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PICTURES OF THE WEEK
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It was lightly snowing this morning. Gina says I'm too excited for spring and need to not be so grouchy when I see some snowflakes.

She's right, and I can still enjoy a good cross-country ski or two or three.

And the fresh snow will be great for the U.S. Alpine Championships, which start Tuesday with training at Alyeska Resort in Girdwood. The events continue through April 3. Alyeska first hosted the championships in 1981 and hosted them as recently as 2004.

Gracing the same slopes that locals can use will be a pair of Olympic gold medalists – Ted Ligety and Julia Mancuso. It should be big fun.

Today we ran two stories in the newspaper on candidates for Anchorage School Board Seat B. It’s the first open board seat in four years due to a decision by two-term member Jake Metcalfe not to run for a third and final term.

Candidates Ryan Sharratt and Chris Tuck both had thoughts on teacher contract negotiations, and other important education topics. Click here for a story on Sharratt, and here for a story on Tuck. I’ll paste their short bios below.

Primula auriculas come in a variety of colors.
Nothing going on for Saturday night, March 24? Grab a gardening buddy and head to the Co-operative Extension Service classroom, 2221 E. Northern Light Blvd (inside the Carlton Building) at 6:30 for a slide show and talk on primula auriculas by Ed Buyarski of Juneau, who is also the president of the American Primrose Society. Free and open to all.

A column by Barbara and Clair Ramsey in today’s Anchorage Daily News Money section talks about the possibility of rooftop gardens as our city grows vertically. What a fabulous idea! Could you think of a better way to enjoy a gorgeous day than from a rooftop garden, as city streets grow shadier from new, tall construction? And as the Ramsey’s state, roofs designed and built properly can sustain a green roof.

I recently got a copy of Green Roof Plants, A Resource and Planting Guide by Edmund C. Snodgrass and Lucie L. Snodgrass (Timber Press) that I have been devouring for it’s lists of low maintenance perennials, especially of the sedum and sempervivum kind. The problem for us, of course, is finding the plants that can withstand our long, cold, dry winters but there are plenty that do. Wouldn’t it be great if gardens, however small, were to be included in rooftop design for new construction?

Sometimes it’s the smaller bill that seem to cause the most problems, Sen. Hollis French, D-Anchorage, says.

When French proposed a bill that would make it a misdemeanor for auto detailers to install window tinting that let in less than 30 percent of light, he says he was only trying to make the roads safer. When windows are that dark, it’s hard for police officers, or pedestrians trying to cross the street, to see the driver behind the wheel, French said.

But when the bill came up in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, callers from Fairbanks complained that if the bill passed, the loss of revenue from tinting installations could put a serious, well, dent into their business.

The House is discussing a bill that would double the fines for traffic violations in a school zone. A similar law passed in 1998 applied to traffic violations in highway work zones, and Rep. Peggy Wilson, R-Wrangell, thinks Alaska’s school kids are worth the same amount of protection.

Wilson and co-sponsor Scott Kawasaki, a Democrat from Fairbanks, say studies show a child has a 10 percent chance of dying if he or she is hit by a car traveling 20 miles per hour, and a 45 percent chance of fatality if the car is traveling 30 miles per hour.

The bill had its first hearing Thursday in the House Health, Education and Social Services Committee, where it was held over until the next committee when there wasn’t enough time for discussion.

As chairman of the Senate Resources Committee, Charlie Huggins, R- Wasilla, is pushing for an aggressive, if not optimistic, schedule for Gov. Sarah Palin’s gas pipeline bill.

Huggins said this week he hopes his committee can get through its hearings before the Easter break on April 3, when he is shooting to pass the bill on to the Judiciary Committee. After lawmaker debate and discussion on the legal aspects of the bill, Huggins said he’d like to see the bill move on to the Finance Committee sometime by the third week of April.

If all goes as planned, the bill could be on the Senate floor by the last week in April, a timeline that Senate Minority Leader Gene Therriault said he thought was “very doable.”

Most anybody involved with Alaska’s seafood industry knows the state’s senior U.S. senator, Ted Stevens, is a big fish. No less than the nation’s foremost ocean fisheries law bears his name – the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which dates to 1976.

With a big push from Stevens, Congress late last year overhauled the act for the first time in a decade. The revised law has provisions to reduce domestic overfishing and illegal international fishing.

On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration honored Stevens for his efforts to “protect the nation’s fisheries and promote coastal awareness and conservation,” according to a press release today not from NOAA but from the senator’s own office.

Heirloom pinwheel marigolds.
By all accounts, it time to plant seeds. My garden is mostly perennials but there are some annuals that I am compelled to grow every year because I love them for one reason or another. Like the gold and maroon pinwheel marigolds that grow into tall feathery bushes. They don't look like any other marigold I know and they have a wonderful fragrance as well. When I say fragrance, I don't mean perfumey. It's sort of pungeant but not unpleasant, almost medicinal in an herbal way, if you can conjure that. I can still smell it when I handle the seeds.

