Douglas Island, conveniently located a few hundred yards across the Gastineau Channel from Alaska’s capitol city, the focal point of the Stroller’s living room view, is a breathtaking charcoal etching.

The island’s hill and mountain ridges, chiseled against a brilliant blue sky by a recent confectioner sugar snow fall on our third growth trees, create a scene reminiscent of a Rie Munoz print.

The Stroller buttoned his camel hair trench coat against a mid-morning breeze drifting off the cold winter waters of the Gastinau Channel and carefully navigated the three blocks of black ice covered sidewalks between the Capitol building and the Baranof Hotel’s Capitol Cafe.

After almost three weeks of relentless crystal clear blue skies this day’s high grey clouds are a soothing return to normalcy. Too much of a good thing can dull one’s senses to the Channel’s breathtaking beauty and, besides, locals are hoping to save some our limited yearly allotment of sunshine for the warmer days of summer.

It is with great pride and an optimism born of crass cynicism that this legendary column is resurrected.

In the spirit of the original, written by revered Klondike newsman E.J. “Stroller” White some eight decades ago, we will attempt to continue the Stroller’s good works and pursue his lifelong mission of moral and spiritual uplift by always advising his friends and neighbors to just “put a squirt of lemon in it”.