Healthcare crisis in a nutshell
When I noticed the grocery stores were stocking Halloween candy six weeks before the event, I realized that President Obama’s goal of fixing America’s healthcare crisis would be harder than winning the Nobel Peace Prize. America spends far more, per capita. on healthcare than any other country in the world. Some experts claim it consumes [...]
Letters
Free computer basics classes provided This month at the Homer Public Library, people learned essential computer skills that will help them function in our technology-dependent world — for free. A recent grant from the Clifford Jenson Fund and the Unrestricted Fund at the Homer Foundation has helped to fund a year’s worth of monthly classes [...]
How to dress like a ‘Homerite’
The other day, having refilled my Diet Coke for the seventh time, I found it necessary to take an extra trip around the parking lot to understand exactly what kind of fur was draped around the woman microwaving nachos at Petro Marine.
(While this certainly seems like a more than opportune time to get into a furious debate regarding the ethics and humanity of wearing processed animal pelts, I hardly see where it would serve any purpose. Dolphins, tuna, NRA, Darwin. It’s pretty much all the same – so what’s the point?)
Back to the nachos.
Kenai sculptor tackles giant gourd
A jack-o’-lantern just won’t do for this job. An extraordinary pumpkin demands an extraordinary design.
That’s the attitude Kenai sculptor Joy Falls will use to approach the 319-pound pumpkin she’ll be carving at the Kenai Visitors and Cultural Center this week.
“I’m a sculptor and it will be sculptural; kind of a 3-D character,” Falls said. “It’s too wonderful a pumpkin to just make a jack-o’-lantern out of it.”
Broomballers hit the road for ‘Northern Championship’
Dan Deschamps bounds onto the ice, blowing a whistle as he slides to a stop.
“OK, we’re going to work on defense tonight,” he says, rounding up his team of broomballers.
An intense hour of drills commences, with members of the Duggan’s Pub Homer Broomball team enthusiastically hurtling across the rink. This has not been the standard for Homer Broomball practices in the three years since its inception, and during the first “Whitehorse practice,” it took me by surprise. Until now, the typical warm-up consisted of whacking shots in the general direction of the goal for a few minutes, while the stragglers finished in the locker room.
Wyatt moves to No. 2 in state at 160 pounds
Bitten by the flu and injury bugs, the Homer High wrestling team found itself down five wrestlers when it arrived in Seward last weekend for the annual King of the Mountain Tournament and was forced to forfeit in six different weight classes.
Lady M’s earn Senior Night victory over Nikiski
After a dominating opening performance against Nikiski last Thursday at home gave the Homer Lady Mariner volleyball team a decisive 25-12 win in the first game, their small but vocal crowd of supporters was probably thinking “easy win.”
Sports Briefs
Nikolaevsk to host ‘Mixed 6’ tournament Small schools netters from all over Alaska – including the Ouzinkie Hawks, Old Harbor Lynx and Akhiok Eagles – will converge on Nikolaevsk School on Thursday for the annual Mixed 6 Volleyball Tournament, hosted by the Nikolaevsk Warriors. The two-day event kicks off at 2:30 p.m. Thursday and features [...]
Sportswriting – so easy a computer could do it
It’s been said that if you put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters, one of them would eventually write “Hamlet.”
But could they come up with a good sports story?
Fletcher tops in 100-yard backstroke
With only days left until the all-important regional swim meet at Skyview High – where state qualifiers will be decided and the seasons of many swimmers will end in disappointment – the Homer Mariner swim team could have been forgiven for slacking off at last weekend’s Peninsula Invitational.
But slack off they did not.
