The night of the election, I felt a lot like this.Well, I think the advisory vote has been opined about enough really at virtually every Alaskan blog to which I link. Go read them! But for my two cents, I must add that it wasn't a large margin, certainly not a 2/3 to 1/3 kind of thing, which was what Coghill and Co. were looking for to push their crap proposed amendment through the Lege.
And how can you claim any kind of mandate or to know what the voters of Alaska want with a 14 percent turn out? [Correction @ 4 p.m.: 23 percent.]
As others have pointed out, it was cool how many of the outlying regions that were primarily Yupik, Inupiaq and Aleut voted against it. So that 'old time' Alaska ethic of 'live and let live' still exists1, Flic.
Just not on the Kenai Peninsula or in the Mat-Su.
1As it does out in my neck of the woods, the Goldstream Valley.
6 comments:
I lived on the Kenai for about 10 years, and am constantly amazed at how socially conservative it is.
I like to think it might be changing with population growth and less isolation, but it's slow if it is.
Friggin neo-cons could have killed all of us liberals in one stroke if they bombed the Planned Parenthood fundraisers....
I'm all for resettlement and gentrification on the Kenai Peninsula. The neo-cons there are very, very vocal, though. It won't be an easy fight.
Oh, how conservative could it be, you ask. Some jackass whose name I chose to forget, was once grand exalted leader of the Michigan Militia -- you know, the people who spawned Timothy McVie, the Oklahoma City bomber. This guy was thrown out of the MM for being too radical. He moved to Nikiski and has blended into society there very nicely, thank you. Practically freakin' invisible because so many others are just like him.
Such a waste, too, because the Kenai Peninsula is the epitome of all that is Alaskan, except polar bears. And I mean that geographically, economically and like that. Wonderful place. It'd be perfect without the cons.
But let me add, I wouldn't want the whole KP to be like Homer. Those people are so freakin' self-centered and self-important that they give hippies a bad name. They're just whack. Maybe a cross between Spenard and Haines. That'd be perfect....
Oh, the Kenai Peninsula is beautiful. But man, is it overrun by tourists in the summer. Seriously, I've never even fished the Russian River for reds, mostly because combat fishing isn't worth it.
As for Homer, I make a pilgrimage when I'm down razor clamming on the KP, but I don't really know the town. Usually, just drive down to have some fresh seafood, make the pilgrimage to the Salty Dawg, etc. Yeesh. I'm sort of a tourist.
I'd take a cross of Nome, Talkeetna, Ester, and Squarebanks.
Okay, Nome, Talkeetna, Ester all good. I hate to say it, but I haven't found anything about Fairbanks I've like beyond the fact that it has a preternatural will to exist beyond any reason whatsoever.
Why is there a Fairbanks?
Nobody knows.
Squarebanks? Like a lot of places in this state, it sprang up because of the Gold Rush. And like a number of places, once it existed, that was reason enough for those there to continue. Then came WWII and Lend Lease, then the pipeline, and presto! here we are.
A lot of the hardcore 'develop every last square inch of the state' types came with the pipeline, somehow managed not to spend all their money on coke and whores, settled and bought property, and now await the Second Coming, aka, the Gas Pipeline.
As the bumpersticker at the Midnight Mine says, in paraphrase because I was, uh, drinking at the time:
"Please God let us get another pipeline. We promise not to piss it away this time."
Addendum on Why There Is A Fairbanks: because Bartlett, the conman and theif, got himself thrown off the boat when it got stuck on a sandbar...otherwise Fairbanks would have been out where Felix Pedro actually found gold. And maybe it would have been named Pedroville.
Harrumpf.
Post a Comment