Interesting article about development in Alaska

Jinu · RealPoor Guru Joined: 11 Oct 2002 Posts: 2396

Alaskan Delegate to New York: Don't Fence Us In
By ALAN FEUER

NORTH POLE, Alaska, Aug. 1 - Doug Isaacson has a few ideas about city folks. First of all, they do not understand Alaska. Second of all, they do not understand Alaska.

He was flying in a six-seat Piper Navajo the other day above the tundra, grousing that he could not build on all that empty land because the city slickers wanted to preserve it. They needed some place to dream of in their cramped apartments, he was saying.

It drives a man like Mr. Isaacson insane.

"It's a fantasy they're trying to preserve," he said as the plane flew bumpily above a wilderness that stretched away for miles in shades of greenish gray. "It's in their minds. It's only when you're living in the rat race of a claustrophobic city that you start with all those claustrophobic thoughts."

At the end of the month, Mr. Isaacson, a delegate to the Republican National Convention, will be traveling to New York - perhaps the most claustrophobic city in the nation. The natives are planning to welcome him with cocktail parties, catered galas and a river cruise or two to showcase their town. But for Mr. Isaacson, the sojourn in Manhattan is more about the politics than about the fun.

"Why am I going to New York?" he said the other day. "To preach that people should stay out of the sovereign issues of Alaska."

Mr. Isaacson has never been to New York City, and his journey will take him over more than four time zones and across 4,438 miles. It will take him from the town of North Pole - population 1,646 - where butchered moose meat sits in the freezer and the sign proclaims, "It's always Christmas." It will take him across the Continental Divide and the cultural divide - not that he particularly cares.

"He hasn't really talked about it much - I'm surprised," said Mabel Generous, who works for Mr. Isaacson at Gold Coast Mortgage in Fairbanks. "I know I'd be talking about it if I was going to New York."

New York officials view the convention as a way to sell the city to the heartland and they are hoping to raise at least $65 million to pamper delegates and the thousands of journalists who will be watching them.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has repeatedly urged New Yorkers, an overwhelmingly Democratic lot, to be nice to the delegates. But Mr. Isaacson seems little concerned about his reception in New York, and is instead intent on making his voice heard on issues dear to him.

He is suspicious of people who think Alaska should remain a wilderness, undeveloped and pristine. While this position may seem logical, even admirable, on the overcrowded island of Manhattan, it is a luxury up north, he says, where the oil and mining industries can mean a paycheck for a worker who needs a job.

"New Yorkers tend to think of Alaska in terms of Central Park," he said one day, leaning back so that his tie with the Republican elephant was on display. "They think it's a beautiful place that has to be preserved.

"But people live here. They have to earn a living. Don't tell me the environment's so fragile we'll destroy it. We're not going to spoil the land. We're not going to bite the hand that feeds us."

Mr. Isaacson is a Republican of the Calvin Coolidge school, a man for whom the business of America is business.

"We're old school," said Jim Whitaker, the mayor of Fairbanks, whom Mr. Isaacson is proud to count among his friends. "We're Republican because Abraham Lincoln was Republican. Because Teddy Roosevelt was Republican. Because Dwight David Eisenhower - the fellow who said 'Beware the military-industrial complex' - was Republican."

They were sitting on the patio of the Princess Riverside Hotel, enjoying an after-breakfast beer. It was 11 a.m. As they talked, a slender man with snow-white hair came by to gaze at the sparkling Chena River. He was tall and frail and had a pastel sweater draped across his back.

He asked them if they were from Alaska. They were. And he?

"I'm from outside Philadelphia," he said with a sigh. "Don't s***w this place up, all right? Back East, it's all a mess."

Easterners. Mr. Isaacson could only shake his head. He bears no malice for the Easterner, though he is wary, searching constantly for hidden agendas and the dagger in the smile. For example, he found it difficult to trust the big-city news reporter sent to interview him, worried he would come off as a hick.

Doug Isaacson is not a hick. He is a mortgage broker, a city councilman, a father, an American. He lives in a rural town where local people answer Christmas letters mailed to Santa. He is a former seminarian who once worked for the Air Force translating intercepted Soviet communications from a plane's belly.

What the Easterner does not understand, he says, is that Alaska is vast enough to handle even decades of development. Whether this is true or not, he put this Easterner on a plane and flew him out 100 miles beyond the Arctic Circle to prove how huge and empty Alaska is.

From the air, there was a single road that cut between the rolling hills that stretched away so far into the distance that the concept of distance seemed to disappear. Then the road disappeared. Then the hills. Then the trees. Eventually there was nothing but the mountains and the tundra - nothing artificial to be seen.

"It's called the last frontier, but it's a zoo," he said above the humming of the engines. "Our movement is restricted. Our commerce is restricted. They've taken away our right to do anything by taking away the land."

When Mr. Isaacson says they, he means that conglomeration of environmentalists, liberal money and politicians - often Democrats - who, over the years, have set aside some 300 million of Alaska's 365 million acres as untouchable public land. It drives him crazy that "environmental evangelists," as he will call them, have made it so you cannot build a factory, a shopping mall or even a house on all that empty land.

"We've got land for literally millions of acres up here, and yet we don't have title," he went on, as the plane flew well above the Brooks Range. "That's immoral. It's absolutely wrong."

It is telling that when Mr. Isaacson discusses the environment he uses terms like "missionaries, evangelists, proselytizers, animists" and the like. He says he is a Christian, as well as the son of a Christian and the father of five good Christian children. The earth, to him, is to be used because the earth is "God's bounty."

"Why am I going to New York?" he asked again, this time cooking chicken on his grill. "Values," he said.

Mr. Isaacson's voyage to New York will not be entirely political, of course. His 19-year-old daughter, Rachelle, is joining him. If he is somewhat ambivalent about the trip, his eldest child is not. "I'm really, really excited," Ms. Isaacson said the other day by cellphone from a summer camp in Indiana. "I love city life and New York is the ultimate city. It's a happening place.''

She wants to see the Statue of Liberty, and yeah, Times Square should be pretty cool. She would like to walk around and soak it in. "And a Broadway show would be really fun," she said.

It was explained to her that her father had procured a pair of tickets. He did not know which day or show.

Interesting article about development in Alaska

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