Heather Lende

HEATHER LENDE

Mom's love shows at the dinner table

The other night just about everyone was home for dinner -- the two teenage girls, my married daughter and her husband, and my oldest daughter (our son is in college in Colorado but should be home today for the summer).

HEATHER LENDE

Friends are always on call

HAINES -- The theme of my life lately is that the best days are those with the most complications -- like Tuesday, when I was supposed to write an obituary in time for our weekly paper's deadline.

AROUND ALASKA

A season of happy endings

HAINES -- Snow in April is discouraging but not unusual. The surprise is that the town is full of visitors who want more of it.

HEATHER LENDE

New citizens find the beautiful in America

HAINES -- For one day, I pretended to be a jet-setter and flew to Juneau and back for a party.

HEATHER LENDE

Hope and mercury are on the rise

HAINES -- The day of the first Democratic caucus ever held in Haines, or at least the first one that Tlingit elder and caucus official Barbara Lewis, who has connections to this place back before there were Democrats or Republicans, can remember, it was about zero with a northerly gale steaming off nine-foot swells on Lynn Canal. It'd been freezing for weeks.

HEATHER LENDE

Holiday memories accumulate

HAINES -- I have been writing my Christmas cards -- or, I should say, New Year's cards -- a little late, but I figure better late than never.

HEATHER LENDE

Back home with a gift of friendship

HAINES -- After a week in Los Angeles, I finally got the tune "If I can just get off of that L.A. freeway without getting killed or caught ..." out of my head -- once I was safely home. Technically, I wasn't home yet, but I was on the famil

HEATHER LENDE

There's comfort in being prepared

There's no snow on the ground in town yet, but I'm ready for it. There's firewood in the shed and meat in the freezer. I don't live in the wilderness, but I'm surrounded by enough of it that I like to keep my place in order.

HEATHER LENDE

This letter didn't make deadline

HAINES -- The last time I saw former Haines Mayor Frank Wallace was this summer. It must have been around the Fourth of July. It could've even been at the parade. He could've been driving his red 1952 Chevy pickup with the flag waving on the ant

HEATHER LENDE

Push and pull of the seasons

HAINES -- I think I know what the poet meant when he wrote, "So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, beside the white chickens."

HEATHER LENDE

Busted — but not hunting for excuses

One of my friends says that to be a real Alaskan, you have to commit at least one crime (preferably with a firearm) and be canned from at least one job (preferably while singing "Take this job and shove it./ I ain"t workin" here no more

HEATHER LENDE

Life's course winds through sunshine and shadows

HAINES -- One of my favorite columnists was Dr. George Sheehan. The cardiologist and marathoner wrote about running with such passion that critics accused him of turning the sport into a religion. He responded, "Running isn

HEATHER LENDE

Eldred Rock Lighthouse a source of ferry tales

HAINES -- Cruising up Lynn Canal on the ferry from Juneau on Sunday morning, we passed the Eldred Rock Lighthouse. The handsome white and red octagonal lighthouse on a tiny island 30 miles from Haines was activated in 1906 and is the oldest original light

HEATHER LENDE

Hunting for moose but finding home

HAINES -- I went moose hunting Sunday, and please don't tell my husband this, but it wouldn't have been the same at all if we had actually shot a moose.

HEATHER LENDE

'Gunalcheesh' -- Tlingit for 'thank you' -- says volumes

By the time I was handed the thermal blanket, I was out of room on the table, my lap and the floor for any more gifts. I already had a bag of fruit and cans of Vienna sausages, pork and beans, fruit cocktail and corn.

HEATHER LENDE

Slow voyage to fast race enlightening

HAINES -- I am a little sore from the second high school cross-country meet of the season. I could also use a nap. I didn't run in the 5-kilometer race on Saturday. I'm a coach, and my workout was herding 17 teenagers from Haines to Wrangell and

HEATHER LENDE

Inspirational adults, motivated children

HAINES -- Nineteen years ago, I took my first child to kindergarten. On that late-August morning, I was thankful that my daughter already knew Teacher Nancy and Teacher Sandy. (That's how they introduced themselves, and is what the youngest students

HEATHER LENDE

Pickin' and jammin' are such sweet labor

HAINES -- This is the season when there are piles of freshly split firewood in driveways, when pressure canners full of salmon are hissing on stoves and jam jars are cooling on counters.

HEATHER LENDE

Townsfolk wide-eyed over $18 million school

Sometimes things really do work out. Sometimes we use our collective talent and money to do great things, like build new public schools. Sometimes we even manage to build them on time and under budget and make sure that they look like a million bucks -- o

HEATHER LENDE

Filmmaker speaks to animals -- and tourists

HAINES -- When my neighbor said a brown bear had been eating her strawberries, my dad, who was visiting from New York, lit up. "A bear? Right across the road?" Then she said it was gone.

HEATHER LENDE

Wedding day fancy, plain and perfect

HAINES -- There is still a flower pot in my driveway with a sign stuck in it that says "wedding this way" and another sign on the back door that says to stay out of the house because the bride is dressing, which didn't really work, since ab