Sometimes a Great Roslyn

“Suicide’s not the Indian way. Don’t go where you’re not invited. Know what I mean?”
-Ed Chigliak

Powerful words spoken by a fictitious character, in a fictitious Alaskan town, in a fictitious teevee series, that was filmed in a real town.

Roslyn is to America as Wasilla is to Suncadia.

America just wants to be Roslyn, while Wasilla and Suncadia desire fame, fortune and a shit load of Condos by a golf course in the middle of the woods.  

We could blame Palin, but I find it’s best to just blame Grant Goodeve…for pretty much everything.  Thanks Grant!

Like Roslyn, Suncadia and Sarah Palin’s image were built by illegal immigrant labor.  Roslyn survived the hard-working immigrants. Suncadia and Sarah?  Not so much.

Hard times have befallen us all…unless of course you’re Jamie Dimon, or you make earth ending widgets that the Pentagon uses.  People are hungry and living in closets.  The accusers of Assange are using a CIA torture attorney, because WikiLeaks knows too much and Jacob Appelbaum hates golf courses.

It’s all pretty simple really.  We want the idyllic life in Roslyn, with a Costco or Whole Foods conveniently located about 10 miles away.  Then building codes are changed, zoning laws are fiddled with…and before you know it, you’ve got this mart, that mart, 6 golf courses, 3 McDonald’s, about 9 Starbucks and a couple of empty housing developments the size of Rhode Island.  And then – BAM!  Your “Roslyn” now looks just like Vancouver, Washington, and nobody really wants to live there.

I once read on a bar napkin…that if all we really wanted to do was be happy, healthy, have nice things and help our fellow-man, we would.  But fighting, dying and struggling for every half a penny they allow you…is so much easier.

Sometimes a great Roslyn happens, most times it doesn’t.