Dave Kiffer - Alaskan Poet, Historian, Humorist

  NORTH ATLANTIC STANDARD TIME (Copyright 2012, by Dave Kiffer     It shines on in this bleak world The endless tree falling silently In a forest of iron rustcicles Made not of limestone but of Metal fingers reaching out To cover the echoes of a Thousand screaming mouths   Now we bring centurial light Dropping the candle two and A half miles in the bitter well Of all redeeming progress Only to find more questions Than answers to the questions We hold tighter than eternity   The wood is gone and so Is the flesh that littered this Elephantine graveyard of Our fevered imaginations Only a gilded clock locked Not at 2:18 am, but at a time Stamped much, much earlier

  Everything Changes , 'Cept the Rain Ketchikan's recent spate of record-breaking temperatures got me thinking (always a questionable activity). Not about the temps themselves, 72 and 67 are not particularly high temperatures for Our Fair Salmon City. Yes, they set the all-time marks for April 18 and April 19. And those warm days were especially welcome as they came on the heels of a generally gray Winter and Spring. They were most definitely an improvement over the intermittent snowstorms that were still whacking the community as late as April 9. What is it they say, "April Showers bring May Flowers?" Not in Ketchikan. "April Snows bring May Woes" is more like it. But the whipsaw that was a week between two inches of the white stuff and 72-degree temps was definitely hard on these older bones. I used to laugh at people who would "predict" the weather by how poorly they were feeling. Not anymore. As usual, I digress. The sunny skies got...

  The Aussie who loved Ketchikan For 40 years, Len Laurance was The Ketchikan Visitor Industry It is likely the most famous story in the history of the Ketchikan visitor industry. At a Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce meeting in the early 1970s, Len Laurance said that eventually Ketchikan would host more than one million cruise ship passengers each season. The proclamation, made at a time when less than 70,000 cruise passengers visited the First City, was met with guffaws by the audience. But Laurance , who died at 88 on April 8, was right. In both 2018 and 2019, Ketchikan had more than one million cruise visitors and would likely have had more than 1.3 million in 2020 if not for the COVID 19 pandemic that shut down the entire Alaskan cruising industry. In an interview in 2014, Laurance said his projections were simply based on a 10 percent increase every year. "It took a while for most of Ketchikan to recognize the benefits of tou...

  SOUTHEAST LOG 4-24-21 COVID outbreak reported WRANGELL - Authorities are reporting 16 COVID cases in the past week. They say the cases appear to be community spread. A mask mandate has been put in place until April 30. THE WRANGELL SENTINEL Company gets timber contract HAINES - An Oregon company has received won a contract to cut the 1,000-acre Baby Brown timber tract north of Haines. NWFP Inc, bid more than $423,000 for the state timber lands contract under which work could as soon as June. THE CHILKAT VALLEY NEWS Airport to reopen PRINCE RUPERT - The Prince Rupert Regional Airport on Digby Island will reopen by June 1. Officials say that Air Canada has reached an agreement with the Canadian government to resume service to the airports in Prince Rupert and Sandspit. THE PRINCE RUPERT DAILY NEWS What, no Kjottboller? PETERSBURG - The Moose Lodge held a "Swedish" meatball fundraiser for the Little Norway Festival last week. THE PETERSBURG PILOT Mounties honored ...

  WHATEVER YOU SAY Say nothing, you said, To hard men approaching In that subterranean bar. I didn't know they were Hard men, as you said, They were just oversized. "Slab" you nodded, "Mary," he nodded back. The history crackled. They ignored my nod, Slab handed you a box Tiny in his butcher hands. "Slieve" he said You nodded and blinked. Then they both left. It was a long ride Into increasing dark After that night. Each crossroads Maybe more deadly, Than the last.

  AMIDST THE LOCALS    (copyright 2021, by Dave Kiffer)   I know Mom liked the grass, Something we did not have At home because the glaciers And the rain stripped Everything worthwhile away.   So, we would head not for parks But for the places that were quiet And serene, and green, even On the hottest days of summer, When the pavement melted dreams.   There was comfort in the headstones. The names, the dates, the words Heartfelt but inadequate, Unable to sum up any breathing part Of people that we did not know.   It was like reading a newspaper From a city where you do not live. You feel the import of the times But none of the immediacy of lives Lived in your own ebbing shadow.   So now when I visit somewhere new I find myself wandering the sections, Wondering how each stone arrived. Was it early? Was it late? Or was it Just in time, to mark the passing.

