Hometown rag

There’s nothing like the hometown rag to get me feeling local again. I read the Anchorage Daily News nearly every day. The ADN is what brought my family to Alaska. My mom and dad moved up from Washington state in the 80s when my dad was offered a job at the paper.

The ADN is also a direct link to life on the ground in Alaska. The stories are about fisheries, aerial wolf-hunting, earthquakes, bear attacks and the occasional stranded community (this year, one village was cut off for several days after severe flooding). That’s life at home!

One of the best things about the paper is that the letters to the editor are so accessible. This is especially good because Alaska is insulated from the rest of the world. Sometimes, I think news and opinions that are common elsewhere just don’t make it there. So this week, I submitted my own letter to the editor, about the raging health care debate.

A friend pointed out that I forgot to mention my Alaskan credentials in my letter (i.e., born and raised in the far north). As such, I will have instantly lost the goodwill of some readers. In Alaska, the most important credential any aspiring politician can have is long-term residency in the state. Any local will tell you: it’s impossible to know Alaska unless you’ve lived there. People who profess to know something about Alaska without the requisite experience are (rightfully) labeled a meddler from “outside”.

I suppose that I’ll have to face facts sooner or later. I’ve been living out-of-state for five years, and am now about as far from Alaska as I can get. Soon, I’ll become one of those meddlers–someone who still reads the ADN and follows the news from home, but who has lost touch with the flavour of the place. I don’t know when my transition from local to outsider will take place, but in light of all the newspapers that are failing, I hope I’ll still have the ADN to remind me of life in the northern frontier.

Image credit: Toucanradio