And That Would Be Where?

I had quite a nice time at the Pastor’s Missions Forum here in Atlanta this week. I met a lot of nice people and heard lots of information about missions around the world. Getting back to the meeting lots of nice people part, I still am amazed at the celebrity status one has just being from Alaska. Alaska! Is the response you usually get right after they ask where you are from. Next they want to know about Sarah Palin, do you know her? Do you think she is ready for being president? It all makes for unending small talk. Several of the pastors I spoke with had actually been to Alaska to work on a MAPS project, most in places even I have never been after living in Alaska for 37 years. I thanked all of them for their contribution to our district and encouraged them to come back again and again as we really need volunteer help across our state.

And then, there was the usual ignorance about Alaska. I met one pastor from Florida in the hall as we walked to the meeting room together. He had heard I was from Texas. I responded, “no, I am from the larger state.” He looked at me with an absolute blank look on his face and said, “and that would be where….?” Alaska, I said, the state twice as big as Texas. Oh, yes, he said. Even most of the ones who seemed to know where Alaska is, there is that pause where after you tell them where you are from they have to go through their mental file to place that location. That’s just before the Alaska! part.

Then finally there is the segment of those who cannot possibly imagine anyone actually living in Alaska. I was riding the hotel shuttle back to the airport and a nice lady from South Carolina, that would be South Carolina, or however you might write with a very significant southern drawl. When I said I was from Alaska, her face became very pained looking, and I thought she was going to scold me. “Ooohhh” was all she said. I think it was sympathy or something close to that, pity perhaps? Even though the guy flying to Minneapolis sitting next to me was going to encounter temperatures far colder than I was going to step off the plane into in Kenai, I got the sympathy or pity, and not the guy from Minneapolis.

That’s OK, I guess. I like where I live. I don’t miss the traffic, or the crime (they chain-link fence and lock everything there in Atlanta), or the humidity, or muddy disgusting looking rivers and their “mountains” that hardly qualify as a rounded bump on the topography. No, living in Alaska has been good to me and my family. I think I’ll stay right here.