Liza Sanden put the first weeks of the government shutdown to good use with end-of-summer chores at her East Anchorage home. She pickled beets. She made jam.

“These last two weeks, though, have definitely been – the anxiety has been tripping up,” she said. “When are we going to go back to work? When am I going to get a paycheck again?”

As the government funding lapse became the longest in U.S. history, Sanden is one of thousands of federal workers in Alaska who are on furlough and not getting paid. Thousands of other Alaskan civil servants are working without pay.

Alaska, more than most states, is highly dependent on the federal government, for the services the employees provide and the money that fuels the economy. The state is home to some 15,000 federal workers and the shutdown a

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