  LIKE SNOW IN APRIL   (Copyright 2021, by Dave Kiffer)   My mother used to say And it was not a good thing, More-over it was something Nary to occur in her book.   Nary was another word She used when she was cross As in "you'll nary turn out to much" When she caught me acting loon.   Which, of course, was something That happened much more often Than nary, and at least twice As often as snow in April.

  A Belated Thank You We often seem to wait too long to let people know they have been important in our lives.  As a journalist I have written dozens of stories of people after they have passed on and the common theme is always how much others cared about them and the difference they made in those people's lives. Yeah, I get the whole "never speak ill of the dead" approach, but it seems that, more often than not, there is a fair assessment of folks when people come to grips with the fact they are gone. Maybe we're just assessing the empty space they have left in us, but it is always good to know you have made a mark. Although, in these cases that revelation does come a little late, at least for the dearly departed. I was thinking about that when I was chatting with one of my former high school teachers in the store the other day. I was taken with a sudden urge to tell her how important she was in the direction my life eventual...

  A nearly two-decade quest to build a "homeport" dock for the NOAA research and survey vessel came to fruition this week, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency announced it had awarded an $18 million contract to Anchorage-based Ahtna Infrastructure and Technologies LLC. Ahtna Infrastructure is a subsidiary of Ahtna Netiye’, Inc. which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ahtna Native Corportation, the Glennallen based Alaska Native Corp.  Ahtna has done previous projects in Alaska for the FAA and the Coast Guard. It also worked for NOAA on a project in Alabama. Back in the late 1990s, NOAA was at a crossroads, much of its coastal survey fleet was aging and several of the vessels, including the Fairweather had been taken out of service. But the replacements for those ships, as exemplified by the Oscar Dyson which was then under construction, were proving much more expensive and NOAA was looking at smaller budgets in the future. NOAA deci...

  SOUTHEAST LOG 4-17-21 New mountain preserve PRINCE RUPERT - A new conservancy is being established near Mount Edziza. The area is called the Ice Mountain Lands but will be later renamed to reflect the Tahltan heritage of the area. THE PRINCE RUPERT NORTHERN VIEW Manager search drones on HAINES - The borough assembly has to start over at square one in its search for a new manager, the fifth one in the past decade. The assembly chose a man from back east, who then said it would cost too much to move. Now, the second finalist, acting manager Alekka Fullerton, the borough clerk, says she is no longer interested in the full-time job either. THE CHILKAT VALLEY NEWS Skiers trigger avalanche SITKA - A group of skiers triggered a large avalanche on Mt. Edgecumbe last week. Officials say that one of the skiers was buried but was very lucky that the other skiers quickly found him and dug him out. He was uninjured. THE DAILY SITKA SENTI...

  SOUTHEAST LOG 4-10-21 New outbreak at Acropolis Manor PRINCE RUPERT - A new outbreak of COVID 19 has occurred at the Acropolis Manor senior home. Two residents are reported to have tested positive. Between mid-January and mid-March, 57 residents and staff tested positive for the virus. And 16 residents died.   THE PRINCE RUPERT NORTHERN VIEW Couple separated by COVID WRANGELL - A couple that has been married for nearly 70 years has spent most of the last year apart because of COVID restrictions. Elmer Mork, 91,  was finally able to visit his wife Patricia, 87, a couple of weeks ago at the Wrangell Medical Center's long term care facility. THE WRANGELL SENTINEL. Woman, father charged in cycle death SITKA - A 19-year-old woman has been charged with manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident that killed a bicyclist two weeks ago. The young woman's 70-year-old father has been charged with tampering with evidence and...

  BUT NOT WITHOUT REMEMBERING I can pass the frozen food aisle But not without remembering That time we both grew cold, Deep in discussion of the world. Or watch the rain come down But not without remembering Standing wet on the back deck, Deep in discussion of the world. Going on, I'll just fill in your side But not without remembering Time never quite stands still, Deep in discussion of the world.

  Ketchikan's rainfall notoriety goes way back In 1916 Visiting Writer Dubbed  First City 'The Rainiest Town' Perception is often reality, so although there may be some wetter places in America than Ketchikan (Little Port Walter, Kauai Island in Hawaii, the coast north of Yakutat) Ketchikan is generally considered the rainiest "town" in America. And despite its efforts to market itself as other things, such as the Salmon Capital of the World, it has certainly been nationally known as the   rainfall   champion since the late 1940s ( See "When Did Ketchikan Become the   Rainfall   Capital," SITNEWS, August 17, 2017 ) Or maybe even earlier? How about this headline from the January 12, 1916 edition of the international weekly magazine "Christian Herald" published in New York City. "Ketchikan: The Rainiest Town in America."  The Herald was certainly international in scope with stories in t...