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American Indians and Alaska Natives are the ethnic group with the highest undercount of any defined by the Census Bureau. Approximately 4.9 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives were undercounted by the 2010 Census. The reasons for this undercount are varied, but one key reason is that 26 percent of American Indians live in hard-to-count census tracts. More than 80 percent of reservation lands are ranked among the country’s hardest-to-count areas. The U.S. Census Bureau is working with organizations like the National Indian Council o...
Wildfire. Earthquake. Winter storm. Windstorm. Any of these events can, and have, happened in Alaska. And any of them can result in you and your pet having to either shelter-in-place or evacuate. Are you and your pet prepared for either of these scenarios? Being prepared starts with thinking ahead: Ask neighbors to help with your animals if you're away from home and can't get back to your pets. Assign one person in the family who is responsible for making sure your pets are evacuated with you....
My mother's handwriting jumped out at me as I pulled out the contents of a 1960s-era postmarked envelope. What a wonderful surprise, I thought, as I read her letter and set it aside. I was half an hour into sorting through a large box full of my Aunt Clara's letters about a year ago. The box contained hundreds of letters, which covered the years 1954 through 2008. My mother was less than three years older than her sister, Clara, and they had a very close relationship. Perhaps partly because...
By the early 1950s, the tent city at the mouth of Ship Creek had turned into a bustling, modern city. Clifford Cernick wrote that Anchorage was much like Baghdad in an article that appeared in the Seattle Times on March 4, 1951 – a time when Baghdad was a bustling city, a jewel in the desert. "A grizzled prospector, back in Anchorage after three years in the Alaskan wilderness, noted the towering framework of a new apartment building, the paved streets, the bustling downtown traffic and g...
When Universal Pictures assembled the cast of the popular TV series "The Munsters" for the big screen adaption in the 1966 film "Munster, Go Home!" another actress replaced Pat Priest as Marilyn Munster. "I was devastated not to be in the film," said Priest from her home near Boise, Idaho. "We were on the set filming the end of the season and the producers sent one of their guys down to tell me. I was 29 and my contract was up for renewal, so I think they wanted a younger actress and didn't...
President Donald Trump recently has been making a striking claim – insisting he has ensured that people with preexisting medical conditions continue to have health insurance coverage. In tweets, at campaign rallies and even at his recent State of the Union speech, Trump says: "I was the person who saved pre-existing conditions in your healthcare." He wasn't. This comes at the very same time that his own Justice Department pushes to eliminate the Affordable Care Act (ACA) altogether, including pre-existing conditions for millions of A...
IPop quiz: What is the most powerful estate planning tool? Most people are thinking: “That would be a will, right”? And indeed, the good old Last Will and Testament is important, but it has its limitations. The biggest one is, the will only applies to assets that have to go through probate. Since many assets don’t go through probate, the will doesn’t apply to them. In fact, in a great number of cases, the will is never even used. Others might be thinking: “A living trust is more powerful...
Q. I see that Windows 7 is no longer supported by Microsoft. Do I have to upgrade right away? A. If you found a 10-year old can of beans in your pantry, would you eat it? How about an ancient jar of mayonnaise? Just like old food hidden away in the back of a cupboard, there is no single magic date when a long-lived tech device is unsafe. So much depends on context. A PC that is not connected to the Internet is reasonably safe for years. But the Internet is a dynamic environment, and every connected device is continuously subject to attacks....
Congressional lawmakers find themselves caught between the unlikely and the impossible as they try and work through complicated issues like drug price controls. With the sharp partisan divide, the ongoing impeachment of President Trump, the upcoming presidential campaign and their own re-election fights on everyone's minds, difficult choices with disappointing results are the most likely scenario for prescription drug and most other major health care legislation affecting seniors – just like i...
Family caregivers of loved ones with disabilities and chronic illnesses experience life transformations that are often unexpected. Their altered lifestyles, frequently resulting in dramatic changes to their personal identities, can last for many years, depending on their circumstances. Being uprooted from their former selves over long periods of time can bring isolation and loneliness. And that can have negative physical and mental ramifications for both the caregiver and their loved one. How caregivers deal with their newly transformed lives,...
By Al Clayton, Sr., as told to Maraley McMichael. Recent clear sunny days in make me think of going ice fishing. I've made many winter fishing trips through the years, but one in particular stands out in my memory. While living in Anchorage in the early 1960s, I made a trip to Copper Lake in the Nabesna Road area. I chose March because it usually brings beautifully clear, cold weather to interior Alaska. Another fellow, Buck Moore, made the trip with me. Buck was a camp cook for Lee Hancock and...
In the early 1900s, coal was being shipped from as far away as Cardiff, Wales, to the U.S. Navy's coal station at Sitka. Some thought that the coal deposits at Chickaloon in the Matanuska Valley might meet the Navy's requirements. Along with federal Bureau of Mines director A.M. Holmes, Jack Dalton went to look the mine over in 1913. When Holmes concluded the coal would suffice, he gave Dalton the task of figuring out a way to get the coal from the mine to tidewater – at a cost the Bureau c...
