravel hidden under that thin protective coat of snow sent a shiver through me every time I heard and felt it and the trip was cut short after only a few minutes. So now the machine has six miles on it according to the odometer. Oh joy.

Two things filtered through the mind today. The first came as I walked across a parking lot at the store, my ears burned by the cold air, my fingers tingling from the same condition, some of it blamed on the slowing circulation of an aging man but also on the lack of exposure to the weather this year. Somehow 10 below at the cabin is tolerable while out here it is not. The thought that developed was about weathering these conditions and it raised the question asking if we are not going to get a decent winter in Alaska any more, why spend the rest of my life suffering in the cold and grumbling about it. Maybe it would be better grumbling about it on a beach in Palau.

And that one kind of evolved into the second one. Given the political atmosphere in the country these days I might be able to do some good if I were to take every one of those goddamned climate-change deniers by the neck and shove their pompous well-fed faces into the bare gravel in my yard. That wouldn't change anything, of course, but think of the personal satisfaction.

This complaint has almost become an annual event. Seems like I have written something like it several times over the past few years. Perhaps it all comes down to choices and maybe a big one is looming. There are options for places to live but there are no promises for anywhere. After all, if you can't count on winter in Alaska, what is there that you can count on?

I am thankful we survived this flight

Until I began traveling around Alaska in small airplanes I was afraid of flying. One event I experienced during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race changed that. A pilot everyone addressed as Crazy Horse flew me over what is called the Farewell Burn, an area of more than 300,000 acres that had been cleared by wildfire.

We spotted a dog team making way across the open snow and Crazy Horse asked if I wanted to make a picture. I said sure and he immediately put the Cessna 172 into a precipitous dive toward the musher. I snapped the picture, dropped the camera and grabbed the hand-hold overhead and held on for dear life. It was in that moment I realized I was clinging for safety to the very thing that was going to kill me and that if we were going to crash there was nothing I could do about it. Over the course of almost two weeks flying along with the race, Crazy Horse and I had several more adventures but from that day forward I had taken a fatalistic attitude toward flying and it never bothered me again. It didn't even bother me (much) during another serious flight along the Seward Peninsula a couple of years later.

At the time I was spending the winter in Nome and had flown to Shishmaref farther north on the coast of the Bering Sea to interview famed dog musher Herbie Nayokpuk. I spent a couple of days with him and his family working on a story about his preparations for the Iditarod. After that I boarded a Munz airplane for the trip back to Nome in clear, calm weather. On the way we landed for a quick exchange in Teller, about halfway. After Teller we flew out south over Port Clarence and then east along the Norton Sound coast. A short time out the weather changed.

We flew through what looked like a dark curtain into what amounted to a whiteout only dark. The pilot was new to the air service on a check ride with a senior Munz pilot and I could often hear the senior pilot talking to the man at the controls, guiding and advising passing on advice gained in years of flying along that coast. When we flew into that cloud, I heard an exchange between the two but only picked out the word "beach."

Our course changed but since there was no landscape to observe the only way you could tell was by the adjustment to the airplane's attitude and altitude. We dropped and headed north until just a vague outline and a few drift logs identified the Seward Peninsula shoreline. These were our guiding landmarks leading us home. As we flew along occasionally the airplane would rise a few feet or drift off to the south and the landmarks disappeared. At one point the senior pilot had to elbow the one at the controls to make him aware he was drifting away from land again.

Except for that driftwood on the ground all around was a blank shroud of gray. The pilots were in touch with someone on the ground and at one point after an obvious conversation with ground control, I heard the senior pilot say out loud, "I don't care what they say, I think it's safer to go on than to go back."

At that point I pulled my tightly packed sleeping bag off the deck and hugged it in front of me. I had been told at one time or other this would cushion me in a crash and perhaps save my life. We pushed on in the gray void following that beach and gradually making our way east for what seemed an eternity, the sense of it being without landmarks I had no idea how fast we were going or whether we were making any progress. Then a couple of buildings appeared followed by a row of utility poles and this I knew. They led the way to a runway at Nome's airport.

