I can see Grewingk Glacier from my house...

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[Grewingk]

Not really. I can see Portlock, Dixon and a couple of unnamed hanging glaciers from my house. I have to run the snowmachine up the hill to the neighbor's hay meadows to see Grewingk Glacier. That's the famous glacier you can see from Homer, Alaska. The Wiki entry on the glacier is wrong -- it's in the Kenai Mountains, not the Chugach Mountains, across Kachemak Bay from Homer. (The Wiki entry on K. Bay is wrong, too. Who writes those things??)

Anyway, I'm a beef cattle rancher in the Greater Kachemak Bay area. I used to be a gold miner, but I met this really cute cowboy back in the mid-90's and semi-retired from mining. Had to stay home in the summertime and learn to put up hay, instead of running wild in the 40mile Mining District of Alaska.

So I live on an old federal homestead that's been a working cattle ranch since 1951. For fun, I dabble in Alaskan agricultural politics, trying to afflict the comfortable and get some local food production stepped-up around this state. The current status of food production in Alaska sucks. We have a two week food supply in the stores, tops. The Homer Bench alone could feed a huge proportion of Alaska, but the old homesteads have been sold off to developers who are building subdivisions on the hay fields, cattle ranches, dairy farms and potato fields. The MatSu Valley, where SWWNBN lives, has the same problem. The old homesteads are worth too much money for some folks to turn down these days, so they're going out of production and being sold off. No Farms, No Food. Read the American Farmland Trust website if you have any interest in the topic. And support your local farmers and farmers markets.

I was a denizen of the Usenet newsgroup <alt.culture.alaska> from ~1992 until a few weeks after McSame picked SWWNBN for Veep. The pinheads from the Rush Limbaugh rabid R ng's infested my home ng and I had to leave in disgust. At the same time, ACS, our Alaskan phone company and ISP that Meghan Stapleton, pitbull for SWWNBN, works for, quit paying their News Service subscription, but they're telling all of us that "the engineers are working on it." Huh. I guess Meg told them to just bullshit the customers until we get tired of bitching. Anyway, when I lost my Usenet service, I found the blogs. Black cloud, silver lining. I'm still on a dialup connection -- ACS has been saying that they'd have DSL out here in six months for the last seven years. I guess lying is a part of their corporate culture. Our local ACS phone man says we're lucky to have a dial tone out here.

Anyway, if anyone still thinks Trig Palin isn't SWWNBN's kid, PM me with an email address and I'll email you a photo of an obviously pregnant gov. I talked to her a few weeks before Trig hit daylight and took a few pictures.

You guys are a hoot!  : )

   -- from Grewingk, near the Cosmic Hamlet

[twain12]

  from rainy New Brunswick


Edited by ira2 to fix smilie.

[Writing from Alaska]

Hey welcome and thanks for the end of rumor info. Though the birth story is odd, let's move on  - hooray. Plenty of other things to consider, I say!

Anyway  - it sounds like you live in a truly wonderful part of the REAL Alaska, unlike those of us who live in Anchorage, the closest city to Alaska.

                     

[Charcoal Sniper P.]

  Grewingk, I am glad you did an introduction, when I was sending off your card swap card you were a great mystery to me, now I feel like maybe I know a little more about you. 

I live in a city and we do have broadband Internet but a lot  of Vermont doesn't, and have been promised it for years.  Our phone company just got sold under the guise of that they are going to do the broadband thing that people have been promised, I think it will happen but I don't think it will happen soon.  Maybe if it becomes one of the "projects" the government pays for to boost the economy it will happen sooner.

[the problem child]

Welcome Grewingk! You must live in an extraordinarily beautiful place. Please share some pictures on the "view from my window" topic if you are so inclined!

[ira2]

  Grewingk!

[Grewingk]

Thanks for the welcome, everyone!  : ) 

I'll post some "view from my window" pictures when I have time to fiddle with Photobucket. This area is pretty enough to break your heart. My SO was born/raised here and he still drives into the ditch once in awhile, gawking at the view.

@ Charcoal Sniper P. --
I read somewhere that Obama is going to include Broadband for Everyone!! in his economic recovery package. Universal Broadband is on his Rural Issues position paper that was handed out during the campaign. He knows how important connectivity is. (I hope the Secret Service lets him keep his Blackberry after he takes office. Presidents get too isolated from real people and from their friends, because of their security bubble.)

Ah, just found it on the Speed Matters Blog. Here's the blurb:

Obama to include broadband in economic stimulus package

Last weekend in his weekly radio address, President-Elect Barack Obama announced that he would be including money for broadband deployment and adoption in his economic recovery plan. His proposals for universal high speed Internet access and his recognition of broadband's importance to the economic recovery reflect the work CWA members did during the campaign to focus attention on the issue.  [I think CWA is probably Communications Workers of America or something close to that. Just a WAG.]