Overheard on NPR

I'll confess: I often listen to the radio, but it's not always the one for which I work.

Yesterday morning I was brushing my teeth to the non-threatening presence of KUAC (the National-Public-Radio affiliate broadcast from Fairbanks) when I heard this quote:

Don't make the same mistakes I did. Make your own mistakes; mine are all taken.

Prediction: Obama 364

It's the big day! I can't pass up the opportunity to make a prediction, so here's mine:

Undecided?

I haven't written on this blog in a few months now.

I'd like to think it's not because of a lack of things to say, but rather because of an overabundance: a lot of my free time has been consumed with following the presidential elections, and it's only gotten worse as the clock has ticked closer to November 4th.

Every week I feel eager to write something about the election, but then suddenly, the news cycle turns over, and my chosen subject has become old-hat. Sarah Palin trips on a rock, suggests the rock has been palling around with terrorists, and I'm back to square-one.

Keeping up with the delirious pace of the news media is often more trouble than it's worth. It's taken a lot of my time and energy that might have been better applied to, say, building a ship-in-a-bottle, reading the complete works of Leo Tolstoy, learning the cello, or painting my bedroom. Or sleeping.

But sometimes, being a political- and media-junkie yields something insightful - or, better yet, provides some much-needed humor.

Here's an except of David Sedaris' take on undecided voters, from a recent issue of The New Yorker:

To put them (undecided voters) in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of s*** with bits of broken glass in it?"

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

Now, what Sedaris never says (in the October 27th issue) is which candidate is the chicken, and which is the platter of you-know-what.

But either way, his point is well-taken: what remaining avenues are there to be undecided?

After almost two years of non-stop campaigning from both parties, the choices we have for President have been exhaustively explored. No detail has proven too minor, too incendiary, or too absurd for our consideration. (Obama's flag pin, anyone? How about Palin's wardrobe?)

At this point - just "hours from the first polls closing," MSNBC said today - we have had an endless feast of policy debates, editorials and talking points from which to distill our own opinions. On both sides, many voters have so staunchly entrenched their decision that the mere thought of the alternative is practically scandalous. (And I should probably count myself in this group.)

For me, I'd liken the 2008 campaign to a sports championship, writ large. From the pre-primary season to now, the eve of the big election, my feelings have ranged from frustration to impatience to near-euphoria. I've only deepened my hope to see my team win in the final round, but at some point, it all has to be over.

No matter how the exit polls, electoral votes, and dangling chads fall, I'm looking forward to living in a post-election nation. It'll be fun to think about something else.

I'll probably give myself at least a few days vacation from the ups-and-downs of the political world - maybe a whole week! - before I cave in to the relentless siren song of news-magazines, the blogosphere, and cable news.

Because you know, 2012 will be here sooner than you think.

The New Palin

What to make of Sarah Palin? I can tell you that in my current home state of Alaska, this is very much the question du jour.

Granted, our junior governor is nothing new. Or at least, she wasn't anything new, until John McCain picked her to run with him on this fall's GOP ticket.

But Palin-as-Vice-President, or even Palin-as-President? Now, that's new. And it's not just that the situation has changed; it's that Palin herself - as a candidate, and as a persona - has changed overnight. Her expanded aspirations cast her personality and her story in a different light, and expose her past to a heightened degree of scrutiny. A mere fortnight ago, Sarah Palin in the White House would have been a ridiculous hypothetical. Today it's a very real possibility, and even the residents of the 49th state need to redraw their conceptions of the "hockey mom" who might, one day, sit behind an Oval Office desk.

Thus, we Alaskans stand astride with the rest of the world in making evaluations. Some of us are swelling with state pride and posting McCain-Palin signs in the yard; others are taking a second look at her checkered past, and not liking what we're seeing.

It is two months before the election, and a pall of discord and disbelief broods over the Great Land.

