Others

I make no confession as to whether or not I may or may not be involved with contributing satirical rants to www.thesprucetip.com; along with another local character whose work may be found at https://johnlmessick.

Each fall the Alaska State Fair hosts an annual Giant Cabbage Weigh-Off, where gardeners from around the state compete to see whose cabbage outweighs the competition. Either myself or someone in my family has entered a cabbage for most of the last two decades.

In spring 2017 I found myself distracted one afternoon by all the news about bots on social media and their supposed ability to sway political outcomes. There appeared to not yet be such a bot promoting all that wild salmon give to our world, so I made one.

From 2014 to 2020 I worked as my alter ego, Ben The Balloon Guy, creating balloon art at over 150 events around Alaska as well as in my travels. I’ve worked at six year olds’ birthday parties to sixty year olds’ retirement parties and everything in between.