A reader writes:
You wrote:
If you want to find Ground Zero for this confluence of poverty, isolation, Christianism and meth, take a trip to Wasilla, Alaska, whence the new Esther has emerged.
As a 25-year resident of Anchorage, which is just 40 miles from Wasilla, I wouldn't characterize it as particularly a hotbed of poverty. Per per the 2000 census, its poverty rate (9.6%) was only slightly higher than that of Anchorage (7.4%) — though its unemployment rate was significantly higher (11.2% in Wasilla vs. 6.8% in Anchorage). Its median household income was $48,226. Compare that with New York City (2007 figures): median household income $48,631 with 18.5% living in poverty.
It's not especially isolated either, at least not more so than other communities on the road system in southcentral Alaska. About 30% of its workforce commutes daily into Anchorage, and more come into town for shopping and entertainment. If you want isolated, try Bush Alaska — the vast areas of the state, predominately Alaska Native in population, accessible only by air or water.
On the other hand, it is a hotbed of Christianism.
And everyone there has to deal with it even if they are not themselves Christianists. (Pretty much the case here in Anchorage too — we have a diverse religious community, but Christianist churches like Jerry Prevo's mega Anchorage Baptist Temple have a lot of loudmouth power hereabouts.) Wasilla is also a very ugly town that seems more like a long stretch of strip malls and big box stores than an actual town. It was like that even before Palin became its mayor; she only made it worse. By comparison, its near neighbor in the Mat-Su Borough, Palmer, has a real sense (as expressed in architecture) of being a community, with a town center, probably due to its history as the center of the Matanuska-Susitna agricultural colony that began in FDR's time.
Given the choice, I do my best to avoid Wasilla because it feels so soul-less, all this suburban-wasteland type architecture in the midst of a spectacularly beautiful part of the world. I think the spiritual and intellectual vacuity of Christianism in combination with soulless big-box-store-ism and consumer culture have much more to do with Wasilla's meth problems than actual poverty.
Photo of Wasilla's "Main Street" taken by Mudflats.
The Dish 