1.20.2017

Just a girl and her bills. 

1.19.2017

Sure, legislative staffers have to leave the building in which the Governor is speaking in order to watch him give the State of the State address from the Triangle, but there's no way we'd all fit into the gallery anyway. Plus, the reporters need the seats more than we do. Plus, beer.

Plus, no one is there to stop you from laughing along when the Governor compares the state budget to an experience he had his freshman year of college, while home in Alaska during Christmas break. He was trying to drive from Delta to Valdez with a high school friend (and former cheerleading captain, apparently, though most recently she served as the Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources....), and it was 40 below, and parts of the transmission kept falling off the car, but they managed to maintain one gear: reverse. They drove backwards, heads stuck out the windows in the cold.

Alas, now it is the entire state that is "heading into hazardous territory in a substandard vehicle," as the Governor put it. That got a good laugh, and a few grimaces.

Or when he told the assembled room that last summer, he had helped celebrate the 2 billionth salmon caught in Bristol Bay (at least, during the modern commercial fishery). 

"The fish was symbolic of the abundance and quality that is the basis of Alaska’s subsistence, recreational, and commercial renewable resource economies," he said. "It was also delicious." 

Partisan divides are immediately forgotten as the entire room of elected Senators and Representatives stopped him with applause. Rural, urban, Republican, Democrat, legislative, executive, House and Senate, independents and secessionists -- when the Governor of Alaska talks salmon during the State of the State, you are clapping. We like our Governor, but we love our king.

1.18.2017 - Numbers

The 30th Alaska Legislature gaveled in yesterday.

The first Speaker of the House with Alaska Native heritage was sworn in, 58 years after statehood.

Despite our age, Alaska is facing a fiscal crisis of unprecedented scale, like crashing a Maserati after turning fifteen. Two years ago, the price of oil plummeted by half in less time than it takes to draw up a quarterly report. State revenue was gutted. We have a $3 billion dollar budget deficit: you could fire every employee in the state, shut down every public school, end Medica(id)re, and you still couldn't fill the gap.

Over the last two years, we've spent about $6 billion of our savings to balance our budget, pouring very, very expensive water into our leaky bucket. For every dollar Alaska spent from revenue last year, it spent two from savings. We have about one year before the account runs dry. There are a few other reserves of cash we could tap into, but deciding how will require a significant political compromise -- between an unusually conservative Republican Senate, a new majority-Democrat, bipartisan House, and an independent Governor.

Fourteen new legislators were sworn in yesterday, after what's been described in the news as a "wave of anti-incumbency" that swept many out. There were 55 office changes in the capitol building in the last week. There are only 60 legislators.

The legislative session is supposed to be ninety days. This was day one.

1.16.2017 - Haines, AK

Two roommates, hard at work in Haines, Alaska. 

1.11.2017

People from the Lower 48 often ask me if it was dark for the whole winter where I lived, and if the sun rose. It seems there's a misconception out there that crossing it's the border into Alaska that causes the plunging darkness of polar night, rather than the gradual axial tilt of the earth, but that's okay, we've survived worse assumptions. I would usually laugh, and explain that I was from the southern shores -- in the part of Alaska where I lived, the sun always rises. Even at the lean point of the year, we get a little more than two hours of sunlight per day. We had it easy!

Everyone I have ever told this to: I would like to formally retract this statement as a lie.

In Kotzebue, sure, the sun doesn't rise until 1:30 pm. But the entire landscape is made out of bright white content -- clouds in the sky, snow on flat landscape which stretches out long toward the horizon. The overwhelming experience during the day isn't darkness at all. Even when the sun is below the horizon, clear skies mean that the moon and stars reflect off the snow.

Turns out, it's a lot darker to have a landscape dominated by looming mountains, giant trees, and oppressive rain. What?

Dear Southeast: I want you to know. You no longer have to feel like wimps when it comes to sheer pitch blackness. You don't live in the easy part of Alaska when it comes to daylight. Embrace your prize -- overwhelming gloom!