Wind buffeted the airplane at that point and I heard the pilots talking about the advisory from the ground that there was six inches of slushy snow on that runway. With the airplane taking gusts from the side and dropping in altitude even more they aimed at the end of the runway. During the descent the runway looked through the windshield like it was rolling from side to side. Finally, the senior pilot, I recall his name was Victor, took the controls. As if magically the airplane steadied as he brought it closer to the runway.

Then in an instant, he set the airplane down, not like from a gradual flight path into a decelerating roll down the runway, but like a helicopter, straight down, bang, ground, stop. I don't think we rolled ten feet. Sheepishly I pushed the sleeping bag off my lap and back onto the deck. As we left the airplane I happened to bump into Victor and we looked into each other's eyes for an instant. I said the word, "nice." That was all that passed between us, but we understood each other at that moment. Then we had to push the airplane through the slush to move it to safety off the runway.

More adventures with Crazy Horse can be found here

A long-time Alaska journalist dies

As posted on facebook by Kitty Delorey Fleischman.


       Many knew Nancy as the editor of the Nome Nugget but I wonder if anyone knew she was a scientific innovator as well. She introduced one of her innovations around Christmas 1980 when a bunch of us gathered at her apartment for a party. She began her demonstration by pouring popcorn kernels into a brown paper bag. She had just gotten one of those new-fangled microwave ovens and wanted to demonstrate its advantages. She placed the bag in the oven and started it up. In time the popping stopped and she pulled it out, a huge smile of accomplishment on her face. That changed to horror a moment later when the bag burst into flames and she had to dump it into her sink and flood it with water. End of demonstration, but not the laughter.

I couldn't have said this better myself

Posted by Brandon Weber on facebook: Brandon Weber

8 hrs ·

This. Absolutely this.

Yet another underprivileged minority begins to emerge

Privilege came up in a conversation with a friend a couple of years ago. The friend did not accept

that I did not recognize being privileged. At the time I had not picked up on the modern concept of privilege. Not too long after that I realized what caused our difference of opinion.

She was speaking to the comparison between white people and minorities in which generally white people enjoy advantages that most minorities do not. My concept at the time, and I realize it now, was narrower and involved privilege among white people and I certainly do not enjoy the same advantages as the wealthy do. In fact it is that lack of privilege that has forced a new minority of which I am probably a charter member or about to become one. But because of our conversation, I now understand the broader view of privilege, the concept that simply because I am white I enjoy a certain level of privilege within a diverse community of minorities.

It goes like this: The recent election was devastating in so many ways but the next morning the sun rose, so there's that. And there's still snow in the forecast. Big fat moon coming up in the sky if we can see it. Cleared up some nagging chores throughout the day and it appeared the Earth was still spinning. So what's to worry about? This isn't the first president I didn't vote for.

Why is it that now we are supposed to unite and support our elected president in an atmosphere of cooperation and patriotism after eight years of our current president facing the worst obstruction of any in history.

The Republicans want us to come together to support the new president. After eight years of Republicans doing just the opposite to one of the finest presidents the country has ever had, that is not going to happen. A racist, misogynistic egotistical uninformed bully has been elected president largely from votes by people who will suffer more under this new administration. And the dangers he presents to the country far outweigh any desire to "just get along."

The idiocy of people voting against their own interests is described no better than in the attached meme. Wave the confederate flag and then tell people they lost the election and to get over it. Right.

On the same day that meme appeared this president-elect told a 60 Minutes interviewer he was going to get rid of Roe v. Wade but not same-sex marriage because that issue has been settled by the Supreme Court. That is the level of ignorance we are going to face for the next four years.

