The Alaska town that inspired ‘Northern Exposure’ is in a battle over legal pot

December 5, 2017December 5, 2017 Brett

TALKEETNA, Alaska — The presence of a marijuana retail store has caused a deep divide in this quirky tourist town, where hundreds of visitors roam the streets daily browsing in art galleries and souvenir shops housed in historic cabins.

Most of Talkeetna’s stores line the two long blocks that make up its Main Street, where tourists – many who arrive in Alaska on cruise ships and are bused about two hours north from Anchorage – wander into storefronts like Nagley’s General Store for ice cream or slip through its back door for a cold one at the West Rib Bar and Grill.

At Main Street’s opposite end, near a river park where visitors snap photos of the continent’s tallest mountain, is Talkeetna’s newest venture into the tourism trade. The High Expedition Co. is a nod to the rich mountain climbing history of the eclectic community purported to be the inspiration for the 1990s television series “Northern Exposure.”

Talkeetna’s first marijuana retail store is causing a rift not seen in other tourist-dependent towns in this Libertarian-leaning state, where marijuana had a casual acceptance long before it became legal. But even here, like in many pot-legal states, some towns have opted out of sales, fearful it might invite crime and other evils.

In Talkeetna, some shop owners – the ones who built a multimillion-dollar business from the steady stream of mountain climbers who use Talkeetna as a staging point for treks up Denali – say this one shop could ruin the tiny town’s historic atmosphere and harm business like the eight or so stores that serve alcohol along Main Street could never do.

“I don’t think he belongs in downtown Talkeetna,” Meandering Moose B&B owner Mike Stoltz said.

Joe McAneney co-owns the High Expedition Co., which opened in mid-May. “The sky hasn’t fallen on Talkeetna, the sun is shining, and this is now the most photographed shop in town,” he said.

Grabbing the attention of amateur shutterbugs is a small “Cannabis Purveyors” wooden sign on the store’s deck.

McAneney has been working to open the shop nearly since the day in 2014 that Alaska residents voted to legalize recreational marijuana. He and a partner bought the cabin that was originally built for Ray Genet, an early Talkeetna climber and guide who died in 1979 on Mount Everest. McAneney worked with Genet’s family and has incorporated a small museum dedicated to Genet and Talkeetna’s climbing history. But even that association led to some disdain.

“Small towns in Alaska are harder than anywhere to break into and sort of become accepted,” McAneney said.

His store got its approval from the borough on a technicality when the assembly was writing regulations for marijuana businesses in unincorporated areas, like Talkeetna, and inadvertently omitted special land use districts – like the town’s Main Street. Talkeetna has no local governing body, only a nonvoting community council whose sole power is sending recommendations to borough officials roughly 75 miles (120 kilometers) away.

State regulators approved the store’s permit on a 3-2 vote last spring.

“There’s people that are upset about it, but it’s legal,” said Sue Deyoe, the Talkeetna Historical Society and Museum’s executive director.

Opposition mounted as the issue went before state regulators, where a stream of residents unsuccessfully called in to the Anchorage meeting to oppose the store’s license.

Among the biggest issue for critics is the lack of places for tourists to puff the marijuana they buy – smoking pot in public is illegal, and that led to fears the nearby river park would become the place to partake.

Alaska State Troopers say there were no citations issued for anyone consuming marijuana in public in Talkeetna from April 1 to July 1, the same as last year.

But opponents argue Talkeetna is lawless, with the closest trooper an hour away. “What are we supposed to do?” asked Stoltz, the bed and breakfast owner. “Are we going to take the law into our own hands? Duct-tape him?”

Stoltz said the very presence of a pot store will harm business in the historic town, where residents make a year’s living between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

“If we lose our tourism, we lose what Talkeetna is,” he said. “We’re not catering to stoner tourists. To me, that’s the conflict with Joe.”

Seeing a pot shop on Talkeetna’s main drag didn’t bother 65-year-old Jeff White, visiting from the Louisville, Kentucky, area.

Talkeetna has the artsy feel of a tourist town in Colorado, which also has legal marijuana, he said. “This goes with that vibe, and I think that’s fine.”

One resident dismisses the idea that the pot store is giving Talkeetna a black eye. But it is dividing the town, Christie Stoltz said, noting the chasm has reached her home. She’s the daughter of Mike Stoltz, the B&B owner.

“I feel like it’s generations — the older generation versus the younger generation,” she said.

For some, marijuana was never an issue, Deyoe said, and it pales in comparison to a controversy last spring when the borough proposed leveling trees over an area about the size of eight football fields for an expanded parking lot for summer use.

“I think the community council got way more letters on that than they did in reaction to the marijuana shop,” she said.

The feel-good Hallmark Channel is booming in the age of Trump

August 29, 2017August 29, 2017 Cory

By Heather Long August 21

A scene from the Hallmark Channel’s hit series “When Calls the Heart.” The show follows Elizabeth Thatcher, a young socialite who moves to a small Canadian frontier town in the early 1900s. (Crown Media)

There’s a very good chance that you or someone in your close circle of friends watches the Hallmark Channel.

Ratings are booming. Hallmark was the only non-news channel in the top 15 to see substantial viewership growth last year. In November and December, when Hallmark aired Christmas movies almost nonstop, the channel often ran neck-and-neck with Fox News and ESPN for the title of most-watched TV network on basic cable. Ratings are up another 9 percent so far this year, Nielsen says, and the Christmas movie marathon hasn’t even started yet.

It’s feel-good TV. There’s no sex or gore. Hallmark movies and series like “When Calls the Heart” and “Chesapeake Shores” have happy endings. The main characters do the right thing. The problems get worked out. The guy and girl, whatever their age or grumpiness level at the start, always end up together. This kind of TV has always drawn in older women, but Hallmark’s appeal isn’t limited to them anymore. Ratings are growing fast among 18- to 49-year-old women, and a growing number of men are tuning in as well. Men account for some of the jump in the Nielsen ratings, and when the channel does focus groups, increasing numbers of men say they watch with their wives.

