Dave Kiffer - Alaskan Poet, Historian, Humorist

HALO (Copyright 2016 by Dave Kiffer)   She loved the gloriole, Reminding us that her mother Had seen one just before labor, That she had risen from the couch To go outside in the sun And that her water had broken.   She also loved the rainbows That came when the clouds did not, Rarely, yes, but often enough To leave colored memories To melt the gray sky days Into moments softly passing.   Perhaps it was the finiteness Of the rainbows, the beginning, Middle and end, the story arc Soaring from ground to sky And back again, like a love story Which she also loved.                                                And yet she Clearly preferred the circle Of the sky dogs, the tail chasing Halos ri...

  Bear With Me On This One A while back, I had a giggle when I noticed a friend said she wanted to strangle someone with her " bear " hands. Yes, I'm sure it was just another example of the Auto Correct Follies, which has replaced Spellcheckapalooza as one of the great scourges of the modern world. In trying to be helpful, auto correct offers words and names that you had no intention of using and make no grammatical sense. And sometimes, I swear, it inserts them AFTER you hit send!!! But, is " bear " hands really so bad? Yes, it is not correct. It is not "bare." And yes, it would be a little too exciting to rent a " bear " boat charter. But, in some ways, strangling some with your " bear " hands would be appropriate. Assuming you had " bear " hands, of course. Another word that sometimes comes in written communications is "baited." No, not as is "my hook is baited."...

  FROM HEIGHT   (copyright 2022, by Dave Kiffer)   From height You begin to understand. At the surface Things seem manageable You are only confronted With the next island The narrow canal ahead The next strait to cross   But at height You really see how small The white boat in the sea Really is, and how tenuous The connections are Between here, and there

  PATIENCE (copyright 2014, by Dave Kiffer)   It was the eight hundred thirty fourth Most popular childs’ name last year, Not as common as during Puritan times But trending higher these chocablock days, Life needs more “Patiences” in checkout lines Life needs more “Patiences” on the highway Life needs more “Patiences” on hold In the circle of hell that is tech support.   And yet, we shouldn’t be driven by how Our names say we should think, act, Boys named Ruger and Steele need be No more aggressive, or intense, Than Serenity or Harmonia, Laying in the beach sand, Waiting to see what comes in.

  I WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE (copyright 2012, by Dave Kiffer)   That under similar circumstances I would behave in a similar fashion That I would rush a pillbox or Throw my body over a grenade That I would leap into a burning room Or stand tall against a charging bear That I would step up to take the rap Rather than see an innocent punished. And yet here I am facing your broken glass With my guilty hands raised in supplication As though I have no more idea how Such a thing could have happened Than I would know what causes sin Or why the Zloty has fallen ten percent.

  Still masking after all these years? A while back I wondered if I would miss the masks that i have been wearing at work and elsewhere for most of the past couple of years. The answer is yes. For one thing, now I have to go back to shaving every morning. That's an extra five minutes out of my day that I won't get back - at least until I retire. Which is just about 500 days away, but who is counting? When you think about it, shaving every morning is truly pushing your luck. For example, you're tired. If - like me - you are NOT bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6 am, shaving can lead to serious problems. Few places bleed as much as the face when punctured. When I was a kid, I used to occasionally see grown guys wandering around with little bits of toilet paper stuck to their faces. Somehow that was considered less embarrassing than bleeding to death because they tried to get one last swipe out of a dull blade. There were also these odd ...

  Ziegler was dean of the Ketchikan legal community Fifty years ago this month, the dean of the Ketchikan legal profession died while on a vacation trip to Seattle. Adolph Holton Ziegler was 86 and was stricken at a Seattle hotel and later died at one of the area hospitals on May 17, 1972.  At the time of his death - he was the oldest and longest serving member of the Alaska Bar Association, having become a member in 1915. His death came just about a month before the Ketchikan Community College - now the University of Alaska Southeast-Ketchikan Campus - planned to name its main building after him. Ziegler spent more than two decades serving on the Alaska Territorial School board, including a lengthy spell as board president. Ziegler was born in Easton, Maryland on Dec. 20, 1889 and was educated there at Easton High School and Maryland College and Sadlers Business College.   According to his biography on the University of Alaska website, he b...

