Henkimaa

A better site than that other one

2009-06-08T08:52:00.002-08:00

SOSAnchorage: if it ends in dot net, that'll get you to the site that fact checks the homophobic fundraising site of similar title sponsored by the Anchorage Baptist Temple.

WAR’s antigay letter to the Alaska Bar Association, 1993

2009-04-16T00:02:00.002-08:00

An Acrobat PDF copy of page 7 from the May-June 1993 issue of the Alaska Bar Rag in which Wayne Anthony Ross' by-now famous antigay "degenerates" letter appears is now posted, along with some background info, at Henkimaa.com.

Which is where I'm moving my blog (I'm just updating here for now until Google's spiders or whatever they are catch on to the content there so it shows up in searches). Please make any comments there, as I've got commenting turned off here.

Jay Ramras: “We won’t necessarily be coloring within the lines”

2009-04-15T18:06:00.004-08:00

Representative Jay Ramras, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, doesn't seem to mind joining Alaska attorney general-nominee Wayne Anthony Ross — not to mention Gov. Sarah Palin herself — in coloring outside the lines of Alaska state law.

Read the full post at Henkimaa.com (where my blog is moving).

(Comment there too, if you like, since I'm disabling comments here.)

Pro-WAR = anti-LAW

2009-04-15T12:58:00.005-08:00

New post over lunch about Wayne Anthony Ross & his disrespect for the rule of law at my new website/blog. See it there.

Anti-WAR lettter: Against Wayne Anthony Ross

2009-04-15T07:26:00.002-08:00

A letter sent to all Alaska legislators, posted last night on my new website, which is where I'm in the process of moving all my blogs.

See the letter here.

Note to Jeff Bezos: #glitchmyass

2009-04-13T12:28:00.001-08:00

My tweet of the day:

Note to Jeff Bezos: #glitchmyass, we deserve more explanation & apology than that for #amazonfail. Do you really want to regain our trust?

Things have really snowballed. In fact I'd say it's a snow-boulder now, what with the Twitter hashtag #amazonfail, the online petition which is now at over 17,000 signatures, & a Google search on Amazon Rank now brings up as first result the satirical definition coined yesterday by Smart Bitches Trashy Books. (They've now got the definition in the Urban Dictionary too.) Trolls are taking advantage: one Livejournal blogger claims to have written code that brought the delisting about, only to be exposed by another Liveblogger as a metatroll with bad code. I'm only surprised that there's not a Wikipedia article about it, though the Wikipedia entry on Amazon.com now has a section on the delisting (currently subtitled "Deranking of erotic, LGBT, feminist, progressive and sex-positive content").

A huge public relations nightmare for Amazon.com. As well it should be. So far their only public statements are to the effect that #amazonfail was caused by a technical "glitch" which they are working furiously to resolve. But I have a hard time buying that as anything other than, as others have noted, a "templated" cover story as they try to resolve the issue internally. There's too much data provided by bloggers researching the delisting for it to have been merely a glitch: how else explain why a search on "homosexuality" bring books about "preventing" or "curing" homosexuality to the very top of the search results, to the almost complete exclusion of the numerous other non-homophobic books on the subject?

Reports from the disabled community that Amazon also delisted books on disability & sexuality which news needs to be shared more widely.

I do think it possible that some enterprising homophobic souls within the Amazon hierarchy took it upon themselves to interpret a policy about "adult books" rather more widely than top management had intended. But that remains to be seen. For my part, I am looking for something more than weak babble about a software glitch. I want a public explanation & apology from someone at the very top levels of the Amazon hierarchy — preferably Jeff Bezos himself — on top, of course, of correcting the problem itself. They've lost a lot of trust, & they're gonna have to work pretty hard to regain it. I've seen plenty or reports from people saying they'll never buy from Amazon again, even if they do fix the "glitch."

This, for me, comes on top of having learned a month or two ago (after I'd already purchased my Kindle) about their monopolistic actions with regard to their print-on-demand service BookSurge. This is currently in antitrust litigation — see the Small Publishers Association of North America page on the lawsuit and the Amazon Booksurge Antitrust Lawsuit Clearinghouse.

I know there are alternatives to Amazon, but I'm also a hoping-to-be-published writer, so this has relevance to me also as someone who recognizes Amazon as one of the most important places to have one's books listed in order to be able to make a living at it.

There are signs that Amazon is making progress in relisting the delisted books, but it's slow — & still no public explanation or apology besides the inadequate & mealymouthed "glitch" explanation offered so far.

Amazon Rank - Google bomb 'em!

2009-04-12T13:07:00.001-08:00

Yep, it's true. Amazon.com has decided that all any any books about or by LGBTA folk are "adult content" -- the equivalent of pornography. Hence, they've removed the sales rankings for those books. Hence those books are tougher to find when searching for books on Amazon.

This is regardless of the books' sexual or any other content.

So I'm joining in the Google bombing on Amazon Rank. Read about what a Google bombing means in this post about this stupidity at the Smart Bitches/Trashy Books blog. Include the hashtag #amazonfail in your Twitters. Read how it's affecting LGBTQ authors at Kelley Eskridge's & Nicola Griffith's blog and the other pages they link too. And let those idiots at Amazon know how you feel.

Lauren Green sings

2009-04-09T12:36:00.002-08:00

Last Saturday (April 4) I attended a concert at UAA of the winners and honorable mentions in two competitions held recently by National Association of Teachers of Singing Alaska (NATS): Classical Voice (held April 3–4) and Musical Theater (held February 28).

My niece, Lauren, competed in the "upper avocation" division of both competitions. And guess what? She took first place in both.

This is her singing during the concert.

She is one kick-ass soprano. I told her afterwards that she looked so relaxed as she performed that she made it look easy, & she laughed and said, "I'm glad the audience thought it was relaxing!" — but of course I know the hard work it takes to appear that way, no matter how much native talent one might have. (And she has it.) I can't wait for more people to discover her.

I heard a lot of other fine singers that night too. I finally located an announcement with the full winners list posted on the Anchorage Daily News website: "Singing winners announced" posted April 6, 2009. Congratulations, all of you.

Ballad of the Splash

2009-04-06T12:12:00.005-08:00

In honor of National Poetry Month, & also in honor of breakup (which is Alaskan for the time of year we're now in, when the ice & snow melts & everyone's car is splashed with mud) — here's a poem I wrote back in 1997, based on a little tragedy I experienced when I was a child growing up in Columbia Falls, Montana.

Ballad of the Splash
by Melissa S. Green

'Twas one day after school let out
the child was walking home,
on her feet red rubber overboots
to keep her dry and warm.

The mountains’ southern slopes were bare,
the northern slopes were white,
the street one-third of pavement grey,
one-third not melted quite,

and one-third, lo! a thousand lakes!
and puddles, rivulets, streams,
to watch, or dam, or stomp and splash
though it might damp her shins.

