In the days of sail, ocean travel was dangerous. Thousands of shipwrecks from that era litter Earth's oceans and beaches. Sailing ships weren't for fun and games. If you were part of the crew, your work was hard and hazardous. Falling from the rigging or being washed overboard by a wave were common fatal accidents.

It's time someone put in a good word about pink salmon, the fish also known as humpies, so I'll give it a try.

Weighing between 3 and 4 pounds, pinks are the smallest of the five salmon species found in Alaska waters, but they are by far the most numerous. The 2011 commercial harvest was well over 100 million pinks. The harvest of the second most numerous species, sockeye, was only about 40 million. Third place went to chum salmon, with 17 million. Coho (silver) salmon took fourth place with 3.4 million. Chinook (king) salmon finished dead-last with only .4 million.

We Americans have made life so safe, it's become boring.

Trouble is, we're not hard-wired for serenity. We need drama, action and danger. We claim to want safety, but at heart we hanker for an occasional shot of adrenaline. We crave the thrill of being chased by something. We enjoy the feeling of being scared, if only vicariously. This is one reason we spend so much time and money on TV, games and movies.

To ring in the new year on a positive note, here's an idea for bolstering the wintertime economy of the Kenai Peninsula: At midnight on New Year's Eve, lower something to the ground.

I don't understand why, but lowering things on New Year's Eve gets people all excited. Excited people eat, drink and spend money they don't have on things they don't need. As I understand it, that's what makes the economy go round.