Down in the basement, while changing a flat tire on my bike, I looked up and saw our old Alaska license plates. They hang in a place of honor near dusty tools that nobody uses.
Yep. We lived (and drove) in Alaska. Five whole years. We moved up there in 1980. We were happy recipients of the first ever "Permanent Fund Dividend." It's every Alaskan's itsy-bitsy annual share of the state's oil booty. Even my young daughter got a dividend. One thousand big ones that first year.
Alaska, thanks to presidential politics, is much on people's tongues. Today my favorite writer's dateline was Anchorage, AK. Maureen Dowd's column shows up in my little local paper on Mondays. I totally love her. I can picture her up there in Anchorage, wondering which t-shirt to buy. I bet she is staying in the Captian Cook Hotel. I stayed there a zillion times on the state's dime. I was an Alaska state employee, don't you know. But under different governors. I actually respected each of them. It would be different today.
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