An Act of Contrition
In a way this posting is a form of “mea culpa.” It is an act of contrition for a time of my life that when I look back, I feel sorry and ignorant. I was a product of the society around me and in that I became what it wanted me to become. As a man who tries his best to think logically and independently I am ashamed that I surrendered myself in the manner I did. I was the product of Alaska in the late 1960s and 1970s. It was almost a frontier but not quite. Alaskan’s proudly called it the “Last Frontier.” Roads were still often dirty and dusty. Nothing was manicured and most was created out of necessity as opposed to methodically planned. Those that lived in the state were divided between a small subset of long term hardy Alaskans that arrived during World War II or an even smaller set that came before. They were truly the hardy mountain man types. The ones that had lines of seasons written in their faces like the rings of a tree. My family was of a new class. It was a group