Kodiak Daily Mirror - Daily newspaper of Kodiak, Alaska

Local Columns

Hank Pennington

Outdoor Kodiak: Set your sights on better muscle tone, breath control
The weather has been hard on everyone’s shooting practice over the last couple of months. Though I usually spend lots of time in the field with a gun in February, it has been a challenge this year just to get out of my driveway! Even if you’re wi...

Feb 21, 2012 | 0

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Outdoor Kodiak: Fly fishing in deeper, warm layers
After the last few weeks of frozen pipes and brutally cold wind, I’ll take any sign of spring. At times like these, mud, water without ice and brown grass can be signs for optimism. I recognize that we have at least a couple of more snowy months...

Feb 14, 2012 | 0

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Outdoor Kodiak: Taking aim against the rising cost of ammunition
If it’s been a while since you bought ammunition, be prepared for sticker shock. In recent years prices have gone through the roof. That’s not news to dedicated shooters, but the occasional shooter will be shocked when he finally runs low and has ...

Feb 07, 2012 | 0

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Marion Owen

Garden Gate: Greatest veggie hits for growing up north
When Robert E. Peary prepared for his final attempt to reach the North Pole in 1909, his provisions included an astounding list of supplies: 16,000 pounds of flour, 10,000 pounds of sugar, 10,000 pounds of “biscuit,” 100 cases of condensed milk, 3...

Feb 20, 2012 | 0

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February is a good time to reboot any plants, such as fuchsia, dahlias and geraniums, that you brought in for the winter. To propagate geraniums, clip 4- to 5-inch tips, remove the lower stems and leaves and set them in fresh water. Change the water every few days. Soon they’ll start to sprout roots, giving you a new supply of plants, for free! (Marion Owen photo)

Garden Gate: Winter seed starts preview garden indoors
Since this winter has been rather blustery, here’s my No. 1 reason for starting seeds indoors: Growing something green is a sure cure for the restlessness that plagues gardeners while the weather is cold and gray and when the itch to garden comes ...

Feb 13, 2012 | 0

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Fear of failure can be crippling when starting new gardening projects. Beginning with baby steps can be the most freeing of all actions. (Marion Owen photo)

Garden Gate: Cures for ‘analysis paralysis’
Dan Burns is a friend of mine who works as a professional sports photographer. Based out of Connecticut, he covers a wide range of events from polo to pro football, theater, dance and wildlife. “I photograph anything that moves,” he told me last ...

Feb 06, 2012 | 0

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Laine Welch

Fish Factor: AMSEA: Federal budget cut to commercial fishing safety unfair
It’s a mixed bag in America in terms of bankrolling “the best available science” for our nation’s fisheries. Based on the preliminary federal budget released last week, funds for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration went from $4.7...

Feb 20, 2012 | 0

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The world’s first portable floating drydock has been launched at Sitka. Builder Allen Marine said it can acommodate vessels up to 1,000 tons and can be shipped by air to remote communities. (Allen Marine photo)

Fish Factor: Lights in wheelhouse give flood warning
Over half of all fishing fatalities are due to vessels going down, and most of the boats sink because of flooding. The sinkings of the Alaska Ranger and Katmai in 2008, for example, in which 12 men died, both stemmed from flooding through open hat...

Feb 13, 2012 | 0

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Fish Factor: Gov. takes ‘conserve’ out of DNR mission
Alaskans were surprised to learn (from the Anchorage Daily News’ Alaska Ear, of all places) that there is a new and different mission statement posted by the Department of Natural Resources on the State of Alaska website. The old statement of p...

Feb 06, 2012 | 0

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Mike Rostad

Gary Ennen, far right, poses with his classical guitar teacher, Renato Bellucci, and Bellucci’s wife, Belen, in Paraguay. (Photo Courtesy of Gary Ennen)

Kodiak Tapestry: Guitarist learns to play up a storm
Kodiak guitarist Gary Ennen is one of the fortunate few who have taken lessons and performed with Renato Bellucci, a well-known classical guitar player and composer. Introduced to Bellucci and his work through the maestro’s website, Ennen was so...

Feb 10, 2012 | 0

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Frank Bishop, left, and Bill Burton own a herd of roughly 450 buffalo that graze the grasses of a 22,000-acre state lease.
(Mike Rostad photo)

Kodiak Tapestry: Partners watch out for predators, poachers
The mammoth, wooly buffalo of the plains have made their way to the bear haunts of Kodiak Island where some folks seem to think the animals are theirs for the taking. But they aren’t, warns Alaska Department of Fish and Game Kodiak area wildlife ...

