Hello Junkies!
Had another milestone this week with the arrival of our first guest on the podcast! Our best bud, Johnny O, stopped by all the way from the frozen wilds of Alaska! We had a good time talking about stories of European trips, of Alaskan fact that YOU want to know, and ended our conversation with topics ranging from homelessness to drivers training.
Johnny O is a published author, he currently has 2 selections available with the promise of a book of poetry on the horizon! If you have Amazon Prime and a Kindle, you can read “Loki’s Laughter” absolutely free!
Johnny did say that getting a check for being the resident of Alaska is true, the program is call the Permanent Fund of Alaska and is open to those that have resided in Alaska for at least 12 months and will remain a resident for a period of time. As Johnny said, the government is trying to get a movement together to pay off Alaskans in one lump sum – something that he is opposed to because the checks tend to fluctuate each year, meaning that they would actually lose money in the long-term if they took a lump sum payment.
The cost of living in Alaska is a bit higher than here in the lower 48, the biggest shock is the cost of cigarettes ($10 a pack!) and a single Taco Bell taco costing as much as a lunch combo! Yes, it is “The Land of the Midnight Sun” where the sun shines for almost 24hrs a day for a period of time during the summer months. A wild frontier to be sure! There’s even a shortage of 22 caliber bullets right now in Alaska, people are waiting in line to purchase whatever they can at the moment…
We spoke about homelessness, sparked by a post from a mutual friend on Facebook & Matty brought up the book by Adam Shepard about his experiment to see if the “American Dream” (job, car, apartment, & $2,000 in savings) was still possible today starting from scratch. Dan purported that the experiment was flawed since Mr. Shepard had a “fallback” if the experiment failed.
Madison, WI is trying something different to help their homeless population – building $5,000 “tiny houses” for them to live in. It’s an experiment that seems to be working in helping them get off the street.
Salt Lake City, UT is also tackling the homeless population problem by providing apartments rent-free to those that are homeless in the hopes that if they have a place to live they will be better able to find a job or seek help. The project so far has seen a reduction of 69% of those that have been deemed to be “chronically homeless”.
We also talked about drivers training and shared only the tip of the iceberg as far as that topic goes, maybe there will be more in the future…
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Until next week, Junkies!
Junkiosity 