Alaska solstice and issues

Jenn asked a couple of Alaska questions, so I will answer to the best of my ability. First, summer solstice: I have lived here for 14 years (well, actually 14 years on June 29th) so I am used to the lessened sunlight in the winter and excessive sunlight in the summer. One thing about solstice, we stay up later in the summer with all the sunlight. I had ladies' Bible study last night and we go out to eat after, well, by the time I dropped off another lady at home and was pulling out of her driveway it was 11:20pm and as sunny as 5:00pm. The drawback, we sleep a little later, today, I woke up at 8:45am and I was the only one awake. This June has been a little rainy, but we will take it happily, usually we are very dry and have forest fires, there is nothing worse than smokey days, the sky is an orange-brown and we know the sun is behind all that smoke but the smoke is so thick that it cannot be seen.

Now,  the second question:" My other question is this: do you think people who live in Alaska feel isolated from the rest of the US? Do they feel any different than someone who lives in the lower 48 about issues?" This one is a little more difficult for me, so, yes, some times we do feel isolated, I grew up in KY and could drive and go wherever. Here, Alaska is so vast and we live in the interior which is fairly isolated. 6-7 hours to Anchorage 8 hours to Valdez,etc. On issues, we can keep up on issues now better than ever with internet and cable or sattelite, etc. When I moved here 14 years ago, we could not get cable where we lived and local tv was hilarious(back then I watched tons (too much) tv) there were not enough stations for abc, nbc and cbs, so the stations shared programming, that was weird to get used to.  And, we did not have a computer yet either.Then, Alaska has its own set of issues that make us unique to the lower 48. One thing, many people have moved up here to get away from the lower 48 so there are some unique people here as well with some unique personalities. But things here are changing fast as we here in Fairbanks are now bombarded with "big box" stores all the sudden and some of that uniqueness ( in my eyes) is starting to fade. Yes, I am glad that we now have some choices as to where to shop, etc. but there was something about this "Golden Heart City" that gave it that title and I wonder if it will stay the golden heart city? So to answer clearly: Yes, we do sometimes feel isolated, but we can know what we need to know about issues and it depends upon the issue as to how it effects Alaska.

May the Lord find us faithful.