Jan 27, 2012 | 0

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Mickey Jones, decked out as Santa Claus, is really the helper here for teachers Diane Langfitt, left, and Anne Oliver. (Photo courtesy of Mickey Jones)

Kodiak Tapestry: Teacher’s aide considers self luckiest girl in world
Mickey Jones loves to wear hats. Red ones, purple ones, yellow polka dot. Floppy ones, skinny ones, tall ones. Halloween hats, Santa hats. Hats for every occasion, including her mid-December send-off party at Main Elementary School, when she reti...

Jan 13, 2012 | 0

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Suzanna Bobo

Local author Harry Dodge III reads a selection from “Kodiak Tales” at the annual meeting of the Kodiak Public Library Association in spring 2011. (Suzanne Bobo photo)

Scuttlebutt: Local bear guide, author hits home with his fiction
One of my greatest pleasures of the past year was hearing local author Harry Dodge III read at the annual meeting of the Kodiak Public Library Association last spring. I had met Dodge several years earlier, briefly, in the newsroom at the Kodiak...

Feb 17, 2012 | 0

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Scuttlebutt: Planning ahead for a Kodiak-style love fest
Just in time for the day set aside to honor the patron saint of lovers, several organizations are sponsoring events that will allow Kodiak residents to do what they do best — show their love for one another. I’m not talking about the soppy sort o...

Feb 03, 2012 | 0

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A stop sign at the Coast Guard base in Kodiak seems to be crying “uncle!” in the face of so much snow. (Suzanna Bobo photo)

Scuttlebutt: Snow evolves from delight to pain and back again
The wind sock hanging from the eaves of our house is motionless, but snow begins to fill the tiny tracks left by the crows who gathered hopefully on the deck rail this morning — and the bigger tracks left by my husband, who stepped out, bread in h...

Jan 20, 2012 | 0

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Kodiak student Josh Bezona rides a boat in Italy.

Scuttlebutt: Va benissimo! A Kodiak student’s amazing adventures abroad
Imagine spending an afternoon hiking through the foothills of the Italian Alps. Or taking a short drive and ending up in Milan. Or returning home for supper to the land of risotto and cream sauce. Kodiak High School student Josh Bezona enjoyed t...

Jan 06, 2012 | 0

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Switgard Duesterloh

Amazing Nature: Change no worry for jellyfish
There is a saying that goes, “The only constant in life is change.” Animal populations undergo changes and some years are good, others are bad.It has always been so. As scientists and environmentalists sound the alarm over a change in ocean chemi...

Feb 17, 2012 | 0

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Amazing Nature: Pacific cod better off than Atlantic cousins so far
Again and again, I watch mesmerized as the big cod circles the aquarium in the Kodiak Fisheries Technology Center. Every so often, the big fish opens its mouth and takes a gulp as if adjusting its jaws. The telltale barbell on its lower jaw shows ...

Feb 03, 2012 | 0

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Kodiak Middle School students measure pH in seawater while doll Abby watches. (Switgard Duesterloh photo)

Amazing Nature: Oysters in the classroom
Kodiak Middle School students are busy studying how a change in ocean chemistry has in recent years affected oyster farms along the North Pacific coast. Like all bivalves, oysters begin their life as an egg, which hatches into a small larva that...

Jan 20, 2012 | 0

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Amazing Nature: Arrow worms: clear, sleek predators
If you have read the Amazing Nature column before, chances are this is not the first time you read about plankton and the amazing creatures one can encounter gazing through a microscope at a sample of the community of ocean drifters. Marine plank...

Dec 23, 2011 | 0

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Capt. John Quinn

Another Day in Paradise: Riding out the storms of life
One of my favorite viewpoints in Kodiak is through my porthole window in my office. Maybe it’s one of my favorites because it is one of my most frequent views as I come and go inside our building and always pause and look out the window. On a calm...

Feb 17, 2012 | 0

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Another Day In Paradise: Love shines, fair or foul
We must be coming up on Valentine’s Day, because the weather is warming up. What does one have to do with the other? Absolutely nothing. In spite of no correlation existing, our weather is warming considerably over what we endured in January as w...

Feb 10, 2012 | 1

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Another Day in Paradise: Embracing Alaska’s winter
From warm to cold. From wet to white. From snow to ice and back to wet. The streets get narrower as there’s no place to put the snow. Sidewalks are memory lanes where only the brave attempt to flounder. One morning this week there was more snow st...

Feb 03, 2012 | 0

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Another Day in Paradise: Living in the moments we have
We’ve all heard the expression, “Live life in the moment.” Well, at the moment it is clear and cold. I would prefer something a little warmer, thank you. Then, when I stop to think about it, this is exactly what I wanted. Let me back up a little....

Jan 27, 2012 | 0

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