The few culture magazines that have noticed Hallmark’s popularity surge say it’s all about production value. “The movies look more high-quality now than they used to,” pop culture site A.V. Club said earlier this year. Crown Media, which owns the Hallmark Channel, confirms it has been spending a lot more on its movies and shows lately, but better acting alone doesn’t explain the big jump in viewership and advertising dollars last year.

“The environment is undeniable contentious. We are a place you can go and feel good,” says Bill Abbott, chief executive of Crown Media.

That’s a polite way of saying more and more Americans are turning to the Hallmark Channel for relief from the daily news cycle. Hallmark is the complete opposite of the divisiveness that so many families felt during the election and President Trump’s penchant for courting controversy.

Turn on the news and you see people who can’t get along, even in the same party. Turn on Hallmark and everyone ends the show smiling. You get re-runs of “The Golden Girls” and lots of romantic films. The characters work together to save their town or store or farm.

Hallmark’s ratings have been rising for several years, but it really started surging in late 2015, right about the time the election — and the Trump phenomenon — took off. During the week of the election last year, the Hallmark Channel was the fourth-most watched channel on TV during prime time. Let that sink in. It had more prime-time viewers than MSNBC did, and it was just behind CNN and ESPN.

“We intentionally branded ourselves as the happy place,” Abbott says. Hallmark’s tagline is “the heart of TV.”

The happy formula is working. The Hallmark Channel and its sister station, Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, are doing so well that Crown Media just announced it will launch a third channel — Hallmark Drama — on Oct. 1. At a time when pundits are ready to proclaim the death of cable TV, Hallmark is starting up another old-school channel. That’s how much demand Hallmark believes there is for its family-friendly, feel-good shows.

The end of the year is Hallmark’s sweet spot — for viewers and advertising dollars. The channel will start running its Countdown to Christmas on Oct. 27, with 21 original movies that all have a holiday theme. Viewers love it. Hallmark claims more than 85 million people watched one of its channels during November and December last year. Hallmark easily won the ratings race among female viewers during the holidays and was even able to rival powerhouse channels Fox, ESPN and Nickelodeon at times for overall household viewership.

Advertisers are also flocking. Hallmark is now attracting car companies and financial firms as advertisers. That’s rare for channels that are perceived as mostly women’s networks. Hallmark is also making more of an effort to have nonwhite actors, although the company admits it has more work to do on diversity. At Upfronts, a massive convention for TV advertising where network executives gather to try to lure more dollars to their channels, Adweek noted how relaxed Hallmark executives were. While many other TV executives were trying to convince advertisers their network wasn’t dying, Hallmark just pointed to the ratings.

Hallmark is on track to surpass its stellar 2016, especially after the Christmas season. Last year, Hallmark averaged 1.1 million viewers during prime time. Viewership is already up through July, compared with the same period in 2016. With fall shaping up to be a contentious time for the United States at home and abroad, Hallmark could be the big winner.

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August 29, 2017August 29, 2017 Cory

Alaska Looks at a Nuclear Threat, and Shrugs It Off

By KIRK JOHNSONJULY 13, 2017

David Chatterton, an Army veteran and co-owner of 907 Surplus in Anchorage. “If it did happen,” he said of a North Korean nuclear attack, “we would definitely be avenged.” Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

ANCHORAGE — In Washington, the news that North Korea may have developed an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting Alaska set off a wave of anxiety.

But here in Alaska — already home to survivalists, end-of-the-world preppers and all-around tough cookies — the latest geopolitical hubbub is being taken in stride.

“You’ve always got to keep your edge,” said Robert Allison, 60, yanking up a sleeve to show off his United States Airborne Infantry tattoo, etched into a bicep.

More than one out of every eight adults in Alaska is, like Mr. Allison, a military veteran — the highest concentration in the nation. Another 6 percent or so of Alaskans are on active duty, or in an active-duty family.

Anybody old enough to remember the Cold War, when Alaska was for decades at the front lines of national defense with an array of listening posts and ready-to-scramble air bases just across the Arctic Circle from the Soviets, also already knows the feeling of being a hot nuclear target. Some people recalled it as just something that came with the territory. You shrugged it off.

Camouflage clothing at 907 Surplus. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

“I’ve lived a good life, so if something happens, it happens,” said Gary Melven, 68, a Vietnam War veteran — United States Navy — and son of a World War II infantryman. Mr. Melven was a boy in Anchorage when the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, and the famous Distant Early Warning Line radar sites of Alaska and Canada were straining for signs of incoming missiles.

“It was just background, growing up,” said Mr. Melven, the manager of Eagle Enterprises, a store south of downtown Anchorage that sells emergency survival supplies for fishing crews, pilots and outdoor enthusiasts.

“I was more interested in riding my bike,” he added.

To hang out for a few days in some of Anchorage’s military surplus and survival gear stores is to hear a lot of casual fatalism like that. People who are used to calculating risk said they saw little reason for increased alarm now from North Korea. City officials, from the mayor on down here in the state’s largest metropolitan area, have also said they were seeing little sign of panic or fuss.

“What are we going to do up here that we’re not already doing? They’re not going to evacuate Anchorage. We have more to worry about from an earthquake and tsunami,” said John Humphries, 56, a former military helicopter pilot who is now an investigator for the state medical examiner.

Mr. Humphries was shopping on a recent morning at 907 Surplus, a military supply store in a strip mall east of downtown, where a stream of men and women — many in uniform, stationed just down the street at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson — were coming by on a recent morning.

At 907 Surplus you can buy a green sniper scarf, a biochemical gas-mask canister or a pair of sub-zero-rated Army boots. Marpat Woobies, camouflage-colored wet-weather poncho liners beloved by Marines and great for backcountry Alaska, too, go for $30. But if you have to ask what they are, then you’re probably shopping in the wrong place.

