The President’s recent visit to Alaska was in many ways controversial, but there was one
positive aspect to it: It has inspired me to start blogging again. While I realize this excites some, frightens others, and disinterests most, there were so many things I wanted to blog about during the President’s visit, that I had to give the blog a facelift and return the hamsters to the power wheel.
So where have I been and what have I been doing? Writing for money primarily, but that kind of writing doesn’t really let me fully express myself. It’s like a perpetual job interview in which you have to keep editors happy and manage your emotional outbursts. You have no idea how badly I want to overuse exclamation points!!!!!! Phew, that’s better.
Since the President is gone and discussion of his trip is mostly over, I’ll give you the highlights of what would have been some of my rants.
Mt. McKinley to Denali:
We call it Denali in Alaska, that’s its name. The name change is something the Alaskan legislative delegation has been asking for for 40 years, but has been blocked by the more politically powerful Ohio delegation. Plus, when the Alaskan explorer named it Mt. McKinley, McKinley wasn’t even President yet! He was a presidential candidate, and the explorer was lucky he won. Otherwise, it would be like someone having named a mountain Gore or Dewey.
Climate Change:
Some glaciers in Alaska are melting others are growing. Rates of melting have varied over time, with some of the most aggressive retreating happening well before the automobile. It’s also amusing that the President wants to increase arctic ice, but also build more icebreakers to break more ice.
Oil:
Prices can’t stay this low forever and Alaska needs more oil in the (literal) pipeline or it will in the too near future need to be shut down and dismantled. That will end oil production in the state.
Dr. Holly A. Bell is a wanderer, ponderer, language learner and slaughterer, an optimistic pessimist writer of poetry and novels, and an interdisciplinary professor of Finance, Economics, and Business at the University of Alaska, living in the Mat-Su Valley. She does not live in, nor has she ever actually seen an igloo.