Fouling Your Nest

You can’t separate Denver from politics anymore, so I was not surprised that while at the FFR show more than one person who fishes Alaska regularly came up to me and asked, “Have you ever seen Wasilla?” Apparently it is the community by which all other Alaskans measure their environmental health — and it is the lowest common denominator. On Salon this morning, David Talbot looks at what Wasilla has become, and wonders if it doesn’t hold up the mirror to Sarah Palin’s notion of what is worth preserving. “Wasilla City Council member Dianne Woodruff hears the same lament about her town all the time. ‘Everywhere in Alaska, you hear people say, “We don’t want to be another Wasilla.” We’re not just the state’s meth capital, we’re the ugly box-store capital.'”