An Exile's Election

Have you ever ordered something from a catalog, or a TV offer, or even ebay? Unless you've walked in my and Ambie's shoes you've probably never noticed the horrible little words at the bottom of the page following an asterisk. "available only in the 48 contiguous states" or "not applicable in Alaska or Hawaii" How does that make us feel? Kind of like going to a birthday party when you're five years old and the mom is handing out cupcakes until she gets to you and she says, "sorry, this doesn't apply to you." We're invited to the party, but we can't have the treats.

While away from my home in Alaska, I needed to get a pair of replacement contacts. Since I got them from Costco, I figured it would be easy to order even away from home. I told the young lady at the counter I needed my prescription from Alaska so she pulled out the list of all Costcos and started looking down the column of international stores. No kidding.

"Um, Alaska is one of the 50 states", I said.

"Oh really?" She flipped the list over to the domestic side and when she found it (the second one on the alphabetical list) she said, "Whaddaya know!"

I've lived in both Alaska and Hawaii and so has Ambie. We know what it's like to be "an exile among friends". We feel like we were added just to make it a nice round 50, but we have to stay in the basement when the guests arrive. Never mind that we supply everyone else with oil, natural gas, gold, pineapples, sugar, and really cool places to vacation. Trying to point these things out just makes our case more pathetic, though.

You never hear people from California say, "Hi, I'm from California, you know, where 38% of the nation's oranges come from, where Gary Coleman is from, and where they discovered gold in the 1800s". You only hear stuff like that from states' residents who feel it necessary to "put their home state on the map". You'll hear people from Nebraska proudly say that it is the birthplace of former President Gerald Ford, Malcolm X, and Marge Helgenberger from CSI.

So here we have an election where, no matter who wins, we have a person in charge who represents the "forgotten states". And either one will make history - we never do anything "normally" out here on the fringes.

You know you're from a small state when the news is filled with the notoriety of fellow and/or former residents where ever they are. You'll see articles in the paper about "Hawaii's own" so-and-so "who made it to round 3 in 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'" or "landed the lead role in Florida County Community Theater's version of 'Christmas in the Land of Oz'". So you can imagine the Obama-fest that has been raging here on the islands since his ascendency on the national stage. I drive past his alma mater twice a day (in Hawaii, it's all about where you graduated from highschool). So although he has never said, "da kine" in a speech, worn an aloha shirt on the campaign trail, lauded the virtues of poi, or given a "shaka" out to his supporters, it's all love all the time around here.

Now, Ambie reports that within hours of the Republican VP announcement, there were McCain/Palin T-shirts for sale at the State Fair and everyone was wearing one by the end of the day. Alaska has been a hot topic on the political/environmental front for a while but no one actually from Alaska has ever risen to the forefront because of it until now. (okay, there was Ted Stevens, but he's hardly a household name.) There's finally someone of national note that uses the term "hockey mom" as opposed to "soccer mom". In Alaska, soccer is just a game you play when there's no ice (that's about 45 days) to keep in shape for hockey.

So forget that he's a black, male Democrat and she's a white, woman Republican, because they have a lot in common. They're both relative newcomers to the national stage, they're both running with an old white guy with experience, they'll both be a "first" if elected, and most importantly, they both know what it's like to live under an oppressive and exclusionary catalog ordering regime.