Sylvia Short has lived a happily outspoken life as a committed and erudite social activist in Anchorage for a half-century -- and now, at 97, is no less outspoken. Born in 1921 in Stockton, Calif., she became what she calls “an uneducated lawyer,” managing to pass the California bar exam after just two years of college. Moving to Alaska in 1967, she continued her work as a lawyer and helped organize the fledgling Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, later serving as AUUF board president. The following year she married Anchorage Community College Director Eugene Short, a childhood acquaintance who shared Sylvia’s love of books. And that’s just the beginning of her story.