Family and Felons

Sorry no birdie pics. I got carried away with the vin rouge on Friday night and was unwilling to muster for the dawn patrol. As pennance, I spent the afternoon working in Emilie's yard.

Yesterday, I played tour guide to my Seattle-based cousin, Anne Marie, and her husband, Gene. Dad came along for the ride. Both dad and Gene are deaf as posts and my ears are still ringing from all the shouting in the confines of my Jeep.

After the tour we convened at the elders for pineapple upside-down cake and coffee. And a serious airing of the grievances that included (but was certainly not limited to) George W. Bush, the price of gas, the price of food, immigrants, aches and pains, and other relatives (both living and deceased). I won't bore you with the details; but it was kinda like some bizarre mash-up of Archie Bunker and Hillary Clinton as might be produced by Judge Judy. There were just enough tidbits of family history to keep me in the room.

Today's schedule of events includes hauling and spreading another half-ton of gravel in the folks' yard.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Great Land a couple of items from the Anchorage Daily News.

Former State Representative and recently convicted felon Vic Kohring will be spending time as a guest of Uncle Sugar at a prison in Taft, California. Vic thought he was going to be at a Club Fed in Oregon and was outraged to learn otherwise.

"It's a real slap in my face frankly to send me to the desert of southern California," he said.

Online comments posted on this article by my fellow Alaskans suggest that Vic's outrage is not widely shared. Several express the sentiment that what Vic did figuratively to the Alaskan public he deserves to experience quite literally while in prison.

And in other news from Vic's hometown: "A Wasilla man described by acquaintances as 'psycho,' 'crazy' and 'not happy at all' shot and killed himself Sunday, ending a 23-hour standoff with Alaska State Troopers that began after the man allegedly killed a former neighbor"

What's truly appalling about this story is the underlying fatalism of everyone interviewed - this murder was about as surprising as the sun rising in the morning. Life on the Last Frontier. What a bunch of rubes.