Anchorage Daily News

Ex-stripper: A witch maybe, but no psychopath. So claims onetime Great Alaskan Bush Co. dancer Mechele Linehan in a television account due to be aired Saturday night in Anchorage, according to a story today in The Olympian in Washington. The newspaper, which lifts a few lines from pre-broadcast material it acquired, quotes Linehan, who is awaiting sentencing for her conviction in the murder of a fiancé, as saying during an interview with “48 Hours”: “I just feel like there is nothing I can do to make people believe me or make people like me. … A witch I may be, but a psychopath I am definitely not.”

Linehan was among several people connected to the case who were interviewed for the “48 Hours” story. “The whole thing is surreal,” her current husband, Colin Linehan, says in his time on-air. “(A) nerve-shattering, anxiety-provoking nightmare. ... The bottom line is that’s not who she is.” The program will air on KTVA Channel 11 at 8 p.m.

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On the Yukon River. Musher Lance Mackey, despite losing one of his top lead dogs, is back in front of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. He left Ruby and is the only team, as of this morning, to have left the first checkpoint on the Yukon River. (See ADN’s package of stories, photographs and video here, and check the up-to-the-minute standings here.) Meanwhile, here are a few stories showing what others have to say about the race:

> The Gazette-Times in Corvallis, Ore., which had been following hometown neurosurgeon Cliff Roberson, says the musher dropped out after his stove exploded his face. “He said it blasted so hard it almost knocked him over,” his wife, Suzanne Roberson, told the paper. “If he went back out and completed the race, he’d probably end up with permanent damage to his eyes.”

>“Mushers confident Iditarod is ‘100% clean,’ ” reads the headline on a USA Today story that brings the drug questions that have afflicted other sports to the Alaska race. Among other things, the story looks at the race’s testing program, which subjects dogs to urine tests for steroids, stimulants, opiates, muscle relaxants and other substances.

> “Sled Dog Racing: Death on the Trail” is how the title of an essay posted on a PETA web site puts the organization’s view of the Iditarod. The piece goes on to detail what it sees as the “grueling” ordeal the Iditarod dogs face and urges readers to contact race sponsors and let them know of their displeasure.

> The Herald and News in Klamath Falls, Ore., is following, in great detail, the race of Rocky Point, Ore., musher Liz Parrish. Parrish was 10 years in preparation for the race, “dreaming, scheming and planning,” according to the story. As of this morning, she was in 73rd place out of Takotna.

> Musher John Stetson of Duluth, Minn., keeps on losing things along the trail, according to a story in the Duluth News Tribune, which has been tracking his run. He lost his food ladle, his coffee cap, his favorite hat — but he’s hanging in. He was running 57th and was in Ophir as of this morning.

> Musher Heather Siirtola of Talkeetna is blogging her race at Hardcore Huskies. She noted in her latest post that she’s taking her mandatory 24-hour break in McGrath, drawn to the community’s “diesel-fired steam kettle outside the checkpoint that provides all the near-boiling water you could ever want.” She was listed in 79th place and was in McGrath as of this morning.

> An APRN story takes stock of the scramble among the leaders that took place on the way from Ophir to Cripple, the halfway point the race. In the end, veteran DeeDee Jonrowe was the first in (and the winner of $3,000 worth of gold nuggets), just minutes ahead of Paul Gebhardt.

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Begich fits into top Dems’ plans. Democrats have high hopes for a major prize this fall: a 60-vote majority in the U.S. Senate. And Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich fits into those plans, according to a New York Times story today. Begich, according to the story, spent 45 minutes during a recent trip to Washington, D.C., meeting with top Senate Democrats, and the group had a single topic: getting Begich to run against Sen. Ted Stevens.

“Last week, they got him,” the story says. “Mr. Begich announced that he had formed a committee to start raising money. Effectively, the race is on.” The story goes on to note that any fight against Stevens would be uphill, but: “From the Northeast to the Southwest, the Democrats have such a strong hand in this year’s Senate contests that they sense the possibility of victories in unlikely states like Oklahoma and Mississippi, and now even Alaska, which last elected a Democratic senator in 1974.”