The store’s co-owners, David Chatterton and Jeremy Wise — both Army veterans themselves — said they had heard little concern from their customers about North Korea. So-called preppers, mostly civilians, are part of the market in shops like theirs, but prepping — laying up emergency food, weaponry and shelter supplies — goes only so far when it comes to a potential strike by an atomic warhead.

Gary Melven, a Navy veteran and manager of Eagle Enterprises. “I’ve lived a good life,” he said, “so if something happens, it happens.” Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

“They’re prepared, but you can’t really prepare for a nuclear attack,” Mr. Chatterton said.

“Totally business as usual,” added Mr. Wise, 30, who is originally from the Galveston, Tex., area and left the Army as a sergeant.

A spirit of come-what-may is helped out by a belief in the wisdom and ability of commanders and decision makers to avert a crisis, which many people in the shops expressed in interviews. Mr. Humphries, for example, said he fully believed a combination of military and diplomatic maneuvers would head things off with North Korea.

Jim Gorski, who spent 22 years as a Navy pilot, said the psychology of calculating risk is also different if you have experienced real threats in your life. He called it “the bunker question.”

If a concrete bunker is protecting your aircraft, he said, which side of the bunker do you stand on? If a bomb falls and you’re on the other side, you’re protected from the blast, but if you’re on the side where the bomb falls, you’re toast. And since you’ll never be able to predict the exact trajectory of a bomb’s fall, Mr. Gorski said, squinting into a bright afternoon sun as he walked near a downtown Anchorage park, then worrying about it becomes pointless.

“You start worrying about everything, you’ll go crazy and you won’t enjoy life,” he said.

Some Alaska residents and visitors are concerned. Marc Mueller-Stoffels, a physicist at the University of Alaska, works on energy issues — a research area that he said got some funding from the military. He said he thought Alaska was a target in the Cold War, and maybe now in the North Korean standoff, partly because of geography and the proximity to potential enemies. But he said the federal government also made the state a greater target by concentrating military research and presence there.

The importance of Alaska as a military pivot point started in World War II, when the Aleutian Islands were invaded by Japan. The soldiers and pilots who poured in here during that conflict, and the roads and bases built for them, in turn became foundations of the Cold War response in the years that followed.

“It’s a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy, since they put some more or less important military infrastructure up here,” said Mr. Mueller-Stoffels, who was taking his 11-month-old daughter, Anna, for a walk in downtown Anchorage.

Mr. Chatterton at 907 Surplus also finds comfort in the idea of justice and retribution — that assured destruction would rain down on North Korea if its leaders made such a foolish mistake as to attack. “If it did happen, we would definitely be avenged,” he said.

Survivor of fatal Haines plane crash rescued by local residents as water rose

June 13, 2017June 13, 2017 Cory

The rescue scene at Glacier Point with the wreckage of a Piper Comanche that crashed on a remote moraine south of Haines on Saturday (Photo courtesy of Patricia Faverty)

HAINES — As an incoming tide swamped the wreckage of a private plane that crashed south of Haines Saturday, a family, a tour guide and a visitor from Yakutat used a backhoe and sections of rope to keep the lone survivor, trapped inside, above water.

Juneau resident Chan Valentine, 31, was injured and pinned in the plane’s back seat by the flattened seat of pilot David Kunat. He and another passenger were in the plane’s front seats, unresponsive.

The Juneau Empire reported the second victim of the crash was Stanley Su Quoc Nguyen, 29, of California. The Empire also reported pilot Kunat’s age as 29.

“The water would be up at (Valentine’s) chest and we could pull it just enough for the water to come down to his waist. We did that four or five times,” said Steve Dice, a state equipment operator from Yakutat. “We just wanted to save that guy’s life and get him out of there. The worst thing would be watching that guy drown.”

The twin-engine Piper Comanche crashed on the beach at Glacier Point, a roadless moraine and tour excursion site about 11 miles southwest of Haines.

Dice was visiting Haines residents Tom and Patricia Faverty and son Kirby, 14, at the family’s cabin at David’s Cove, 3 miles across Chilkat Inlet from Glacier Point, when the crash occurred a few minutes after 11 a.m. Dice had heard the plane approaching from the south and was watching it through binoculars.

It seemed to be flying at tree level and had just passed over a gravel airstrip at the point, Dice said.

“It did a low-elevation, 90-degree turn back toward the water, stalled, and went straight in. It was ugly.”

Patricia Faverty said that even from across the inlet, the crash was dramatic.

“You could see the wing fly off with your naked eye. It was like a movie. It’s still going over and over in our heads.”

Outside cellphone range, the Favertys and Dice crossed the inlet in a skiff, arriving to find the plane’s wreckage upright on the beach, 10-15 feet above the waterline. When they looked inside the plane, they were surprised to see movement.

Tom Faverty approaches the scene of the wreck of a Piper Comanche that crashed on a remote moraine south of Haines on Saturday, after boating across Chilkat Inlet. (Photo courtesy of Patricia Faverty)

Valentine was conscious and could say his name and birthday, but the impact of the crash left him effectively trapped him in a steel cube, Tom Faverty said.

“There was no door. The plane was all around him,” Faverty said. “Also, he was all broken up. You’re not supposed to move those guys. … Worst-case scenario, we could have tried to take (the plane) apart with the backhoe, or gone looking for a hacksaw. Plus, we didn’t have any time.”

Tom Faverty peers into the wreckage of a Piper Comanche that crashed on a remote moraine south of Haines on Saturday. As the tide came in, Faverty, wife Patricia, son Kirby, friend Steve Dice and tour guide Wiley Betz struggled to keep the plane afloat and wreck survivor Chan Valentine, trapped inside the wreckage, above water. (Photo courtesy Patricia Faverty)

The Favertys reassured Valentine and sent son Kirby, a high school track and cross-country runner, to get help at the camp of a summer tour operation about a mile away.

“Then the tide started coming in and it got crazy,” said Patricia Faverty, who by then had cellphone service and made phone contact with town dispatchers. “I was screaming bloody hell on the phone.”

