The Felon, in his presidential campaign and since, has promised there would be retribution against his enemies. To WC’s knowledge, in 250 years of American history, he was the first major presidential candidate and first person elected who campaigned on a promise of revenge. So how successful has he been in getting his sworn revenge?…
Emily Dickinson, poet and recluse, dutiful daughter and profilic correspondent. Only ten of her more than 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime, and a complete, un-bowdlerized edition of her poems and letters wasn’t published until 1955, some 70 years after her death. She was as enigmatic as any person in American literature. Here’s a…
Alaskana / Commentary / Dunleavy / Econ 101
This chunk of stupid involved inaction as well as action, but it’s still stupid. Anyone with the brains of a planarium has been able to see since at least the early 2000s that Alaska needed additional revenue, that revenues from oil were not going to recover, that the state could not budget cut itself to…
Yes, yet another parrot species – there are about 163 species, worldwide – this one found in central South America, mostly in Brazil and Argentina. It is very popular in the cage-bird trade, and as a consequence escaped birds are common in unexpected places, including Dade County, Florida, where these birds were photographed. Turquoise-fronted Amazon…
Alaskana / Commentary / Politics / Teabaggery
At the February 4, 2026 meeting of the Matanuska-Susitna School Board, Superintendent Dr. Randy Trani blasted the Galena City School District. Dr. Trani reported the tiny (population 456) city school district had just completed a $31 million new high school, which included a swimming pool, and would be hosting a national water polo tournament. Funding…
Of course WC admires LaMonte McLemore. In one single artist you can find a masterful singer, a gifted photogtrapher and a pretty decent baseball player. That’s three of WC’s personal interests squeezed into one individual. What’s not to admire? McLemore passed away on February 3, 2026. It helps that he was also funny, generous and…
Steven A. Feldman, was counsel for Affable Avenue LLC (“Affable”). He filed a brief in support of Affable’s motion to dismiss that was peppered with false citations. The trial court was concerned about both the origin of these fake cites and Feldman’s delay in correcting them. The Court issued anOrder to Show Cause why Feldman…
According to the Pulitzer Prize website, the Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary is given “Illustrated Reporting and Commentary” is given: For a distinguished portfolio of editorial cartoons or other illustrated work (still, animated, or both) characterized by political insight, editorial effectiveness, or public service value, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000). The Prize Committee, in…
Hornbills are similar in general appearance to New World Toucans, but they are only distantly related. It’s an interesting example of convergent evolution. Hornbills hornbills have diversified much more in the relative size and elaboration of the bill. There are at least 64 species of Hornbills spread across Africa, Asia and the Far East. East Africa…
Dear Judge DiBenedetto: The Anchorage Daily News reports that the Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct has recommended you be publicly reprimanded for behavior including using offensive accents to impersonate people from other ethnic groups, and keeping a courtroom of attorneys waiting for an hour while you watched a sports game. You were appointed as the…
The handsome Rose-ringed Parakeet is native to sub-saharan Africa, Indi and Pakistan. But it has been introduced in any number of places, including the capitals of many European countries and Honolulu, Hawai’i. Color variation among the introduced populations is considerable; the native populations are yellow-greenish but selective breeding, small in-bred populations and possibly diet have…
As several readers have pointed out in emails and comments, it’s pretty hard to limit Dunleavy’s idiot actions to just five instances. Certainly WC could devote an entire blog to Big Mike’s Boners. That’s not going to happen. If you think WC has missed an egregious one, put it in a comment. Alaska Governor Mike…
Cook Inlet Energy, a relatively small player in Alaska’s North Slope crude oil production, was fined $313,616 for flaring – burning off – some 45 thousand cubic feet (MCF) of natural gas at its Badami crude oil production facility. That’s enough natural gas to heat 900 homes for a year. Alaska has a prohibition on…
WC returned from Southeast Arizona with a relatively modest 900 photos. You’ve seen a few of them, but because you can never have too many bird photos, here are just a few more from Paton Center, Madera Canyon and Saguaro National Park. Click on an image for a larger version. A few notes follow the…
WC rode the nearly new Tustumena to Kodiak back in 1965, a year after she launched. An amazing 61 years later, she’s still in service. All those years and the rough North Pacific waters in which she sails have taken their toil. The ship’s hull cracked badly enough in 2012 that the Alaska Marine Highway System stopped…
Sadly, WC has never seen a bona fide “groundhog,” a/k/a “woodchuck” and “whistle-pig,” among half a dozen or more other local names. A groundhog is a marmot, in North America specifically Marmota monax, found in the eastern United States and Canada. WC has seen at least three other marmot species, whose photos here stand in…
Ah, January. Many of us begin the month with a hangover and end the month in bitter cold, and the sad realization that there are still months of winter ahead. It’s no way to start a year, but there we are. Take a break from shoveling snow, or trying to get your car started, or…
