Bird of the Week – Mountain Bluebird
Okay, Enough ducks already. Let’s look at a thrush. WC isn’t sure Mountain Bluebirds breed in Alaska every year; they seem to come and go. But it sure is a treat when you find one. Birds of North America says, The Mountain Bluebird is one of the most sublime of all North American passerines. Like other North American bluebirds, it is beautiful, bold, and charismatic, with a dedicated human following. Indeed, many people view bluebirds as emblematic species representing all that is good in the world. The truth is a little less bluebird-like. The species thrives in areas of human…
Around the Lens Podcast 14 – We Enter The Time Machine
This week’s show featured photojournalists Stacy Pearsall and Ben Weller. We spoke about the recent controversial Valentino ad campaign featuring photography by renowned photographer Steve McCurry. During our Gear Talk segment we discussed the new Canon 80D and its new lens which features a power zoom add on. Then we took a theoretical time machine and gave younger selves career advice. Finally, we took a Reddit question about photojournalism and discussed how we overcome visual blocks. Picks of the Week: Stacy promoted a model release app for the iPhone and Nikon action cameras. Ben promoted the pants he likes to wear while…
The Weekend Off – News You Missed
Alaska Newsweek – ALASKA-ANCHORAGE: THE BEST WOMEN’S HOOPS TEAM WEST OF UCONN AND THE YUKON Megan Mullings was understandably despondent. A freshman at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, she had just taken part in her first intercollegiate scrimmage, a whupping that was so one-sided it may as well have been a crime scene. “I was thinking, This is our first game; is our entire season going to be this bad?” recalls Mullings. KTUU – Ex-Juneau lawmaker fined over alleged conflict of interest A state ethics committee is fining a former state legislator more than $18,000 over claims that he sought…
The Pete Kelly Lisa Murkowski Surreality Show
State Sen. Pete Kelly, a Republican from Fairbanks, has introduced a bill to allow University of Alaska students to carry guns on campuses and into dorms. That’s public policy even more harebrained than putting pregnancy tests into bar bathrooms. Did Pete go to college? Did he live in a dorm? If so, he apparently didn’t notice that dorms aren’t exactly hothouses of good judgment. Adding firearms just increases the opportunity for adolescent bad judgment to become truly tragic. I sure wouldn’t send my kid to live in a dorm populated with gun-toting teenagers. I haven’t figured out what Kelly does…
Justice Scalia’s Black Beemer
By Greg Palast | For OpedNews It was one of our team’s weirder investigative discoveries: The recently departed Justice Antonin Scalia— alev ha shalom — in 2011, was ticketed for recklessly driving his black BMW. To his family, I offer condolences. To my readers, I offer the facts. A man’s soul must be laid to rest, but history must not be buried as well, especially now that the Justice’s passing has become grounds for stories that border on historical obscenity, cf. the New York Times, “Liberal Love for Antonin Scalia.” Love?? Well, if you want a Valentine, this ain’t it. There’s been a…
Bird of the Week – Green-winged Teal
There sure are a lot of ducks… Here’s another dabbler species, pretty common in Alaska. The Green-winged Teal is North America’s smallest dabbling duck. Unlike many of North America’s other dabblers, this one does not breed extensively in the prairie pothole region of the central part of the continent. Instead it’s most abundant during summer breeding season in river deltas and wetlands of the boreal forest in Canada and Alaska. This Teal nests in dense cover, often in shrubs or sedges. While it is heavily hunted, because its breeding areas are far from human activity, its numbers have remained high and may even…
Around The Lens Podcast – Photography, News and more
It’s not often that you hear from the people that make the photos and video that go along with the news stories that you read. Photojournalists are a relatively silent group, usually loners (like me) who drop in take their shots and get out to file with their news organization as soon as possible. The few times you even read what we’re thinking come in the form of one or two sentence captions at the bottom of photos. We never get invited on talk shows to get asked how we feel, or what we saw… even though we’re usually the…
Max Gruenberg (1943 -2016) – Memorial in Pictures
Alaska lost Rep. Max Gruenberg (D-Anchorage) last week. He was remembered by legislators on both sides of the aisle. Jeanne Devon (former editor of The Mudflats) took these excellent shots in her new job as Press Secretary for the Alaska Senate Democrats. You can watch the moving tribute to Representative Gruenberg at 360North.
Bird of the Week – Ring-necked Duck
Sometimes WC thinks that birds are deliberately named in a way to confuse birders. This is one of the reasons. WC means, what the heck? Yes, there is an extremely faint, rarely visible ring around the bird’s neck. But thre’s a blinding white, extremely obvious white ring around the bill. Why not Ring-Billed Duck? Sigh. This is an uncommon duck in Interior Alaska; the range maps doesn’t even show the species in the state. But it is, and they do breed here. Despite appearances, this is a diving duck, not a dabbler like a Mallard. The gold eye, double white…
Photos: Hillary Takes the Stage One More Time In New Hampshire
TheMudflats is in New Hampshire! I’m covering the primaries, so be sure to keep an eye on my twitter feed @zdroberts and keep checking back as I’ll be posting photos like these as often as I can get upload them. Every politico in the planet is in the Live Free of Die state right now so the internet is a bit slow here. Last night Hillary took to the stage in Portsmouth, New Hampshire speaking to a packed house at the Great Bay Community College. It was a mixed crowd of students, locals and over 80 people who bussed up from Arkansas….