Senior Voice -

"Here is something you might like to take a look at," Dad commented back in spring 2005 as he brought me a worn manila colored bundle tied with string. Dad had been puttering around looking for...

Spring weather makes me think of summer's influx of visitors to our wonderful state and I am reminded of our years living in Slana running a bed and breakfast in our home. My husband Gary and I...

For various reasons, I had not cleaned out my email inbox for almost a year. So, last October I spent a whole weekend purging and filing. Not surprisingly, the majority of emails were from my two...

The afternoon of Dec. 12, 2022, the phone rang and it was Michael, my snowplow driver. "Lady (he always calls me 'lady'), I've been thinking, and I just don't know what to do with you." He said he...

During my recent bout with COVID-19, books helped keep my sanity. I enjoyed reading during the long weeks of recovery, when I had little energy to do much else. I have loved books for as long as I...

Upon feeling a familiar "swirling" motion that Sunday afternoon of Nov. 3, 2002, I left the kitchen and walked to the living room of our Slana home. I'm always a little jumpy during earthquakes,...

The third grade students looked at me like they did the other two docents – old ladies who were telling them what life was like back in the good old days of 1935. The way I talked made one student...

Author's note: Life is a journey and circumstances change, as they always do. It was with bittersweet thoughts that I recently recalled this story from 10 years ago while tending a brush pile fire wit...

"I think I opened the wrong door and went into the 'men's'", her friend said to my sister, Shirley, after returning to their car, which was parked in the driveway of my house. "The one I went into...

Living at our place on Chena Hot Springs Road out of Fairbanks the spring of 1975, my husband Gary and I wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible. We had five acres, but no electric power. Besides...

My sister, Jeanette, who lives in Soldotna, made arrangements for the four of us siblings to go on a farm tour, though Margaret Adsit, original owner of Alaska Farm Tours. As the date got closer, it...

My first bike ride of the season was on April 1 this year, two weeks earlier than spring 2021. That first ride is always thrilling after months of winter snowshoe lap exercise. The sides of the...

I became alarmed when what I thought could become treasured gifts to my grandchildren might turn into indecipherable codes by the time they received them. Back in 2013, it was called to my attention t...

Editor's note: Al Clayton, who died in 2008, wrote this story about a cold misadventure. It's been edited and submitted by his daughter and Senior Voice Correspondent Maraley McMichael. I made a...

There are many Alaskan wintertime sports. I always preferred cross-country skiing over downhill, but my son, Patrick, is the other way around. The Hatcher Pass Mountains in the Matanuska Valley are a...

"Whoa!" Grandpa McMichael exclaimed as my husband, Gary, drove down the boat launch at Finger Lake Campground near Palmer, right out onto the lake ice. We were only 30 feet offshore when Grandpa...

One winter while living in Slana, a couple months after our devastating 2002 Denali Fault earthquake, I took a two month leave of absence from my school aide job, and my husband, Gary, and I drove...

One November many years ago my son taught me something about how the streams of love and loss flow through our family. It was the day our dog died, an eight-and-a-half-year-old Springer spaniel named...

Late one evening in early October 2005, I stood at the top of the stairs in my home in Slana, unsure of what to do. Having just finished working on one of my quilts, I had switched off the lamp...

The garage sale signs were posted on each side of the driveway, so I knew we were expected and welcome, but I still had mixed feelings. An older gentleman in our community of Slana back in the summer...

Since 2014, I've enjoyed working each Wednesday and Thursday morning in the Flower Department in the Barn at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. Wednesdays I fill the "vase" bottles with water and help...

I don't recall one of my first fishing experiences, but according to a family photo, grayling were caught in a little creek near Twin Lakes, about mile 28 of the Nabesna Road in the summer of 1958....

January 15, 1963: Dear Mrs. Ridener. It is cold up there. I do not want too go. But I'll have to. I love you Mrs. Ridener. I love the collass too. Your frend Maraley While going through boxes of...

One of the best music concerts I ever attended took place right here in downtown Palmer at Vagabond Blues, back in May of 2017. From Scotland, Dougie MacLean sang and played his guitar. He said he'd...

"So, Mom, what do you want to be called when you become a grandma?" my daughter, Erin, asked in the weeks after we learned she was expecting our first grandchild. This question set off much...