Columns 2007

There are probably few Alaskans left by now who have not heard the best lines from The Simpsons Movie repeated again and again, often by relatives living elsewhere who call specifically to quote them to us.  For those of you who have been living in a salmon creek since the movie debuted, those lines are as follows:  “Alaska, where you can’t be too drunk or too fat.” And, spoken by an official handing them money as the family crosses into Alaska, “Welcome to Alaska. Here’s a thousand dollars.” Finally, “We pay everyone in Alaska to let us destroy the environment.”

There is a part of me that wakes up each morning and wonders what fun headline I’ll read today about Alaska’s politicians. I watch the Daily Show every night on the chance that Ted Stevens may be their star again.  But in between those moments, I’m mostly sad about what’s happening in our state.

I was speaking to my sister about this recently and she snorted and said, “I live in New Jersey and you want to whine to me about corrupt politicians. Are you insane?” She was right.  I grew up in a city whose mayor’s went directly from

My mother raised me to believe that some things were private and should always stay that way.  Maybe this is why the current trend in America to make everything public, or at least accessible to the government, troubles me so much. Or maybe it’s because I’ve just lived in Alaska way too long and that ornery streak of independence I was born with has hardened into armor on my soul.

It seems that each day another piece of our lives becomes either government or public property. If we object, we’re told it’s to fight terrorism or for our own good. 

I grew up on the Jersey shore. Spending summers on the beach down the block from dad’s store was the only way to keep cool in a world without air conditioning.  When I was in 8th grade, I was down the beach with friends. A boy I’d been in school with since kindergarten made an unflattering comparison of me in a bathing suit to a large boat. I went home, took my bathing suit off and essentially never put one on again. I announced that I was allergic to the sun and sand and just didn’t want to go there

I realize that Alaska has a credibility gap when it comes to science and technology in politics.  I mean, seriously, will Comedy Central never tire of showing that clip of Uncle Ted’s tube explanation of the Internet. Does no one in the lower 48 get that to an Alaskan, everything good comes from a tube, which is just another word for pipe?  Can you say oil pipeline? Can you say gas pipeline?  It was a natural metaphor for an Alaskan to use.

Don Young is a bit harder to explain what with his “there is no scientific proof of global

I took a train trip recently that was supposed to last twelve hours.  About fourteen hours into the trip, with no sight of a conductor to tell me what was happening and no chance to jump off and rethink the whole train trip idea because we were stopped somewhere in the middle of a nameless woods, my mind started to wander.  This is never a good thing.  Perhaps it was something I did in the sixties. Who remembers? Whatever it was, when my mind cuts loose from its moorings in reality and starts to wander hither, thither and yon, the

I think it is probably appropriate on many levels that my column should first appear as part of the Daily News on the Fourth of July.  After all, this holiday celebrates the new beginnings of our country and my appearance here celebrates my new beginnings with this paper.

Ok, I’ll grant you that’s somewhat of a stretch.  But stay with me here. I’m writing this while on the East Coast, the temperature is higher than a moose’s shoulder and the humidity is something most Alaskans can only dream about.  There is every chance I’m delirious and don’t know it.

There

The pictures in the paper last week of the Barrow boys’ football team frolicking in the ocean off Florida were geared towards only one response.  Everyone was supposed to say, “Aw.”

Once we get past the cute factor, however, some hard questions need to be asked. Perhaps first and foremost should be how a community justifies the hundreds of thousands of dollars it will spend on a handful of boys on a football team while cutting back on academics, eliminating many bilingual education programs and totally ignoring the entire female population of the school.  Or did I miss the mention

I don’t want to get all huffy and possessive about this scandal stuff, but I do feel obliged to point out to those people weeping, wailing and wringing their hands over what has befallen our pristine state that this is not the first corruption scandal ever in Alaska. So we should stop acting like a virgin on her wedding night.

And, may I add, our previous corruption scandal involved people who couldn’t be bought for anything that didn’t have six to seven figures before the decimal point. They would have scorned the amounts being cited in current indictments.

I’m speaking,

I never went to a prom.  I don’t say that looking for sympathy…though anyone who wants to say “Aw!!!” and buy me a latte to help me feel better should feel free to do so.  No, I say that because this is one event where the protocol has changed dramatically since my youth, back in the days when wheels were square and CD’s were called eight tracks. And it’s changed for the good, which is wonderful.

I can still remember walking into the dining room not long before prom time and hearing my mother on the phone trying to find