Into a flow she moved pebbles
and rearranged small sticks
so to watch with all a child’s delight
some fluid dynamics.

And then she held her foot just so
above the reservoir
and stamped it down to swamp the dam
and cause a muddy shower.

Thusly moved she down the street,
through this puddle and that,
till she came upon the greatest lake
outside the laundromat.

And as she set foot in the pool
her overboots so red
did slip; she went horizontal
as though she’d gone to bed.

Overbrimmed her overboots,
overbrimmed her coat —
she felt no longer dry but wet
as an overhumidified boat.

She hopped up tearful and soggy and cold
and ran home in a thrice
and was careful evermore not to wade
in puddles bottomed with ice.

Out of the cave

2009-04-02T08:05:00.008-08:00

I've been going through a rough patch lately. A patch . . . oh, about 8 months long. A cave, to be sure, well-supplied with bookshelves, TV, laptop, Kindle, iPod Touch, & plenty of escapist entertainment; but a cave nonetheless, where I lived with my cat & the boy's dog & not much else but a deepseated hurt & a need to think/feel/work my way out of it. Unlike other rough patches in my life, this one rendered me unable to communicate much, or to desire to. I mostly just wanted to be alone. Stopped most of my online communication, only kept up with a very few select friends & relatives, & even that's been fairly sporadic.

(Except for my valued Mondays w/ Marcia & Wednesdays w/ Sylvia.)

There are reasons, of course. Briefly: changes in the relationship with my partner of 16 years, which are inevitably leading to the end of the partnership (though not the love & friendship); & the approaching death of my father (though his matter-of-fact acceptance helps with my own).

I seem to be have come out of the cave now. Not just feeling better — I've felt better a number of times (only to then go back into the grey again) — but actually able & willing to communicate. Maybe it was that I'm finally accepting the inevitable with my partner. Maybe it was finally getting the plane tickets bought to fly down in late April to see my dad. Maybe it was taking enough 5-HTP to keep the serotonin cooking in my brain. Maybe it's the light coming into the days after a looooooong winter. Maybe it's all just been perimenopause. Anyway... seems I'm back in the world again.

(Long parenthetical: My partner hasn't lived here up here for the last two & a half years anyway because she was in school in Seattle, though we were in almost daily contact &, of course, visits. Last summer, after much internal exploration, she made the decision to transition from female to male (or FTM, as it's oft-abbreviated), which presents its own set of challenges for someone like me, a lesbian); & more recently he's gone into a kind of wandering, living mostly off-the-grid mode, currently living out of a backpack & bivvy bag in Nevada. As per my yesterday post — he found himself with bars on the cellphone yesterday & called me up for Google Map help. He intends to get up to Spokane later this month when my brother & I fly down to see my dad, which is important to me.)

It feels good to feel good again, for the first time in months. Not that I was was continually in the grey all that time, but even my better days were inside the cave, not able to see much beyond its walls. Why, I even feel like carrying my camera around with me again.

Round Mountain, NV

2009-04-01T16:41:00.006-08:00

Here's around where Ptery, formerly my partner Rozz, is now. He called me up to get help with directions.

View Larger Map

Remembering Nicholas Hughes (1962–2009)

2009-03-30T12:27:00.061-08:00

Last week after learning of the suicide a week before of Nicholas Hughes, son of the poets Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes, I immediately snagged a copy of Plath's poem "Nick and the Candlestick" & posted it here. Then, a few minutes later, I deleted the post.

I deleted it because I found myself bothered to be thinking about him merely as the infant celebrated in the poem, or as an adjunct to his mother's famous life & death. He had his own life, after all, didn't he? Damn betcha. And something told me that his family, friends, colleagues, & partner saw him as something far more than one the headlines over the past week have painted him as — the putative victim of his mother's "suicide gene." His death was a tragedy, yes: but a tragedy because it was a loss of him & for all who knew him. And for many of those, like me, who didn't.

* * *

Sylvia Plath has been an important figure in my life for many years. As a poet, yeah, & also because when I was younger I had my own little romance with suicidal impulses. I still wrestle too damn often with bouts of the endless bleak grey or, worse, the pit. One of the marks of my growing maturity was, I think, when I finally came to understand that Plath herself was more than her own suicide — that even the three deaths marked out in "Lady Lazarus" — you know the ones —

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

— were none of them the death she died. Nor did she intend suicide when she wrote that poem in October 1962 — four months before her death. As I discovered & wrote in a piece I did in 1995 for a course I took towards my MFA degree at University of Alaska Anchorage, "Plath was not ready to give up and die at this point; on the contrary, she was intent upon continuing her life and her career as a poet." Later in the piece I wrote:

We can only speculate on what her life and work would have been like today had she survived. But less and less do I believe her suicide in February 1963 was the inevitable result of a life-long death wish. No, I think now that she died because she was prevented from consolidating the gains she had made in October. In October she wrote "the best poems of [her] life," the poems that, exactly as she predicted, would "make [her] name," and in which she began to free herself of the dominating influences of her husband, her father, and her own illusions. In October she began to shape new meanings for herself out of her life's central events. But that winter, her spirit sapped by miserable physical and emotional circumstances, the inner regeneration she began in October came to a halt and then reversed itself.
— "Sylvia Plath's Resurrections" (1995)

Plath biographers mostly recognize that. But you sure wouldn't know it from most of the newspapers stories since Nick Hughes' death. Back to the doomed poet, back to the nonsense about the "artistic temperament" making poets more prone to suicide (how many poets haven't killed themselves; how many people who aren't poets or any kind of artist have killed themselves? did you know that Alaska had 419 deaths by suicide in 2003–2005 — one of the highest rates in the country — & most of the victims were not poets or artists?), back to a whole lotta other nonsense that attempts to encapsulate the complexity of life & death into neat little catchphrases & sound bites & fatalism thinly & fakily disguised as "psychology." All that's added here is to stick in an asterisk with a footnote to Nicholas Hughes' name as victim either of Plath herself, or of whatever led her to her own tragic death.

What a load of bollocks. As crap-infested as the blame that dogged Ted Hughes for most of his post-Plath life. (Pardon me, but many people survive turbulent relationships without killing themselves. I do not blame him. And as a father — he was remarkable.)

So what caused her to take her own life? What caused her son to? In the final analysis: nobody knows. But as someone myself prone to suicidal ideation in my bleakest moments, I think Nick Hughes' friend Joe Saxton has it exactly right:

Taking your own life isn’t rational except in the tiny narrow logic of one person’s brain.... His life had a thousand things to look forward to, yet the chemicals in his brain and his fear of another relapse just let him fall through the crack in one short moment. In a day, or a week, or a month, he might have felt entirely different.

