The Romance of Tropical Alaska

Has anybody noticed all the media reports that make Alaska sound like a paradise where the people are friendly, honest, and eager to talk, the moose are easy to shoot, and the oil money flows hot and heavy?

It all makes Alaska seem like a tropical paradise.

Except for one thing--most of Alaska is unbelievably cold, dark, and depressing during the incredibly long winters. I went to college in northern New York which is one of the coldest places in the lower 48. One of my professors referred to "the North Country" as "The Gulag." But Alaska's even colder. My department at Morehead State in Kentucky interviewed a woman from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks for a chair position. She was desperate to get out. Most people she knew in Fairbanks spend a good chunk of each winter in Hawaii or New Mexico. But she had stayed in Fairbanks to work on her research instead and now the winters were driving her so crazy that she was positively eager to move to rural Kentucky.

Come to think of it, a couple of my social work colleagues moved from Alaska to Kentucky as well.

The other thing that's annoying about the media's Alaska romance is that rural areas in the lower forty-eight get so much nasty stereotyping. When the media pays attention to rural Appalachian areas like Eastern Kentucky, they never mention the friendly people, the great music, poetry, and fiction writing, or the compelling stories of overcoming adversity. Instead, it's all about hillbilly ignorance, high school dropouts, pregnant teenagers, methamphetamine, marijuana growing and poverty. During the Democratic primaries, the media unfairly portrayed tiny Inez and Clay County as the ground zero of American racism.

Obviously, the election is going to be hot and heavy for the next two months.

But after the election, the national media should give rural areas like Eastern Kentucky the same friendly look they gave Alaska during the Sara Palin roll-out.

I'm sure they'll find that we're a tropical paradise as well.