A wedge of sandhill cranes flew over the road this morning all of us on our way home. As light came through the clouds, it highlighted the first yellows showing up among the green leaves. That nip in the air meant something for sure. The state fair is over, kids are back in school and oh boy are we in an election season.
In case somebody isn’t paying attention our governor has been nominated for vice president. A little more than two years ago she was mayor of the town next to this one, an Alaska version of a valley girl (the Matanuska Valley). The rap on her is she doesn’t have the experience for the job, but a lot of people didn’t think she had the experience to be governor either, and now she works with something like an 80 percent approval rating. Some people rise to the occasion and she seems to be one of them. The big thing in her favor is she is an outsider. She beat three former governors on the way to winning that election, including the incumbent, who came in third in his own party’s primary. Now she is up there on the national stage, a woman who had to quick get a passport last year to go visit Alaska troops in the Middle East because she had never been overseas before, and drawing all kinds of focus on the north. We could do without that, but nothing’s going to stop it. I have to admit I am pretty darned proud. I disagree with so many of the things she stands for, but I like her, and I just have to smile every time I see her there on TV with all those famous, politically powerful people and holding her own, her family with her.
The media sniping had to be expected. Sometimes my own profession embarrasses me. She stepped into that spotlight and I suppose expected it, but how hard the press tries to find some dirt amazes even me. A coworker this morning said it was awful how she paraded her family in front of everyone in her drive for public office. But, to my mind that is part of it, everyone brings the family along and my guess is the family is well prepared for it. They may be reluctant but the smiles from most of them showed they were happy to be there and proud of Mom and what she was doing. Pretty common knowledge the governor’s daughter is pregnant, and her being there also offended this person. But my thought is, this is a family, they are going to support each other and not hide their problems, but instead show the world how they deal with things like this and that is up front and honest, not try to hide it. That is support. I don’t suppose many people do, but I felt some sympathy for the boyfriend. Try to imagine this from a male point of view. You finally achieve every boy’s dream and have sex. A mistake is made and you find yourself dealing with a pregnancy. That can be traumatic enough. But then imagine your mistake ON THE FRONT PAGE OF EVERY NEWSPAPER IN THE WORLD.
I sent a note to my son at college warning him this was yet another reason to practice safe sex.
There is another person in that family to keep an eye on and she is the little scamp Piper, the governor’s youngest daughter. You may have seen her during the speech licking her fingers and then damping down a cowlick in her baby brother’s hair. There was a great picture made of her during the festivities surrounding the governor’s inauguration here. She was standing in front of her mother in a cute little dress, arms folded across her chest, something of a scowl across her mouth and her eyes cast wickedly to the side as if wondering, “now how am I going to work this to my advantage.” The Secret Service is going to have their hands full with that one. Could there be a movie in it?
All in all, except for being somewhat under the microscope, not a bad day to be an Alaskan, and watching those sandhill cranes heading south on the winds of change.
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