Exciting, surreal, controversial, flabbergasting: Palin's anointing defies any single descriptor or response. It's set off a buzz of chatter and debate in the cooling September air. My Alaskan friends are finding it difficult to maintain a conversation for long before talk veers back to the VP nod. There's a lot to discuss: Palin's qualifications (or lack thereof) for the job, her potential role in the White House, her history in Wasilla and Juneau, and what her selection might mean for the state.

Her nascent candidacy has offered, politically, many immediate positives and negatives, as well as a study in contradictions. Palin as McCain's counterpart seems simultaneously brilliant and absurd, shrewd and foolish, fascinating and horrifying. Every news cycle seems to bring a different wrinkle to Palin's meteoric political narrative, and I keep finding new ways to make sense of it all.

On the one hand, McCain and his advisers may have hit political pay dirt, if last week's Republican National Convention was any indication. Palin's stinging oratory on Wednesday night electrified the delegates. There was plenty of camera time for her family, ample jabs at the Democrats, the normal drumbeats of national security and lower taxes, and the reassurance that she would carry her working-class street-cred into the White House. Only a speech from Ronald Reagan's ghost could have rallied the Republican base more.

At the end of the day - although her initial pick seemed a bizarre surprise - Palin makes sense for John McCain. Her youth and credibility as a working mother, her faith, and her staunch, money-where-your-mouth-is position against abortion have drawn together a conservative electorate that hadn't quite made up its mind about the silver-haired Arizonan. Palin is a game-changer. She brings the base to the table with a smile, and she might even drag a few independents and swing voters along for the ride.

But on the other hand, Palin's political history raises many, many red flags. And while there's a lot of smoke, there could be some fire, too.

In Wasilla, Alaska, where Palin was mayor, she made enemies by using evangelical Christianity as a wedge issue. She was a born-again Christian, and promoted herself as the "first Christian candidate" when she was running for the job, even though her opponent was himself a Lutheran. (See this article in The New York Times.)

The degree of her religiosity - and how it might affect her politics - continues to be an issue. A recent Associated Press story (via the Chicago Tribune) relayed how her own Wasilla Bible Church was encouraging a conference that would "turn" gay men and lesbians straight. (The ultra-conservative group Focus on the Family supports this "pray the gay away" movement.) If Obama's private church-going is political fair game - with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and all - then so it goes for Palin, too. The pendulum swings both ways: just what does she believe?

More recently, she's been embroiled in the scandal that she fired the state's public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, possibly for personal reasons: Monegan refused to dismiss Mike Wooten, an Alaska State Trooper who also happened to be the ex-husband of Palin's sister. A chain of phone calls and emails may suggest that the Governor's office overstepped its bounds in pressing for Wooten's dismissal. (The Anchorage Daily News is chronicling the ongoing story, at this page.)

Amid the flak, Palin has painted herself as a bare-knuckles Alaskan reformer and a tireless champion of political ethics. The "hockey mom" reputation dovetails well into this portrayal: one imagines Palin floor-checking dirty politicians who cross her path. A new ad from the McCain campaign shows the two of them as "mavericks" of the same stripe: unbound from party cronyism, marching off to do glorious battle against corruption and earmarks.

But here's the irony: thanks to the Monegan firing, the Alaska legislation has launched a bipartisan investigation into Palin's own ethics.

And for all Sarah Palin's self-promotion as an opponent of federal aid, she is hardly the foe of earmarks that she says she is. While mayor of Wasilla she took an interest in the earmark process and requested huge sums of federal money: so much so, in fact, that McCain himself criticized her pork projects. This year alone, she appealed to Senator Ted Stevens for earmarks totaling nearly $200 million; that would be the most federal money, per-capita, of any state in the union. (Check out the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Seattle Times for more.)

This Monegan/Wooten/"Troopergate" story - which Alaska state senator Hollis French (D) recently said could be an "October surprise" for the McCain campaign - may reveal a broader insight into how Palin likes to govern. A number of government employees who have worked with her say that Sarah Palin simply likes to get her way. When she doesn't, there's trouble.