Just so.

* * *

It must've been around the time that I took my MFA in Creative Writing at UAA (December 1997) that I learned Nicholas Hughes had become a fisheries biologist at UAA's sister institution University of Alaska Fairbanks. I thought that was pretty cool: he was making a name & life on his own terms. As people do.

Shortly thereafter, his father came out with The Birthday Letters — the first time Ted Hughes revealed very much at all about his own life & feelings about Plath in the aftermath of her suicide. The next time I thought about the Plath/Hughes family was October 1998, as I walked down a street in Vancouver, BC with a friend & saw Ted Hughes' death shouted out in bold headlines in the Canadian newspapers. I thought to myself, That's why he came out with The Birthday Letters when he did — he knew he was dying.

It was my intent ever after to learn more about Ted Hughes' life & poetry, feeling as I did that he'd been unfairly demonized by many of Plath's admirers. (I can't say how disgusted I am by Robin Morgan's poem about him, or some of the other yucky behavior coming from the Plath-worship quarter. I admire Plath too, but please!) I never quite got around to learning about him then thanks to my own life events.

I didn't stop to think how Ted Hughes' death might affect his children. Joe Saxton say it was his father's death that led to Nick Hughes' battles with depression:

Until the death of his beloved father in 1998, Nick was a man in whom a zest for life and a thirst for learning welled over. Whether it was investigating Nile perch in Kenya for his undergraduate dissertation, working out how to make the perfect glaze for his pottery, discovering the ecology of grayling or trout, or “calibrating” (his term, not mine) how to only just lose at football in the garden against his godchild, my youngest son, his lust for learning was undimmed.

Nick’s father was his soulmate. He and Ted had a relationship of shared passion, shared pleasures and a deep love of fish. At the end of O-levels they went off to fish in Alaska together. Nick and I retraced some of their steps two years later. Alaska is beautiful in its own right but all Nick wanted to do, it was clear, was to relive their trip in the most excruciating detail. “Hey Sag,” he’d say, genuinely expecting me to light up with interest. “This is the branch where dad’s line snagged when he had a big salmon.”

. . . Ted’s death meant that the most important relationship in his life was gone. Worse still were the repercussions: disagreements of the sort that many grieving families have when the family linchpin dies. Nick was in his late thirties then and his mental health began to suffer.

* * *

And so, last week, news of Nicholas Hughes' death. Which brings me back around to "Nick and the Candlestick" & wanting to honor his life & memory as he himself lived it in the company & witness of his family, friends, colleagues, students, & loves.

Plath's poem is part of that — written October 29, 1962, on the same day she completed composition of "Lady Lazarus." Now I can quote some of it: Nick Hughes, aged 10 months, as seen by his mother in love, a light of possibility even in her own darkness:

O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses,
With soft rugs -

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

As I've learned more of him over the past week, how much more he was a light in fact to his father, sister, stepmother, friends, loves, colleagues, & students. Just read Ted Hughes' letters about visiting (& going fishing with) his son in Kenya, where Nick Hughes was studying Nile perch for his undergrad dissertation, or Alaska, where the younger Hughes took his Ph.D. as well as becoming an important researcher on salmon, grayling, & trout. Or the memories of him at the UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. Or Dermot Coles' article about him in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner:

He made lasting friendships in Fairbanks with those who shared his inventive interests in such varied pursuits as stream ecology, pottery, woodworking, boating, bicycling, gardening and cooking the perfect pecan pie. Nick guided many people in the winter to spots along the Tanana to savor the art of burbot fishing through the ice.

He spent countless summer hours in his research of grayling and salmon in the Chena River, exhibiting all the patience and wonder that defines a great fisherman. One of his innovations was rigging underwater cameras to get a three-dimensional view of the fish feeding in the passing current.

I read that, & I feel the cool breeze blow into me: the joy of life as profound as anything put to words in a poem — like his father's poems, full of animal life.

In yesterday's Times (of London), Joe Saxton recounts:

There was only one poem of Ted’s I ever saw Nick express interest in – not Birthday Letters, not Tales from Ovid, not Pike, nor any of the other dead rat plop poems. It was about woodpeckers.

When Woodpecker’s jack-hammer head
Starts up its dreadful din
Knocking the dead bough double dead
How do his eyes stay in?

Ted had hit on a biological conundrum and as a biologist Nick wanted to know the answer (which is, apparently, that it keeps its eyes shut and wraps its tongue around the base of its brain – a woodpecker’s beak is going at 1,300mph on impact).

I love that. I love the poem — the play of words & rhythm — & the biological conundrum both, & I love the scientific curiosity that led Nick to investigate the answer.

Though I'm not convinced that it was the only poem of Ted that Nick was interested in: surely the father's love of animals & nature as expressed in his poems was an influence to the son, as well as something both shared side-by-side in the fishing trips they took together —

— & now I stop to think: why does this matter to me, who knew neither of them?

Because... because I'm a poet? (though I haven't written much poetry lately....) Yeah, sure, partly. But mostly I guess that in the desperation of my despairing youth, I got caught up in a very screwed up & false romanticization of Plath's death. The thing I wrote in 1995 about her, "Sylvia Plath's Resurrections", was me working my way out of that sick misunderstanding — partly for her sake, yeah, but also very much for my own: because John Donne had it right when he said "Death be not proud." I think Plath loved life. I know damn well that so did her son. I know damn well from my own nasty times in the pit that it's not a hatred of life or a love of death that leads to the act of suicide: it's inexpressible pain that the suffering mind cannot foresee an end to.

I feel no particular virtue that I've each time somehow muddled my way to the other side of the pit, or the seemingly endless bleak grey landscapes I've staggered across (so far, at least) — it's not easy to explain how I've come through, any more than it's easy to explain why others have not. I sure as hell would never judge someone like Nick Hughes that he didn't. I'm just sad he didn't. But I'm glad also that he lived what he lived. I didn't know him, but I hope that those who did know him have good & lasting memories of him, & that you are all comforted in the face of his premature death.

Joe Saxton's Times article informed me that today at 1.30 PM Alaska time, there would be a tribute to Nick Hughes at UAF, & that "Nick’s colleagues in Alaska and New Zealand have requested that people take a moment and think of Nick and his life."

That's what this writing is for.

* * *

Addendum: Another article in The Mail which further fills out the picture on Nick Hughes' life, including memories from friends & colleagues in Fairbanks.

I forgot to mention earlier how much it's bugged me the numerous news stories that described him as "unmarried with no children" — most of them failing to mention his relationship with Christine Hunter, a UAF biologist with whom he lived, & who was the one to discover his body. I'm so sorry for your loss, Christine. News also that UAF plans to establish a scholarship in his name.

And indications that the cult of Plath (as much as Plath is important to me, do not count me as a member) was more a harm to his life than his mother's death itself. Such an intrusive, destructive cult. Get a life, folks.