And those same voters who bought the presidential candidate's mantra of cleaning out Washington and taking back the country managed to increase majorities in both houses of Congress, the very people who caused what needs to be changed.

You have to laugh at those people who wanted to kick out the beltway insiders to get a fresh start and then voted for most of the incumbents in Congress, the very people who have caused the problems bothering people. With the presidency and majorities in both the House and Senate and the philosophies they espouse, the very core of our democracy is threatened and the people most likely to suffer most are those who voted for them.

For example, a large voting block of elderly people supposedly voted to maintain those majorities. Talk about voting against your own interests, this new power structure has vowed to cut or eliminate Social Security and Medicare, two programs that benefit the elderly and which many of us might not survive without.

The president-elect says he objects to Social Security on moral grounds. Moral grounds? I have been paying into Social Security since 1958. This was my retirement and I paid for it. As a matter of fact I am still paying for it as even my Social Security payment is subject to taxes and the FICA withholding, plus I pay a premium for Medicare as well. What is moral about taking it away from all the people who have contributed over the years? And in an era of skyrocketing drug prices and other health commodities, what is moral about removing the Medicare safety net?

Cutting or removing those programs will create a whole new minority, a whole new group of people without privilege –  old white guys who depend on Social Security and Medicare.

So, to my mind with this threat over our heads along with so many others, I see no reason to shake hands, no honeymoon period, no "get behind the new president to make things work." It is time to obstruct the obstructionists at every opportunity. A true patriot is obligated to fight to save the country, not shake hands and move on with the folks who would destroy the fabric or our very foundations. I have no intention to be part of "one-united-people." A man who consistently spouts divisive policies is not a uniting factor and in fact is creating new minorities to crush all the time.

Regarding Social Security and other stuff

Synchronized swimming just for the fun of it

That time we built an official 'historic site'

It's somewhere on this map and, no, I am not going to say where.

There are two places where some of the world's greatest adventures are formed: around a barroom
table late in the night and around a campfire way off the pavement somewhere.

This one comes from the latter. It occurred on a remote beach in Alaska's Prince William Sound and led to quite a different result than any of us could have expected.

Sitting around a campfire in front of a teepee my friends used as a headquarters for kayak trips they guided in the sound we hatched the plan to build a sauna for our use over the course of a summer. It came up as a whim but as the line goes in Stan Rogers' song "Mary Ellen Carter" "with every jar that hit the bar" the idea became more of a mission.

A ready supply of lumber in the form of weathered cedar planks lay just across the bay at an abandoned cannery. We all had tools and a quick call on a radio to another friend coming out the next day produced a supply of nails and some hinges and we were on our way. A stove and pipe would have to come out later.

The next day while a couple of friends and I made several trips across the bay in my 19-foot boat hauling lumber, others drew up a design, found a level spot and cleared it in preparation for the construction

Along with the weathered cedar the old cannery produced other treasures: some metal roofing in good enough shape to cover our building and a box of the old-time square nails which we thought would give our steambath some character. Little did we know it might give it too much character.

With half a dozen people working over the course of the next day we had the structure on a solid foundation and built all the way to the roof. The next day we built a fancy door and fashioned a handle from gnarled driftwood. At that point I had to leave to go back to work and it fell to others to complete the structure.

That summer proved so busy I never did get back to see the finished project, but when I came back the following spring a bunch of us went out there and had a fine party on that beach to kick off the summer. After that, the boat work became hectic and it wasn't until August the chance arose to go back.

At the time I was carrying four Bureau of Land Management surveyors who were documenting historic sites chosen by Natives in the area under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. We visited several bays and coves over ten days until one day we pulled into that very bay where we'd built the sauna. As was my custom I asked the surveyor what was in this bay.

He was kind of excited. He said the Natives had claimed a spot in the bay were there was a foundation for an old cabin and a steambath that was still in use. He expected to have a sauna while we were there. I became immediately suspicious. He showed me a photograph and sure enough it was our sauna. I started laughing while the others looked at me curiously until one asked what was so funny.

