Grad grateful for science scholarship

Growing up in Homer, surrounded by the incredibly beautiful and diverse landscape of Kachemak Bay it was easy for the life sciences to become my favorite subject. Which is why I am incredibly grateful to be one of the recipient’s of the 2019 Homer Community Science Scholarship.

This scholarship will help me in my pursuit of a Conservation Biology and Ecology degree at Montana State University which I will be attending this coming fall. Homer has given me a great appreciation for the natural world around me and I plan to return to the incredible community of Homer to help conserve the environment that has given me so much.

Thank you to the Homer Foundation for the interest in my academic and career goals and your generous contribution towards helping me achieve them.

Alison McCarron

Scholarship helps grad give back

With much gratitude, I am proud to accept the Health Care Providers Scholarship award from the Homer Foundation. I was born and raised in Homer Alaska, and I’ve been surrounded by the caring community of Homer my whole life. That is why I applied to the Homer Foundation for a scholarship, because they give back to the community, therefore improving the quality of life for those who live in Homer. Which includes me and my family, and all those I’ve grown up with who’ve gotten me to where I am now.

I am truly appreciative.

Emilia Halstead

Removing emotion from PFD debate

It’s difficult removing emotion from the PFD debate because of how significantly and directly beneficial it is to all Alaskans. No matter where you live in this frontier, the dividend has significantly and uniquely impacted your life. The PFD allows individuals and families to put those funds toward their own unique set of needs. No other program can lift families out of poverty, provide a down payment on a house, college tuition for kids, a new roof on a home, or a used car. No. Other. Program.

Let’s remove the emotion from the debate and look at the facts. PFD cuts are inequitable and regressive, taxing lower income households disproportionately higher. It places the cost burden of funding government exclusively on Alaska residents, with Alaska families carrying the heaviest cost burden. It hurts the poor, vulnerable, children and seniors on a fixed income. PFD cuts remove money from the economy, reduces household income and hurts private sector businesses.

Why is the most beneficial program that reaches all Alaskans being prioritized as the one to cut? Why are so many legislators on both sides of the aisle pushing for PFD cuts that will hurt the very same groups and causes they advocate for? Why aren’t other revenue options being considered? Are legislators trying to protect the highest income earners in the state from an income tax? Maybe.

Maybe it’s past time to expand the scope of this conversation. Maybe legislators should analyze various revenue options instead of limiting the conversation to PFD cuts. And maybe it’s time to put this debate behind us forever by protecting the dividend in the constitution for all future Alaskans.

Maybe then we can finally find a revenue option that’s fair, equitable and acceptable to the majority of Alaskans.

Catherine Felt, Kenai

WWU bound and grateful

As a Homer High senior, I have been working on getting ready to go off to college. This not only includes the many applications to colleges but also for scholarships. One of these such scholarships was the Health Care Providers Scholarship that I recently received. I am very thankful to these donors for giving me the chance to receive this scholarship and use it at Western Washington University. I plan to put it to use in order to get my Physical Therapy degree which I will later use to work in a hospital and aid others with their physical therapy needs. Once again I would like to reiterate my statement and thank them for this generous scholarship.

Kelsea Scott

Pilots, try to be good neighbors

It’s another summer with the re-appearance of multiple float-plane operations and influx of bear-viewing aircraft. Along with the business they bring to town is the issue of greatly increased aircraft noise. Some pilots and operators, such as Smokey Bay, are clearly sensitive to the issue and make efforts to be a good neighbor by mitigating their noise footprint. Others, however, apparently don’t appreciate how obnoxious the noise can be. Most of the racket seems to emanate from about a dozen aircraft, mostly the Cessna 185s and 206s on wheels and floats. The problem, as everyone knows, is the high prop RPM. That high-pitched piercing noise carrys literally for many miles.

So, as a reminder to those pilots, when feasible please make an effort to get them back a couple-hundred RPMs once safely airborne. Also very helpful, for the floatplanes taking off to the southwest and then making a right turnout over the city, is to extend their departure leg for about 15 seconds before initiating the right turn, in order to help gain pattern altitude earlier. Of course, so you can then reduce the prop even more. Every once in a while, in the evening, a lightly-loaded Cessna 180/185 floatplane does takeoffs and landings, making tight patterns over the city, with his prop screaming throughout. Not a way to make friends.

For those pilots who can accept this input with a measure of grace, and with consideration for those below you — be assured you have our thanks and gratitude.

For the remaining recalcitrant pilots who persist in unsafe low-level approachs over the city with props cranked up high, well, I guess it just proves what they say about the unfathomable persistance in society of a certain subset of humans.

Larry Slone

The Devil is everywhere

The Devil says, “Take children away from their parents and put them in cages.” The Devil says, “Fear thy neighbor and distrust strangers.” The Devil says, “Find differences in others and hate them for it.” The Devil appears everywhere — in church, in government, at home.

We are all the same. To see differences is the work of the Devil.

This is my belief.

Lela Ryterski

Same as it ever was

Both houses in Juneau are the same as they have been for decades — all bickering over funding for education, health care, the Alaska Permanent Fund, increases in Pioneer Home costs, and on and on.

Seeing Hoffman and Coghill in each other’s faces, debating all of the above along with the crime bill designed to keep the bad guys locked up longer … and while we are on the subject of bad guys, I am reminded of the Bill Allen/Legislature fiasco of a few decades past when Allen was able to buy Alaska Legislators votes for the amount of a monthly house payment. Some called that dirt cheap.

Now, I’ll tell you what dirt cheap is: when the oil companies contribute a few thousand dollars in campaign funds to a politician, who in turn, votes to give nearly a billion dollars, in Alaska taxpayer money, to the oil cartel, as tax credits — now that is dirt cheap. I do not know how these people can sleep straight at night, but I do know, that the “Corrupt old Bastards Club ” is alive and well in our capital city.

John A. Anderson, Kenai