Oreos and Sarah Palin — Mansilla, Spain

A few days ago I got a packet of Oreos for being from Alaska. In his six years of running a shop on the Camino, Emil doesn't remember ever meeting an Alaskan. And for that, I got a special prize. He snuck the blue and white package in with my other groceries with a wink, and I clapped my hands, and I felt very, very young. 

This morning, I ate them for breakfast, halfway through a lazy 11-mile walk. I spent several of those miles trying not to throw up my prize. My body seems to have become very militant, and chastises the processed foods I used to gobble. 

"No! Zis is not nourishment! You cad, you irresponsible nitwit, feeding your tummy zis cookie!" 

Now, I'm not saying that I've gone to the dark side of calorie counting. My stomach has no problem with the chocolate croissants I prefer to start my morning with. It just seems to need REAL food. Go figure? I don't eat that much processed food at home anymore either, but I think American food in general is much more complex and dressed up than what I've been eating. Which is mostly bread, cheese, sardines, apples and potatoes. I'm sure not all Spanish people eat this way, but it seems fairly typical of the walking folk I'm alongside here. 

So, no more Alaska Oreos, no matter how well intentioned. It's amazing, actually, how much street cred my far away home gets me. Eyebrow raises, little bursts of surprised laughter, excited ooohs and aahhhs. People drop their little walls down, because I've surprised them just enough. Silently, I know that having been born and raised in Alaska has nothing to do with anything I did, but why focus on that. 

"How many people live in Alaska?"

" —insert made-up number here —"

"Wow! So few!" 

I should probably look up Alaska's population. So far I have said various numbers that differ by several millions. 

The one drawback to pulling out my effortless party trick is that, inevitably, someone brings up the old SP. 

"So, what happened there?" 

I want to say, uh, I don't know. I was busy being youthfully irresponsible when she got elected and forgot to control the fate of the governorship. And besides, have we not forgotten about Sarah Palin yet? Can we not let her ladyship fade away into the great peaceful obscurity that most of us relish? 

The worst times are when I can't get a read on the political leanings of the question asker, and also when I can. The liberals are entirely too confrontational sometimes. Even though I agree with them, I am a little weary of people expecting the general Alaska population to answer every mystery of the Palin debacle. Yes, we are the ones who elected her. But, no, I cannot explain, "What happened there." But, an attempt from a fairly uninterested young woman might go: A right-leaning state elected a charismatic religious lady to drive for a while, never suspecting that the mother ship would come along and recruit her to be first mate — and then find out that she probably should have failed her driver's test. 

Then there's the conservatives. I made the mistake of assuming that the nice Catholic people I was eating with shared my same political leanings. I have no idea what on earth led me to that assumption. But when I called SP's leap to the presidential ticket a horrifying experience for Alaska and an embarassing reflection of our state's actual leadership potential, eyebrows went up. They were very polite, but, we weren't on the same page. 

I guess there's some obvious observations here — when only a small percentage of the population turns out to vote, and an even SMALLER percentage has substantial awareness of the people and issues they're voting on, some bull shit sneaks through. It happens all over the country, it's just not every day that a presidential candidate decides to roll the dice on a gimmick. 

And that I think is what frustrates me the most about it all. Not that Sarah Palin was ill equipped for the National Stage, but that her presence there and the Alaska schtick that came with it was such a gimmick. And it didn't work. Thank God. 

ALL THIS BEING SAID, I am not a political guru. I write community news stories sometimes but I make no claims at understanding all the nuances of American or Alaskan political history. I cannot answer all the questions about these topics, or even guarantee that the opinions I do have are the right ones. I just want to go one day in the Spanish countryside without being asked about Sarah Palin, and without forcing a laugh when people ask me if I really CAN see Russia from my house. 

And much like my dietary choices, I might need to join my fellow Americans in being more discerning in regards to our political leaders, no matter the right or left leaning. And maybe that starts with encouraging the people around us, whose ideas and communications methods we respect, to start running for office. Looking at national or state-wide elections sometimes feels daunting for me, and I feel a little, or a lot, powerless. But leadership does not exist only on the National stage. Robust and innovative methods of problem solving can be fostered within our communities in a way that seeps into our national dialogue. And if you think that's too optimistic of me, then maybe you should lie back and wait for the end of days. I'm going to try to get one my talkative liberal friends to run for city council, or state representative, or President of the Good Intentions Club, and see what happens.