Dear Goldberg File Reader (or, Reader of the File that is named after Goldberg), Is that how it is done? Badly, anyway? Well, so be it. Let's keep this short and sour. I write to inform you that Jonah is not here this week -- he's heading to Alaska on the NR Cruise, where he's fully intending to buy a pair of pants . Or whale jerky. Or both. Anyway, recollecting those glorious days of Dean Martin Presents The Golddiggers, we present this short-term summer replacement series, The G-File, Jonah Vacation Edition. Which means a blast from the past. And which can only mean . . . Jonah goes to ANWR. Thrill to the classic. See you next week. Jack Fowler Publisher National Review *** Ugh, Wilderness! From the August 6, 2001, issue of NR Deadhorse, Alaska -- As I stand here looking at what must be the largest selection of porn magazines above the Arctic Circle (and an impressive display by any standards), I can't help thinking of a line from the 1973 film classic Papillon: "Abandon all hope and masturbate as little as possible." In a sense, that should be the motto of Deadhorse. This "town" has one store and no restaurants. Worse, with the exception of some inaccessible Indian and Eskimo villages, the nearest alcohol is on the other side of a vast mountain range hundreds of miles to the south. Indeed, this fact alone may explain why the general store has every conceivable publication for the man who enjoys drinking a beer and wooing a lady, but can't -- because he's in Deadhorse. Residents of some humble towns boast of their McDonald's or Krispy Kreme franchises, or perhaps the fact that Elvis once passed through. Deadhorse chauvinists are quick to brag that this sprawling, gravel-lined lot of airplane hangars, cargo dumps, and corrugated trailers has a ZIP code; once this postal luxury has been mentioned, the frills drop off dramatically. The next-most-impressive thing is the bumper sticker on the pickup truck that splashed mud on my shoes. It reads, "Where the Hell is Deadhorse, Alaska?" I have come here because if you want to write about oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, you have to come here. Deadhorse is the central spur for oil activity on the North Slope of Alaska, specifically the area known as Prudhoe Bay. I arrived in Deadhorse together with a hundred or so regular commuters from Anchorage, all of them employed one way or another in the search for what was once called -- at least in the opening of The Beverly Hillbillies -- black gold, or Texas Tea. They work in the North Slope, an 89,000-square-mile tract of land roughly the size of Minnesota. If Alaska were Don King, the North Slope would be his afro. More specifically they work in the much smaller area around the coastal plain near Prudhoe Bay, the starting point of the trans-Alaska pipeline and the home of the richest oilfields in North America. And within that space, they work on a comparatively tiny archipelago of parking-lot-sized islands of human activity in a boundless ocean of tundra . . . Read the full piece here. | 
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