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In our last article, we talked about having an emergency plan for your pets in case of natural disasters. The current COVID-19 public health crisis is a reminder that we need pet care plans not just for disasters but in case we become ill and are unable to care for our pets ourselves or need to be hospitalized. Anchorage Animal Care & Control (AACC) had a dog brought to the shelter when both his parents were hospitalized due to COVID-19. Their daughter later stated that her parents delayed...
"Look! Look! Look!" I excitedly exclaimed to my almost 16-year old son as I pointed to the field on our left. We were driving past one of the many grain fields in the Matanuska Valley where we live. I would drop him off for his last day of school in a few minutes. He looked up from reading the all-important sports page of the newspaper. "What? Birds? I don't care about birds," he said with disgust. He went on with his reading, ignoring the four sandhill cranes foraging in the field. I wonder if...
The establishment of airplane competition didn't stop Chester Noongwook of St. Lawrence Island from continuing his dog sled mail service run until 1963. His was the last mail delivery of its kind in the country. Wien Airlines established the first commercial airplane base on St. Lawrence Island at Gambell and built a landing strip at Savoonga. The company took over the mail-carrying duties for the U.S. Post Office. But Noongwook was retrained on a supplemental basis whenever the planes couldn't...
While most of us will be remembering mothers on May 10 this year, entertainers who worked as child actors in television sitcoms may also have special memories of their 'TV mom.' For Paul Petersen, that was Oscar winner Donna Reed, matriarch from "The Donna Reed Show." In 2018 for the anniversary of the show's first broadcast, Petersen (and coauthor Deborah Herman) released "The Donna Reed Show: A Pictorial Memoir" (see www.micropublishingmedia.com ). "It's kind of an archival look back at an...
This is the second time in less than two years I have written this column in the wake of a major traumatic event. A few days after the 2018 earthquake, I used that event to remind people that incidents like that should shake them out of their complacency and cause them to get their affairs in order. At the time I wondered whether, when the Senior Voice came out a month later, people would have largely forgotten the event (as it turned out, they had not). This time, a few weeks into the...
Q. What is an effective way to keep my laptop running like new? A. There is a powerful technique that can work miracles, but it also requires great care — reinstall the operating system. This is not the best option for everyone, but done properly it can keep your computing life nearly trouble-free. System resets are known by different names, the most common are “Reset this PC” (Windows), “Reinstall MacOS” (Macintosh), and “Powerwash” (ChromeOS). Unless you have experience backing up and restoring data, a reset is best left to the professionals....
By now, every home in the United States should have received an invitation to participate in the 2020 Census, our once-in-a-decade opportunity to ensure that our communities are counted. Census results help determine how billions of dollars in federal funding flow into states and communities each year, and the results determine how many seats in Congress each state gets. To ensure that diverse elders, their families, and their caregivers are given the community support and representation that they deserve, the Diverse Elders Coalition is...
Where were you when the pandemic came to Alaska? Future generations will demand an answer from each of us. Did we change our habits to protect the vulnerable? Did we make sure our elderly neighbors had everything they needed? Long after the virus disappears from the public consciousness, these are the questions we’ll be left to grapple with. For so many, we look to government to provide services during a crisis. We forget, as Franklin Roosevelt once said, that “government is ourselves.” It’s understandable. Few have experienced an event o...
Thousands of Anchorage area seniors, youngsters and others need help from voters in this spring’s municipal election. Voting begins after ballots go in the mail on March 17 and ends on April 7 when the polls close. I ask voters in the Municipality of Anchorage to mark their ballots YES, for Proposition 7. At stake in Proposition 7 is $5,375,000 in much-needed funding for projects at the Anchorage Senior Activity Center, the Chugiak-Eagle River Senior Center, Loussac and Mountain View Libraries, and various municipal facilities, including W...
Despite a genuine consensus that something must be done, Congressional efforts to rein in drug prices remain stalled and more than likely dead until after the November elections. Even with rhetoric rising on how important controlling drug prices is and added pressure due to the coronavirus (COVID-19), nothing is likely to get done as lawmakers are split on fundamental issues of how to solve the problem. Even President Donald Trump’s support for bipartisan Senate drug-pricing legislation doesn’t appear to be motivating Senate Majority Lea...
Protecting yourself from COVID-19 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning that the new novel corona virus will be spreading around the country and everyone in Alaska should be as prepared as possible. Anyone who is older than 65 and anyone who is being treated for cancer need to take special precautions. The disease caused by the new coronavirus is called COVID-19. The most common symptoms include fever, cough and breathing difficulties. Although symptoms are very similar to th...
I welcome the sight of springtime sunlight streaming through the south facing windows of my home, but along with that comes noticing dirt on the window glass and a thicker than usual layer of Matanuska Glacier silt on the window sills. Although I no longer live in a log home, this reminds me of the following story I wrote back in 2004. "What do you mean 'washing logs'?" asked the lady at the other end of the phone. I had just mentioned I needed to get back to my project of washing logs. Upon...
