1957: Death Penalty Defeated in AK

The other day, I got curious about press coverage regarding the Alaska Territory’s decision to abolish the death penalty back in 1957. Newspaper indexing for that period is spotty, but thankfully the Alaska State Library hosts a decent index to Fairbanks newspaper headlines from 1900 – 1974. The index can be found at http://www.eed.state.ak.us/lam/newspapers.cfm.
Poking around [...]

Moon and Venus

Moon and Venus

Originally uploaded by nikkorsnapper

One more photo blog entry for today. This is one isn’t mine. It was taken by Nikkorsnapper on February 27, 2009 and he gave it a Creative Commons license. That’s why I can post it here.
I’m posting it here because this represents what I saw coming home last night. It [...]

Neighbors Cats

Neighbors Cats

Originally uploaded by AlaskanLibrarian

I was out on the balcony taking landscape photos when I noticed my neighbor’s cats were out for some air. Aren’t they cute?
Yes, this is a light posting day. Can’t be dead serious all of the time!

Captured Snowflakes

Captured Snowflakes

Originally uploaded by AlaskanLibrarian

This is a picture of my front balcony. Apparently the glass was so cold, some snowflakes stuck to it. I took this picture a few weeks ago.

For Lent: Common Ground w/Republicans

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent for Catholic Christians such as myself. While the traditional practice for Lent is giving stuff up, we are also encouraged to add practices as we think God may be calling us to take up.
I’ve decided one of my practices will be to blog once a week [...]

State of the Union: Proud to be American

I have just finished reading President Obama’s first State of the Union Address. I like reading the SOTU’s instead of watching them for two reasons — 1) The State of the Union started life as a letter sent to Congress and 2) Reading the words allows me to consider the content without as much [...]

Lights, Camera, Alaska!

Did you know that most films set in Alaska are actually filmed elsewhere? The State of Alaska noticed that too and as a result revived the Alaska Film Program. At the Alaska Film Program website at http://www.commerce.state.ak.us/oed/film/home.cfm, you can:

See maps of Alaska’s regions
Learn about Alaskan weather
Get general information about filming in Alaska
Find local production services [...]

There are other answers

In one of my local newspapers, I read an article entitled, “Women should have a choice” by a 8th grade girl. I’m not going to give her name or link to her article because I don’t want her to get savaged by anti-abortionists (as opposed to pro-lifers). It would probably only strengthen her commitment to [...]

Murkowski and Begich: Modeling Respect

The video above is from the program Alaska Report via Senator Murkowski’s official YouTube channel. Alaska Report is a long running show on Alaska One public television. It has been strictly a Republican show for many, many years due to the fact that our Congressional Delegation has been all Republican.
As I [...]

Book Review: No Time To Think

Haste doesn’t just make waste. It ruins lives, creates bogus controversies and promotes bad decision making. So appears to be the thesis of:
Rosenberg, Howard, and Charles S. Feldman. 2008. No time to think: the menace of media speed and the 24-hour news cycle. New York: Continuum.
In the past year, I made a choice to almost [...]