In what passes for tradition here at Wickersham’s Conscience, we spend the last week of each year thinking about the year that is ending, and making our wishes for the coming year. This is the final blog post in that annual tradition. Despite the abject failures of his wishes for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and most…
In what passes for tradition here at Wickersham’s Conscience, we spend the last week of each year thinking about the year that is ending, and making our wishes for the coming year. This blog post is firmly in that tradition: a look back at the kidney stone that was 2022 and a look forward to…
As most readers know, WC has very, very low expectation of American politicians. Most of them, Republicans, Democrats and Independents, have as their first principle getting re-elected, seeing everything else as a means to that end. There’s a spectrum, of course. At one end you have the Lauren Broberts of the nation, whose only principle…
In what passes for tradition here at Wickersham’s Conscience, we spend the last week of each year thinking about the year that is ending, and making our wishes for the coming year. This blog post is firmly in that tradition: a look back at the kidney stone that was 2022 and a look forward to…
In what passes for tradition here at Wickersham’s Conscience, we spend the last week of each year thinking about the year that is ending, and making our wishes for the coming year. This blog post is firmly in that tradition: a look back at the kidney stone that was 2021 and a look forward to…
WC has two posts today. First, WC will address the decision in Kowalke v. Eastman. Later this morning, we’ll start the end of the year series of posts. Alaska Superior Court Judge Jack McKenna has issued a ruling in the challenge to the qualifications of David Eastman to be a state legislator. Basically, Judge McKenna…
In what passes for tradition here at Wickersham’s Conscience, we spend the last week of each year thinking about the year that is ending, and making our wishes for the coming year. This blog post is firmly in that tradition: a look back at another kidney stone of a year and a look forward to…
Admittedly, it isn’t one of the two Turtle Doves; it’s an Asian Gray-capped Emerald Dove, photographed in Thailand. But it’s a Christmassy looking bird for all that. And with it, WC wishes you and yours the very merriest of Christmases. Starting tomorrow, we’ll begin the year end summaries. But for now, enjoy the holiday. WC…
“Glaucous” is Old English, imported from Greek (glaukós) ‘blue-green, blue-grey’) and is used to describe the pale grey appearance of the surfaces of some plants and birds. In Glaucous-winged Gulls, that color is confined to the wings. The glaucous color is absent from the very leading edge and much of the trailing edge of the wings,…
WC went to a jazz concert Saturday. Some context: The angel, Aziraphale, is riding with a demon named Crowley’s, in Crowley’s Bentley, looking for the misplaced young Antichrist. Somewhere around Chiswick, Aziraphale scrabbled vaguely in the scree of tapes in the glove compartment. “What’s a Modern Jazz Quartet?” he said. “You wouldn’t like it,” said…
A long while back, 20 or 25 years anyway, WC was at a holiday party at a friend’s house. One of the other guests was Johne Binkley, third son of Captain and Mary Binkley, and at that point a reasonably successful politician as well as the CEO of the company that owned the Riverboat(s) Discovery…
It didn’t get much publicity when it came out, but the House Oversight Committee back in early December, published its Investigation of Fossil Fuel Industry Disinformation. And it is a devastating indictment of Big Oil’s response to the climate crisis. As the Committee put it, Big Oil’s own documents demonstrate how the fossil fuel industry…
Little Feat has never been wildly successful, but they have been popular and durable, and despite the relentless turnover in personnel, they have preserved a quintessential, distinctive sound since they were formed in 1969. As the band, over the course of its 53-year history, has explored rock, blues, funk and jazz, their music has always…
The results are in. For the second year in a row, voting was a bit thin. Ongoing hypocrisy exhaustion? Perhaps a kind of malaise for anyone who still manages to care about current events? In the event, total votes were again about two-thirds of the average between 2018-2020. Among those who did vote, however, it…
(This is a part of an eclectic, sometime series on writers and artists WC has known and doesn’t want forgotten. The first post in this series was on Steve Goodman. The second was on Sir Terry Pratchett. WC has also written about Laura Nyro, Bill Berry, Jo Ann Wold and Boudleaux and Felice Bryant. Here’s…
