Day 14. Provisions are running low. Down to the last pack of smoked salmon… Still have a large bag of dog food, canned green beans, and Pilot Bread™. Mind is slipping. Days running together… Dreamed about being on a boat… My pencil is almost gone. This may be the last I can write… conserving energy. OK, it’s not that bad, but still. There’s this appalling sight: No, not the layer of Alaska Spring dust in my car. No, not the 154,128 miles on the old beast. The temperature! It’s been two weeks now. Two weeks of May. Two weeks of…

You’d think that a former governor who presided over the most corrupt government in Alaska since statehood would stay home and write his memoirs or something. You’d think a former Governor whose own Chief of Staff served a prison sentence for illegal campaign contributions would thank his lucky stars that Chief of Staff didn’t tell the Feds everything he knew and would keep discretely quiet. You’d think a failed candidate who helped give us Sarah Palin would have the simple decency to maintain an embarrassed silence. You’d think the man who single-handedly killed a national bank and seriously wounded a regional Native corporation would…

Here is everything you need to know about the ongoing effort to honor Alaska as an owner state. The time is now to be active, and take our state back from the undue influence of Outside corporations, and the legislators who do their bidding. Complaining is easy. Fortunately, so is acting in a positive way to take control of our future. Gov. Parnell will sign SB 21 on Tuesday, May 21st at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage between 11:30am and 1pm. Be there with a sign to protest the giveaway! Alaska is an owner state. We deserve a fair share of…

After deciding to take Mother’s Day off, SpringWatch continues. One exciting development last night was rain falling on the metal roof. It was a glorious sound, and although I feared that by morning the temps would have dropped and it would be snowing again, it didn’t happen. But the warming trend seems to be missing our fellow Alaskans to the north. The NewsMiner reported: Fairbanks set a new record low temperature of 22 degrees on Monday at Fairbanks International Airport. That broke the old record of 26 degrees in 1938. A strong cold front moved across northern Alaska Sunday night…

By Sen. Hollis French Two recent news items out of Norway caught my attention. The first happened April 30 when Gov. Parnell went there to discuss tax policy. The second was the announcement on May 6 that Norway had decided to make a change to its oil tax laws. Now, I don’t know whether the governor was responsible for the May 6 tax change. But I like to imagine that the Norwegians listened very carefully to the governor’s reasons for lowering taxes here. Being the sober and meticulous people they are, they ran a complex cost-benefit economic analysis on his…

Well, today was “Critter Day,” no question about it. First, the long-anticipated swallows have returned to Paradise Valley. Capistrano, eat your heart out. No matter how spectacular your swallows are, or in what infinite numbers they possess, or how “miraculous” they are, or how huge of a fan base they have, there is no swallow on this earth that is more appreciated than the dozen that return every year to Mudflats Mission Command. After I heard their trilling song outside, I laid down on the deck, and just watched them for a long time, swooping in huge circles, and a…

Another week, another set of polls concerning the Alaska Senate race. Last week PPP polled Sen. Begich, this week it’s a poll on the Republican primary ticket… and it’s a bit surprising. Sarah Palin wins the Republican Senate nomination. For those outside of Alaska you might be thinking, “duh… of course.” But for those in the state it’s common knowledge that not too many people are a huge fans Palin, who has come to be known as “the quitter” or the “half-term governor.” In fact she’s so disliked here that according to a PPP poll in February she would lose to Hillary…

It is hard to imagine being abducted, away from your family for eleven years, chained, beaten, with no hope for freedom even when your captors know you did nothing to be there … that is the case for eighty six men held at Guantanamo Bay prison facility. Neighbors turned in rivals, bounties were paid, and many times the wrong person was taken simply for wearing a certain brand of wristwatch in the days that followed the invasion of Afghanistan. The United States had no evidence of wrong doing in many cases and has concluded no charges could be filed against…

After hearing the unmistakable strains of running water drifting over the snow from the direction of the creek, I donned my bunny boots, grabbed my camera, and headed down the hill on WaterQuest. The driveway has been making interesting progress. Lake Whatthehell has completely evaporated. And I came across this little snow bridge that just screamed out for some kind of troop of action figures, lined up on a quest, fording the river… But today, I am the action figure, with my trusty sidekick the no-longer-puking noble hound at my side. The little spring that flows into the creek was…

I knew I’d forget one. I made a list of springtime indicators on yesterday’s post, and sure enough, I got a reminder. It’s not quite like robins, or bunnies, or adorable woodland creatures, but it probably involves one or more of them. I am speaking, of course, of the dog finding some half-frozen rotting carcass (aka yummy treat) melting out of the snow pack. A few years ago, she came home with a frozen-solid rabbit spine with two appendages still attached, so it looked like a big fuzzy “Y”. They say that insanity is repeating the same thing over and…