Kirby Faverty located Wiley Betz, a guide at the tourist camp who responded on a four-wheeler, and brought word of a backhoe back at the camp. By the time Dice was able to retrieve the backhoe, the wreckage was already in the water.

“We knew we didn’t have much time, but I didn’t know we had that little time,” Dice said.

Tying together some rope from the skiff, Dice and Tom Faverty attached the backhoe’s bucket to the plane’s landing gear and started pulling – twice breaking the line. After guide Betz located a chain, Faverty and Dice were able to keep enough pressure on the line to keep the plane afloat.

As the tide floated the wreckage, they were able to pull it toward shore 5 to 10 feet at a time – an estimated 30 feet total – keeping Valentine’s head above water until Haines paramedics Al Giddings and Tim Holm arrived aboard a Temsco helicopter from Skagway.

Working in waist-deep water with tin snips, Giddings was able to cut a hole in the top of the plane to extract Valentine, Faverty said.

“The responders were very professional,” Faverty said. “They had all the equipment they needed. Al was in charge and knew just what to do. He was amazing.”

Valentine was transported by helicopter to Juneau, then Seattle, for treatment. Pilot Kanut of Juneau and the other passenger were declared dead at the scene, according to state troopers.

Haines Borough Fire Chief Brian Clay said the work of Faverty’s group was critical.

“They did the right thing. Valentine wouldn’t have survived if they didn’t do what they did,” Clay said.

Weather included clear skies and calm waters at the time of the crash, rescuers said.

A debriefing on the accident by state troopers and officials in Haines is scheduled for Tuesday.

Blockbuster has survived in the most curious of places — Alaska

May 9, 2017May 9, 2017 Cory

By Samantha Schmidt April 26

For families across the United States, driving to the local Blockbuster Video was a Friday night ritual. The kids fought over which movies to rent, parents had to pay off the late fees and all succumbed to the popcorn and candy buckets at the register.

Blockbuster once operated 9,000 stores nationwide, bringing in $6 billion in annual revenue at its peak. In 1989, a new Blockbuster was opening every 17 hours. But the image of the blue-and-yellow ticket stub logo now merely evokes nostalgia and memories of a time before Netflix, before online streaming, before some laptops eliminated DVD players altogether.

After a long decline, the video rental business declared bankruptcy and its new parent company — Dish Network — began closing all remaining retail locations in 2013. Netflix had won, and Blockbuster was dead. Or so Americans thought.

At least 10 known Blockbuster stores across the country have managed to stay afloat in the digital age. However, the largest cluster of Blockbuster stores are not on the mainland, but in Alaska, where dark, long winters and expensive WiFi have helped maintain a core group of loyal customers.

“A lot of them are still quite busy,” Alan Payne, a Blockbuster licensee-owner, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “If you went in there on a Friday night you’d be shocked at the number of people.”

Payne owns eight of the last surviving Blockbuster stores in the country, including seven in Alaska and one in Texas, employing about 80 people in total. He first purchased Blockbuster franchises in 2000, just years before the industry as a whole began to decline. At one point his Austin-based company, Border Entertainment, owned 41 stores across the country.

After the 2008 recession hit, and after Netflix began to emerge as a major threat, Payne and his team of managers said, “Okay, we’re going to do this as long as it makes sense.”

Business indeed took a tremendous hit, and sales have been on a continual decline. In 2013, 40,000 people were coming through Payne’s stores, and that number has now dropped to about 10,000. Just this week, one of Payne’s last two Blockbusters in Texas closed. He didn’t think his stores would last past 2016, but through a “managed downscaling” Payne has managed to keep them profiting, without making any cuts to employee salaries and without any support from Blockbuster’s owner, Dish Network. He simply pays a licensing fee to use the business name and logo.

“We just keep plodding along,” Payne said.

The stores’ survival has depended on aggressive real estate deals with landlords willing to offer short-term leases and reduced rent. It has required running the business “a lot differently” than Blockbuster ever did, avoiding what Payne calls “a contentious culture over late fees.” Unlike the old Blockbuster, Payne’s version never sends out invoices to customers for late fees; they are simply collected whenever they come into the store. But he has also refused to eliminate late fees entirely like Blockbuster did, a decision Payne calls the “final nail in the coffin.”

Still, a great deal of the business’s endurance has come from the core customer base in Alaska, primarily made up of older people. Alaska ranks high in disposable income among the states, due to good-paying jobs, exceptionally low taxes and payments from reinvested oil savings.

Moreover, Internet service is substantially more expensive than in most states, since most data packages are not unlimited, but rather charge by the gigabyte, as CBS News reported. Heavy Netflix streamers could end up paying hundreds of dollars per month in Internet bills, Payne said.

For this reason, a hefty 20 percent of sales in Payne’s Blockbuster stores come from rentals of TV shows — from the “binge watchers,” he says.

Alaska’s cold, long and dark winters also lend themselves to plenty of in-home entertainment, Payne said. The most profitable Blockbuster store is in bitterly cold Fairbanks, where temperatures can reach 50 below zero.

Most of Payne’s managers have remained in their roles for at least a decade, riding out the wave of closures and declining sales. If any of them were to leave now, Payne said, “it would be impossible for me to go out and hire a new management team.”

But Payne said, “They love the business, they want to see it to the end.” What has kept his managers around for so long is also what has kept Blockbuster alive — the interaction with customers.

“There’s not a whole lot of retail businesses that people go to because they truly want to,” Payne said. “When you went on a Friday or Saturday night to rent a movie … that was just fun.”

In fact, more than half of Blockbuster’s revenue is generated during a six-hour period on Friday nights, Payne said. “Most of our people remember those days, and it’s still fun to be there on a weekend.”

When asked why people keep coming to his store, Kevin Daymude, the manager of a Blockbuster outlet in Anchorage, said: “Easy. Customer service.”