Distance

2009-02-07T01:21:00.002-09:00

Now for the first time in some years, a person from the past, who is still in the present but is in another place, distant, someone whose day-to-day life is no longer something in which I share, not even to the extent to which I shared in it before. Nor does this person share in mine.

I'm nearly 50. How many people who have come & gone in my life like that. Given the powers of technology -- Internet, email, alumni associations, Facebook, Twitter, blogs -- there are a lot of them from even distant times (relatively speaking) with whom contact has been restored. Or not.

My great-grandparents, my maternal grandmother's parents, were separated for seven years, with no Internet or even telephones, & still kept love alive. I still love these my friends many of whom I've not seen in years. Some of them decades.

And then there are those who are separated by more, by death. My mother. Soon, my father. All their progenitors.

How does one then, restoring contact out of however much distance, however much time, truly know one's friend again? I have no idea what he or she lives from day to day, nor does she or he know my life. What else is there? Yet we want to touch, some way. Why? How? But we do. If only to say, here's what it's like here since you left. Here's what's happened to me since we last saw each other. Here's how my life has changed, or hasn't. Here's how I still love you.

I send this out to all my friends, all those whom I love. Whether you've read this or not. Whether we've restored contact or not.

Eyes Remain Open: A photoblog

2009-01-06T12:56:00.000-09:00

I've decided to publish all my Eyes Remain Open photoblog photos on my main blog Henkimaa, but they're also directly on Eyes Remain Open because the color scheme there (black background) is actually nicer for photos. Yet I don't want this blog to be black background. But if you want just the photos, you might want to look at 'em there.

Meanwhile here's the description with which I began the Eyes Remain Open blog on November 11, 2005:

This blog takes its name from my favorite Finnish proverb:
Rakkaus on ankara ja lempi kova,
siihen juolee seisaalleen ja silmät jää auki.

(Love is severe & devotion tough,
it kills you on your feet & your eyes remain open.)
In this context, that's not a comment on how hard taking good pics can be sometimes (though it can be, especially when it's freezing-ass cold outside as it's been here lately); but on the how the simple framing & recording of an image in a camera, & the sharing of that image with others, helps me to combat my despair & keep my love for the world alive, & keep me devoted to living & working for life in the face of great odds.

Something like that.

Let the pics I take, & the pics I share here, always reflect that love & devotion, as I strive to keep my eyes open, however painful that may be.

Alaska evangelicals support the corrupt

2008-11-05T16:27:00.000-09:00

The Anchorage Daily News reports on exit polling (emphasis added):

Like McCain, Stevens and Young performed best in small cities and rural areas, such as the region that includes Palin's hometown of Wasilla, where she served two terms as mayor. The two also were heavily supported by a great majority of voters identifying themselves as white evangelical or born-again Christians.

Gimme that ole time corruption, it's good enough for me.

An update from Tom Begich

2008-11-05T15:49:00.000-09:00

DailyKos reports:

Tom Begich, brother of the candidate, explains the current situation up in Alaska:

There are about 60,000 votes out. Of those there are 9500 known Early Votes, 5700 questioned with as many as another 8000 or more questioned ballots (similar to Provisional ballots in some states – in Anchorage these are often teachers and those who work far enough away from their homes, but near a polling place), and 46,000 or so absentee ballots of a substantial number are not mail in but are early vote absentee.

Based on these things, we believe it is possible (I think probably a good 50/50 chance) to win and so Mark has not conceded. We won about 59% of the early voting absentees. Generally have done well with Anchorage Mail in absentees (won a Mayor's race on them) and are likely to do less well in the out of Anchorage absentees. We solidly won rural Alaska, Fairbanks and Southeast and expect to do well with their absentees, though not with Mat-Su, Roads and Kenai.

We also have seen some precinct anomalies that have to be addressed (one precinct shows hardly any votes for Mark and Ted, but large numbers of votes for the two independents – likely a machine calibration error). Given all of this, and many of you know that I crunch numbers all the time, I believe we might still win, but won't know until around the 17th at the earliest.

In a follow-up email, he ads:

This just in from Mark. On our three military bases we won. This has big ramifications for the absentee vote. Here are the numbers:

Ft. Wainwright (Fairbanks): 270 Begich 184 Stevens
Elmendorf AFB (Anchorage): 723 Begich 461 Stevens
Ft. Richardson (Anchorage: 235 Begich 137 Stevens

So another long wait for the will of the voters to be decided as, in another race in which every vote have outsized importance.

I know Tom — a solid guy, not to mention a talented singer-songwriter (though that's not his bread & butter job). During Mark's two mayoral races, I used to run into Tom at Side Street Espresso & get encouraging news about the campaigns, which ended up proving out. Based on this, I'd say there's still a good chance then that Mark will still beat out Stevens.

Here's hoping. Go Mark!

Alaska post-election blues

2008-11-05T15:18:00.000-09:00

I stopped writing the blog because I felt the ground was pretty well covered, & I also lacked for time.

But today I'm blue.

Oh, indeed, I'm very happy about the Obama victory, & while my as-yet uncounted vote for Obama certainly didn't push deep-red Alaska anywhere near the frontier of giving him our three electoral votes, I'm still proud & glad to have registered my support for hope & change. Blue in this case is happy-blue, happy Democratic-voting blue.

But then take a look at some of the other election returns. First, the return of former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin to Alaska to take up her gubernatorial duties. As I quipped last night in Twitter,

Our long national nightmare is coming to an end; but Alaska's is still going strong.

And then the election returns which show convicted felon Senator Ted Stevens & we're-just-waiting-for-the-indictment Congressman Don Young possibly returning to Washington, DC. The majority of Alaskans are apparently completely happy to support & report corrupt politicians, so long as those corrupt politicians are Republicans. Maybe instead of "Alaska's Flag" our state song should be

Gimme that ole time corruption
Gimme that ole time corruption
Gimme that ole time corruption
It's good enough for me

Which nicely ties with the ostensibly Christian values of many of those corrupt-leaning voters, neh?

Then there's another set of election returns, not from Alaska but from California: Proposition 8.

Ten years ago Alaska passed what I believe was the very first constitutional amendment that defined marriage as only "between one man and one woman." My partner & I were in the midst of a very difficult year-long breach at the time, which somehow made it possible to take things a lot more philosophically. But right now... geez.... I know that amongst other good things brought by Barack Obama's victory is the sense of vindication & deep pride that black people are feeling now — their humanity and worth recognized. I'm very glad for that. It's so long overdue.