Putting aside the obvious comparisons - does a stubborn, evangelical Christian with a propensity for wedge issues and big spending remind you of anyone? - one wonders just what kind of Vice President Sarah Palin would make. Have Wasilla and Juneau already seasoned her enough to tackle Washington, D.C., and, with it, the world? Or, do we have another Dan Quayle on our hands - except this time, one who could be "a heartbeat away" from Commander-in-Chief? One conservative critic, Rick Brookhiser, put it concisely in his column for the National Review:

Either McCain thinks the war on terror isn't serious, or he thinks the vice-presidency isn't... McCain, bless him, intends to do everything himself. Good luck! Palin will go to funerals.

My own political opinions are likely clear by now; the Obama '08 sign propped against our living-room window will not be coming down anytime soon. But, at least for this post, that's beside the point. Sarah Palin may be a reformer saint or a rotten surrogate, but either way, it's made for a fascinating two weeks of conversation. The surreal spotlight on Alaska and our governor has only begun.

Gas Prices Redux

Here comes trouble.

The price of fuel in rural Alaska is going up... again.  As the summer approaches, communities throughout our region are anticipating huge - and sudden - bumps in per-gallon costs.  Rumors of drastic increases in fuel rates have been going around Nome for a few weeks now.

In the meantime, we've received the latest gas prices from Bethel.  (It's a city in southwestern Alaska - the Kuskokwim Delta - just on the fringes of our radio station's AM range.)  Here are the figures:

Regular gas: $5.64 per gallon (up $1)

Heating oil: $5.91 per gallon (up $1.86)

Diesel: $6.45 per gallon (up $1.81)

Yikes.

What Goes Around...

It's been too long since my last post, so perhaps a little bit of humor will break the ice.  I'd like to recount an encounter I had about two weeks ago at our local grocery store.

It was a Thursday, during my lunch break, and I was on the checkout line at Hanson's (a.k.a. Carrs, a.k.a. Safeway).  I had a simple ensemble of items in tow: a vanilla root beer, a York's Peppermint Patty, and a copy of our local weekly newspaper, The Nome Nugget, which had just hit the shelves.

There was only one person on line in front of me: a young Native boy, I'd say between 7 and 10 years old.  (The older I get, the worse I've become in pinpointing the ages of those outside my peer group.)  

The boy had amassed a small order of some standard household foods: eggs, milk, bacon, and a few other things.  He had done an admirable job lugging each of these items (disproportionately large for his small hands) from his cart and onto the black conveyer belt (disproportionately high for his small stature).

One by one, the cashier rang through his items.  I don't remember the final total, but let's say for the sake of this post that it was $16.40.

The child then reached into his pocket, and awkwardly removed a wad of $1 bills, gradually unfolding the wad of singles and counting them.  When he had finished, he sheepishly revealed to the cashier, "I'm 40 cents short."

An awkward silence ensued.  The child looked at the cashier, the cashier at the child.  The cashier, I believe, may have muttered out a tentative "OK": not a reassurance that the debt would be overlooked, but rather just an acknowledgement of the problem.  What to do?

In the pregnant pause, I mentally pictured the amount of money inside my wallet, and decided that I must surely have at least one dollar bill that I could donate to the moment.

I took out my wallet and was right: there were some $1 bills inside.  I gave one to the child, he finished the transaction, quickly thanked me, and then left with his groceries - taking my $0.60 with him.

That's fine, I thought at the time.  Surely he needs the change more than I do!

As it turns out, I was wrong.

It was now my turn in the checkout line.  My newspaper went through, my candy, and then my bottle of root beer.  My total: $3.47.

I took out my wallet again, still feeling a little self-congratulatory from my recent goodwill.  I surveyed the remaining money inside.

There were three $1 bills left, and not a scrap more.  With the child already long gone, I was now forty-seven cents short.

I sheepishly looked back at the cashier, handed him my credit card for the measly purchase, and smiled.

