Isn’t it great to live in Alaska?

Saturday we celebrate Alaska Day, the anniversary of the handover of the territory from Russia to the United States, which happened on Friday, Oct. 18, 1867, with the replacement of the Russian flag with the U.S. flag flying above Fort Sitka.

The day is kind of a blip on the yearly radar; a quirky note on Alaskan’s calendars and, for state employees, a paid holiday.

But we think it’s a good opportunity to reflect on what it is that makes this the Great Land. Week to week, we think our pages reflect a lot of what makes Alaska a great place to live:

• We love that we live in a state that includes both the cross country skiing clubs we wrote about Tuesday but also the big city conveniences like the downtown Palmer shopping, where we have chronicled the game of grocery store musical chairs currently underway as retailers move around the Glenn Highway/Palmer-Wasilla Highway intersection. Alaska has both the solitude of the wilderness and the bustle of the city and, in Mat-Su, they’re less than a 20-minute drive from one another.

• We love that we live in a state with communities like Houston, where city council elections regularly hinge, to steal a phrase from one of our reporters, “on fewer voters than it would take to fill a school bus.” The directness of that democracy — the candidate could have, and probably did, know each of those voters — is a truly wonderful thing. Worldwide, millions of people live without democracy but we in Alaska regularly go to the ballot box — and even if only a slim minority of us choose to exercise that right — without fear of repercussions and with the certainty of a peaceful transition of power.

• We love that we live in a state that can produce both religion columns like the ones we receive from Howard Bess — bookish, theologically liberal — and like the ones we receive from Lavon Barve — earthy and deeply conservative. It is to be celebrated that while our Valley contains such a broad spectrum of beliefs we go out of our way to help each other no matter who is in needs.

• We love that we live in a state where our borough mayor — a farmer who often shows up to events in dirty Carhartts — is not an anomaly. We know that a lot of communities have grown to the point where their elected officials are professional politicians. That’s not the case here and we’re glad for it.

• We love that we live in a state where we can randomly run into the superintendent of our school district participating in a blanket toss, at a school play or even with her family in the grocery store.

• We love that we live in a state that celebrates its Native heritage daily in classrooms around the school district and as a community through things like the Gathering Place at the Alaska State Fair and the Native Youth Olympics.

• We love that we live in a state that contains people like Wayne Bouwens, whose personal history mirrors that of the Valley in which he grew up and whose obituary is included in today’s paper. Bouwens was a chronicler of the Valley’s history who will be sorely missed.

• We love that we live in a state where the operations of the police departments are transparent enough that we can document them through court filings like the ones used to prepare stories that appear in today’s paper.

• We love that we live in a state where we can count on our police and fire officials to keep us safe, as evidenced by those same stories referenced above and another about longtime firefighter Mahlon Greene.

• We love that we live in a state where we regularly get photos from people of moose in their yard, or of the so-called blood moon, or of the aurora borealis, or of the local Boy Scouts selling popcorn.

Mostly, we love living in a community where these parts of small-town life still make the newspaper.