“Everyone likes to feel like they’re special and that they can talk to someone face to face if they have a question,” Daymude said. He has known some of his regular customers for more than 20 years. Despite its challenges, he has stuck around because he still believes in Blockbuster, “our little company in the ‘Last Frontier’” Daymude said.

“When you go in the store, walk down the aisle, you’re going to see all kinds of things you never thought of,” Payne said. There’s something about finding a “diamond in the ruff” on a shelf that is simply more gratifying than scrolling on a computer screen.

Yet Payne accepts the reality that it’s only a matter of time before he is forced to close his Blockbuster stores for good. And for some loyal customers, the closure of a Blockbuster store cuts deep.

In Mission, Tex., Hector Zuniga’s parents would rent movies for him twice, even three times a week from their nearby Blockbuster. Hector, 20, is autistic and nonverbal, and though he has trouble communicating, he always had a way of telling his family when he wanted to go to Blockbuster.

He simply said, “Barney,” according to his brother, Javier, 19.

When his parents told him the Blockbuster in Mission, Tex., would be closing, Hector was heartbroken, and confused. Knowing how much Hector loved the store, and how accustomed he was to visiting it as part of his routine, his parents came up with a solution: They decided to create a mini-Blockbuster in their home.

When they revealed the surprise this week, Hector began to smile, laugh and clap, Javier said. In their home, the parents had set up a display rack, complete with a Blockbuster sign, and stocked the shelves with movies they purchased in the store’s closing sale. Among the movies were all of Hector’s favorites: Elmo, Veggie Tales, Rugrats and, of course, Barney.

So I was up in Alaska

May 9, 2017May 9, 2017 Cory

By Garrison Keillor April 18

Up to Alaska last week to visit old friends and relive fragrant memories of previous trips. Landing on a short uphill grass strip near a native village and later taking off on that strip and off the edge of a cliff. Fishing in a fjord near Juneau as a dark enormity rolled up from the deep, a humpback 30 feet off starboard. Encountering a moose while biking around Anchorage. Sitting in a friendly cafe in Sitka that felt like family. Hiking the Iditarod trail and seeing the body of a moose who broke through the ice of a lake and drowned. Going to the state fair in Palmer and mingling with Alaskans in a state of euphoria produced by sunlight.

It is a state that one remembers long afterward.

Last week I sat in a little cafe in Anchorage and got into conversations by the simple device of asking directions. In a state that offers so much solitude, people are happy to talk. I met a couple who’d lived for many years in the mountains east of there, raised two kids, got divorced and now live a few blocks apart in the city. “We’re still best friends,” she said cheerily, and he gave her a wan look. He is still in love with her, he said, and wants to get back together, and she isn’t interested. Instead of directions, you get a novella.

I met a Tlingit woman who gave me her unvarnished views on Alaska politics and an old trucker who hauled materials for the pipeline, and finally quit, fed up with the rules and regulations. His first truck was a White, a good truck, and he wound up driving a Peterbilt, which he hated. “Never buy a truck that is on the assembly line on Friday and they finish it on Monday,” he said. He was once fined $250 in Arizona for speeding; the highway patrol sent him a picture of his truck taken by a roadside camera on the desert that also recorded his speed, and he sent them a photo of $250 arranged on his kitchen table.

I was sitting in my hotel room in Anchorage on Wednesday morning, when someone yelled, “Open up! Open the door!” I opened the door. Two uniformed officers stood there. It wasn’t me they wanted. They were yelling at the door next to mine. One cop had a revolver drawn, aimed at the next door. Another cop yelled, “Open the door now! And keep your hands where we can see them!” Police can yell really loud and their diction is quite clear.

An officer with an assault rifle stepped into my room and said that they had a warrant out for a man next door and that the man had announced he had a gun. The officer opened the door to my balcony and suggested I go into the hall. So I stepped out, barefoot, without glasses, in jeans and a T-shirt. Seven officers stood in the hall, including a slight young female, and four of them had guns drawn, including her, and were focused on the door next to mine. They were on high alert. I slipped past the uniforms and none of them glanced at me. The one closest to the door yelled again, “Open the door! Now!”

I’m a civilian. I lead a casual jokey life. I mess around. I wouldn’t know how to bring that steady intensity to bear on a closed door. That’s just a fact. I can do panic; I don’t do high-focus readiness. If I am responsible for your security, you are in serious trouble.

They got their man. He surrendered and was handcuffed and I got a glimpse of him in the hall, a skinny guy with a hangdog expression, wanted for drug dealing. He had been dealing out of the hotel room. Whatever drugs he himself was on were not a kind that make you smarter.

Nobody I talked to in Alaska began a sentence with “I was reading an article the other day that said that . . . ” — everything they said was from their own experience. This is different from the world I live in, of people tuned in to media. I can say from my own experience that an armed man dealing drugs in the next room is a danger to me and that I maintain my casual jokey way of life thanks to public servants whose training enables them to bring highly focused attention to bear. That’s what I know.

Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality.

Recall petitions drawn up for three Haines Assembly members

May 9, 2017May 9, 2017 Cory

Posted On Apr 12 2017

By : Abbey Collins

Comment: 0

Heather Lende, Tom Morphet and Tresham Gregg are targeted in the recall effort. (KHNS photos)

An effort to recall half of the Haines Borough Assembly is moving forward.

Petitions to recall assembly members Tresham Gregg, Tom Morphet and Heather Lende have been drawn up on the basis of Alaska Open Meetings Act violations and misuse of an official position.

Lende and Morphet are the body’s two newest members. They’ve been on the assembly for about six months. Gregg was elected in 2015.

Resident Don Turner Jr. submitted three separate applications for recall petitions last week. In a letter to Turner released late Wednesday afternoon, borough clerk Julie Cozzi said she and the borough attorney had reviewed the applications.

At the attorney’s recommendation, Cozzi found some of the allegations in each petition application legally sufficient.

The petition to recall Gregg will contain one allegation: a violation of the Open Meetings Act. That claim is also on petitions for Morphet and Lende.