But in the very same election, a lot of the very same voters who voted for Obama, voted to shit on gays & lesbians in California — voted to say that their relationships are worthless — voted to keep people like me second class citizens. Just as my fellow Alaskans voted ten years ago. And in one of the world's great ironies too, it seems that one of the demographics in California that most strongly supported the initiative to treat gays/lesbians as lesser people were the same people whose humanity & worth were so profoundly affirmed by our election of Obama — African Americans. It's hit me hard. Okay, so it's just one battle in the war. We'll eventually succeed. Yadda yadda. But today... today I just want to curl up in a ball & cry.

Well, I did that for awhile. But now I'm sitting up & deciding that instead, I'm going to do my part for change.

Time to turn our red state blue. Happy blue.

Troopergate report: Major findings

2008-10-10T16:28:00.000-08:00

Branchflower reports on page 8 of his report four major findings:

Palin abused her power in violation of Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act, which provides that "each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust." His reasons for this findings are given later; I haven't had a chance to read them yet.
Walt Monegan's refusal to fire Trooper Wooten was not the only reason Palin fired him, but was probably a contributing reason. However, Palin was still within her rights to fire him.
Harbor Adjustment Services of Anchorage and its owner Murleen Wilkes handles Trooper Wooten's workman's compensation claim properly, & Wooten got the workman's comp to which he was due.
Attorney General Talis Colberg failed "substantially" to comply with Branchflower's August 6, 2008 request for information in the form of emails.

More later, when I've had time to read. But I imagine plenty more info about the findings & implications will be available from all over the place really soon.

12-0: Troopergate resport will be released

2008-10-10T16:07:00.000-08:00

The Legislative Council (or those present) voted unanimously to release the report.

This word from one of the reader comments at the ADN's Alaska politics blog. Kyle Hopkins hasn't himself reported in yet, but I'm sure he will.

It'll probably take an hour or two for the report to hit the 'net though. Probably someone at the ADN will have to scan all those pages into a .pdf. Unless Branchflower or someone has been kind enough to make an electronic copy available to begin with.

Update: The Anchorage Daily News already has it up online. Here it is (PDF).

Still waiting for Troopergate report

2008-10-10T15:10:00.000-08:00

But here's an update from the ADN's Kyle Hopkins:

3 p.m.: So here's something to consider while we wait for the Legislative Council to vote -- and yes, we're still waiting:

The council needs eight votes to release the investigator's report. Three members of the 14-member council aren't here -- Rep. Ralph Samuels, Rep. John Harris and Rep. John Coghill.

Unless they called in after the meeting started, that means they're automatic "no votes."

So what's going on behind those doors? Do they have enough votes to make the report public?

Sen. John Cowdery isn't here, but phoned in.

I'd reckon there are at least five votes in favor of releasing the report: the four Democrats on the committee, & Sen. Lyda Green, Republican of Wasilla, who is not a big Palin fan.

Here's the list of Legislative Council members, from the Alaska Legislature's website.

Waiting for Troopergate report

2008-10-10T12:56:00.000-08:00

We're hoping, anyway, that it'll be release today. The Alaska Legislative Council is apparently still in its meeting, which began at 9:00 AM. Kyle Hopkins of the Anchorage Daily News is at the legislative offices in downtown Anchorage and posting occasional updates at the ADN's Alaska politics blog. The latest:

12 noon: Sen. Kim Elton, D-Juneau and the Legislative Council chairman, stepped out for a bathroom break and was asked how it was going inside. "I'm not going to characterize it," he said. "I'm tempted to, but I won't." None of the others coming and going from the room have had anything to say.

Then Jeff Turner, an aide to the Senate majority, came out and said it would be at least another hour until any official word emerges from within.

A bigger story on the hearing was posted by the ADN at 11:00 AM:

Sen. Kim Elton, D-Juneau, chairman of the Legislative Council, gave no indication how long the secret session might last or when Branchflower's report might be made public.

But two lawmakers who've stepped out of the meeting briefly say it could be hours.

Senate President Lyda Green, a Wasilla Republican, and Rep. Peggy Wilson of Wrangell said the session is moving slowly.

How slow? Wilson was asked.

"Slooowwww," she said.

Each legislator, meeting at the Legislative Information Office in downtown Anchorage, had two big binders on the table in front of him or her - one green and a larger red one. They contain some 1,000 pages in all.

Before the meeting was closed to the public, Wilson said she hadn't had time to read the full report after picking up a copy Thursday night and she said she might be uncomfortable discussing it until she had.

"I spent hours on it yesterday and didn't have time to read it all," she said.

Elton agreed with Wilson, telling her he could have spent four days on the report himself. But Elton added that he was able in just a few hours to get the gist of Branchflower's findings and recommendations.

Tony Hopfinger at Alaska Dispatch posted on the scene in downtown Anchorage:

The council is composed of 14 legislators, 10 Republicans and four Democrats. Three Republican legislators—Senator Gary Wilkins and representatives John Harris and Ralph Samuels—did not show up today. Senator John Cowdery, who has been indicted on corruption charges, was on the phone at a meeting before the council went in closed session.

Outside the Legislative offices on Fourth Avenue, as many as 75 pro-Palin supporters were chanting early today “Go Sarah, go.” Some of them are holding balloons in the shape of kangaroos, implying that the council is nothing but a kangaroo court.

Matt Apuzzo of the Associated Press also has a story about the meeting.

Meanwhile, Andrew Halcro, who was first to expose the Palinocracy's pressure on Walt Monegan to (illegally) fire Mike Wooten, admits (with a great deal of irony) to being "The blogger on the grassy knoll:"

am to blame for the entire Troopergate scandal and the ensuing investigation into if Governor Sarah Palin abused the power of her office by firing former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan because he wouldn't fire her ex brother in law, State Trooper Mike Wooten.

Me, me, me. The blog stops with me.

I am responsible for Governor Palin's husband Todd's weird obsession with his former brother in law State Trooper Mike Wooten, where he admitted in a deposition this week that he has spent years trying to get Wooten fired.

I am responsible for the "over two dozen phone calls" Governor Palin admitted her staff made to the Department of Public Safety to inquire about the status of her former brother in law.

I am responsible for the recorded phone call where Palin's right hand man Frank Bailey is pressuring another State Trooper that Wooten needs to be fired, even though he hadn't been able to convince anyone else in authority.

"Mike Tibbles (Palin's former Chief of Staff) disagrees with me, Audie Holloway(a State Trooper Lt. Col.) probably disagrees with me and Walt does (Commissioner Walt Monegan)" Bailey said in the recorded phone call released by Governor Palin on August 13.

I totally put him up to it even though he said he got the confidential information he shared in the call from Todd Palin.

Also in that same phone call Bailey said, "She (Palin) really likes Walt a lot, but on this issue she feels like it’s, she doesn’t know why there’s absolutely no action for a year … it’s very troubling to her and the family. I can definitely relay that.”

