Our newspaper carrier up here on Hatcher Pass Road has given us customers notice that he will be leaving on September 30, 2009. He expressed “pleasure to serve you for the past year, but after working 370 days straight, I need a break!” Indeed.

We’ve had some good carriers on this route and a few who never could manage to deliver a paper on a daily basis. But I can only recall a few mornings when, due to circumstances beyond this carrier’s control, our newspaper was not delivered. He was one of the best.

There must be tougher routes than this one but given the winter snow conditions and side roads this is a difficult carrier route to service. It may be sort of “part-time” but it means working every single day and it isn‘t easy.

I will forgo the usual lamentations about the decline of the printed newspapers to say that I really appreciate the sustained efforts of the news carriers. Our departing carrier had some innovative ways to deliver the newspaper---obviously geared toward more efficient delivery from a small-sized vehicle. The paper was, at one time, tightly rolled and secured with rubber bands before being slipped into the Day-Glo orange plastic sleeves. More recently, the plastic sleeves were twisted, stretched and knotted, making the final delivery package look like a stick of dynamite with a dangling fuse.

I recycled the carrier’s rubber bands for camping. And I have always used the plastic newspaper sleeves in many ways---mostly as stuff sacks for raingear, etc. for lightweight backpacking and climbing. I don’t wrap food in them because that plastic looks more toxic than the clear kind.

The newspapers themselves are recycled as place mats, to wrap refuse, and always wind up in the wood stove. It is my main source of fire-starting material. Time and again, while using the paper for these purposes, I have noticed articles previously unread or whose importance was not at first apparent.

The most interesting thing about having old newspapers around is seeing articles that have lost all meaning due to the passage of time---and others that were prescient.

FORMER REPRESENTATIVE MASEK GETS LIGHT SENTENCE -

Beverly Masek got elected and re-elected here in Mat-Su because, like Sarah Palin, she possessed commercial good looks and said all the “right” things. Unlike Palin, Masek possessed a flat personality---her tales of woe at her sentencing hearing were probably mostly true. She was obviously being manipulated by others.

The main point is that folks here in the Valley will elect almost anybody who spouts the right wing, conservative party-line. Masek fought against rural subsistence to the detriment of her own Native people---but she played her conservative cards well enough to keep getting elected here.

Remember that little strip-tease she did on the Legislative floor---removing her outer clothes to reveal the Indian costume underneath? In my opinion she should have reversed costumes.

Beverly was probably intelligent enough to be a decent legislator. If she had gotten a stiffer sentence her story might even have qualified as a tragedy. In any case, Mat-Su Valley surely could have done with some more forward-thinking leadership instead of yet another conservative hack dressed up in a Native costume.

Too much of our political representation consisted of corrupt clods like Vic Kohring and Beverly Masek---members of the upturned palm clan. Senator Scott Ogan probably got out of the Legislature just in time to avoid prosecution---his “consulting fees” from Evergreen were an obvious conflict of interest. That’s my main point here: Mat-Su Valley voters just can’t seem to grasp the concept of political conflict of interest. You know, where elected politicians receive money from special corporate interests but voters think it’s okay because they are so gosh-darned “conservative.” And the rest of us must suffer for it.

Rudy Wittshirk