Turner alleges the three, and Assembly member Ron Jackson, communicated privately about whether to approve a piece of the harbor expansion project. In her letter Cozzi says if true, the action would constitute misconduct in office and is sufficient grounds for recall.

Petitions to recall Morphet and Lende will contain a second allegation: misuse of an official position. Turner says the two assembly members tried to coerce a subordinate and affect their personal or financial interests when they requested the police department provide the full blotter. The police chief scaled back the information included in the blotter several months ago.

Morphet is the publisher of the Chilkat Valley News. Lende writes the obituaries for the paper. Turner says Morphet and Lende would benefit from the publication of the blotter because of their affiliations with the paper and their personal blogs.

Cozzi removed several allegations from the petitions that she and the attorney found legally insufficient.

Turner and the other nine sponsors on the recall applications have 60 days to gather signatures on the petitions. Each of the three separate documents needs 258 valid signatures to trigger a special election.

KHNS will continue to follow the recall effort with reaction from those involved in weeks to come.

Cold, Dark, and Happy

March 27, 2017March 27, 2017 Cory

Years of state rankings have begun to paint a picture of an idyllic healthiest place to live.

Mendenhall glacier, Juneau, Alaska Sean Lema/Shutterstock

“Alaskans are the best in the nation in terms of exercise,” explained Dan Witters, a research director at the polling agency Gallup, in making the case that Alaska is the nation’s new bastion of well-being. “Which just goes to show you that you don’t need year-round good weather to demonstrate good exercise habits.”

Even if I remain unconvinced on that front, the fact that people manage to exercise more in Alaska than people in any other state—somehow—is just one of the many metrics that landed the state the number-one spot in a massive study of health and well-being across America, released this week.

Alaskans also reported the lowest stress levels of any population in the country over the past year, and the state had the lowest rate of diabetes. Maybe most surprisingly, despite the cold and darkness, Alaskans also had the second lowest rate of depression diagnoses in the country.

Witters, who oversaw the 2014 Gallup-Healthways study of 176,702 Americans, seemed to find genuine excitement in the ascension of Alaska—more than once calling it “really neat” and suggesting that it is a model that other states would do well to emulate. Indeed, the state’s victory is a realization of longer-term trends, Witters explained, that he has been measuring and observing in Alaska for a while now.

The state has actually been in the top 10 multiple times since the first annual well-being rankings in 2008—Hawaii and Colorado are the only states to have made the top 10 every year—though Alaska has never before been number one. Other rural, colder states seem to score highly in well-being, too: South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, and Utah all made the top ten.

2014 Well-Being Rankings

These rankings have made little news in past years, in part because they are based entirely on self-reported surveys, which scientists are quick to dismiss. (Maybe Alaskans don’t actually exercise more; they’re just part of a statewide culture of lying about exercising. Maybe they don’t have diagnoses of depression because doctors aren’t recognizing symptoms, or people don’t feel comfortable talking about it in a telesurvey. Et cetera.) But seven years and 2.1 million surveys in, the longitudinal trends seem too substantial to dismiss outright. And if people are lying, Witters concedes, at least they are most likely lying in the same ways regularly.

Gallup’s methodology has been consistent for years, which lends some credence to trends. In the case of obesity, for example, national rates have been on the rise, from 25.5 percent of the population in 2008 to 27.7 percent in 2014. So that number may not be exact, but it is likely that the rate is indeed increasing.

“There’s no clinical in-home measurement,” said Witters—obesity questions are part of a phone interview, in which a researcher asks people their height and weight. “We accept the response at face value.” From those numbers, an algorithm calculates body mass index (which is far from perfect as a measure of obesity, but still widely used). Comparing Gallup’s findings to measurements from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the obesity rates are probably actually worse than what Gallup reports today. CDC tracks and maps diseases and conditions, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation keeps county health rankings, but the Gallup index is unique as a progressive measure of the quality-of-life factors that influence health. Since Gallup partnered with the well-being-improvement company Healthways in 2006 to create a more comprehensive definition of well-being and track it, the index has begun to fill a niche in psychometrics that inform health in the most fundamental ways.

In the Gallup index, people are scored in five categories, of which physical health is only one. There is also purpose (liking what they do each day, being motivated to achieve goals), social status (having supportive relationships and love in one’s life), financial status (having minimal economic stress), community (feeling safe, and having pride in one’s community).

And in community involvement, Alaska leads the nation, too. There, for example, the survey asks people whether they’ve received recognition in the last year for helping to improve their community. “That’s a tough nut to crack nationally,” Witters said. But among Alaskans, 28 percent say they have—which is actually the best rate in the country. They are also, despite (because of?) the bear population, fifth in the country in terms of feeling safe and secure.

“Another really good one that I love about Alaska, within the purpose element, is learning something new and interesting every day,” Witters explained, “which is an important psychological need.” That metric is a reason that college towns tend to score highly on the well-being index. And there, too, Alaska is number one in the nation, with 72 percent of residents feeling daily intellectual stimulation.

The state is held in stark contrast to the opposite end of the spectrum, the cases of Kentucky and West Virginia. If nothing else, the two states attest to the validity of the ranking system in that there is consistency in its results: The pair has managed to hold down spots 49 and 50 for six consecutive years.

“Kentucky and West Virginia are really in bad shape,” said Witters. There diagnoses of depression are perennially among the highest in the nation, as are stress levels and high blood pressure. Nearly a third of West Virginians smoke tobacco, compared to 19 percent of people nationwide.

Behind those disheartening numbers is another particularly important metric: having someone in your life who encourages you to be healthy. There West Virginia also ranks last in the country. “That is a really good leverage point that they could take advantage of, that cultural change of encouraging accountability to one another,” said Witters, when I asked them how West Virginia could learn from Alaska. “It’s about having someone who has fundamental expectations of you, in how you live your life.”

