Good cops bad cops
By: Diana HaeckerReasonable citizens have repeatedly addressed City fathers to provide reliable and honest public safety in Nome. Their pleas should be heard as one of the most fundamental tasks of...
View ArticleNo More!
By: Diana HaeckerIt is 2018 and women are still not treated as equals in America. I’m not even talking about equal pay or opportunity, but equal in terms of being afforded the promise of safety and...
View ArticleFull Transparency
By: Diana HaeckerWe are being fed incomplete information at all levels of government these days. On the international level, Saudi Arabia has yet to get its story straight about the country’s...
View ArticleThe Wall
Government that holds hostages typically is not good government. It is a failing strategy of President Donald J. Trump to have to resort to extreme measures and gamble that emergency declarations will...
View ArticleRaising honorable citizens
Do we expect too much from government? Listening to Governor Mike Dunleavy’s state of the state address, he pledged to make Alaska a safer place, by replacing SB 91, addressing the opioid crisis, and...
View ArticleCutting Eduction funding is a bad strategy
By: Diana HaeckerFor a guy who used to be an educator and who ran on a platform of restoring trust in government, Governor Mike Dunleavy just sent the opposite message to Alaskans, namely that...
View ArticleFood Security
By: Diana HaeckerGovernor Dunleavy toes the line with President Trump in disregarding the importance of climate change for the survival of the world as we know it. Instead of refocusing our collective...
View ArticleEDITIORIAL: Quid pro quo
As we see in this week's poll from The Nome Nugget’s website, most people are staying updated on the daily deluge of news streaming from Washington on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald J....
View ArticleLETTERS: Port development; PETA
To the editor: In regards to last week’s Op-Ed penned by Sen. Sullivan Senator Sullivan gave Nome residents some more of his dumb. Sullivan is clearly not sensitive to the tremendous problems that...
View ArticleLetters: Impeachment
To the editor, I’m sending this as a reply to your editorial of November 7, 2019. I’m a daily follower of the impeachment process, in fact I’ve been a daily follower of Donald Trump on CNN since he...
View ArticleEditorial: Impeachment
Impeaching a president is a grave undertaking. It is not taken lightly and should not be dimished by name calling. Instead, we ought to listen to the public servants who are lined up to testify and...
View ArticleEditorial: Impeached
By: Diana HaeckerMembers of Congress and Senators are working for you. Remind them, especially this week, of their mandate and remind them of the oath they swore to protect the Constitution from...
View ArticleEditorial: Graduation
It’s May and that means graduation season is upon us. After two years of uncertainty due to the pandemic and under the threat that in- person instruction could be disrupted at any given moment, let’s...
View ArticleOpinion: Arctic Orientation
On Friday, a press release landed in my email box, informing me that the U.S. Coast Guard hosted a “Senior Leader Arctic Orientation”, a whirlwind tour that put 30 people into Nome for a few hours...
View ArticleShare the Trail
By: Diana HaeckerSnow is on the ground, hopefully here to stay, and we hear the roar of snowmachines reverberating through town. It is the sound of winter, as is the howl of a dog team. The message of...
View ArticleDear Graduates
By: Diana HaeckerGraduating from school is a scary moment as you find yourself facing a million possibilities for your future. What path to take? What door to open?The world celebrates your success of...
View ArticleFund what’s good for the soul
It seems that all we hear these days is cuts, cuts, cuts. We hear from every level of government, from the feds and the state, that we should prepare for further belt-tightening and that we should not...
View ArticleReturn to reason
/*-->*/ To the student of present world and state political affairs, it seems that reason has gone out the window. At all levels, federal, state and even local, differing parties are so entrenched in...
View ArticleThe lessons of Hokule’a
Last Friday, the replica of an ancient Hawaiian voyaging canoe returned to its homeport of Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of Oahu from a three-year voyage around the world. Thousands of people lined...
View ArticleBudget
It took again a second special session for the Legislature to produce a FY18 operational budget, but they are still trying to work out a longterm plan to put the state on a sustainable trajectory. Do...
View ArticleTransparency
By: Diana HaeckerHow often do we feel like we don’t even know the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our current state of the nation, the state of the state and the state of our local affairs? I sure...
View ArticleHealth Care
By: Diana HaeckerU.S. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, has first postponed the vote on the repeal and replace of President Obama’s signature law, the Affordable Care...
View ArticleDismissing Scientists
By: Diana HaeckerTwo weeks ago several high-level federal scientists and policy makers were dismissed from their jobs working on climate adaptation and resilience in Alaska and were assigned to posts...
View ArticleThis land is your land…
The federal government is the largest landowner in Alaska. The feds own about 60 percent of Alaskan land, an area of 222 million acres. This includes National Parks, wildlife refuges, national forests,...
View ArticlePet care
By: Diana HaeckerIt has been a while since Nome saw regular veterinarian care for the city’s and the region’s dogs, cats and other four-legged companions. Since last April, however, we have noted the...