The March Hangover

God created the month of March to show people who don't drink what a hangover feels like.
- Garrison Keillor

Well, Iditarod's over. And there is perhaps no better time than now to quote the above, which I heard on a recent Saturday afternoon on KUAC (our Fairbanks NPR affiliate). If the month of March is a hangover, then Alaska feels it in a very special way.

In the Great Land, mind you, the weather may not exhibit what Keillor would seem to call the "hangover" effect. I am picturing in my mind the March of many northeastern states: gray skies and slush in the gutters, rain and snow and then rain and then more slush, ice in the driveway followed by mud. That, surely, is a hangover: the headache and soft light that Mother Nature feels after the bender of winter, before getting hydrated with April showers and renewed in May flowers.

For the 49th state, March is less of a mess. In many ways, it's actually refreshing. In Nome, we're currently gaining over six minutes of daylight per day. At Christmas the sun rose at lunch and had set by 4pm; now, it's still twilight at quarter-to-ten. January blizzards and February frostbite gave way, albeit temporarily, to a glorious, sunny period without new snow. (New snow is an Alaskan thing: of course we still have tons of the white stuff already on the ground -- 9-foot-high drifts in parking lots -- but no precipitation in the skies is a welcome state.) With the clouds gone you can see the Northern Lights at night, if you're lucky enough. And recent temperatures have drawn thoughts towards spring. As I mentioned in my last post, 15 above may not be particularly high, but with an afternoon sun to warm your skin, it's enough to enjoy a cold beer outdoors.

Alaska, however, has its own reasons to claim the March hangover.

March is the denouement of a racing season that starts right after New Year's: a season that winds its way through January and February with races of sled-dog and snowmachine teams. (In Bush Alaska, we don't say "snowmobiles"; we say snowmachines.)

Each race of the season is impressive. The "Iron Dog," for example, is the longest snowmachine race in the world; over the course of a week, racers speed their way from Anchorage to Nome, and then from Nome to Fairbanks. For those unfamiliar with the geography of Alaska, that's an incredibly long trail. The Iron Dog is 1,971 miles long: just about exactly the same as a drive from New York City to Aspen, Colorado. The teams that finish this race run that distance in less than a week, even after plenty of mandatory layover (rest) time.

But Iditarod remains "The Last Great Race," and there's some reason for the hype. The race has endured for over a generation - 2008 was its 36th incarnation - and it runs all the way from Anchorage to Nome: just over 1,100 miles. This year nearly one hundred teams started, and an all-time record of 78 finished. For each musher - from first place to last - the experience demands endurance and determination, and, if you hope to be competitive, a lot of strategy, too.

To give you the proper idea, imagine driving all the way from New York City to Des Moines in a slow golf cart. Your cart can go about 10-11 mph in spurts, but most of the time, 6-8 mph is about your top speed. You need to rest strategically. Too little rest, and you'll burn out; too much, and you'll lose momentum and get passed. There are 95 other carts racing with you, and you're all sharing a trail that is not a manicured highway, but rather a winding, sometimes precarious route, one that can become impassible with poor weather. And oh yeah, it's routinely snowing and 30 below, before the wind chill. The Iditarod is hard.

The science of breeding and training dog teams has been honed extensively since the race began in the 1970s, and finishing times have become significantly faster. Still, though, the fastest anyone has ever done the trip was in 2002: multiple-time champion Martin Buser arrived in Nome in just shy of nine days.

So the Iditarod is not just hard; it is long and hard.

The race is a big deal for all of Alaska, and for Western Alaska in particular, since it passes through many of the otherwise isolated villages of our region. Places like White Mountain, Unalakleet, Koyuk, and Shaktoolik have a flurry of race excitement during the first half of each March.

Nome is the finish line, and the city welcomes hundreds or even thousands of tourists who come to see the first or second place mushers finish. (This year, that would be Lance Mackey and Jeff King, respectively. Both have been champions before.)