WC can say with some confidence that this is the only Larid celebrated in a gold-plated sculpture, the centerpiece of claimed religious miracle. The sculpture can be found in Temple Square in Salt Lake City. The Church of Latter Day Saints celebrates California Gulls as the agency of their salvation from Mormon Crickets. WC regards…
WC has fought the Pebble Mine Project since it was first proposed. It the wrong location, the wrong kind of ore and the wrong size of mine. It’s also a gold mine, and the world really, really doesn’t need any more gold mines. If you are looking for objectivity in this post, you are reading…
The Alaska Republican Party Central Committee met earlier this month, the first meeting since the November 2022 election. We don’t know what they had for dessert, but we know what the main entrée was: crow. Great big servings of crow. Mmm. Tastes just like chicken.1 You see, the Alaska Republican Party Central Committee had censured…
When WC was younger, you could drink from a stream in Alaska without worrying about giardia, “beaver fever.” In another lamentable change for the worse in WC’s lifetime, you really, really don’t want to do that any more. It seems to be a European disease. It was first reported in the United States in Colorado…
It was the second strongest earthquake WC has experienced. Only the Good Friday Earthquake in 1964 was stronger. But the November 3, 2002 Denali Fault Quake was M 7.9, and the epicenter, under Susitna Glacier, was only 82 miles from Fairbanks. It’s worth marking the anniversary, and noting what geologists have puzzled out about the…
This is your chance to hit back. Vote for the Wickersham’s Conscience’s 2022 Hypocrite of the year and help send a message that you are tired of hypocrisy and are calling it out. Remember: the Winner gets a very nearly fancy certificate notifying them of their award. Here’s a cheat sheet summarizing the candidates and…
Yes, a second blog post today. Sadly, the good folks at WordPress – a company called Automatic, Inc. – charge WC for hosting Wickersham’s Conscience. WC attempts to pay that bill, as well as subsidize his camera equipment, with photo sales from his photography business, Frozen Feather Images. So, yeah, a brief advertisement. WC reminds…
Gail Fenumiai, Alaska’s Director of Elections, is retiring. Actually, retiring again. Former Alaska Lt. Governor Kevin Meyer – nominally in charge of statewide elections under the Alaska Constitution – somehow persuaded her to return in 2019, four years after she had left the post. It’s hard to imagine a more challenging statewide position than Director…
Bonaparte’s Gull, named after ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte, not the French emperor, is found across North America, from the northern edge of the boreal forest, where it breeds, to the Gulf of California and Gulf Coast, where it winters. In its leisurely migration, it is often seen across most areas in between. Despite that extensive…
Anyone who has lived in Alaska for very long knows that those poor folks in Arkansas get confused about the official abbreviation for their state and the official abbreviation for Alaska. All those “As,” Ks” and “Ss,” WC supposes. Of course, Arkansas is “AR,” and Alaska is “AK.” That kind of confusion is the only…
As has been WC’s practice the last few years, WC invited reader nominations for the 2022 Hypocrite of the Year contest. And, as ever, readers did not disappoint. Six serious, well-considered nominees were proposed. Their names, the basis for the nomination and WC’s response are set out below. Nominee Support for Nomination WC’s Ruling Herschel Walker…
When WC went to law school, shortly after the Civil War, there wasn’t an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. There wasn’t an 11th Circuit until 1981, when Congress carved Florida, Alabama and Georgia out of the 5th Circuit to create the newbie circuit. But even if it is new, as the law measures time, it…
In plate tectonics, a Triple Junction occurs where three tectonic plates, all moving in different directions, touch. For example, off the west coast of the United States is the Mendicino Triple Junction, where the San Andreas Fault, a strike-slip fault and transform plate boundary, separates the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. To the north lies the Cascadia…
(This is a part of an eclectic, sometime series on artists WC has known and doesn’t want forgotten. The first post in this series was on Steve Goodman. The second was on Sir Terry Pratchett. WC has also written about Laura Nyro, Bill Berry, Jo Ann Wold and Boudleaux and Felice Bryant. Here’s another wonderful…
WC was in Denali National Park in early spring, 2012, en route via shuttle bus to Camp Denali for a meeting. On the flood plain of the Toklat River, just before the bridge, we encountered a grizzly bear sow with a second year cub foraging for Eskimo Potato quite close to the road.1 We pulled…
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