Ponderings

Clocked my thousandth mile, walking roadside ditches.

Grab-N-Go in one hand to avoid potential itches.

Cigarette butts and Styrofoam, fast food-wrapper frights.

Twelve-pack cardboard beer discards, ALWAYS a Coors Light.

Plastic bags, COVID masks and rubber gloves — no gift.

Once a metal boat-part that took two of us to lift.

Imagine if the wind that day had been the opp-o-site?

Metal bouncing to and fro, potential others hit.

But You, the one whose actions finds me pondering the most.

Airplane bottle shooters, nips, so many you could boast.

Do you buy them by the dozen even though a bottle’s cheaper?

Are they opened with your teeth, hood pulled forward like Grim Reaper?

By the time that you have driven,

East Road to Homer Spit,

How many single gulps have reached your bloodstream as you sit?

Produced by wealthy rich and discarded by the poor,

A throwaway society, left always wanting more.

I dream of better days ahead when littering could stop.

Until that day you’ll find me there, a litterbugging Mop.

Zan Greenwood

Homer

Harbor expansion poses problems

There are a lot of problems with the Harbor expansion. First there is parking. Already parking is a problem and with more slips and bigger boats the number of vehicles will also increase with no room for them. Then there is the job market. Already there are businesses in town that can’t find workers, so where are the workers going to come from for all the new boats and business that are expected with the expansion?

The lack of affordable housing is not included in the proposed harbor expansion. It appears to me we are getting more and more big houses that are folks’ second and third homes; few will be available for rent or use by folks needing a job.

Traffic is another problem. The streets of Homer are not ready for the increase. The cracks and potholes will just get larger and larger.

I see very little positive reasons for a larger harbor. Sure, a few big boats will be happy to have the space, but who wants to see those large draggers here, you know the ones that pull huge nets across the bottom and kill everything including halibut, king salmon and crabs?

Seward already has a big harbor and there is talk of a large harbor in Nome.

Let’s keep the cosmic hamlet a hamlet and continue to know who our neighbors are and appreciate a small town feel with appreciation for quality of life over uncontrolled growth.

Louis Dupree

Homer