Dr. King’s day is coming up. In years past, I would post quotes of Dr. King, but I’m no longer interested in his legacy delivered in bite-sized pieces. As one of the great orators of ...

The Split Rock Lighthouse was built in 1910, in response to a 1905 storm that sank or damaged 29 ships on Lake Superior. the lens is a marvel of engineering. A third-order Fresnel, the complexity ...

Home again. Finally.

This last month, I learned that you can’t go home again because home is not a place you can go to. Home is something you build with your loved ones. It’s a peace of mind, ...

No name?

Alaska is full of artifacts from our recent past, but few are so starkly absurd as the official name of No Name Creek. Of course, the creek has a name, has had one for a ...

Easter

The Lord has Risen! Every Easter reveals something new to me about my faith. This year, my thoughts keep going to Judas Iscariot. The role of Judas has always caused me some trouble. He had ...

Real history

I learned American History from a textbook, but I learned what really happened by word of mouth: At the Interpretive Center at Totem Park, I learned about the fights between the Russians and Tlingit, but ...

Elizabeth Peratovich

On this day, Alaska celebrates the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, passed before Statehood. I’m proud of this act and of the civil rights and protections enshrined in our Constitution more than ten years later. Lest ...

Ellen Sutphin

Every year when we close out our fair, we do so knowing that we will not see someone at our next opening. I did not imagine that person would be Ellen.

New Year’s Eve, 2020

2020 was a rough year, but one that can give us hope for the years to come. We saw greater civic engagement and, amongst all the cynicism, a real feeling that government CAN be better in the new year, and in all that follow.

Christmas Eve, 2020.

The decorations went up early, but the preparations took longer. Were I not looking at a calendar, I would not know tomorrow was Christmas. It’s sneaking up on me for the first time in my ...

First Christmas

COVID-19 has made Stan Rogers’s ‘First Christmas’ a song for us all. As a part of my own meditation on not making it home this year, I’ve written a verse: She’s always thinking of how ...

Thanksgiving Telephone

Today I am thankful for our telecommunications network. Growing up, it would take 3 or 4 tries to get a circuit off the island for a call to loved ones who expected a call on ...

Hospice in the time of COVID

COVID has taken a second family elder.  Two otherwise unrelated cases spread across different states, but they have given me an understanding of how the virus has changed the meaning of hospice.  God willing, you’ll ...

Distancing Social Media

There was always that guy in class with whom you’d never agree. Each brought their experiences (and sources) to the class texts. Each came up with different interpretations as to what the texts meant. Then, ...

Jeff Davis street

While there is a national debate on monuments and statues, it’s worth talking about more than just the Confederates. Sitka has a street named for Jeff Davis (the Union one, not the Confederate President) Davis ...

The First Easter

As Christians, we tend to celebrate Easter like it was Palm Sunday. We gather and say “he has risen” with the same enthusiasm the Palm Sunday crowds cheered “hosanna, ” not knowing what was to ...

The Message of Colonialism

In one of the seminal works on media analysis, Marshall McLuhan wrote that “the medium is the message.” The idea is that the medium has a symbiotic relationship with the message itself. TV gravitates to ...

How does it feel…

Many people have asked me in the last few weeks how it feels to be a papa. I generally hedge, I deflect the question saying it’s too soon to tell or that it’s not really ...

The Things we Build

To all of you who are a part of the Three Barons Fair: I think it’s sometimes easy for us to focus on just the part of the fair we participate in directly. We can ...

April Fools

The following is an old piece of writing long thought lost. April first is a time of jest, when people test their wits and compare their pranks to decide which comes out best. The competition ...

Another Shutdown

I’m reading a lot of discussion about who “won” and who “lost” the government shutdown. Spoiler alert, we all lost. The arguments for both sides are, of course, compelling. The reality is that the House ...

Pantopol

I was flipping through some of my pictures when this one surfaced. It’s the sculpture Pantopol, by Ted Jonsson, at SeaTac international airport. I’ve always liked this sculpture. It’s one that appears to change from ...

Dr. King

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an amazing leader. Facing down institutional violence, he was able to talk about the long arc of history bending towards justice. He could see further ahead than the rest ...

Hoshino and Joseph

I love this pole. It is a master of one art form memorializing a master of another. The figure at the base of the pole is the wildlife photographer Michio Hoshino. Even if you don’t ...

Market genorosity

Today’s lesson in unintended consequences: King Mansa Musa of Mali was the wealthiest person the world has ever seen. Mali was a center of trade with abundant salt and gold, and being south of the ...

Fatima al-Fihri

Today, in “women I wish we knew more about,” Fatima al-Fihri. Fatima bint Muhammad Al-Fihriya Al-Qurashiya was probably born around 810 AD in Kairouan, modern-day Tunisia. Her father was a wealthy merchant who ended up ...

The Politics of Waiting

Politicians and pundits really like Christmas, but then everyone likes a baby shower. You can show off your Christian bona fides in a nice safe manner, adoring the helpless baby before he has a chance ...

Death Penalty

This week, we have a stark example of one of the reasons I strongly oppose the death penalty. Ledell Lee’s trial was overseen by a judge who was having an affair with the assistant prosecutor. ...

Radicalization

This week, a man walked into a school where his estranged wife worked.  He shot her, and two of her students, in front of a room full of children.  I have yet to see anyone ...

Coffee Forthright!

What happens when you are having blood-work done in the morning which requires fasting?  Well, if you are me you apparently dismember Sondheim. To the tune of Comedy Tonight… Bring Coffee Forthright! Something inviting, something ...