Sarah...

My Alaskan blog got no new posts in the miserable rainy month of July, or the gorgeous sunny month of August. This first day of September will get one. This post is about Sarah Palin.

It's taken me a weekend of pinching myself to accept that I didn't suffer some kind of debilitating brain injury while cabin-bulding or eat the wrong kind mushroom in the woods... Apparently I'm still in the same universe you all are in. And in this universe, the possibility of a President Sarah Palin exists. It could come down to a few thousand votes and a single heartbeat...

OK... believe me I could go on... but... this will be a short post. Others far more (and far less) qualified have unleashed the blogging - ad infinitum - this will generate. The shear volume that will accumulate, from pundits to policymakers, from peons to politicos, will set all kinds of records I'm confident. This race, this election, will be the most talked about, the most record-breaking on many fronts, ever. It is a mind-bogglingly intriguing time to be an American citizen, a voter, and especially, an Alaskan. This script could not have been more interstingly written by the most talented screen writer. It is incredible. It is terrifying. It makes me... proud? It makes me... cringe?

But... all those thoughts/opinions can be found elsewhere... my one tiny little contribution that I will share is my sole personal experience related to Sarah Palin.

Simply, I spent a couple hours in February at an event in Fairbanks she was at. On February 16th I went to the Finish of the Iron Dog snow machine race on the frozen Chena river in Fairbanks. Sarah Palin's husband Todd Palin has won this race four times in past years. Not this year. This year he hit a snow-covered oil-drum at pretty high speed... inertia being what it is Todd kept going while his machine decidedly stopped. After about 70 feet he landed... a dusting off and clean bill of health from the clinic in Galena... a pushing on... only after his completion of the race was it determined he fractured his arm. Said Sarah of her Alaskan hubbie: “Going 400 miles with a broken arm, that’s impressive.”

In any case, I was there when Todd Palin came in and so I shot some video of the Palin family distributing hugs to eachother. I posted it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBbCcdPXS78

The video got about 400 views in first about 6 months. And about 3,200 views in the last 3 days. Interestingly, it got it's first comment on Friday morning... I had just woken up and was checking email... I got one from "YouTube Service" that said I had a comment on my video... "They do know the Veep mansion doesn't get a lot of snow, don't they?" Huh? What?

"Huh? What?" Indeed...

There is more than meets the eye in my video... three of her 5 children are in this video. Daughters Willow and Piper are by her side. Son Track isn't. He is away with the Army... The third? Though I stood feet away from her I had no idea (no one there save Todd probably did) that under her winter coat Sarah Palin was five months pregnant with a son... a son she knew had one too many 21st chromosomes... So that makes four... Finally, absent from view is 17 year old Bristol... Bristol... named after Bristol Bay... we learn this morning... was either pregnant or about to be around this time... Why these prying observations? If only all these were all personal, private family issues. But they won't be. They are matters of national interest. Her stance on abortion elevates these matters to the highest level of national attention... and... for this election, distraction. And perhaps someday to the utmost of relevancy... to those who sit in the highest court in the land...

Huh. What. Wow.



Sources:

http://www.adn.com/sports/snowmachining/irondog/2008/story/317669.html
http://www.newsminer.com/news/2008/feb/17/palin-suffers-broken-arm-iron-dog/