Anchorage Daily News

News for Monday, Nov. 26

Alaska is good, once every 20 years. Sportswriter Mark Snyder muses humorously about what he learned in Alaska last week on his Detroit Free Press blog. The short days messed with his mind, the seafood and mountains blew his mind, and he saw a wolverine (in the museum). He was also duly appreciative of Mrs. Alaska, Jeannine Jabaay of Anchorage, "who sat behind Michigan's bench on Saturday." The Wolverines savored 40-degree weather, a far cry from the blizzard we had for their arrival in 1987, their previous appearance in the Shootout.

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The bright side: Gas didn't cost more here. Blogger Jeff Walker, in town from Lubbock to follow the Texas Tech Red Raiders at the Shootout, was braced for high prices when he got here last week. "True for the most part," he writes on LubbockOnline.com. But the price he paid for a gallon of gas was $3.06, "about what I remember last week before I left for The Last Frontier." He couldn't match his hometown's $11 haircut, though. Other surprises: Local folks unaware of Bobby Knight (the woman who cut his hair never heard of Texas Tech, either) and the enthusiasm for Gonzaga at Sullivan Arena.

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Dogs bite us. According to an abstract posted by SafetyLit, a San Diego State University compilation of injury-prevention literature, Alaska hospitalization rates from dog bites were higher than those in the Lower 48. Alaska Natives were three times as likely to be hospitalized because of a dog bite (9.3 per 100,000) as non-Natives (2.5), and the resulting average hospital stay was almost twice as long for Natives (4.6 days vs. 2.5). The data, furnished by the Alaska Section of Epidemiology and published in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health, was an attempt to gauge the overall public health burden from dog bites. UAA operates one of the health institutes that contribute to the IJCH.

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Residents of Alaska island battle global warming – and each other. The Los Angeles Times took its readers to Kivalina Island, 85 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where a $3-million wall of sandbags has been washing into the Chukchi Sea almost since the day it was finished in October 2006. The culprit: waning sea ice, which used to protect the island from winter storms. Caught between global warming and natural erosion, the island is probably 10 to 15 years away from dissolving under the homes of its 400 residents, most of whom are eager to leave. The price tag for relocating the village: $250 million, which no one has offered to pay. Residents are divided about where to go and how to get there.

"Today, about 70 homes sit on short stilts above the permafrost," reports the Times. "Most homes have no running water and the standard toilet is a 5-gallon bucket. A shower costs $3 at the 'washeteria.'" The best prospect for work is the Red Dog Mine, about 45 miles away. For those who stay on the island, "the center of social life is the city-run bingo hall, where the average adult loses $750 per year."

The Times online package includes a short video on how the island is sinking, and a photo gallery about life on Kivalina.

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Diamond the seal heads home. After about a month in rehab – and we're not talking the Betty Ford Clinic here – a 250-pound adult ribbon seal was driven from Seward to Kenai in a U-Haul and loaded onto a Coast Guard plane for a flight to Cold Bay and release back into the wild. The Peninsula Clarion documented her return, including a fetching photo of Diamond looking out of her crate like Queen Liz at a Buckingham Palace window.

Diamond mysteriously appeared about a half-mile inland in the Palmer Hay Flats State Game Refuge in early October. Best guess: She went up Knik Arm, but a ribbon seal's presence in Cook Inlet is extraordinary – their usual hangout is Bering Sea ice.

Diamond was wrangled out to the road with an ATV and has been cosseted – but not too cosseted – at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward until she was declared fit to go "home" last week.

"We maintained her wild," Tim Lebling, stranding coordinator/rehabilitation technician at the Alaska SeaLife Center, told the Clarion. "We monitored her through remote cameras, and she had very little human interaction. We didn't want to do anything to make her less wild, so I think she'll do great when she gets back to her own environment." Diamond's wearing a satellite tag so her recent keepers can track her progress.

Also: Go to the Alaska SeaLife Center's Web site for more on Diamond's rehab (she's still under the "Current Patients" menu on the Rehabilitation page.

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You, too, can stroll the D.C. perp walk. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank takes readers around the capital to see the sites of scandal, guidebook style. There's the townhouse where the fibbies found $90K in a congressman's freezer. The restaurant where Monica Lewinsky lunched with Linda Tripp and her tape recorder. Where Lewis Libby scooted, Jack Abramoff wined and dined poor congresspersons who couldn't afford their own lunch. Milbank ends with a stop at the Capital Yacht Club, where "among those who have floated their boats" is our own Sen. Ted Stevens, who has become ensnared in a corruption probe in his home state.

Milbank notes that the comedy group Gross National Product "has long conducted Scandal Tours for the prurient," but he concludes that the group's Web site needs an update (too much Ollie North and Fannie Fox).

ALSO: While the political blogger Senate 2008 Guru enjoys piling on Stevens, the latest posting rates potential Republican primary challengers as "ankle biters."

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Crab fishermen for Obama? Too early to call it a trend, but The New York Times profiles Rory Steele, a former Alaska seafood catcher who has logged nearly 26,000 miles in his red Chevrolet S-10 pickup and listened to a recording of "The Audacity of Hope," the Illinois senator's second book, four times as he recruits precinct captains and caucus-goers over a 21-county territory in Iowa. Steele sports a Marine Corps tattoo on his right bicep, but confides to the Times that "I thought it would be weird to tattoo 'Obama' on my arm."

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MORE ALASKA HEADLINES:

Musher Amanda Byrd negotiates delicate balancing act (Fairbanks News-Miner)
Senate field hearing on Alaska Native veterans (indianz.com)
Feds weigh in on effects of planned rail spur to Port MacKenzie (Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman)
Trans-Arctic shipping nears possibility as ice melts (Homer News)
Man may avoid trial in Caribou Hills wildfire case (KTUU/Peninsula Clarion)
Anchorage Bird TLC gets peregrine falcon (KTVA)
Medical merger could bring new health care model to Alaska (Fairbanks News-Miner)
Follower of Baha'i escapes Iran to find religious freedom in U.S. (Juneau Empire)