Anchorage Daily News

Santa Maria man settles with Alaska over Caribou Hills fire. The Associated Press reports that the Alaska attorney general's office has dismissed a misdemeanor charge of uncontrolled spread of wildfire against Charles Partridge, 61, of Santa Maria. In exchange, his insurance company has agreed to a settlement that begins with $250,000 this year.

The Alaska Division of Forestry said sparks from a grinder Partridge was using to sharpen a shovel ignited grass last June. The fire burned at least 53 cabins and residences, 79 outbuildings and 55,648 acres of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge wilderness area.

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Local writer gives shout-out to Alaska's hunkiest male politicians. Gov. Sarah Palin has gotten so much national press as the hottest governor in the nation, that Anchorage blog Own the sidewalk.com was moved to crank open the spotlight so it could shine on the good-looking political guys in our state.

Here's the list:

< Les Gara: "He's not just handsome; he's Anchorage Handsome."

< Andrew Halcro: "He has more respect for a nice clean line than almost any man in the state..."

< Tony Knowles: "...looking very, very good....Like, who's-your-aesthetician? good."

< Mark Begich: "...currently the Most Adorable Mayor In America and soon to be the Cutest Little Junior Senator In Washington."

< Jay Hammond: "In later years, he just rocked the heck out of that beret."

There's more: Jay Rabinowitz, Mike Stepovich, and yes, even Mike Gravel.

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Plastic debris chokes oceans, travels far. The Associated Press story in today's Anchorage Daily News about junk washing up on Aleutian beaches is echoed by a magazine piece in The New York Times Sunday magazine, called "Sea of Trash."

Written by Donovan Hohn, a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, the sobering piece takes readers to Alaska where they meet Chris Pallister, a 55-year-old Anchorage lawyer and director of a nonprofit group called GoAK with an environmental mission to "protect, preserve, enhance and restore the ecological integrity, wilderness quality and productivity of Prince William Sound and the North Gulf Coast of Alaska."

While volunteers stuff 60,000 pounds of trash into 1,200 garbage bags off Gore Point, Hohn describes conditions that send the world's plastic on oceanic journeys to wash up in relentless volumes in wilderness areas remote from any industrialized communities.

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Facts are confusing over U.S. domestic oil supplies. The Hartford Courant's political columnist took a stab at the national debate over whether opening ANWR and drilling offshore would lower gas prices. Mostly, he offered readers links to the volleys back and forth. Readers won't leave better informed, just nursing a mean whiplash.

The links:

< The Associated Press account of its computer analysis of Bureau of Land Management records showing that 80 percent of federal lands leased for oil and gas production in Wyoming are producing no oil or gas.

< The House Committee on Natural Resource's report, backing up the AP.

< Rep. Don Young's letter to the committee, asking for the facts.

< The official GOP response.

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Rep. Don Young shows up in Michigan fight over Indian casinos. The debate is over land swaps for casinos, according to Freep.com. The link to Young is a bit of alphabet soup, but it's quick.

Disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, now serving time for fraud and tax evasion, once represented the Indian tribes fighting for the land swap. Developer Mike Malik worked on one of the casino deals. He hired Washington lobbyist Richard Alcade, who also worked for developer Daniel Aronoff. They've both been linked in news accounts to the $10 million Coconut Road earmark in Florida, promoted by Alaska's Don Young.

Here's the bottom line: Young is the ranking Republican on the Natural Resources Committee and supported the casino bills when they were passed by the committee in February. Malik contributed $4,600 -- the limit -- to Young's re-election committee March 31.

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New blog offers a Native voice. Alaska Real says it aims to offer the perspective of a 20-something Tlingit/Athabascan woman. It launched June 5, and the creator, known as Writing Raven, already is working to get credentials to blog from the Democratic National Convention.

She describes her drive to create the blog as a new forum for a Native view: As a young Alaska Native woman, I've found it difficult to find "me" represented even in the citizen-driven World Wide Web. ... I believe that "Alaska's diversity" needs to be represented, especially the Native voice ...No, I certainly won't be the solution to all ills, but it's one of those proverbial small steps, and I'm a leapin'.

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Season of river fish camps opens. The Bethel blog Tundra Medicine Dreams describes the anticipation, the work and the rewards of traditional fish camps along the Lower Kuskokwim River.

The current post provides photos and authentic details on the fishing, cutting, harvesting and smoking of salmon along Alaska waterways.

The product of this work is "dry fish", the staple of the Yupik diet. The strips have a jerky-like consistency, chewy and full of smoky salmon flavor and oil. Good strips are just divine. It is said that an astute elder can taste your strips and know whether you let your fire go out during smoking, for which you are a lazy slackard, though no one would say it to your face.

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Speaking of Bethel, see it from the eyes of a Florida tourist. That tourist is journalist Leonard Pitts, who was in Alaska in April as keynote at a journalism convention. His account of his visit to Bethel and Kwethluk appeared Saturday in the Miami Herald.

Sitting around a kitchen table in Bethel, he queried his hosts on what is unique to Bethel and what one gives up to live in Bethel.

'You're going to find seal meat,'' Father Chuck Peterson says. "And salmon berries. And seal oil as a condiment. That's a very favorite condiment that people put on their soups. Salmon in abundance. People fish throughout the year.''

You'll give up movie theaters, running water, traffic and crowds.

In Kwethluk, Pitts noted a few grocery store prices: "a box of Quaker Instant Oatmeal costs $6.55, a game of Scrabble will set you back $30.19."

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Political insiders explain why Gov. Sarah Palin won't be the GOP VP. Political analyst Paul Kuhn of Politico takes a look at three Republican women likely to be considered as John McCain's running mate. Palin is joined by Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and former Hewlitt-Packard chief exectuive Carly Fiorino.

Palin simply doesn't pass the test, he writes. Despite being "young, vibrant, fresh and now and a new mother of five," Republican insiders go on to list her fatal flaw:

Several top Republican Party leaders, who asked that their names be withheld so they could speak frankly about vice presidential options, said that Palin remains out of the top tier for now.

"Too unknown and inexperienced," said one GOP insider. Others pointed out that she is not only based far from the Lower 48 - and in a state with just three electoral votes that should already be in the bag for the GOP - but also has no foreign policy credentials or experience."

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Former Alaskan remembers George Carlin on Reason online. The comedian’s death Sunday sparked a column from former Anchorage Daily News teen contributor Marty Beckerman today for Reasononline.

Beckerman wrote that if Carlin hadn’t become a comedian, he would have been a linguist. He cites many examples of Carlin's frustrated wit over softened phrases. A favorite was the phrase, "the unlikely event of a water landing," discussed in every preflight safety lecture. What it means is the plane could crash right into the ocean. (He used more colorful language.)

Beckerman was a regular ADN freelancer from 1998-2000 and has just just finished his third book about fringe politics on the left and right, called “Dumbocracy.”

*** Other headlines of interest to Alaskans:

< Juneau's mayor says they'll have curbside recycling in a year (Juneau Empire)

< Democrats Benson and Berkowitz debate energy, attack Young (Fairbanks Daily News Miner)

< Sand Point fishermen settle for 70 cents a pound, lower fuel costs (Alaska Journal of Commerce)

< Canadian military struggles while training in the Arctic (Associated Press)

< B.C.'s wild salmon will be extinct in 10 years due to sea lice (Natural news.com, Science)

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