It’s official. The Gay Uncle is going to Alaska. And it’s not just to check off the box on the only state he hasn’t visited, to eat wild salmon that hasn’t spent the last eighteen hours on a cargo plane, or to see some icy tundra before it all melts. He’s actually been invited to go North to the Future (state motto) to continue his speaking tour of preschools around the country. As it turns out, a friend of his from high school runs the Jewish Community Center early childhood center in Anchorage (www.FrozenChosen.org) and has asked him to come up and deliver a lively presentation to the parents of her students, and do a workshop with her teachers. This won’t happen until May, which gives Gunc plenty of time to find a super-fancy rustic lodge in which to spend the rest of the week he’ll be up there. He’s hoping that, with global warming, it will be “spring” by the time he arrives, and the roads to the super-fancy rustic lodges will be open. But before he heads out to the world of arctic lava hot-rocks and baby-seal-fat-body-wraps, he’s made a second urban plan. Based on a recommendation from one of his former preschool students–and the sincere needs dictated by the high-profile pregnancies in the area–he sent a signed copy of his stellar book The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting to the Wasilla Public Library, along with an offer to be a guest lecturer at their preschool story time. And in an act of kismet, on the day he received confirmation of his Alaskan JCC gig, a letter from the Library also arrived. “Thank you for your donation of the book entitled The Gay Uncle’s Guide to parenting. I’m also going to pass on your information to our Youth Services librarian with the offer of doing a guest story time reading.” The G.U. will keep you posted on how things go, but he is certainly looking forward to the trip, to the opportunity to help Bristol Palin with her new baby, and to have the chance to answer the question offered up by Raymond Carver in one of his famous short stories. “What’s in Alaska?”