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Those of you (including this retired Army pilot) who have witnessed an aircraft accident first hand know the litany of emotional phases that one experiences. At first you deny the accident happened. “I know that crew and they are the best. They’re just lost, will fix the radio and call the center or the tower.” Next you become angry, saying , “Why did this crash have to happen? Someone could have prevented this from happening. Who is that person? Let’s find out.” The third stage of grief is a...
Although the frenzied gold seekers of the North lacked most of the luxuries, not to mention necessities, of civilized living, they did have theaters – even opera houses. There had been entertainment in California's gold rush of 1849, but never had there been such garish and colorful entertainers as in the days of '98. And many of them went on to fame and fortune. Sid Grauman, later owner of Hollywood's Grauman's Chinese Theatre and high priest of Hollywood's cinematic palaces, started his career...
Only a handful of actresses danced in feature films with both Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. One was Leslie Caron. Although her last feature film was a decade ago, she hasn't been exactly idle since. "I won an Emmy in 2007 for a guest role on 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,' which was a grand moment for me," said Ms. Caron from London, where she moved in 2013 from her native France to be near family. Her autobiography, "Thank Heaven," was published in 2010, and in 2013 she appeared in an...
Dear Jonathan: I recently updated my estate planning, which included a new will, as well as a revocable living trust. I decided to go with the trust because I want to make sure that my estate is not probated at my death. I recently read that if all of your assets avoid probate, you don’t need to have a will because the will only controls assets you have to probate. Is this true? If so, why did my attorney insist on me preparing a will along with my trust? Jonathan says: The article you read is correct in that a will only controls the d...
Q. I use my iPad during business meetings and the clicking sound it makes when I unlock it is distracting. Is there some way to silence that noise? A. Having invested years perfecting the art of stating the obvious, my best recommendation would be to unlock your iPad before the meeting begins. However, if the sound your iPad or iPhone makes when you lock or unlock it is ruining your life – or perh...
Alaskan economics are connected to Petroleum prices. The price of petroleum is down and the state budget is under attack. The legislature and Gov. Bill Walker estimate the yearly budget deficit is between 3.2 to 3.4 billion dollars. There are only two ways to balance the budget; one is to reduce state spending and the other is to raise revenues. In an effort to reduce state spending the Governor has recommended cutting senior benefits by 25 percent. Senior benefits only go to those seniors whose incomes are between 75 and 175 percent of the fed...
Former Phoenix VA Healthcare Director Sharon Helman, who was earlier ousted by the administration after the public outcry over the deaths of veterans on a waiting list, has had her $57,000 bonus upheld. An administrative judge ruled Helman’s dismissal was due to taking trips and gifts and not the result of her stellar work at the Phoenix VA. The judge ruled therefore she was entitled to her well earned $57,000 bonus in addition to her $170,000 (never in question) base salary. Factor in her f...
Called the Spanish flu, only because the Spanish press wrote about it, a virus took more than 500,000 American lives between 1918-1919 (estimates worldwide range from 20 to 100 million). And it came north, even though Territorial Gov. Thomas Riggs did everything in his power to keep it away from Alaska's shores. When 75 citizens of Seattle died from the flu during the week of October 12, Riggs asked steamship companies to examine all passengers heading north on the final ships of the season and...
Produced from 1990-1995, the British sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances" quickly crossed the Atlantic, bringing smiles to viewers of American Public Television where the show was widely broadcast. The success of the series, still seen on limited PBS stations today, was mainly due to the formidable acting skills of Patricia Routledge, who created the ludicrously snobbish and comical character Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced 'bouquet,' of course). "The basic premise of Hyacinth is pretension and that's...
Dear Jonathan: I just completed the probate of my late brother’s will. I was the executor he appointed to act on behalf of the estate. This was not a pleasant experience and in fact was quite the opposite and made me realize that I don’t want to put my family through anything like this at my death. My wife and I don’t have a large estate, but we are comfortable and I want to make sure that everything I own goes to my wife first and then to my kids upon her death without having to go through probate first. What do you recommend we do to avoid pr...
Q. I know you’re probably sick of hearing from us XP user/whiners, but it is such a good operating system, I just don’t want to move to something else. I have heard that Microsoft was losing money on XP, but why can’t they just charge XP users and continue supporting it? A. Microsoft was not losing money on XP. In fact, it was one of their most successful products ever. But as an operating system, it simply ran its course and it was time for the company to move on – exactly as it had announced years in advance. The same will hold true for Win...
For veterans, seeing temporary politicians take a knife to the military budget is nothing new. For some elected officials, low hanging fruit like retirement pay and TRICARE health care insurance is an easy choice since it directly affects so few voters. For those of us who began their military career with a “Greeting from Uncle Sam” letter from the draft board, we assumed we had a contract with the federal government. That contract was that if we spend 20 years in the military, we would be rew...
Among the memorials in the Anchorage Municipal Park Cemetery stands a small, pink marker adorned with a palette. It is the final resting place of Sydney Mortimer Laurence, one of Alaska's greatest artists. Known for his dramatic landscape paintings, Laurence was one of the first professionally trained artists to live in the territory. His works, which often feature Mt. McKinley, hang in the Musee du Louvre in Paris, the National Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. and many other locations worldwide....
