READERS: To get a true feel for Alaska and the Yukon please listen to the YouTube rendition of the Cremation of Sam McGee at the bottom of the page. The following should get you going. Meanwhile, ponder this, word has it that Joe E. Brown visited Anchorage and called it the world's biggest liquor store.
 MECHANICAL OIL PIG REACHES PORT AFTER 9-YEAR PIPELINE CONSTRUCTION STRUGGLE VALDEZ, Alaska _ A journey of 38 1/2 days - and a struggle of nine years - ended with arrival of oil from above the Arctic Circle at the line's southern terminus here. The North Slope crude officially ended its pipe journey at 11:02 p.m. Alaskan time 4:02 a.m. EDT. "Mile 798, mile 799, mile 800," voices crackled over the radio. A light flashed on, a buzzer sounded and a Teletype clacked out: "SCRAPER ARRIVED." The world's biggest construction project was in use. Oil was flowing along all 800 miles of the $7.7 billion trans-Alaska pipleline. At first the technicians who had nursed the oil along from Alaska's North Slope to this ice-free port on the state's southern coast tried to shrug it off as nothing to get excited about. When the oil arrived late Thursday night they could not hide their happiness, and the operations center erupted in backslapping and cheering. "It took me back 20 years," said Henry Mowell, a veteran pipeliner and Alyeska Pipeline Service Co's vice president for operations, "I was checking pressure and recording it just like I did then." The first word that the oil had finished its 38 1/2 day journey came from Bob McGill, who walked alongside the pipeline's thumping mechanical "pig" as it preceded the oil into the terminal here. SUITCASE CHILD ANCHORAGE, Alaska _ The custody battle for 5-year-old Scotty Mackay got so fierce at one point that the boy was taking a suitcase to breakfast, expecting he would be shuffled off to yet another home. Since the death of his mother in a mysterious bombing in 1976, Scotty has lived with his mother's brother, his father, his father's sister, a friend of his father and a state court judge. The case comes to court again today when Scotty's wealthy father, Neil Mackay, 55, a real estate man, faces contempt charges for spiriting his son out of Alaska without court permission. Robert Wagstaff, Scotty's court-appointed lawyer, says the case is the most unusual he has seen. It reads a little like a Robert Louis Stevenson adventure: taken by his father to the Pacific in violation of the court order, Scotty was the subject of an island-hopping search by up to 13 detectives. He was finally found on an island described by Stevenson as "the pearl of the Pacific." His trip home from the Pacific involved court orders and island hops by tramp steamer and amphibious plane.
Illegitimi non carborundum NOME, Alaska _ Alone parking meter stands on Front Street, a tribute to a newspaper editor who has crusaded against progress. Albro Gregory, the crusty publisher of the Nome Nugget, believes the "There's no place like Nome" and he wants to keep it that way. Gregory, or "Greg" as his friends call him, wants to maintain the town's Gold Rush image. He once editorialized: "I'm not against progress, but not in this town." MCCAIN FINDS WOMAN CANDIDATE IN REMOTE ALASKA John McCain not only has a vice presidential candidate who can field-strip a moose, he has shown that he can gut history. Questioned about whether he would stick to his support for less regulation of business in the face of the collapse of the nation’s economy, he called himself a “Teddy Roosevelt Republican.” The trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt, an avid conservationist whose kill numbers put Sarah Palin to shame, ran unsuccessfully on the Bull Moose ticket when he couldn’t interest the Republican party in his progressive ideas. Even though they were contemporaries, Roosevelt may not have heard or read philosopher George Santayana’s aphorism that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” had much in common with the “Fair Deal” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his fifth cousin, promised the nation during the Great Depression. Will McCain, or Barack Obama, find a slogan even approaching FDR’s “The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself,” the essential inspiration of his 1933 inauguration? McCain’s basic lack of knowledge of Roosevelt and what he did and stood for suggests the nation is headed for a huge abyss if McCain is elected. Although Teddy Roosevelt professed to support capitalism, it didn’t stop him from busting up 40 corporations he believed were guilty of monopolistic practices. He also tried to make sure the food Americans ate was not contaminated, and that they were not misled by false labels. McCain’s association with the Keating Five also raises questions, though so far they may been most publicly expressed on the Stephen Colbert show. McCain was one of five senators found to have been involved a savings and loan scandal: “The Keating Five.” U.S. taxpayers ended up paying the cost of the failure of 747 savings and loan associations, at a cost of about $125 billion in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A recession followed. As in the current scandal, federal regulators had warned it was coming. Although McCain was the only Republican of five senators investigated, it was determined that he had the closest relationship with entrepreneur Charles H. Keating. Investigators found that Keating made $112,000 in political contributions to McCain. The McCain family made large investments in a Keating shopping center project. They accepted free trips to one of Keating’s tony Bahama retreats. The senator paid for some of the trips as they became public. McCain got off with a slap on the wrist from a Senate investigatory commission, accused only of poor judgment. So far, in the manner much like John Kerry before him, Barack Obama has stayed away from talking about the Keating Five. After all, John McCain is a hero. That didn’t stop Republicans from conducting a sleazy campaign against Kerry, even attacking his war record. It would seem a fair question to ask whether McCain, who will have his finger on the button, should go through a neuropsychological exam to determine whether he could handle the stress to decide, for example, whether to stop a Russian invasion. After all, this is a man who never seems to have met a war he didn’t like. Obama, his running mate and Palin should undergo similar tests. In most cities a policeman couldn’t be hired without such tests. Soldiers take them. There is considerable psychological evidence that the effects of torture can stay with a victim throughout his or her life.
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