So according to Bailey, the governor "really" liked Monegan's performance, but just not his performance in responding to her wishes to see Wooten out of a job. This was on February 29, 2008...and then four months later Monegan is fired?

I admit, this is all my handy work.

Of course, not really. Because of course really the McCain/Palin report, released last night (though darned if I can find a copy) that purports to find Sarah Palin innocent of any wrongdoing, is a big pile of doggie doodoo. As Halcro goes on to explain.

The national press is paying attention. A story in today's New York Times about Troopergate by Serge F. Kovaleski reports:

Ms. Palin has denied that anyone told Mr. Monegan to dismiss Trooper Wooten, or that the commissioner’s ouster had anything to do with him. But an examination of the case, based on interviews with Mr. Monegan and several top aides, indicates that, to a far greater degree than was previously known, the governor, her husband and her administration pressed the commissioner and his staff to get Trooper Wooten off the force, though without directly ordering it.

In all, the commissioner and his aides were contacted about Trooper Wooten three dozen times over 19 months by the governor, her husband and seven administration officials, interviews and documents show.

Not only that, but the question even came up with Chuck Kopp, who briefly replaced Monegan as DPS commissioner before he was forced to resign due to a past sexual harassment charge:

Nor did that interest end with Mr. Monegan, the examination shows. His successor, Chuck Kopp, recalled that in an exploratory phone call and then a job interview, Ms. Palin’s aides mentioned the governor’s concerns about Trooper Wooten. None of the 280 other troopers were discussed, Mr. Kopp said.

The Palinocracy has spoken

2008-10-09T20:05:00.000-08:00

The Palinocracy has spoken: Sarah is innocent!

Or at least that's what the Palin Ministry of Truth Squad would like us to believe. Mainly, it's just the next idiotic step in the McCain/Palin campaign's futile efforts to steer the Troopergate investigation. Now that the efforts in court to quash the legislative investigation have failed with today's Alaska Supreme Court ruling, the Truthiness people are attempting to preempt Branchflower's report tomorrow by releasing a report of their own "investigation" tonight.

Per Matt Apuzzo of the Associated Press:

Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing.

This ranks right up there with the ethics complaint that Palin filed against herself in order to try to pull the investigation over to the Personnel Board, & then to attempt to dismiss her complaint against herself because she decided she was innocent.

Ludicrous.

Alaska Supreme Court won't block Troopergate investigation

2008-10-09T13:12:00.000-08:00

Just in from the Anchorage Daily News: the Alaska Supreme Court has upheld Judge Michalski's decision in Keller v. French, rejecting the attempt to quash the legislative investigation into why DPS Commissioner Walt Monegan was fired.

Here's the Anchorage Daily News story on the decision.

Here's the Alaska Supreme Court's order affirming Judge Michalski's October 2 ruling. An opinion will follow.

Walt Monegan responds to Todd Palin deposition

2008-10-09T12:55:00.000-08:00

Tony Hopfinger at Alaska Dispatch talked with fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan about Todd Palin's deposition in the legislative Troopergate investigation.

Walt Monegan, the former public safety commissioner that Sarah Palin fired, says Todd Palin’s statement in the Troopergate investigation backs up what he’s said all along: The First Dude was obsessed with seeing his trooper ex-brother-in-law canned.

“Todd says (in his statement) that he’s been campaigning on that for years,” Monegan said in a phone interview Thursday with AlaskaDispatch.com. “I think he had a kind of obsession with it.”

Which certainly seems to be what others have observed about Todd Palin. Frankly, I'd be more scared of Todd Palin having his sights on me than of Trooper Wooten.

Monegan says he and others in the Public Safety Department had numerous conversations with the Palins and the governor’s aides over the couple’s concerns with Wooten. Wooten had been disciplined for misconduct reported by the Palin family before Sarah was elected governor. Monegan concluded the matter had been resolved.

Exactly. The misconduct & the Department of Public Safety's discipline for the misconduct had already taken place prior to Sarah Palin becoming governor. The Palins issue is that they don't believe the discipline Trooper Wooten was given was enough. Maybe that's so: but as DPS Commissioner, Monegan's hands were tied because (1) discipline had already taken place; & (2) the law & a union contract between the state & the Trooper's union both forbade going back to increase the discipline for the same offenses long after the fact. The Palins don't seem to get this; nor do a number of Palinistas who keep on harping on Wooten's offenses in reader comments about Anchorage Daily News stories about the case.

The question on Monegan’s mind now is who was the thrust behind the effort to have Wooten fired?

“When I was contacted by the attorney general, or Annette Kreitzer, or (Mike) Tibbles, who was the instigator of that?” Monegan wonders. “Somebody actually had to set that up. Who leaned to make them call me? Was it Sarah? Was it staff? Was it Todd?”

It was magic.

Todd Palin argues in his statement that his family’s concerns with Wooten went unaddressed and that he believes the Public Safety Department was looking out for one of its own.

Monegan disagrees and said he actually working on a new effort to bring better oversight to investigate allegations of trooper misconduct in his agency. He said he proposed in spring to create an internal affairs unit, something that hasn’t existed. The unit would review allegations of misconduct by officers, instead of relying on troopers investigating their fellow officers. The Alaska Legislature this year funded one of two positions Monegan proposed, he said.

Which is exactly what should be done.

Why did I fire thee, let me count the ways

2008-10-09T07:25:00.000-08:00

Josh Marshall of Talking Point Memo commenting on Todd Palin's deposition:

For those of you keeping score, the Palins' purported rationales for firing Monegan are tellingly similar to those originally put forward for firing those US Attorneys -- vague and barely consequential complaints that no one ever seems to have mentioned before the press started asking questions, peppered with occasional defenses of the reasons for the firing which they claim aren't even the real reasons.

Todd Palin's deposition: A record of obsession

2008-10-08T23:09:00.000-08:00

Word comes tonight that Todd Palin's 25-page written deposition in the legislative Troopergate scandal was released to the press by his attorney. The Anchorage Daily News reports:

Todd Palin talked with over a dozen state officials, many of them repeatedly, in his crusade to get a state trooper fired who he considered to be a bad cop, a dishonest person and a threat to the Palin family, according to his sworn statement given Wednesday to a legislative investigator.

But you don't have to take the ADN's word for it: read the deposition for yourself.

Then read Andrew Halcro's analysis of it, which points out a number of misstatements & inaccuracies in the "First Dude's" account. Jason Leopold at The Public Record also has an analysis, including background details contradicting Todd Palin's claim that Sarah Palin was uninterested in Trooper Wooten:

But Todd Palin's claim in his affidavit that Gov. Palin was uninterested in what her former brother-in-law was up to stands in stark contrast to documents that have been publicly well before the probe commenced.

Since she became governor in December 2006, Palin was deeply enmeshed in the dispute with Wooten before she was sworn in as governor, according to a review of documents relating to the case.