If you have watched television since the 1950s, there's no avoiding William Schallert. His distinctive, mellow voice and comfortingly familiar face have appeared on series ranging from "Father Knows Best" to "Desperate Housewives" and everything in between (see www.william-schallert.com). "I've never added up the total, but I did work a lot," said Schallert, from his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif. The tally of his television appearances is close to 300, with another 100 feature films – the fi...
Staff from Alaska’s Social Security office will be available for questions via videoconferencing at the following locations and times: Kodiak Job Center, on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month (March 10 and 24), 9 a.m. to noon. Kenai Senior Center, on the first and third Wednesday of each month (March 4 and 18), 9 a.m. to noon. Ketchikan Job Center, every Thursday (March 5, 12, 19 and 26), noon to 3 p.m. Social Security provides toll-free telephone service to all of Alaska. Residents in Alaska’s southeast communities can call the Jun...
Dear Jonathan: I know that the annual gift tax exclusion for 2014 was $14,000. Is this amount being increased for 2015, or is it staying the same? Jonathan says: The annual gift tax exclusion for 2015 will remain at $14,000. Dear Jonathan: How much will a person be able to shelter from federal estate tax in 2015? Jonathan says: The federal estate tax exemption will increase in 2015 from 2014’s amount of $5.34 million to $5.43 million dollars for a single person. A husband and wife will be able to shelter $10.86 million dollars from federal e...
Q. I’m using high-speed Internet over a phone line. It works okay, but on occasion it goes so slow that most sites never finish downloading. Is this a provider problem? A. I would start your investigation with your Internet service provider, and initially determine what connection speed range you should have. Your provider’s website will have that information or you can call their customer service department. With that information in hand, run several speed tests using a site such as speedtest.net, bandwidthplace.com or cnet.com/internet-speed-...
Age does not directly affect your credit score. At least not the way late or missed payments or overuse affect your score. But there is a definite connection. Assuming you’ve handled your finances well, age can be a positive factor in determining your credit score. There’s a saying in the financial world – “the best credit is old credit.” So let’s say you are 70 years old. You may have had charge accounts of one kind or another for 45 years or so. That’s a long time to prove yourself creditworthy. It’s also long enough that, even if you had...
President Obama in December of 2014 took the first step in removing the last vestige of the cold war by restoring relations with Cuba. The United States for over 53 years maintained sanctions against Cuba because it was a communist country depriving its citizens of democratic freedoms, freedoms which were already eliminated by Fulgenco Batista when he abrogated the Cuban constitution in 1958. By the late 1950s, the Cuban people's negative feelings against Batista's repressive policies and govern...
The Alaskan-Canadian Highway, known now as the Alcan, was one of the highest priority projects in the Second World War after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The strategic value of a highway from the contiguous 48 states to Alaska had been debated for years. The "save the money crowd" said the cost to build the land link was too high for a territory with 75,000 natives and pioneers living in log cabins who hunted, mined, trapped and fished for a living. A coastal route had...
One of Anchorage's most respected doctors made a mercy run to Iditarod four years before Nome's celebrated diphtheria serum run of 1925. Early on the morning of Jan. 24, 1921, Dr. John B. Beeson hopped on a train leaving Anchorage and headed toward Iditarod after getting word through the U.S. Army Signal Corps that Claude Baker was near death. Baker, a well-known Iditarod banker, was suffering from an old injury he'd received while serving as a guard on the gold trail outside the famous mining...
At 76, veteran comedian and impressionist Rich Little is still zigzagging the country doing one-man shows. Impressions have been Little's stock and trade since his school days in Ottawa, Canada. "I would answer teachers' questions in their own voices," said Little, from his home in Las Vegas. "Pretty soon, they stopped asking me questions!" That was over 60 years ago. Today, crowds still flock to see the man who claims a repertoire of over 200 voices. Unlike ordinary comedians, Little says...
Dear Jonathan: Several years ago my wife and I completed our estate planning. At that time our estate was worth around $2 million and the exemption from federal estate taxes was only $1 million. Consequently, our attorney recommended that we prepare separate trusts which would allow each of us to take advantage of the exemption amount so there would be no federal estate taxes due at the death of the second one of us to die. I don’t really remember or necessarily understand the strategy other than the fact that we had to create two separate t...
Q. Is there is any way to print the contents of a folder so I can obtain a list of the filenames, sizes and dates modified? A. Yes, you can print a list of the files and subfolders contained in any Windows folder, and while this can be accomplished within Windows itself, using a third‑party program makes the task a lot easier. One such program is PrintFolder at http://no‑nonsense‑software.com/freeware. PrintFolder can print files, subfolders or both, and it includes several other customizable options. If you’re a purist and prefer to print y...
Social Security COLA increase Happy New Year and I hope it is a healthy one. If you are on Social Security, you will notice that you received a whopping 1.7 percent increase in your benefit. Please spend it wisely as you probably will not get any more “good” Social Security news for the next two years. Replacing lost or stolen credit cards and documents I have a sad story to tell and I hope that you all learn a lesson from my misfortune. All of my identification cards were either lost or sto...