I looked at them very seriously and said, I built that goddamed historic steambath. Yup, the Natives  had come along and claimed our sauna as their own and indeed one of historic significance. The only thing historic about that building was the imprint of my skinny white ass on a bench inside. But what can you do? If we went too far into the legalities we probably had built an illegal structure to begin with; we had no legitimate claim to it. I don't know what happened to that sauna though a fellow in another port on the opposite side of the sound told me one day he had found a sauna and described the island. A welder, he worked up a fancy stove for it, but then he disappeared too.

Whether it is still there or not I have no idea and most of the people who knew about it either have died or dispersed across the globe. But sometimes I like to think of future tourists tracing the history of Prince William Sound staring into a roped-off area that protects that building which was my contribution to the Native history of the sound.

The sweet music

I spent most of the Eighties living on boats in the summer, running first small charters and eventually moving up to larger tourist boats. I was divorced at the time and my daughter would come in the summers and spend several weeks with me living on the boat and getting a taste of that world. In time she thrived, but at first, at the age of 6 and the first time she had left familiar surroundings for any length of time, she was unsure of herself and it took her some time to adjust. And, of course I needed some adjustment too.

I tried to make her as comfortable as possible but in the first days she had trouble falling asleep on the boat. She could never tell me why and I tried everything I could to help but nothing seemed to work until one night I hit on something we hadn't tried.

The last time I had gone into a town I had brought back a few 8-tracks because that's what kind of player was wired into the boat. One of those albums was Willie Nelson's "Stardust." One of those early nights when she had trouble falling asleep, I put that album on and played it low volume. The next time I looked in on her she was sound asleep. After that every night at bed time it was "play the sweet music, Daddy." And sweet music became the go-to bed time music through most of our years on the boats.

A few years later when she was old enough to be buying her own music she told me "Stardust" was one of the first CDs she bought. As technology changed, I have bought it in the 8-track as I said, but also in a cassette and then a CD.

Attached here are a couple of examples, the title track and "Unchained Melody;" Willie Nelson like you have never heard him before or since. Sweet music, indeed.

Baseball over the years in Valdez, Alaska

University of Alaska Fairbanks 1909 baseball game in Valdez, Alaska. '"Fort Liscum vs. Valdez, June 22, 1909." Photo by Phinney. S. Hunt. From the Mary Whalen Photograph Collection in the University of Alaska Fairbanks Rasmuson Library Alaska & Polar Regions Collection (UAF-1975-84-533).
I think Valdez Little League is still playing on the same field.

That's my son in the second picture playing second base for the Valdez Senior team in 2003.

Sure enough it looks like the games were played on the same field and the photos taken from the same position. A good look at the mountain in the two pictures makes it pretty clear that it is the same mountain. Note the ridgeline coming down from the center of the mountain and angling off to the left toward the bottom. And, in the upper right edge of the mountain, that seems to be the same curve of the slope.

A lot has changed over the years. Mostly that the field was almost in town in 1909, but the earthquake in 1964 took care of that. The field apparently didn't move, but the town did, a few miles to the west where it now stands on more solid ground. All those houses beyond the outfield fence are new since the earthquake.

The election is about more than the personalities

Despite best efforts twice in the past week I've been drawn into political arguments online. In one someone I respected came out on Twitter stating he was proud to be voting for Donald Trump. This guy is intelligent enough to have written a fairly credible book and when I saw that at first thought I had somehow misinterpreted what he was saying. Nope. So I questioned it and offered a couple of reasons to change that vote.Then I discovered the problem. He's out of his element.

His book was about a serious environmental issue so I suggested he look up Trump on environmental issues. In his next tweet he asked any of his followers if they could direct him to any articles on Trump's environmental views.  In other words he didn't have a clue and hadn't really looked into his candidate. And then this happened.

