For the past couple of weeks I have been asking Ben to pick an article from the newspaper or a magazine and write a one paragraph summary. Yesterday I asked him to pick an article from the latest Newsweek for us to look at today. He chose an opinion piece written by the mayor of Ketchikan, Alaska - the once building site of the 'Bridge To Nowhere'. I read his summary without reading the article and laughed at a part where he referred to an 'ear loan'.
What do you know about the proposed bridge? I immediately remembered the multi-hundred million dollar bridge to a island of 50 people. That is correct, but not the reason for the bridge. It seems that 30 years ago they were building an airport for this isolated town and they built it on the other side of the waterway, with the promise that it would be linked sometime. Currently the only access is via ferry. (The town is located at the base of mountains and so there was no nearby flat land to build an airport on the towns side of the water.)
The airport services 250,000 people a year. The surrounding flat land serves as the only developable land in the area. The town would like some room to grow to meet the needs of the many Cruise Ships that stop there during the summer.
It could easily be argued that $395 million dollars (a figure that was interestingly left out of the opinion piece) is still too much to pay to meet this need. Still, framing the issue as a bridge to a island of 50 people is a bit disingenuous as well.
In talking about the article we looked at the location via google maps. (It looks like a stunningly beautiful place.) We also defined and looked for the source for the term Earmark (rooted in the practice of identifying livestock ownership with cuts on the ear).
I was reminded that 'the truth' is rarely as clear or simple as it is often framed.
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