{"id":5310,"date":"2016-12-05T10:59:39","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T18:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/?p=5310"},"modified":"2016-12-05T21:27:47","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T05:27:47","slug":"blackdogsmatter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/archives\/5310","title":{"rendered":"#BlackDogsMatter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

No difficulty seeing him in the snow. We finally got some. After two almost snowless winters it’s good to see it back. If for no other reason than it brightens up the landscape, but of course skiers love it\u00a0too. Which is fine, so long as they don’t go off on me when\u00a0they spot\u00a0me and The Dog\u00a0on their<\/em>\u00a0groomed trails. A\u00a0freshly combed trail is to a skier what a glass pool is to a high diver. I get it. I try to stay on the multi-use trails most of the time. But in the few instances when\u00a0I don’t, for instance when we’re forced\u00a0off a side trail onto the groomed corduroy by an angry moose, or circumstances of the day require I shortcut back to the car, I don’t want to be berated\u00a0by an apoplectic skier who thinks just because there’s snow on the trails they are suddenly — and\u00a0legally —<\/em>\u00a0for skiers\u00a0only. They aren’t. I steer clear of groomed\u00a0trails as a courtesy<\/em><\/span> to skiers. As a protest sign I once saw posted at the trailhead correctly noted: 12 months of taxes, 12 months of access<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The opinions of this blogger are his and his\u00a0alone, especially as his Happy Wife\u00a0is an avid skate skier. (Thankfully, a reasonably minded one, sympathetic to the plights of Dog Walkers).<\/p>\n

Lot’s going on lately, not all of which I care to share with you, and not because it’s not good, it is, but I don’t want to jinx the outcome I want by talking about it. And no, I’m not opening a Pot store<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Adding to our seasonal woes of dark and cold, the State is now officially in a recession<\/a><\/p>\n

“I about cried when I first saw the data \u2014\u00a0it was shocking,” said Caroline Schultz, an economist with the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development who worked on the report<\/a>. She described Alaska’s current economic state as a “recession.”<\/em><\/p>\n

How touching,\u00a0an economist in tears. In my experience the best ones are coldly logical and stoic. If a grim analysis is all it takes to make you cry, maybe seek other work? In any case, no matter. I first moved here in ’89 when the State was in the trough of a pretty bad recession. For largely the same reason, too — a very low price for a barrel of oil.\u00a0It rose again briefly in ’90, dipped and stayed low the following ten years, then began climbing again pretty\u00a0steadily, until it was all Wine & Chocolates again (and free Halibut Charters \ud83d\ude42 ) for a pretty long time. Until now<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hard to predict what that graph will look like ten years out.<\/p>\n

So we (HW & I) have had to cut back. To wit: while traveling recently I had to stoop\u00a0to ordering an\u00a0anonymous bottle of Barolo for dinner.<\/p>\n

Nothing pains\u00a0me more\u00a0than a\u00a0look of shame on HW’s\u00a0face<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No difficulty seeing him in the snow. We finally got some. After two almost snowless winters it’s good to see it back. If for no other reason than it brightens up the landscape, but of course skiers love it\u00a0too. Which is fine, so long as they don’t go off on me when\u00a0they spot\u00a0me and The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5310"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5321,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5310\/revisions\/5321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}