Palin filed several formal complaints against her ex-brother-in-law over the course of three years alleging he engaged in illegal behavior while on duty. But her complaints relied heavily on second-hand information, some of which was later determined to be suspect and unverifiable.

Lodging 36 accusations against Wooten in 2005 alone, Palin and her family appeared to be waging a vendetta against the trooper who was assigned to the wildlife division. Palin personally seemed obsessed with ending his career.

Alaska Supreme Court to hear arguments on Troopergate investigation

2008-10-08T09:14:00.000-08:00

When the Troopergate scandal first broke, & the bipartisan Alaska Legislative Council — a constitutionally mandated permanent committee of the Alaska State Legislature — voted 12-0 to investigate the circumstances of the Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, Palin welcomed the investigation. "Hold me accountable," she said.

But no sooner was Palin tapped as McCain's running mate than her cooperation & promises for openness & transparency went right down the toilet. McCain campaign apparatchiks in the form of a self-named "Truth Squad" virtually took over the Office of the Governor & the upper levels of the Alaska Department of Law. Attorney General Talis Colberg advised state employees, who had to be subpoenaed to testify to the Legislative Council's investigator Stephen Branchflower, to ignore the subpoenas, & filed suit to quash the subpoenas. Six state legislators — all Republicans — filed suit to stop the legislative investigation.

Last week, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski threw the suits out, stating in his decision that the legislature has broad powers of investigation & that due to the separation of powers of the three branches of government, the judiciary cannot interfere in those investigations. But the six Republican legislators who sought to stop the investigation appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court.

The high court will hear oral arguments in the case today, with a decision to be handed down tomorrow. Meantime, the subpoenaed state workers, as well as Sarah Palin's husband Todd, have all answered Branchflower's questions. According to the Anchorage Daily News:

With his Troopergate report due Friday, legislative investigator Steve Branchflower appears to have the makings of a fairly complete account, despite weeks of resistance from the Palin family and administration.

Branchflower has, or soon will have, answers from nearly all the people he'd hoped to question regarding Gov. Sarah Palin's firing in July of former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

But Sarah Palin, who initially pledged cooperation, is not one of them.

The Alaska Supreme Court's decision tomorrow appears to be the deciding factor over whether Branchflower's investigative report, due to be submitted the very next day, will ever see the light of day. That appears to be the principal reason behind the appeal: the plaintiff legislators fear that results of the investigation will have a negative impact on Palin's candidacy for the vice presidency of the United States. They insist (as the McCain/Palin "Truth Squad" did) that the investigation has been politicized, without recognition whatsoever of how their own activities have politicized the investigation.

The Alaska Court System has the relevant documents in this case, Keller v. French. Of particular note:

Order on Motion to Dismiss and Temporary and Preliminary Injunction (Judge Michalski's decision)
Appellants' Brief
Appellees' Brief

Sarah Palin & intermittent Gunderson syndrome

2008-10-07T15:58:00.000-08:00

"Gunderson" is a reference to the character Marge Gunderson played by Frances McDormand in the Coen Brothers' film "Fargo" — famous for her midwest/Minnesota accent. Sarah Palin sometimes sounds more like her than at other times, which is why the creators of this video refer to her accent as "intermittent Gunderson syndrome."

Sarah Palin & intermittent Gunderson syndrome

Atlantic.com blogger Andrew Sullivan asks readers to compare Palin's "folksy" presentations during her VP debate with Joe Biden with her manner of speaking during a candidate debate during her 2006 run for Alaska governor. Palin's first answer is about two minutes in. (Compare her accent also with her two opponents, Andrew Halcro, who was born in California & attended high school in Anchorage, & Tony Knowles, born in Oklahoma & came to Alaska in the late '60s after his graduation from Yale.)

2006 Alaska gubernatorial debate
(Andrew Halcro, Sarah Palin, Tony Knowles)

Sullivan comments:

Just compare this recording of Palin in Alaska in 2006 to what you heard last night. Ask yourself where the folksiness is. See how many times she says "doggone" in 2006. Or "betcha". Or "Joe Six-Pack". Make up your own mind. In my judgment she is the biggest fraud we have seen in national politics in generations. She makes the Clintons look honest, and Nixon look as if he has nothing to hide.

As for myself, I can hear the "Gunderson" accent in there, but much more subtly than how she's been speaking to the national public. It's clear that nowadays she's playing it up for the "folksy" vote. In that, I agree 100% with Andrew Sullivan. (About Palin, not necessarily about the Clintons.) And as an Alaskan myself (since 1982, but born & bred in Montana), I seldom if ever come across people who talk like that. I certainly wouldn't call her accent — whether the authentic version or the exaggerated "folksy" version, an "Alaskan" accent.

How, then, did she come by the authentic parts of her accent? Slate has an accurate explanation:

Others have wondered whether her accent hails from Idaho, where her parents are from. But dialect features tend to come from one's peers, not one's parents, and Palin spent her childhood in Alaska's Mat-Su Valley, which is where she got her distinctive manner of speaking. The next town over from Wasilla, Palmer, has a large settlement of Minnesotans—who were moved there by a government relief program in the 1930s—and features of the Minnesotan dialect are thus prominent in the Mat-Su Valley area. Hence the Fargo-like elements in Palin's speech, in particular the sound of her "O" vowel. (Despite its name, Fargo took place mostly in Brainerd, Minn.) However, even in the area, many people speak a more general Alaskan English, the sort one would find in nearby Anchorage. Palin's frequent dropping of the final G in -ing words and her pronunciation of terrorist with two syllables instead of three are characteristic of general Alaskan English (and Western English) rather than the specific Mat-Su Valley speech.

(I say terrorist as three syllables, myself.)

There's a few other YouTubes out there remarking on Palin's Gunderson accent. Here's a selection. Give 'em a watch, they're pretty funny! Especially if you've seen "Fargo."

McCain/Gunderson '08

Sarah Palin's Fargo Interview

Palin of Fargo - A VP Can Happen in the Middle of Nowhere

Sarah Palin: The rape kit controversy

2008-10-07T12:53:00.000-08:00

The Wasilla Project has a new mini-documentary out about Wasilla Police Department charging rape victims for rape kits during Sarah Palin's tenure as mayor. A succinct, accurate rendition of the facts.

Update: The Wasilla Project answers questions about who they are & why they produced the video.

Questions about the Palins' tax returns

2008-10-06T15:07:00.000-08:00

The Caucus links to tax-related websites where tax attorneys have been pointing out problems with Sarah & Todd Palins' tax returns:

One big issue that tax attorneys are pointing to is the fact that the Palins did not report as income the $43,490 that the state gave the family to cover travel expenses for Mr. Palin and the Palin children. Had the Palins reported these payments as income, the couple would have had to pay taxes on it.

