Alaskans have about $40 billion invested in our Permanent Fund. Dollars invested in businesses and nations throughout the world. Most believe dollars are wealth. In the end, dollars are only a tool used to help the people, prosper. Our dollars, created by the private Federal Reserve Bank are accepted around the globe. They are backed, by nothing more than the “good faith and credit” of the American people.

As a Physical Education teacher at SoHi and Skyview for 30 years, I read with great interest the recent Clarion article “Board sees obesity study results.” As our nation ponders how to pay for an unimaginable health plan, it stirred passions of my own teaching experiences and my relationship with students as we innocently fought the ravages of obesity 45 minutes per day, five days per week and had a blast doing so. Fond memories of my own children having P.E.

Rape, domestic violence, suicide, child abuse, fetal brain damage from alcohol, and alcoholism: for more than 40 years Alaska has the highest rates in the nation. A recent survey of Alaskan women found one in three had been raped. Must we endure this?

Given our wealth and small population, we should be the happiest and healthiest bunch of people in the United States. We very much are not.

Chickens are wonderful birds except in my back yard. Having started picking eggs from under hens about 75 years ago, there are many wonderful things, and sometimes times of getting your little hand pecked pretty hard by an old hen. My memory reminds me of standing on a kitchen chair and washing eggs, drying them and putting them into a 30 dozen case. Growing older, you graduated into the wonderful job of cleaning the chicken house about once a month.