We enjoyed the beautiful sunshine and mid-20s temperatures for a Saturday afternoon hike on the Turnagain Arm Trail.

Spring arrived on Wednesday and with it an inch or so of new snow. Winter is still holding on here in the north.

In today's paper, we have a story on the record snowfall received in Juneau this year – 194.6 inches. It broke the record from 1964-65. There also is a photo of Homer Harbor still locked in ice. Because of the continued cold temperatures, the

All this time, I thought happy hours were illegal in Alaska. Happily, I was wrong.

I must have heard it from a dozen friends over the years: "Anchorage bars aren't allowed to have happy hours." I would travel to other cities, enjoy cheap happy hour deals, then wonder why Alaska was lamely lagging by banning deals for early-evening pub crawlers.

That isn't exactly the case. Alaska bars face some restrictions when it comes to setting beverage prices. Blame those crazy kids from the 1980s, when the Anchorage party was in full swing. Doug Griffin, director of the ABC Board, was in his 20s then. One popular gesture, recalled Griffin, was to "six pack" someone: You would literally buy them six drinks, and the compliant bartender was happy to serve.

A friend just posed this question to me: “I want to ask about The 18,000 ladybugs I have released in my greenhouse right now and how to tell if some are alive or dormant?”
My guess is, they’re alive if they are moving and not, if their little legs are sticking straight up in the air. Perhaps someone has a more educated answer!

In the Midtown Assembly race, challenger Elvi Gray-Jackson's campaign has launched a Web site aimed at incumbment Dan Coffey's record.

The site is: www.dancoffeyconflicts.com

UPDATE:
Coffey calls the issues raised on the site -- which says Coffey has too many conflicts of interest -- a “red herring."

“Show me where I haven’t been truthful. Then you got an issue. Show me where I haven’t disclosed. Then you got an issue. Show me where I voted when I had a conflict. You got something on me,” he said this morning.

Assembly candidate Ryan Stencel announced today that she's pulling out of the South Anchorage race to avoid splitting the vote with other conservatives.

Her statement, which arrived this morning by fax, says:

"I am withdrawing from the South Anchorage Assembly race.

South Anchorage is one of the most conservative areas of Anchorage and it is important that the Assembly reflects its views. With multiple conservative candidates on the ballot, I decided to take the high ground and withdraw from the campaign to give voters a better chance to elect a candidate that most accurately reflects their feelings. This has been a difficult decision as I believe I have the best understanding of the important issues this district faces. I have spent years advocating for this area and I will continue to fight for good public policy and the rights of private property owners.

San Jose Sharks rookie defenseman Matt Carle of Anchorage just keeps sticking himself into the team record book.

Carle, who already owns franchise marks for goals by a rookie defenseman (11) and power-play goals by a rookie (8), on Wednesday night entered the record book by tying the mark for points by a rookie defenseman (39, shared by Marcus Ragnarsson, 1995-96).

Carle notched two power-play assists in the Sharks’ 4-1 win at Chicago, which gives him 11-28—39 totals in 69 games this season. He’s on quite a streak, too – he owns 4-9—13 totals in the last 13 games.

I talked to South Anchorage candidate Ryan Stencel earlier tonight, looking to confirm that she’d been telling people she was pulling out of the race.

Stencel said she wanted to wait to make an announcement but agreed to fax something within about half an hour. That was maybe 90 minutes ago and my calls are going unanswered.

If an announcement comes, I’ll post it here.

Incidentally, Sherri Jackson said today that she had asked one of her opponents, Jim Bailey, to drop out early in the race. Bailey had mentioned this conversation too, saying that Jackson was worried the two Republicans would split the vote against Matt Claman.

Sunken cod boat Exodus Explorer. DEC photo

A boat loaded with 35,000 pounds of cod has sunk at Adak Island in the Aleutians, and the U.S. Coast Guard is investigating.

The 94-foot, steel-hulled Exodus Explorer went down in six fathoms of water Sunday after running aground on Gannet Rocks in Kuluk Bay about 2 a.m. while heading into nearby Adak harbor, according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

650 AM talk show host Mike Porcaro got a hold of Mayor Mark Begich and Assemblyman Paul Bauer for an on-air debate today. You can guess the topic: Bauer's assertion that Begich is skirting city ethics rules.

Click here to listen.

• Her Tern boutique started a blog that its staff updates almost daily with pictures and information on new store items. It should definitely make your bookmark bar.

• Lulu E. Bebe has five new styles of Miss Me jeans and lots of new jewelry in this week. I just hooked myself up with some big and blingin’ hoop earrings for around $10.

• Coach and MAXX handbags are back at the Costco on Debarr Road and the styles are fairly recent – well, most of the styles are recent. I did spot the chocolate brown suede tote that I drooled over for most of last year. The handbags start at $99.