Shmoozing with the Fairbanks liberals

We live in a very red town in this reddest of red states. The local Democratic enclave is Ester, a wee gold-rush town about 5 miles south of Fairbanks proper. It's on the side of town that has the university, and is full of artists, liberals and hippie rednecks instead of the other kind. Last night a couple of friends of mine from college, Deirdre and Hans, had a "porchwarming" potluck (they'd been building an enclosed, mosquito-proof porch on their house) so I went and hung out at that for a few hours. I'd never actually been to Ester and was expecting to know almost nobody besides the two of them and my art-dept. friend Jamie who was the one who tipped me off about the party, but instead there were a ton of people that I used to know when I was in college -- a journalism prof and feminist I took a couple classes from, old art-club buddies of mine and so forth. It was a wonderful trip down memory lane, and a nice change of pace to spend a few hours bitching about Bush and the current Save Eielson hysteria with people who understand. I also chatted up Deirdre about doing some editorial cartoons for her paper. She edits and publishes the Ester Republic, a progressive-leaning paper that tries to provide counterpoint to the heavily right-leaning News-Miner, the dominant paper in town.

One of the nice things about Fairbanks is that you're not going to get run out of town for having different views. Fairbanks, as a town, may be strongly patriotic and leans heavily on the economic juggernaut of the local military bases, but the local artist/hippie community is disproportionately outspoken. It seems to be generally understood that everyone has a right to speak their mind, even if it disagrees with the majority position.

Signs I've been living in Alaska too long...

I scored an 84 on this Libertarian Purity Test, which puts me in this realm:

"You are a medium-core libertarian, probably self-consciously so. Your friends probably encourage you to quit talking about your views so much."

I'm right below "hard-core". Now I'm scaring myself.

EDIT:

AAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHHH!!! Howl's Moving Castle is playing in Anchorage! I thought it would never in a million years play on the big screen in Alaska. Anchorage gets all the cool and artsy films and I'm stuck in *sob* Squarebanks. Now I'm thinking about making a 7-hour drive next weekend just to see a movie (assuming it's still playing by then). That is SO damn sad.