Originally airing on NBC from 1962 to 1971 and currently rerunning on several cable networks (INSP and Starz), the enduring popularity of the "The Virginian" doesn't surprise 85-year-old James Drury, who starred throughout the series in the title role (see www.thevirginian.net). "It still holds up," said Drury from his home in Houston. "The old westerns were morality plays that showed the triumph of good over evil and I think that's important for young people to see on screen these days because...
Well, they did it to you. Right before Christmas, too. Your Congress sent you a nice Christmas stocking, but inside was a nasty lump of coal. They eliminated the “Stretch IRA”. I guess I had better back up and explain. A stretch IRA is a device which estate planners have been using for many years, to minimize the income tax bite for your heirs. And now, except in limited situations, we can’t use it anymore. In fact, many people now desperately need to change their plans to avoid a huge incom...
Q. How do I show my medical information on my smartphone’s lock screen? A. Both Android and iPhone support storage of personal medical information and emergency contacts, accessible even when phones are locked. In an emergency, your phone can communicate vital information to a first responder if you prepare it beforehand. Here is how: On Android, the feature is called Emergency Information and it...
While President Trump has not had much success on the drug price reform front, his administration is making modest progress on a different front – announcing two regulatory changes that Trump hopes will provide more easy-to-read price information to patients. The first effort targets hospitals, finalizing a rule that requires them to reveal and display their secret, negotiated rates to patients, beginning in January 2021. This proposal has been resisted for months by a large portion of the health care industry. It would require hospitals for th...
Earlier this year, the National Indian Council on Aging (NICOA) had the opportunity to host several focus groups with American Indian family caregivers. The purpose of the groups was to learn more about these caregivers’ experiences helping an older family member or friend who has health problems and disabilities. During the focus groups, we learned about their caregiving duties, the challenges they face, and their encounters with healthcare professionals. Our focus groups revealed how caregivers’ lives are impacted by their role as caregivers....
By MARALEY McMICHAEL Senior Voice Correspondent "This is not working, I can't handle this all the way to Texas! As soon as we get to Kamloops, I'm going to find a veterinarian and see if we can get something to quiet her down," my husband Gary declared one January day in 2000. He had already grumbled so much, I had moved into the middle of the seat of our '97 pickup. That put Patches, our dog, by the passenger window. We didn't know about harnesses attachable to seatbelts, but we did know that...
More than 60 years ago, the framers of Alaska's Constitution found one of their most difficult problems to be the intermediate government between municipalities and the state. Their solution was the creation of a unit known as the "borough." "It's a county with a New York name," a legislator once said. Most delegates to the Constitutional Convention did not want to slice the territory into a large number of counties as in other states. Valdez delegate William A. "Bill" Egan listed "make-up of...
Toasting the New Year by raising a glass of wine on December 31 is a tradition with many families and friends. But unlike most year-end revelers, actress Donna Mills can welcome the New Year with a bottle of wine from her own vineyard. Schlepping up a hillside harvesting grapes probably wasn't an activity soap vixen Abby Ewing might have enjoyed on the old CBS TV series "Knots Landing." But Mills, who portrayed the manipulative character on the popular show for a decade, has no such...
I have had a lot to say about the problems with the probate system -- it’s expensive, it takes a long time, it is easy for a disgruntled heir or creditor to hold up the proceedings, it is very public -- and about how to avoid it. But today I want to talk about another imperfect system. If someone claims that you are not competent to handle your own affairs, the courts have an adult guardianship system to determine whether you need to have someone appointed to handle those affairs for you. T...
Q. My daughter gave me an Amazon Fire tablet. What is the best way to learn how to use it? A. The Amazon Fire is a great introduction to the world of tablet computers. Because the Fire can do so many different things, it can seem confusing at first. Here are a few ideas to get started. Tablets are much less complicated than traditional computers, so try a little trial-and-error. Play with it. Push buttons, swipe across the screen. Just play and explore. The Fire has built-in apps that let you read, watch movies, play some games, and browse the...
When Altrice Ward’s 82-year-old mother was hospitalized after falling for the third or fourth time, Ward knew she had to face an uncomfortable reality: Her mother could no longer live on her own. So, despite holding down a full-time nursing job, Ward decided to move her mother in with her and take on the role of caregiver. Even her professional training caring for others did not prepare her for what lay ahead. “It was eye-opening and more difficult and exhausting than I imagined it would be,” says Ward, of Maywood, Ill., a Chicago subur...
As a child in Anchorage, Seward and then Glennallen, I remember many magical Christmases. Then, in third grade, I got into a big argument with another student about Santa. I was devastated after a conversation with my mother as I realized that the other child was right. Christmas was still special, but not magical. During the early years, our family would frequently spend Christmas at our cabin on Kenai Lake. Dad and Mom packed everything we needed into the 1956 two-tone green Chevy station...
During the Klondike Gold Rush, Dawson's dancehall girls offered prospectors a welcome diversion from their grueling, lonely days of digging in the sub-arctic tundra. "The sourdoughs lay on their bunks until noon – and noon might just as well be any other time – moving painfully about only to stoke the stove or break off a chunk of rye bread, more from sheer boredom than hunger," wrote Ellis Lucia about digging for gold during a winter in the north country in "Klondike Kate: The Life of the Que...
