The New York Times seems to have really developed an understanding of Wasilla, Alaska, and Sarah Palin.

I read some truly bizarre things about my state and the people here and had started to assume that we would always appear as frosty examples of the hillbillies portrayed in the movie "Deliverance".

But to my surprise the New York Times seems to have gained some real insight into my great state and just what changed it into the Republican criminal enterprise that it is today.

Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur trader’s outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century.

In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the “complacent” old guard.

I have theorized for years that the reason our state is such a hotbed of Republican conservatism is due more to the influence of the oil workers and dividend chasers then the people who live here because of the peace and beauty that surrounds us.

When I was a teenager this place was so much different then it is today.

Nobody sat stuck on the side of the road for more then a few minutes. People were a happy mix of rugged survivalists, peace loving hippies, military families, entrepreneurs, adventurers, outdoorsmen, Alaskan natives, etc. Finding more then four people who shared the same point of view was almost impossible. But that was okay because there was also more respect.

I mean sure we might step outside in the snow to resolve a dispute by punching each other in the face until somebody couldn't stay on their feet, but that did not mean we would not be back inside the bar in a few minutes sharing a drink and telling telling bawdy stories.

But then came the oil. And nothing was ever the same.

Alaska was not then, what it is now. And though Anchorage is growing out of its rough and tumble oil boom years it seems there are other pockets in Alaska where the small town religious morality of the south still holds sway. Wasilla is just such a place. And it has created a monster in Sarah Palin. A monster that may have always dreamed of things that would repel most REAL Alaskans.

Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”

Well sometimes sister Sarah we just don't get what we want in life. And I certainly hope that this is one of those times. For all of our sakes.