Movies about Alaska, mostly based on books by Jack London and Rex Beach, thrilled audiences during the early 1900s. But all motion pictures were filmed outside of Alaska. So when a group of Oregon promoters planning a travelogue and feature film about the territory toured Alaska's towns in 1922, several Anchorage residents decided to go into the filmmaking business themselves. They formed the Alaska Motion Picture Corp. and elected Austin E. "Cap" Lathrop, who owned theaters in Anchorage,...
France Nuyen remains astonished not only by her successful Hollywood career, but by her very survival. Turning 80 last year, Nuyen is still beloved by Star Trek fans for her role of Elaan, the obnoxious princess Captain Kirk attempts to tame in the third season episode "Elaan of Troyius." But her journey to the 60s classic sci-fi series and Hollywood almost never happened. Born in France, she was abandoned by her father and still remembers the harrowing days growing up in her occupied homeland....
I’m keeping a list of the most frustrating myths I run into. First on the list, without a doubt, is the belief that a will avoids probate (it doesn’t). A close second is the myth that a Miller Trust helps you to get qualified for Medicaid if you have too many assets to qualify. That, too, is completely wrong. People find the concept of a Miller Trust confusing because every other kind of trust you will ever run into involves holding assets. You set up the trust, you put the assets into the tru...
Q. I was tempted by an app on the Microsoft App Store but stopped when I saw the permission list: “Access all your files, peripheral devices, apps, programs, and registry.” Do I have to let them breach my security? A. Any sort of restriction on applications is a new development. Since the early days of personal computing, every app had access to everything on the device. Computing devices now record more sensitive personal information than ever before. This new reality imposes fresh challenges for device manufacturers and app developers ali...
American Indians and Alaska Natives are the ethnic group with the highest undercount of any defined by the Census Bureau. Approximately 4.9 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives were undercounted by the 2010 Census. The reasons for this undercount are varied, but one key reason is that 26 percent of American Indians live in hard-to-count census tracts. More than 80 percent of reservation lands are ranked among the country’s hardest-to-count areas. The U.S. Census Bureau is working with organizations like the National Indian Council o...
Wildfire. Earthquake. Winter storm. Windstorm. Any of these events can, and have, happened in Alaska. And any of them can result in you and your pet having to either shelter-in-place or evacuate. Are you and your pet prepared for either of these scenarios? Being prepared starts with thinking ahead: Ask neighbors to help with your animals if you're away from home and can't get back to your pets. Assign one person in the family who is responsible for making sure your pets are evacuated with you....
My mother's handwriting jumped out at me as I pulled out the contents of a 1960s-era postmarked envelope. What a wonderful surprise, I thought, as I read her letter and set it aside. I was half an hour into sorting through a large box full of my Aunt Clara's letters about a year ago. The box contained hundreds of letters, which covered the years 1954 through 2008. My mother was less than three years older than her sister, Clara, and they had a very close relationship. Perhaps partly because...
By the early 1950s, the tent city at the mouth of Ship Creek had turned into a bustling, modern city. Clifford Cernick wrote that Anchorage was much like Baghdad in an article that appeared in the Seattle Times on March 4, 1951 – a time when Baghdad was a bustling city, a jewel in the desert. "A grizzled prospector, back in Anchorage after three years in the Alaskan wilderness, noted the towering framework of a new apartment building, the paved streets, the bustling downtown traffic and g...
When Universal Pictures assembled the cast of the popular TV series "The Munsters" for the big screen adaption in the 1966 film "Munster, Go Home!" another actress replaced Pat Priest as Marilyn Munster. "I was devastated not to be in the film," said Priest from her home near Boise, Idaho. "We were on the set filming the end of the season and the producers sent one of their guys down to tell me. I was 29 and my contract was up for renewal, so I think they wanted a younger actress and didn't...
President Donald Trump recently has been making a striking claim – insisting he has ensured that people with preexisting medical conditions continue to have health insurance coverage. In tweets, at campaign rallies and even at his recent State of the Union speech, Trump says: "I was the person who saved pre-existing conditions in your healthcare." He wasn't. This comes at the very same time that his own Justice Department pushes to eliminate the Affordable Care Act (ACA) altogether, including pre-existing conditions for millions of A...
IPop quiz: What is the most powerful estate planning tool? Most people are thinking: “That would be a will, right”? And indeed, the good old Last Will and Testament is important, but it has its limitations. The biggest one is, the will only applies to assets that have to go through probate. Since many assets don’t go through probate, the will doesn’t apply to them. In fact, in a great number of cases, the will is never even used. Others might be thinking: “A living trust is more powerful...
Q. I see that Windows 7 is no longer supported by Microsoft. Do I have to upgrade right away? A. If you found a 10-year old can of beans in your pantry, would you eat it? How about an ancient jar of mayonnaise? Just like old food hidden away in the back of a cupboard, there is no single magic date when a long-lived tech device is unsafe. So much depends on context. A PC that is not connected to the Internet is reasonably safe for years. But the Internet is a dynamic environment, and every connected device is continuously subject to attacks....
Congressional lawmakers find themselves caught between the unlikely and the impossible as they try and work through complicated issues like drug price controls. With the sharp partisan divide, the ongoing impeachment of President Trump, the upcoming presidential campaign and their own re-election fights on everyone's minds, difficult choices with disappointing results are the most likely scenario for prescription drug and most other major health care legislation affecting seniors – just like i...
