Fairbanks isolation

Living in Fairbanks, it is easy to stick your head in the sand and not realize what is going on in the rest of the world. For the most part, people are kind, and living is gentle, if not easy. My grad student salary during the school year is a quarter my sili valley salary, and I get by okay without even really having a tough budget. We still eat well, we live in a nice cabin, and the animals eat well. And people here are so kind you forget that the rest of the world can be damned harsh. For example, I was out walking the dogs the other day and decided that since it had been so warm the prior few days, some of the mud might have dried off our favorite trail. We went, and it hadn't. In fact, there was a truck stuck in the mud there, surrounded by all the accoutrements of their having attempted to free themselves--wooden boards, shovels, poured gravel, etc. But apparently they had given up and left. I turned back, not wanting to get my boots and the dogs all muddy, and there at the trailhead was an idling truck, with a young couple inside who had been watching me walk out and who had evidently been waiting for me. The woman opened her window and asked if that was my truck stuck there. The two of them had been all prepared to help me dig it out! No, it wasn't, but what nice people. Things like this happen all the time around here. I pull over to look at a map, and someone pulls up behind me to make sure my car is okay. Living here, you are surrounded by natural beauty and human kindness, and it's easy to forget that our world is still a really tough place to be.

Sadly and tellingly, the local rag doesn't even mention any such things. To them, the headlines are local only. (Although, to their credit, we never have celebrity trash on the headlines, either!)

Methinks a letter to the editor is in order. Surely some of those people living in those beautiful big houses overlooking the river can spare a few dollars to a worthy charity.