View ArticleWelcome to Nome
By: Diana HaeckerThis coming Sunday marks the second arrival of the mega cruise liner Crystal Serenity to Nome, after last year’s ‘maiden voyage’ that took the ship from Anchorage via Nome, through the...
View ArticleFirst week of school
By: Diana HaeckerMonday marked the first day of school in the new school year and after a summer of fishing, berry picking and lazing around, students need to get used to the new routine of rising...
View ArticleOur Mission
With the bankruptcy and possible buyout of the state’s largest newspaper, the Alaska Dispatch News, and a nationwide discussion about the role of the mainstream media in light of constant attacks by...
View ArticleOn the off chance...
By: Diana HaeckerYes, we do appreciate when elected officials come to Nome. We do appreciate it even more when they announce their arrival in a timely manner. And, of course, it’s most appreciated when...
View ArticleWeather or climate?
By: Diana HaeckerIn the course of reporting about the effects of a changing climate on our region for this paper, I have come across countless scientific reports that in essence conclude that a) the...
View ArticleJust Saying
By: Diana HaeckerThe National Newspaper Association recently sent out their monthly PubAux paper with the usual industry news of how community papers rock and how they must be preserved to ensure that...
View ArticleA message to predators
By: Diana HaeckerIt is shocking to see this many “me, too” Facebook posts out there that reveal the depth, the severity and the pervasiveness of sexual assault in every strata of society, in every...
View ArticleIditarod
Nome, by virtue of being the finish line of the 1,000-mile Iditarod Sled Dog race and having been intertwined in the history of the event from its first year running in 1973, has a vested interest in...
View ArticleIt's sign up time
By: Diana HaeckerIf you are not a careful news reader or if the daily grind of life keeps you from paying close attention to the fine print of rules, the fact that the enrollment period for the 2018...
View ArticleVolunteers are the heart of Nome
With emotions still raw about the loss of Bette Ann Haugen, who lost her life in the Oct. 31 fire, the burned remnants of the Polaris Hotel remind us every day of the fragility of life and that tragedy...
View ArticleTax folly
By: Diana HaeckerAs I listened to the beautiful music performed by the Nome Beltz Jr./Sr.High School Band and the High School Choir, it dawned on me that those kids will be paying for a tax folly that...
View ArticleIt's been a year
By: Diana HaeckerThe one-year anniversary of the Trump administration has been reached last Saturday and around the globe and the nation Women Marches were held in protest of many things that have...
View ArticleGift of the trail
By: Diana HaeckerThis winter, Nome has phenomenal trail conditions. Snow has come early and plentiful, making for great trails that many enjoy for outdoor recreation and traveling between villages....
View ArticleDangerous overspending
By: Diana HaeckerA Republican-run Congress suddenly forgot what they ranted about during the Obama years concerning the national debt and increasing budget deficits. Now, all those budget hawks and...
View ArticleIditarod 46
By: Diana HaeckerDedication, hard work, tireless caring for the wellbeing of the team and putting the interest of the whole team before one’s own agenda is what it takes to prepare and successfully run...
View ArticleTariffs hit home
By: Diana HaeckerThe paper that this newspaper is printed on comes from Canada. For many years, American printing companies and newspapers have imported Canadian newsprint because there are not enough...
View ArticleOpen Water
By: Diana HaeckerThis winter was a tough one for us here in Western Alaska. It was no doubt a very heavy snow year and most of us were busy shoveling and removing snow most of the time. Flat light and...
View ArticleMining Safety Sound
By: Diana Haecker With horror I watched videos shared on social media that showed a monstrous cutter head gold mining dredge custom-made to tear up the bottom of Safety Sound and Bonanza Channel in...
View ArticlePublic notice needed
By: Diana HaeckeSafety Sound and Bonanza Channel are threatened by one of the most invasive mining proposals ever to reach Nome. We do place our faith in the public process of permitting, or vetting...
View ArticleHuman Migration
By: Diana HaeckerThe current immigration debate is raging across the nation, fueled by inconclusive tweets and messages by the president. One day he’s for the zero-tolerance approach - whispered in his...
View ArticleNew caretakers
By: Diana HaeckerThe Nome Nugget has new caretakers. The ownership of Alaska’s oldest newspaper recently changed hands from the Estate of Nancy L. McGuire to longtime employees, my husband Nils Hahn...
View ArticleGet involved
The Nome Common Council’s decisions are only as good as the comments they hear from citizens who go before it. Without any public input, on the record, the Council is getting away with inaction on some...
View ArticleStewardship
By: Diana HaeckerWe live in a place of abundance and this time of the year reminds us of the blessings that we have all around us here in Nome. Fish are arriving in great numbers in our rivers. The...
View ArticleWe are not the enemy
By: Diana HaeckerPresident Trump vigorously fans the flames of hatred against the press by repeating that the media and the free press of this country are the “enemy of the American people.” It is...
View ArticleBuckle up
By: Diana HaeckerNOAA Fisheries came through and broke some very significant news not only for us here at Norton Sound, but for the entire Bering Sea and the world. The scientists couldn’t find the...
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