Even for all their shortcomings, these rankings are fodder for growth and improvement, and they only stand to become more so. In places, the index is already being used by policy makers and businesses, with an eye to bringing programming and investment to their states. In Iowa, for example, governor Terry Branstad boasted on his website in 2013 when Iowa moved from number 16 to number nine, taking that as evidence of success in his Healthiest State Initiative. The program is actually predicated entirely on the Gallup well-being rankings, explicitly aiming to take Iowa to the top spot by 2016.

The state can get there, Branstad believes, through a variety of public-health programs. Focus Five, for example, imposes a handful of goals for individual citizens that specifically address areas where the state has performed poorly. One of the five is “increasing the number of Iowans who feel their boss treats them like a partner at work.” Another program, Get Your Bib On, encourages Iowans to visit the dentist.

Apart from seeking glory or avoiding shaming, motivation for improvement can also come from bald financial arguments. These well-being factors are interdependent, but also influence healthcare spending, notes Janet Calhoun, a senior vice president at Healthways. She frequently invokes the rejoinder that communities with high well-being scores spend less money on healthcare, and their people are more productive overall. The argument, then, is that there can be significant regional economic return when communities invest in improving the wellbeing of a population. And similarly in the private sector, Calhoun said, “When employers invest in improving the well-being of their work force, they have a healthier bottom line for their business.”

“These metrics don’t move a lot if you’re not addressing them,” Witters said. “Until there are statewide initiatives that are meant to address these basic problems in places like Kentucky and West Virginia, they’re going to be stuck at the bottom.”

In Shirley MacLaine’s New Movie, She Has ‘The Last Word’

March 27, 2017March 27, 2017 Cory

March 3, 20174:30 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

Shirley MacLaine agrees that she’s played a lot of sharp-tongued, difficult-to-be-around women, and that’s true of her latest role in the movie, The Last Word. In her latest role, she’s a woman obsessed with designing her own obituary. MacLaine talks about how she approaches acting and dodges what she wants written in her own obituary.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The movie “The Last Word” opens with a series of photographs. We see a baby then a little redheaded girl becoming an ingenue and, ultimately, a sprightly woman in her 80s. These are all pictures of Shirley MacLaine. She plays a character obsessed with designing her obituary.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE LAST WORD”)

SHIRLEY MACLAINE: (As Harriet) These are obituaries from newspapers all over the country. I want you to read them and see what other obituary writers are doing.

AMANDA SEYFRIED: (As Anne) Wow. I’m sorry you don’t like what I wrote, but that’s that was just me reading about your life.

MACLAINE: (As Harriet) My life is not over yet.

SHAPIRO: So when this grande dame of Hollywood came into our studios, I had to ask, where do you want your obituary to begin?

MACLAINE: Probably, The New York Times (laughter).

SHAPIRO: (Laughter) Front page, lead story.

MACLAINE: Well, I don’t know. What would mine say? I don’t know.

SHAPIRO: Shirley MacLaine told me when she does live question and answer events at theaters around the country, people almost never want to know about her Hollywood roles.

MACLAINE: No. They ask about reincarnation and UFOs and how to find one’s center and how to meditate. It’s all about the stuff in my books.

SHAPIRO: How could they not ask about – I don’t know – “Terms Of Endearment,” “Steel Magnolias,” your years with the Rat Pack or on and on and on – “Sweet Charity,” going all the way back to Broadway.

MACLAINE: Ari, can I call you that?

SHAPIRO: Please.

MACLAINE: They’re interested in themselves. And they come to the different places that I speak to learn about themselves not me. I consider that a great compliment.

SHAPIRO: It’s funny. I read an article about this movie that described this as your first major film role since last year. (Laughter) And I just thought, you know, a lot of actors in their 30s and 40s are not making a movie every year. You are 82 and easily could have retired long ago if you wanted to. You keep up this incredible pace.

MACLAINE: Well, I do have energy. I’m healthy. I’m having a good time. I’m too interested in everything. I could sit and watch people all day. And I remember I used to do that when Warren and I were kids.

SHAPIRO: Warren Beatty, your brother.

MACLAINE: Oh, really?

SHAPIRO: I’m just letting some listeners know who might not be informed (laughter).

MACLAINE: (Laughter).

SHAPIRO: So the two of you would sit and watch people? Describe this for me.

MACLAINE: Well, my dad would visit some kind of – above a store place. I never knew what it was up there. He was certainly not into drugs. We would be left in the car with mother. I’m talking for hours, it seemed. So I learned to be very observant about human behavior, body movement, rhythm, what people are thinking, feeling and expressing really early. And it’s never left me.

SHAPIRO: I’ve read a few interviews where you said, you don’t know how to act. You can’t act. You don’t know anything about acting.

MACLAINE: Haven’t got a clue.

SHAPIRO: When I look at your just litany of awards of roles of standout films, what do you mean when you say that?

MACLAINE: Listen, really, I don’t know how. I’m not interested in learning how. I like to be in the present of the idea that occurs to me. And you can’t plan that. You can’t make a study out of that. I’m not sure how I do it. I wish I could help people understand it, so they could do it themselves. The closest I’ve come to is, I have no past and no future in my thinking at that moment and just do what seems right for the character if we’re talking about character.

And by the way, having a dancer’s mentality, I don’t want to leave anybody out. So I don’t make plans that would leave out the other actors, leave out the director, leave out whoever else – the DP for goodness sakes who wants me to do some standing up because he doesn’t have to move the lights, you know?

SHAPIRO: That’s the director of photography, yeah.

MACLAINE: Really?

SHAPIRO: Just letting listeners know. I know you know the term. I’m just filling listeners in (laughter).

MACLAINE: OK, Air, really? (Laughter). And so I just live in the present, basically, I guess is my answer to all that.

SHAPIRO: You referred to yourself as a dancer just then, and I know that throughout your career you’ve always thought of yourself as a dancer first. In real terms when you’re making a film, what does that mean that you see yourself primarily as a dancer?

MACLAINE: How she moves, how she sits – physical decisions to make about her expression relating to her body.

SHAPIRO: Her meaning the character you’re playing?

