"I'm sitting on my bearskin chair beside the woodstove, in Kotzebue, Alaska, 50 miles above the Arctic Circle, while outside the ocean begins to freeze over. Inside I have about 49 things piling up to say to you, America.

I'm an Alaskan -- born in an igloo, enjoy whale muktuk, all that -- and in case you aren't sick of our state by now, I'll start off with an apology for one of our residents: Sarah Palin.

We Alaskans are not generally so magazine-pretty like her, nor are we so confrontational and vapid. Most of us don't have those peachy cheeks -- we have sunburn, windburn and frostbite. Our fingernails are dirty from actually gutting moose, not yakking about it. Our hands are chapped from picking thousands of salmon out of nets, not holding one up for the camera.

Having said that, here in Alaska we are accustomed to getting jobs we're not qualified to fill. In our far-flung villages and towns we have big money surrounded by big wilderness; the combination causes warped career opportunities. Sort of an Edge of Nowhere phenomenon -- cousin to the Bridge to Nowhere one."

Get the Story:
Seth Kanter: That Sarah Palin is one unreal Alaskan (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer 10/18)

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