Cobalt-winged Parakeets are fairly common in South America east of the Andes, from Venezuela to Bolivia. It’s found in humid forests and other semi-wooded areas of the lower tropical zone, mostly to 500 meters, but occasionally higher, but rarely above 1,350 meters. This species is green overall (paler on the underparts), with blue outer webs…
There’s no sign of whitewater, as an Idahoan understands the term, anywhere near Whitewater Draw Wildlife Management Area in southeast Arizona. But it is a very impressive birding area, particularly for Sandhill Cranes. Here’s a photo gallery from WC’s recent first visit to the birding hot spot. Remember you can click on an image for…
Literally, not metaphorically. Agua Caliente State Park, in Tucson, Arizona, specifically. WC and Mrs. WC, and her brother, Terry, spent some time birding the park earlier this week. Great fun and nice photo ops. Finding a roosting Northern Sawhet Owl was pretty sweet, too. It’s the first one WC has photographed in about 15 years.…
It’s not an exaggeration to say that a lot of early geologists – even as recently as the early 20th Century – were sexist swine. The story of Inge Lehmann illustrates WC’s point and shows even geologists are capable of change. Lehmann was born May 13, 1888, near Copenhagen, Denmark, the eldest of two sisters…
Rollers are birds in the family Coraciidae, a small Old World family of birds with just two genera and thirteen species. WC will cheat just a little bit and include a few Asian Roller species in this post. Rollers hunt from a high perch, silhouetted against the bright sky. It makes them tough to photograph.…
William Stafford Another William Stafford poem that speaks exactly to the time in which we find ourselves. This particular poem is dedicated to a friend who, relatively late in life, has a baby son, and, being an intelligent man, worries and fears for the world his young son will face. For My Young Friends Who…
WC is off visiting relatives and chasing birds. Blog posts may be irregular for a while, and comments and questions may not be addressed immediately. Thanks for your patience.
Not to be confused with the Orange-fronted Parakeet, a species in Central America, the Peach-fronted Parakeet is a found in the savannah and cerrado of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay and possibly still in to Argentina. There are no subspecies. It has a peachy orange forehead and midcrown; a pale orange orbital ring; dull blue wings,…
The late Senator Everett Dirksen (1896–1969) is usually (mis)credited with saying of the federal budget, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it begins to add up to real money.” There’s no evidence he actually said it, let alone said it first. But the quote comes to mind in the face of a recent…
Readers will recall that a BUCIP – pronounced “bew-kip” – is WC’s invention, an acronym for Big, Ugly, Complicated, Intractable Problem. Alaska has more than its share of BUCIPs and, in the past, WC has asked an unreasonable amount of readers’ time to explain what a mess they are. It’s time for an update on…
Old World Sparrows are only distantly related to the more familiar (and unfamiliar) New World Sparrows. Old World Sparrows are the Passeridae, 8 genera and 43 species. New World sparrows are the Passerellidae, 30 genera and 138 species. Even more confusingly, the Old World also offers Sparrow-Larks, Bush-Sparrows and Sparrow-Weavers, as well as Sparrowhawks (which…
One of the questions WC is asked most often is, “What’s the most beautiful bird you’ve photographed” It’s an easy one to answer: for WC, it’s the Resplendent Quetzal. No less an authority than the pioneer of Neotropical ornithology, Alexander Skutch, wrote, A supremely lovely bird; the most beautiful, all things considered, that I have…
WC Is not so old that he cannot remember being a boy. Here’s a poem about boys. There are some British-isms in the poem that jar, but the essence is clear and accurate. McNish won the won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry in 2017. Her work is a bit controversial, in…
Most geologists would bet that the long, northerly running strait – a combination of Chatham Strait and Lynn Canal, smack in the middle of this map – followed the trace of an active fault. After all, the Pacific Plate, on the left side of the map, is sliding northwesterly in relation to the North America…
The 25th parrot species to feature in Return of Bird of the Week is the Yellow-chevroned Parakeet, Brotogeris chiriri, native to most of Brazil and parts of Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. The common name “parakeet” has no scientific meaning. While parakeets are generally smaller and have longer tails than most parrots, there are too many…
It was just about 60 years ago today, as far as WC can reconstruct it, that WC first read This Is the American Earth, by Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall. The book had been published back in 1960, and it was gifted to WC for Christmas in 1965. It was the first time WC had…
WC likes Ethan Berkowitz. He’s a nice guy, was a decent mayor for the Municipality of Anchorage and has had some pretty good ideas from time to time. But his recent opinion post in the Anchorage Daily News is so bone-headedly wrong that WC has to wonder who actually wrote it. Berkowitz proposes that Alaska…
WC’s classical literature professor and mentor, Dominic A. LaRusso, held that the three greatest men in Western Civilization were Marcus Tullius Cicero, Dante Alighieri and Leonardo Da Vinci. It was only natural, LaRusso (a second generation Sicilian) would say, that all three were Italian. When LaRusso learned that WC was an avowed atheist, LaRusso assigned…
Wickersham's Conscience
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