Alcohol, Tobacco, Prescription Pills, and Illegal Drugs

“Addiction runs in our family,” said my mother, “so you need to be careful.” I was young the first time she said this to me and she has said it many times since. Years later, another family member from my father’s side said, “we have addictive personalities. We do not get hooked on drugs and alcohol alone like other maladjusted people, we get addicted to anything and everything that makes us feel high. Food, music, exercise, shopping, fast cars, motorcycles, people — you name it. If it has the power to make you feel good, or pick you up when…

Fatal Conceit

July 28, 2020

Anchorage, Alaska

My hometown is in the midst of a battle with its elected officials. In the past two weeks I have joined my fellow citizens to provide testimony against the city’s decision to spend twenty-two and a half million dollars of pandemic relief money on the purchase of four properties for homelessness services. These properties would include a treatment center, a day engagement center, an overnight shelter, and a transitional housing center. These centers will have a combined annual operating budget of $7 million moving forward. There are an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 homeless people in…

Gun Safety vs. Constitutional Rights

Two teenaged boys opened fire at their high school with semi-automatic weapons on April 20, 1999; they killed thirteen, wounded twenty-one, and then turned the guns on themselves. This is the first I remember hearing of a mass shooting. There were nine in the United States prior to the Columbine High School Massacre, however, with the earliest in 1949, and there have been eighteen since. Thirteen were killed in the first mass shooting in Camden, New Jersey with a semi-automatic pistol and, in total, five hundred and eleven Americans have lost their lives while another eight hundred and twenty-two have…

Environmentalism and National Policy

President Trump made remarks on July 16 regarding his plan to roll back regulations that impede progress in the United States. His proposal will affect the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on January 1, 1970 and has not been updated at all since 1978. Supporters of President Trump’s proposal, titled Legislative Outline for Rebuilding Infrastructure in America, believe that the president has hit the nail on the head regarding our country’s need for a streamlined process to plan and approve federal projects while detractors believe that his changes will enable those…

Competitive Swimwear for EveryBODY

Have you noticed a trend in ladies swimwear? Skin is in, and a lot of it! Booties and boobies everywhere plus plunging necklines, racy cutouts, and shockingly slim coverage through the hips. Our great grandparents would be stunned speechless if they could see what their descendants are wearing to frolic in the surf. Modern swimwear is both a celebration and an objectification of the female body with each swimming costume falling somewhere between those extremes. If the fashion industry’s encouragement to bare it all with daring styles was a phenomenon in beachwear alone then there might be no issue, but…

Coronavirus Challenges

As stressful as it was to walk away from our jobs and hide within the confines of our homes for two months during quarantine, for some it may be even more challenging to return to previous patterns and rhythms because of the expectations placed upon us to keep ourselves and others safe.

It is just as important to return to (new) normal safely and responsibly as it was to hunker down to protect the immunocompromised and therefore vulnerable members of our population, but the regulations and recommendations issued by community leaders are often confusing or contradictory and communication from official…

Americans Are Angry

Violent protests have erupted in thirty major cities across fifteen U.S. states alongside peaceful demonstrations of outrage and anti-racism in many others since George Floyd’s death on Memorial Day in Minneapolis, Minnesota. While activists first took to the streets because of yet another murder of a black person at the hands of police, they stayed and grew louder and ever more aggressive in their march because the source of this outrage is not singular. Racism is but one facet of the rage gripping Americans across the country.

If riots are the language of the unheard then the anger of the…

Demand Social Justice

Have you watched the video of Amy Cooper calling the authorities regarding her interactions with Christian Cooper in Central Park? If you have not yet then you must. In it you will witness a woman who knew exactly what she was doing when she told Christian Cooper that she was calling the authorities to report an African American man attacking her in The Ramble, a wooded area of Central Park. Her face twists with nauseating malice and disturbing glee when she says it and for a moment you get a glimpse of the pure evil at the core of racial…