Time weighs heavy in the Land of the Midnight Sun

Penney's, for your thoughts

Back in 1996, when only one of them was famous, the Anchorage Daily News published a story about an encounter in a department store:

Sarah Palin, a commercial fisherman from Wasilla, told her husband on Tuesday she was driving to Anchorage to shop at Costco. Instead, she headed straight for Ivana. 

And there, at J.C. Penney's cosmetic department, was Ivana, the former Mrs. Donald Trump, sitting at a table next to a photograph of herself. She wore a light-colored pantsuit and pink fingernail polish. 

Her blonde hair was coiffed in a bouffant French twist. 

''We want to see Ivana,'' said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, ''because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.'' 

Ivana Trump, the former Czechoslovakian Olympic skier who found fame and wealth as the wife of the New York tycoon, came to Anchorage Tuesday to push her line of perfume. 

More than 500 people waited as long as half an hour in J.C. Penney to chat with her and receive an autographed photo.

Twenty years on, another Republican pol- from Mrs Palin's hometown- 
says things haven't changed. Women still crave glamour and culture:

State Rep. David Eastman said some Alaskans are glad to become pregnant, so that they can have a Medicaid-funded trip to Anchorage or Seattle to have an abortion. Eastman didn’t provide evidence for this, but said he had been told this by friends and acquaintances.

Eastman said Medicaid funding for travel for health care provides an incentive to become pregnant and have an abortion. 

“We’ve created an incentive structure where people are now incented to carry their pregnancy longer than they would otherwise and then take part in that when they wouldn’t otherwise be doing it,” Eastman said. 

When asked for evidence, Eastman said he “certainly knows of specific instances,” and declined to provide details. 

“I can think of a case that was brought to our attention earlier this session where you had a family who was very glad to hear that their abortion had gone beyond a certain point, because they were going to be heading to Seattle,” Eastman said. 

The first-term Republican from Wasilla made similar comments to the Associated Press. He said many of his constituents want to eliminate Medicaid funding for abortion. 

“You have individuals who are in villages and are glad to be pregnant, so that they can have an abortion because there’s a free trip to Anchorage involved,” Eastman said.