Kenneth R. Rosen

You can get to Norway in six.

You can reach the UK in seven.

And we're talking about major military equipment, so not just coming from New York and

flying across the Atlantic.

So it's a great place to position troops, but the US just hasn't utilized it that way since the Cold War.

Not just an awful lot.

The lot.

Their entire nuclear force.

Um, it's a good question.

You know, uh, I was a young near college graduate, um, trying to break into journalism writing and, um, saw an ad online for a job posting in Juneau, Alaska for a beat reporter out there.

And I said, well, you know, sounds good.

Uh,

i like the wilderness it sounds crazy as well and i'm all for that they were going to pay for my flight and get me out there and i said sure thing and as uh as i got the plane from seattle to juneau it came in sideways so my window seat was looking out at the runway and i thought oh man this is horrifying i made a terrible mistake but we landed safely of course and um

I reported there for about six months covering the state house and education in Alaska.

I fell in love with it in the way many young men and young people would fall in love with the wilderness, this vastness, this real humbling connection to nature and realizing that you are, at the end of the day, nothing compared to the rest of the world and how many people are living and persisting here.

and how much history there is.

So it always stayed in the back of my mind.

I eventually left to go back to the east coast of the US, but it always stuck in my mind and I always had an affinity for the cold and for this dreary community that has to really bind together over the winter months and through a lot because I would order the New York Times, for instance.

I'd get the Sunday New York Times in Alaska

It would come two weeks late.