In Eureka, during Reagan’s take over of California, tree stumps and massive logs floated down streams from wide scale logging. The extra wood was sometimes set adrift, filling the bays with logs, stumps, burl. Small whole earth communities tried to turn this into community and commerce. Creative communities based upon the principle of recovering the waste from aggressive corporations. This is the Reagan that came to power, whose leftovers still fill your head. That was the Reagan that said

A tree is a tree — how many more do you need to look at?”

A trip upto Eureka this past August shows the impact that a governor whose expertise is based on being there brings. Experience is a poor teacher of idiots.
In that once vital bay
now there are beer cans stuck in the sand and shallows, as dead birds and engine slicks float by. Governorship does not gurantee understanding. Eureka lived the Reagan revolution and logged like there was no tomorrow. But tommorrow has come and the only thing trickling down is income, employment and sewage. Lets all go out to Samoa and piss one for the gipper.

Governor Palin is being praised for her mastery of energy. If that means “energize,” then I concur. It is doubtful that history will be as kind to her as it has been to Ronald Reagan. More pressingly, I hope that Governor Palin doesn’t have as lasting an effect on energy and Alaska as Governor Reagan did on those humbled in Humboldt.