I want to thank the Anchorage Daily News for a couple of things: first off, for returning to the original name of one of Anchorage’s first daily publications. It just feels right to someone who grew up in the state when Anchorage supported two daily papers as well as several weekly publications, and the entire state had more than 30 locally produced periodical publications.
Second, thanks for retaining the regular publication of the daily comics section in these ‘pandemonic’ days and months. In these times of social isolation, mutual wariness and generalized grief, uncertainty and confusion, when fear-mongering national leaders do their best to kill a little more of the joy of waking up each day in order to better achieve their own self-centered goals, it has been wonderful to be able count upon the sometimes tender, often ironic and downright smartly critical commentary of the 29 or so creators of our daily dose of common sense and humor to uplift our spirits. You have no idea how much it means to this Alaskan elder.
Third, Art Davidson’s commentary about the state’s plan to blast rock quarries into the cliffs along Turnagain Arm brings to mind again my wonderment about the Department of Transportation’s ongoing inclination to respond to ‘improving road safety’ in general with plans which seem more designed to encourage drivers to travel faster and faster than more and more safely. A road design that protected the natural beauty and character of the landscape by not only encouraging but requiring speed reduction, would seem to be more logical to me — speed bumps every few hundred feet, rumble rows or even just plain gravel roadbeds might re-train drivers to slow down in the area between Rabbit Creek and Girdwood in order to protect their vehicles and their driving comfort and, who knows, even save a few lives endangered by the speed demons with their mania for being first to arrive at the gas station! The grievous scars we have already inflicted upon the landscape by blasting out large sections of the cliffs to widen the roadway in past years still hurt every time I drive by them.
Carol R. Dee
Homer
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