Dear The Great Land,
After reading the comments that people made beneath a short Anchorage Daily News piece asking what readers thought your most important new year's resolution should be, we're really concerned. First off, there weren't that many suggestions. We're not sure if that's because not many people took the time to comment, or because not many comments were good enough to be posted, but either way, it's a bummer.
Most unsettling to The Concerned, however, is how those people want you to set all sorts of goals you can't possibly achieve. Things like voting Mark Begich out of office for supporting a half-assed stab at health-care reform, stopping domestic abuse and sexual violence within your borders, punishing resource companies for environmental damage, instituting a corporate profits cap, lowering gasoline prices, connecting the Bush to the road system -- and yes, even seceding from the union. Thankfully, none of them wrote that you should quit sleeping with your ex, but we wouldn't have been surprised.
Anyway, even though they were just trying to help, don't listen to those yahoos. You can't vote, and you can't sexually assault anyone. You've never corroded a pipeline, done a critical job poorly at the end of a crazy-long shift, or moved a reef into the middle of a shipping lane. You've always been a wonderful hands-off steward of your own wildlife, and you haven't seemed to care one way or another which nation owns you. What's more, you've never even run for public office, nor could you. You don't even have thumbs. We're confused about the abuse thing, though. You abuse people up all the time in your backcountry, and people may not admit it, but your zeal for punishing the innocent is what many Alaskans love most about you.
Anyway, we think those resolutions are for Alaskans to make, not you. But you can't really go without resolving something this year, so we think you should resolve to stop pursuing one of your past New Year's resolutions in particular.
Several years ago, you apparently resolved to lose some weight. You must've been really worried about your appearance. In the last decade, you've lost millions of tons of coastline and marine creatures. We think you may have even developed a disorder. We don't want this to turn into an intervention or anything, but it's time to stop dieting. You've never looked slimmer or weighed less, so please just try to level off -- your ribs are starting to show.
We're sorry you had to hear all those misplaced resolutions. But they make sense to us in a way; people often blame externalities for unrealized, internal shortcomings. It might not mean much to you, but in the coming year, we resolve to not blame you for problems we've created, contributed to, or failed to prevent.
In your corner as always,
The Concerned