It’s time for Page Two: News that might not make the front page for Wednesday January 7, 2026.
Barbara Hunt retired from her job at the Jobs Corps about ten years ago. She then started the Palmer Alaska Buzz Facebook group. Social media was a more innocent place back then. It was a place for connection according to Hunt. (An earlier version incorrectly stated she retired from The Frontiersman)
People used social media to connect with family and friends, for dating, or for business. But Hunt had the idea to use social media to create an online community for Palmerites.
It was a natural outgrowth of her previous work. Her position at Job Corps involved pulling industry people together. Her job at the State Legislature involved polling constituents over issues. She calls it community stuff.
She thinks of the Palmer Alaska Buzz as a community living room. It has one basic rule: “Be kind.”
She doesn’t allow posts about religion or politics. She said, “that makes people upset, divisive. The whole idea is for people to find community.”
And she doesn’t allow cussing for the same reason.
We’ll come back to that cussing thing.
You must demonstrate some connection to Palmer to join. Maybe, she says, it’s just that “your granddaughter lived here five years ago.”
Even with, or perhaps because of, those rules Palmer Alaska Buzz is popular. The group has over 54,000 members.
And over 5,000 others are waiting to come in. That means about 60,000 people with some connection to Palmer are willing to follow the rules.
Hunt and a few of her friends monitor the site with a firm and fair hand. They vet every member. They vet every post. The site averages 50 posts a day. That’s a huge task. And Hunt says she has no idea when she’ll get through that 5,000 person waiting list.
The work is rewarded when the best of humanity shows up in the group. Like the time a mother posted a request for her special needs son. He wanted a motorcycle ride for his birthday more than anything else.
The response was enormous. The young man got more than a motorcycle ride. He got a motorcycle parade. And a jacket and a helmet.
That is what happens with the Buzz according to Hunt. It brings out the best in people.
“Yeah,” she says. “We’ll keep this puppy going.”
A “community living room” of potentially 60,000 people continues to thrive, because of one woman and her friends.
But “simple” doesn’t mean robotic or formulaic. Last month Palmer got pounded by one violent windstorm after another. Hunt did something no one expected.
She put a one-day pause on the no-cursing rule last week.
“People were just exhausted,” she said. “They were fatigued by the whole process.”
Hunt’s alerts go off when curse words are used in the group. For those 24 hours, the alarms kept going off. People blew off steam for one day. Think of it as a foul word amnesty. The next day, she brought the no-cussing rule back.
Maybe it isn’t just the rules that attracted 60,000 people to the Palmer Alaska Buzz. They are part of it. But maybe the site’s success has something to do with the person who wrote the rules.
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This Page Two article was written by David Cheezem and read by Lee Henrikson. If you have an idea for a Page 2 topic, please email us at page2@radiofreepalmer.org.
That’s it for today and the news on Page Two on Wednesday January 7, 2026.