  By Dave Kiffer For the Daily News The recent news that the longtime Alaska Marine Highway System ferry Malaspina will be officially retired and will remain in Ketchikan's Ward Cove as a museum and a training vessel is good news to the fans of the AMHS who had feared that the "Mal" would suffer the same fate as its sistership, the Taku, which was sold in 2018 and then scrapped in India. The Malaspina, along with the Taku and the Matanuska were the first "mainline" ferries in the state fleet, all going online in 1963. They were expected to have a life span of some 30 years, but all ended up serving well over 50 years. The Matanuska remains an active mainline ferry for the state. The Malaspina was the first to go online, in January of 1963, and even though it was replaced as the largest ship in the fleet by the Columbia in 1973, it remained "the Queen" of the fleet in the eyes of the general public. When it arrived in Southeast Alaska in...

  The state of Alaska is selling the retired state ferry Malaspina to the developers of Ward Cove for $128.500. A new group, M/V Malaspina LLC, plans to restore the vessel and turn it into a museum celebrating the maritime and logging history of the community. John Binkley has said that it will also be used for worker housing and hopes to use it as a training platform for the students working towards a career in the maritime industry. The Malaspina has been docked at Ward Cove since it was taken out of service at the end of 2019. Selling it will save the State the $425,000 is has been spending each year for wharfage and upkeep, according to a press release from the ADOT. Four years ago, another one of the original AMHS mainliners, the Taku, was sold for scrap and that was not the best outcome, according to AMHS general manager John Falvey. "This is the fifth ship that the AHMS sold over the past 20 years," Falvey said in a press release announcing t...

  WAVES, TO THE SEA (copyright 2022, by Dave Kiffer)   I used to imagine waves as soldiers In the same way that every stick I threw into the ocean Was an enemy battleship To be hit by the handful of rocks I would toss in like bombs Strafing the bobbing wood That could never be sunk.   The waves were an infringement An attack on our peaceful shores From far over the horizon, much like How we charge down the beach From the other side, to greet The memories that roll in.

  By Dave Kiffer For the Daily News A Ketchikan institution is turning its rice cookers back on after one of the longest closures in its nearly 60-year history. Diaz Cafe, a Stedman Street landmark since the early 1960s, will reopen on May 12 after being closed since last Fall. The venerable eatery normally closes for a couple of months each year between Thanksgiving and mid-January but this year health issues necessitated a longer closure. Three generations of locals have eaten at the longtime restaurant with its "Filipino and American " seemingly frozen-in-time menu, and its distinctive red (ketchup colored) yellow (mustard colored) and black (soy sauce colored) interior walls. Some locals have eaten there every day for decades and the longer closer had them missing a diner that has been a part of their lives since childhood. While it is not clear if Diaz Cafe is the longest operating restaurant in Ketchikan history, it is certainly one of the longest currently operating on...

  Second grade historians Study Ketchikan history Recently, Katie Sivertsen's second grade students at Point Higgins Elementary School studied Ketchikan history. Each one focused on a different facet of the First City's heritage. They were encouraged to take on the personas of actual people in Ketchikan history. Then they presented their work at the Tongass Historical Museum. Much of the information they used came from history stories in the SITNEWS archives. Here are the presentations they gave at the museum recently. It is abundantly clear that Ketchikan has a great group of future historians to carry Ketchikan's "stories" forward. Vanellope - Diaz Cafe My name is Clara Diaz and I own Diaz Cafe, a restaurant in Ketchikan. Diaz Cafe has been open since 1964 on Stedman Street. Before Diaz was open, the Diaz family had a restaurant in Newtown in the 1950s. Our family moved to Juneau from the Philippines in 1934 and then to Ke...