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To celebrate Police Memorial Day, members of local law enforcement agencies are gathering outside the Fairbanks Police Department on Thursday at 9 a.m.

The ceremony will include an invocation and a reading of the list of fallen officers.

Since 1897, 59 law enforcement personnel have died in the line of duty in Alaska.

The first on the list is Marshall William Watts, while the officer killed on the job most recentlywas John Watson of Kenai.

The ceremony will be in front of the police station at 911 Cushman St. at the law enforcement memorial.

The 354th Security Forces Squadron at Eielson Air Force Base is coordinating the event this year.

The public is invited to attend.

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FLY AWAY: Anyone who loves flying is invited to join the festivities at Aviation Appreciation Day on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Sadler Business Plaza, which includes the Alaska Aerofuel facility.

The event begins with a pancake feed from 7-11 a.m. sponsored by the local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association.

Most of the local passenger and cargo carriers will have displays and information.

The EAA Young Eagles flight program, for youngsters ages 8 to 18, will be in operation, along with other attractions.

For more information or if you want to participate, call Pete at 479-6450.

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ALIEN INVADERS: The first-graders from Denali Elementary School pulled enough bird vetch at Creamer’s Field to fill 46 large garbage bags Monday.

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MAKING THE LIST: The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call has added Rep. Don Young to its list of “10 Most Vulnerable” in the 2008 campaign.

“He’s vulnerable in the primary. He’s vulnerable in the general. That’s not a good place for any incumbent to be, even one as tough and with as storied a career as Young’s. As one faction of Alaska Republicans, led by dynamic young Gov. Sarah Palin, seeks to install a new generation of leaders, Young has plenty to fear from his principal GOP challenger, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell. And if Young survives the ordeal of a primary, former state House Minority Leader Ethan Berkowitz (D) could be a formidable general election challenger.”

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MCCAIN ON ANWR: This is from a Washington Post article Monday.

In December 2005, Republicans were poised to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, an achievement they had sought for decades. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) had attached the provision to a must-pass defense spending bill and threatened to keep lawmakers in Washington until Christmas if they tried to strip it. Desperate to remove the provision, leaders from national environmental groups turned to a handful of key GOP senators for help.

With only days left before the critical vote, League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski and Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund President Rodger Schlickheisen obtained a private audience with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). McCain had been on both sides of the Arctic drilling issue over the course of his career, and the two leaders of the fight against opening the refuge were eager to know whether he would come down in their column.

His answer disappointed them. In the brief meeting, the senator said he was unwilling to risk blocking a bill involving the military at a time of war — even though it was clear the broader funding bill would pass quickly and by a wide margin if opponents managed to strip the ANWR provision from it. “We told him, ‘This may be the key vote, this may be the time we win this,’” Schlickheisen recalled in an interview. “He said, ‘Not on this bill.’ That was it.”

Ultimately environmental activists were able to defeat the measure with the aid of two Republican senators–Lincoln Chafee (R.I.) and Mike DeWine (Ohio). But they have not forgotten McCain’s decision, and many say it exemplifies his approach to environmental issues.

“There’s no question that among a lot of bad Republican votes in the Senate, he’s one of the better ones,” Schlickheisen said. “He is perhaps the most unpredictable, erratic, of those votes.”