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Mystery heating up. Repairmen and fuel distributors are trying to figure out what’s causing “a mysterious black gunk” to clog fuel screens on some heating systems in the lower Kenai Peninsula, a Homer News story says. Repairmen are getting many times the usual number of calls for the malfunction.

A likely culprit: a new ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel No. 1 made by Tesoro Alaska at its Kenai facility. Petro Marine, which began distributing the diesel last fall, says it will pump out tanks with the ultra-low-sulfur diesel and replace it with another product without charge.

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Ferry or bridge? Improved ferry service came out on top in a recent state poll as the preferred alternative among Ketchikan residents for Gravina Island access, according to a Ketchikan Daily News story. The ferry option, preferred by 55 percent of those surveyed in a Department of Transportation poll, ran ahead of bridge options, which had the favor of 40 percent of those polled.

A proposed bridge linking the town to its airport on Gravina Island gained national attention — and the moniker “bridge to nowhere” — when money for it was initially included in a federal spending plan backed by Alaska’s congressional delegation. Since then, the community has been looking at other alternatives.

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Protections urged for Denali wolves. An APRN has a story on the call from an independent wildlife scientist for more protection for Denali National Park wolves that wander onto state land, where trapping and hunting them are legal. Gordon Haber told the station that some of the 15 to 20 National Park Service wolf study groups suffered major losses over the winter.

“Just in the last four months, three of them have been essentially terminated, except for a few pups running around,” said Haber, who has pressed for wolf protections in the past. “And then in addition to that, two others that were in that area are missing significant numbers of wolves.”

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Parking surprise. The new parking rates downtown took some by surprise, according to a KTUU Channel 2 story. “Most commuters … aren't necessarily upset over the increase in cost to park; rather, they do not like the sneaky way municipal officials implemented the hike, without any prior warning or public notification,” the story says.

The new rates (click here to read ADN’s story) mean changes for meters, lots and parking garages. A quarter in a meter gets you 12 minutes instead of the previous 20. “It caught everybody off guard; nobody knew about it,” said Terry Archibald told Channel 2. “I checked with all the other tenants and we had no idea. And we all use the meters.”

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Moose hunt approved. The Alaska Board of Game approved another big cow-moose hunt near Delta Junction this fall, a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story says. The hunt, approved at the board’s meeting in Fairbanks, will mean that another 400 moose will be harvested from game management Unit 20D.

According to the story: “Hunters killed 500 cows from Unit 20D last season, which state wildlife biologists said stabilized a moose population that is growing too fast. Despite the successful hunt, there is still a surplus of cows on the land, area management biologist Steve DuBois told board members in a conference room at Pike’s Waterfront Lodge. He cited declining twinning rates, results of browse surveys and some of the highest moose densities in the state as evidence of that surplus.”

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Searching for justice. “There is a lady of the Yup'ik tribe in Alaska that is a hero of mine,” Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, writes in the opening line of an essay on The Huffington Post web site. Giago goes on to tell the story of Elsie Boudreau, who stepped forward to accuse the Rev. Jim Poole, a Jesuit priest, of abusing her when she was a child.

“When she took her stand against Poole it took all of the courage she could muster,” Giago writes. “She knew that she would be putting her own life out there to be scrutinized and dissected by the media. She could have hidden behind the anonymity of Jane Doe 1 indefinitely, but she knew that in order to bring the full focus of the media on her actions and to encourage other Alaska Native children to step forward, they needed to know that there was a real person behind the accusations of the lawsuit. Unfortunately, it seems that the mass media didn't give a damn.”

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Wounded soldier looks to future. A story in the Journal Gazette/Times-Courier of Charleston, Ill., reports on the recovery struggle there of an Alaska Native seriously injured in Iraq. Kevin Spangler, who settled in Shelbyville, Ill., after marrying an Army buddy’s sister, was left deaf in one ear and with other wounds after a rocket-propelled grenade exploded about a foot from his face.

Spangler subsequently left the military, saying he didn’t want to be a drag on other soldiers. “I didn’t want to be a liability,” he said. “If there was another attack and I didn’t hear something, someone might be hurt because I didn’t hear.”

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