When I questioned him about that he blocked me.  Ha, a first. blocked like I was trying to send him naked pictures or something. You know what? No loss. It is a common result to write a book and immediately feel like you are among the infallible literary elite. You aren't. Everything you do is questionable. Ask any writer who was full of himself after the publication of his first book. Guilty.

The second one was more complicated but at least there was no blockage. A friend whom I have known for almost 40 years wrote a comment about how he views this year's election campaign in general. Mostly we agree, the main point being how dangerous a Trump presidency would be to the republic. I added a comment agreeing with him but questioning his evaluation of Hillary Clinton – the old  distrust factor. My thought on that has always been that any negatives about her are the result of the constant propaganda assault on her and her husband from Republicans. Although no wrongdoing has ever been proven, the barrage has had its effect in at least raising questions in peoples' minds about her qualifications.  My friend disagreed and as far as I was concerned that was the end of it. Then a whole bunch of people agreed with me. To be fair quite a few agreed with him too. Call it a tossup, whether you absolutely agree or disagree, the one thing we did agree on is she is a better choice than Trump by far.

I do not have the qualms he does. I was for her from the beginning though I did go with Bernie Sanders for a while. When she won the nomination, I was all in. I think she is possibly the most qualified person in terms of experience who has ever run for president of the United States.

For people who might be wavering or unhappy about voting for the "lesser of two evils," I have attached a meme that came out nearly a year ago. Besides the personalities, it shows what is really at stake in this election and it makes a compelling statement to vote  for one of the candidates.

Hey Lowe's … R E S P E C T

Donovan and Max at Lowe's in Anchorage.

About a year ago a story made its way around Facebook about a  Lowe's store in Canada that hired an employee who needed a service dog.  That story could have gone a lot of different ways but what Lowe's management did was hire the dog too. They even had his own jacket made with the company logo and colors and the words "service dog" stitched onto it. I thought that was pretty cool, something a Canadian would do.

Well, guess what. We have another pair right here in Alaska. Meet Donovan and his dog Max. They work at the Lowe's at Tikahtnu Center in Anchorage.

They were kind enough to pose for a picture. I didn't want to intrude so much as to ask why Donovan needs a service dog or what he does at Lowe's or any other details about their lives. Cool enough that Lowe's accommodated Max and provided him with his own company jacket.  Enlightened.

Lowe's hires a man and his service dog in Canada.

The shame of Alaska

A lot has been written about alcohol abuse in Alaska, particularly how it affects people in the remote villages. To combat it, some villages vote to go dry, but the liquor keeps flowing no matter what. Reading about studies or surveys or potential solutions, cold, distanced from the situation seldom brings home how evil the effects of alcohol are.

This came up on facebook the other day. It's a statement that puts the tragedy right in your face. I know the people involved and so do a lot of other people, so I am not going to name them. Suffice it to say the man involved was once a hero to Alaskans. They live in a small village off the road system.

Here is the post, his wife's plea to save her husband:

My poor husband is in a cycle of drinking until he passes out....bleary eyed, wakes up, goes to the bathroom then glubbs something from lord knows who n passes out again....for a month or more......WHOEVER THE EVIL PERSON IS SUPPLYING, WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT HAPPENS!!!!!! You will be guilty of murder....that's what is facing you at the pearly gates.....no heaven for you!!!!

People will be mad at me for posting this, but enough is enough.....his 76 year old body can't take it.....if you know who is snickering about doing something behind my back....they are the covered in the mud of the worst kind.....it's on them!!!' Tell them to quit it....NO ONE WILL BE REPAYING LOANS...

Feel the tragic consequences. The story is the same across Alaska, lives, whole families destroyed by alcohol. I don't know how much more you could say about the depth of the tragedy than this woman's plea. I showed the post to a friend who also knows the family and we both admitted it brought us almost to tears, the sadness for a friend and the utter frustration of not knowing how to help, how to end this somehow.