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Obama's secretaries learn plane delays are part of rural life
BETHEL -- Everyone was busy waiting for the action here Wednesday morning.
This is the way it often is in the Alaska Bush: Hurry up and get to the place the airplane or airplanes are due to arrive, and then wait because the planes are late. The waiting this time was for the U.S. Secretaries of Housing and Urban Development, Energy, Education and Agriculture. They were due in the Kuskokwim River village to be briefed by the people themselves on the problems unique to this corner of rural America. Knowingly or not, the secretaries were gaining first-hand exposure to one of those problems: The transportation system is not particularly reliable. On Tuesday morning, an Alaska Airlines flight out of Anchorage carrying some of the staff charged with organizing the events flew to a point over Bethel, circled for 15 minutes hoping for the fog below to lift, and then flew back to Anchorage. Later flights to Bethel got in OK, but the weather delay spooked trip organizers, and they delayed the start of Wednesday's activities just to make sure that any fog forming over the Kuskokwim River blew away. People here awoke Wednesday morning to find the skies clear and the temperatures cooling into the mid-50s from the 70s of the evening before. They rushed to the cultural center where the doors were scheduled to open at 8 a.m., and a public hearing to begin at 9 a.m. They were greeted by a sign warning them no one would be arriving from Anchorage until 10. Them came the reports of a mechanical problem with an airplane. Along about 9:30 a.m., everyone was pulled together in front of the cultural center to be told the planes were late, and that events would be delayed. As of 10:30 a.m., it was still unclear when the hearings would start. The many Alaska politicians who gravitated to this community of 6,500 to be part of the action kept busy working the small crowd outside the cultural center. Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls Bob Poe, Hollis French and Ethan Berkowtiz were there. Republican Gov. Sean Parnell, newly elevated from his post of lieutenant governor by the resignation of Sarah Palin, was expected, but had yet to show. The pols circulated among activists of various sorts -- environmentalists, educators, commercial fishermen, subsistence advoates and more -- based in this Southwest Alaska regional hub or flown in from elsewhere. What did it all mean to the average person living along the river? "What's going on?'' asked a middle-aged woman on a mountain bike who happened to be passing the cultural center and pulled in check out the gathering. She was told the secretaries from President Obama's cabinet were due to arrive. "Is Obama coming?'' she asked. No, she was told, just some members of his cabinet. She did not seem impressed. She got on her bike and road away. Craig Medred is a contributing editor at Alaska Dispatch. Contact him at info_alaskadispatch.com .
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