MACLAINE: And then the other thing is my discipline. I have a work ethic of a dancer. I’m not a diva. I try not to keep people waiting. I think my – I mean, don’t do any research on this but think my extension of kept them waiting is maybe five and a half minutes.

SHAPIRO: You were about 15 minutes early for this interview.

MACLAINE: That’s early. We’re talking late here. And I don’t do that. I can’t stand thinking that people are expecting me, and they have other things to do.

SHAPIRO: So when you talk about bringing a dancer’s physicality to a particular role, can you give me an example of how the physicality of one character that people might be familiar with you having played is different from another one?

MACLAINE: OK. Let’s take Ginny in “Some Came Running” – one of my favorite characters by the way. She was this woman who always wanted to please Frank Sinatra – Dean Martin and them. And so she would sit with pigeon-toed kind of look.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “SOME CAME RUNNING”)

MACLAINE: (As Ginny Moorehead) I’d do anything. Ask me.

FRANK SINATRA: (As Dave Hirsh) Would you – would you clean up the place for me?

MACLAINE: (As Ginny Moorehead) Oh, could I?

MACLAINE: My character Aurora in “Terms Of Endearment” would never sit in a pigeon-toed fashion because she’s always displaying outside.

MACLAINE: (As Aurora Greenway) It’s time for her shot, you understand? Do something. All she has to do is hold on until 10, and it’s past 10. She’s in pain. My daughter’s in pain. Give her the shot, you understand me?

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (As character) You’re going to behave.

MACLAINE: (Aurora Greenway) Give my daughter the shot.

MACLAINE: But every character has a kind of body swish to me because I was educated in dancing.

SHAPIRO: Your character in this film “The Last Word” is sharp-tongued, difficult to be around. One could say the same of the character you played in “Steel Magnolias” and the character you played in “Terms Of Endearment.” These are some of your best-known roles. Do you think there’s a pattern here?

MACLAINE: (Laughter) Yeah.

SHAPIRO: Well?

MACLAINE: I think I am myself sharped tongue. And they are written in penetratingly in that direction.

SHAPIRO: Well, we began by asking what you want your obituary to say.

MACLAINE: Ari (laughter). Why does this make me laugh? Why am I laughing? Because you think I’m going to die, and that isn’t going to happen.

SHAPIRO: No because the whole film is about a woman thinking of and designing how she wants to be remembered. You spent how many months inhabiting this character who is single-mindedly obsessed over her legacy?

MACLAINE: Yeah. Well, isn’t this fascinating? OK, that’s what I was doing. When I am the person who doesn’t believe anybody ever dies, so what’s the point of writing an obituary?

SHAPIRO: And yet, you know they will be written.

MACLAINE: Sure. I could say, listen, I didn’t really die, so beware. I’m watching (laughter).

SHAPIRO: Beware, she’s watching – is that the first line?

MACLAINE: (Laughter) You want to make a headline here, babe. I know, but I don’t.

SHAPIRO: (Laughter).

MACLAINE: Let think about this. It’s a good question. Nobody’s asked me this. Let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you in another life, how’s that?

SHAPIRO: In another life? Shirley MacLaine, it’s been an absolute joy. Thank you.

MACLAINE: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF WHITE ARROWS SONG, “WE CAN’T EVER DIE”)

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

‘The Last Word’ Review: Shirley MacLaine In Total Control & At Her Best

March 3, 2017March 3, 2017 Cory

by Pete Hammond

As I say in my video review above, MacLaine rides though this movie with supreme confidence and a complete understanding of just who her character, Harriet Lauler, really is. It was a role written with her in mind and she doesn’t disappoint. This is a woman who needs to be in charge of every aspect of her life as we quickly see in her interactions with her gardner, housekeeper, hair stylist, ex-husband, estranged daughter, and so on. So it is only natural she would want to also control things even after she has left the earth.

Following a near-death episode in which she “accidentally” swallows too many sleeping pills mixed with a glass of wine, she stumbles on to the Obituary section of the fading local newspaper, the Bristol Gazette — an entity she helped a lot when she was a big-shot advertising executive. Meeting with the paper’s editor (Tom Everett Scott), she uses her clout to get him to assign their obituary writer Anne (Amanda Seyfried) to do the job. After her initial research can’t turn up anyone on the list of 100 names Harriet supplied who has anything good to say about the woman (including the local priest!), she delivers the bad news, but Harriet won’t take no for answer. She does her own research and comes up with the four key qualities that make a great obit and proceeds, with Anne in tow, to go out and do some perfunctory good deeds to provide the copy.

Along the way they are joined by a young girl, Brenda (AnnJewel Lee), and it all turns into a much more life-enriching experience than either woman ever expected as three generations end up inadvertently giving one another the meaning of what a life well-lived can really be. A sequence where Harriet even becomes a late-in-life drive-time DJ with a strong knowledge of music, and love for The Kinks, is especially welcome.

If Harriet’s transition from crotchety to warm-hearted is somewhat predictable, it is all in the playing here, and MacLaine and Seyfried play nicely indeed off each other. Newcomer Lee is a delight, and there are effective scenes with Philip Baker Hall as Harriet’s ex, and Anne Heche (giving as good as she gets) as the estranged daughter. Thomas Sadoski also does fine as the radio station manager they encounter, someone who Harriet thinks could be just the guy Anne needs at the moment. Director Mark Pellington keeps things movie at a strong pace and Stuart Ross Fink’s debut screenplay gives these actors enough to work with to make this a solid spring entry that should have strong appeal to older audiences still not willing to go gently into that good night.

But in the end this is all about Harriet, and with MacLaine in charge things are right with the world. I particularly loved the title sequence which is supposed to represent Lauler’s life in photos, but really also show us how far we have come with MacLaine herself and what a life she has had. Producers are Kirk D’Amico, Anne-Marie MacKay, and Pellington. Bleecker Street opens the film in limited release Friday.

Do you plan to see The Last Word? Let us know what you think.