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05/29/2004: "Juneau rates high in a national quality of life study!"

I just read this morning that Juneau is ranked No. 11 out of all 3,141 counties and independent cities in the United States as having a high quality of life according to a recent study by the American City Business Journals.

"The ratings formula compared each county's performance against the U.S. county-by-county averages in 20 categories, yielding an overall quality-of-life score. Counties with upper-income families, large homes and well-educated adults received high marks. But several qualities unrelated to affluence were also rewarded, including racial diversity, family stability and short commuting times. Overall scores ranged from a high of 18.99 points to a low of minus-16.04 points."

The title of the article in BizJournals relating the results of survey is titled Go west for top quality of life

"ACBJ not only produced national quality-of-life rankings, but also broke down the results by population groups and individual states.

Fairfax County, Va., has the highest rating among counties with 500,000 residents or more. Other leaders are Olmsted County, Minn., in the 100,000-to-500,000 group, Juneau, Alaska, in the 25,000-to-100,000 classification, and Los Alamos among counties with populations of 25,000 or less."

So, Juneau ranked #1 in it's size range of 25,000-100,000 (our population is actually 30,000 for the city and borough), and overall: "Juneau received a national percentile score of 99.68 percent. That is the percentage of cities and counties that it surpassed in the rankings."

It's kind of cool actually. I've really fallen in love with Juneau (My house is in Douglas, but Douglas is part of the City and Borough of Juneau). I've always thought that Juneau was the best kept little secret in the country and it made me feel good to see that facts back that up.

If anyone is interested in seeing some amazing photos of Juneau, my favorite photography site is Juneau Photos. It has a searchable database, to see some of the town itself you can choose "Juneau City" from the Keywords section. Other nice sections are "mountains" "hiking" "harbors" "glacier" or you can do a keyword search for "northern lights" if you want to see how beautiful they can get here; the red ones are the rarest and my favorite by far. I've only ever seen the really red ones from Juneau...but that could be from the solar activity that has been going on since I've been here.

If you'd like to see how your county/independant city ranked on 20 different catagories, download the complete study results here in excel. If any of you ever decide to visit Juneau be sure to give me a call. My number's in the book, as well as listed here on my web page. If you ever take a cruise of the Inside Passage, you'll stop in Juneau. Let me know and I'll take you out on the town, or out for a sail on the Rozinante.

Anyway, I'm getting back to painting today as soon as I clean my unbelievably messy home. I'm going to finish up the painting called "Grounded" of a woman on a boat that's in a field. I have to finish her face (one of the few paintings where the woman has her eyes open) and one of her hands, which at the moment just looks like a blobby claw.

Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on the sandy beach painting. I'm going to have to wait for it to dry before I can repaint the figure, but I think I'm leaning toward the middle version myself. It's not that I don't like the green, I do like the way the colors play off each other, but I have to decide if I want the depth, as Karen stated, which makes the figure more focal, or if I'm going strictly for color. I think the depth aspect of the painting, and the focus on the figure is more what I'm shooting for. But it's funny; I hadn't even really considered the distinction before. Hearing from you all helps me out so much. Be sure to let me know if I can ever return the favor!