By the time the top ten mushers have finished and gone off to eat and sleep, most tourists have already gone home. Most of the outside media has trickled away by then, too.

But for those who actually live and work here, the Iditarod is not here-and-gone overnight, confined to 48 hours of excitement. It is a massive project that demands the resources and community involvement of thousands of people, over more than two weeks. At each checkpoint, volunteers are needed to feed the mushers, to give them housing, and to guide them, if needed, back onto the trail. These volunteers work at all hours of the day and the night, often in weather conditions that beguile even the hardiest.

For the small handful of employees at our station -- which converts from its normal business hours into a round-the-clock, 24-hour race schedule -- the Iditarod becomes a labor of love. Our interest does not peter out with the top ten; we are in it for the long haul.

Although this year is an exception -- we have just begun to cover the centennial running of another sled-dog race, the All-Alaska Sweepstakes -- the Iditarod is typically the last hurrah of the winter races. For months, this race season dominates the attention of all the Alaskan Bush, and the Iditarod is its concluding flourish. These months are the most difficult in terms of winter weather: they are the most precarious for personal safety, the most prone to blizzards, and the least hospitable for the transport of the necessities -- such as mail and food -- that can only come by airplane. And yet, it is at this time that the spirit of Western Alaska shines. It is at this time that our station kicks its coverage into high gear.

In this context, even if a few, smaller races trickle in afterwards, Iditarod is a grand finale for us all: radio and non-radio folks alike. After the last Iditarod finisher -- called the "Red Lantern" -- passes through the finish arch in Nome, we all exhale a little bit.

And suddenly, it doesn't seem like too far away until spring. Easter is soon to come, and within weeks after that, the big thaw that Alaskans call "break-up": the time when the snow and ice gradually melt away from the land, while the ice of the sea recedes back North.

If winter and its racing festivity are all one long party, then the remainder of March, after Iditarod, is indeed a time for a hangover of sorts. It is a time for fatigue and rest; lots of race-season exertion take their inevitable toll. But these weeks are also a time for taking stock of winter's last gasps, and a time for anticipating new warmth, new daylight, new transformations.

As March becomes April, Alaskans may rub their eyes and reach for their coffeepots, but they also take heart that -- however long and hard it may have been -- winter is almost over.

And I'll drink to that.

It's All Relative

Bush Alaska, in early March, is a far cry from what anyone in the lower 48 would call "spring." And yet, it sure feels like it today. It's Saturday afternoon, sunny, clear, and about 12-13 above, with little to no winds.

The snow will not melt for another 6-8 weeks, perhaps longer. But earlier today, as I was walking into Airport Pizza - our local coffeeshop/sports-bar/restaurant - I saw a handful of people sitting outside already with their frosty beers, happily soaking up the Alaskan sun at 20 degrees below freezing.

In a season when frostbite is still a legitimate concern, and when the Bering Sea is frozen solid as far as the eye can see, this was a refreshing sight. Tomorrow it may sink back to -20, there still may be a handful of blizzards in store for the coming weeks. But today, it's spring.

Priorities

As part of my daily radio shift (the morning show, 6-10 am, Monday to Friday), I often read announcements for events and meetings happening in Nome and elsewhere in Western Alaska. This affords a nice glimpse at what's happening in the communities we serve: what activities and projects resonate with our listeners, what gatherings are bringing people together, what topics and opportunities are attracting attention, etc. These announcements range from lost-and-found notices to registration details for dog-sled races, from funeral or marriage notices to concerts or parades.

Sometimes, beyond the fairly ordinary - city council and school board meetings, or senior-center lunch schedules - the stacks of printed information in Studio A yield something that speaks to the unique character of this region. Here's one example that stood out in particular, over the past few weeks. I paraphrase, since I don't have the original in front of me:

The Nome Swimming Pool will be closed on Thursday night. The lifeguards will be attending the Nome (Elementary School) Christmas Pageant.