These tax attorneys note that neither Mr. Palin nor the children were employees of the state. Nor were they traveling on behalf of the state. There was some discussion that perhaps some portion of Mr. Palin’s travel expenses might be excludable as income if there was a bona-fide business reason for his presence and if he assisted Mrs. Palin in her official duties.

But there was also uniform agreement that it would be hard to make a case for the not reporting the payments to the children as income.

There are other questions too. The upshot: the Palins probably owe some on their taxes. The biggest question is, just how much.

Still trying to quash the Troopergate investigation

2008-10-03T15:29:00.000-08:00

Per the Anchorage Daily News:

Lawyers seeking to shut down the Legislature's investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin this afternoon filed an emergency appeal with the Alaska Supreme Court.

They're asking the state's high court to decide by the close of business today whether it will hear their appeal.

Just the five legislators this time; Attorney General Talis Colberg isn't joining in this action (so far).

Update, 5:00 PM: The Alaska Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case & issue a decision no later than next Thursday, a day before the October 10 deadline to release the investigative report.

Judge Michalski's decision

2008-10-02T23:24:00.000-08:00

Per TPMMuckraker:

Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski wrote in his decision that "it is legitimately within the scope of the legislature's investigatory power to inquire into the circumstances of surrounding the termination of a public officer the legislature had previously confirmed."

Debate reactions

2008-10-02T20:17:00.000-08:00

Palin did lots better than I thought she would (no Katie Couric moments), but she evaded answering a number of Gwen Ifill's questions, instead going to her own favorite talking points -- mostly energy energy energy maverick maverick maverick. Biden, on the other hand, usually kept pretty much to the point. I haven't seen him speak at length before, except in his spin after the first Obama/McCain campaign last week. I liked him then, I liked him tonight. Best moments: when he attacked McCain's "maverick" status, when he talked about his family, & his takedown of Cheney's vice presidency. Palin, in the meantime, either didn't know how the Constitution defines the role of the VP, or wanted to expand its power in a Cheney-like way. . . or both.

Given the tension & hostility transmitted by McCain in his debate with Obama last week, in some ways I think Palin actually did better than he did. But mostly, she didn't make a complete & utter fool of herself, as she has several times in media interviews. She was more nervous than Biden, but not fatally so. He seemed relaxed, made no gaffes, & both of them showed grace & seemed actually to enjoy the debate. A little snarkiness here & there, but not hugely.

As a lesbian, I appreciated Biden's reply to Ifill's question about recognition of the rights of same-sex couples. Neither favored actual same-sex marriage -- but Palin was clearly far more conservative about the overall question than Biden was, though she gave lip-service to agreeing with him. I didn't believe her there: I know what she said in Alaska about the state workers situation when she first became governor.

Interesting stuff, not a game-changer.

The best news for me came after the debate was over, when I checked in on other news, & learned that Judge Peter Michalski had ruled -- even as the debate was starting -- that the Alaska legislative investigation into Troopergate can go on. Huzzah! Let's hear it for the Alaska judiciary!

Debate munchies, 2/3 Alaska-made...

2008-10-02T17:15:00.000-08:00

... & the other third comes from folks as funny as Tina Fey.

Stevens trial to continue

2008-10-02T14:30:00.000-08:00

Judge Sullivan isn't pleased with the prosecution, but he's decided not to throw the case out. Ted Stevens' trial will continue.

Concerns of the day

2008-10-02T12:14:00.000-08:00

On the morning of the vice-presidential debate, two big pieces of news that closely affects the Alaska political landscape. First is that today is the day that arguments are due to take place before Anchorage Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski on a suit by five Republican legislators to quash the Alaska legislative Troopergate investigation. Michalski may even rule today.

The other: a prosecutorial error in the trial of Sen. Ted Stevens has brought his trial to a screeching halt, & may possibly result in a mistrial.

Bus rider reading ADN

2008-10-01T21:38:00.000-08:00

The front page story, from October 1, 2008, is about the testimony of former Veco CEO Bill Allen testifying at the Washington, DC trial of Senator Ted Stevens on corruption charges.

About Sarah Palin

2008-09-30T12:54:00.019-08:00

I was as dumbstruck as most Alaskans were when, on August 29, John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate. And like many Alaskans, I immediately became a source for non-Alaskans about who in heck this person was.

My opinion of her has changed over time.

November 7, 2006: "it's a sad day in ak"

When she was elected as Alaska's governor on November 7, 2006, I was pretty unhappy. Can't say I knew a huge amount about her: chiefly that in the Republican primary she had defeated the nation's most unpopular governor, Frank Murkowski (along with another Republican candidate), & that she had extremely conservative religious views that translated into extremely conservative social views about abortion, equal rights for LGBTQI folks, etc. Her Democratic opponent, Tony Knowles, was a known quantity — I'd followed his career for years as Anchorage mayor & a two-term governor whose achievements I quite respected, in spite of a couple of issues I'd had with him in the past. But the choice was pretty clear for me. Unfortunately, in a "red" state like Alaska, the lesser-known quantity prevailed. As one of my Flickr contacts wrote, "it's a sad day in ak."

Maybe she's not so bad after all....

But she is. The more I learn about her, the worse it gets. Yuk.

I want PLAIN truth not PALIN truth. No more lies, Palinochio.

2008-09-30T12:54:00.018-08:00

From the Hold Palin Accountable Rally held in Anchorage on September 27, 2008. The rally's stated purpose was to hold Alaska Governor Sarah Palin accountable for her abuses of power in the Troopergate scandal, & to call for the removal of Talis Colberg as Attorney General.

A sea change in Alaska?

2008-09-30T12:39:00.006-08:00

It's been nearly a year since I've kept up this blog. Decided to start it up again.

Why now? Because I'm an Alaskan, & while I'd never intended this blog as a political blog per se, there's a lot of political stuff in/about Alaska right now that's got me riled up. Or something.

Governor Sarah Palin as a VP candidate, & the interference of McCain/Palin campaign flacks in Troopergate. Senator Ted Stevens on trial for corruption in Washington, DC. The possibility that both Ted Stevens & Representative Don Young will get tossed out of office by Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich & former state legislator Ethan Berkowitz, respectively. Alaskans waiting with bated breath for possible indictments of Don Young & Ted Stevens son Ben Stevens. Etc. etc.

A sea change in Alaska? Maybe, just maybe. I'd like to see one, I truly would.

More to come.

Field of Words: Mercy

2007-10-12T23:38:00.000-08:00

A year & a half later, I've finally written another contribution for the Scheherazade Project, a writing blog an internet acquaintance of mine started back then as a means of sharing stories on whatever themes she or other participants throw out. This month's theme is you, the killer. The piece I wrote is called "Mercy." Read it at my writing blog Field of Words.

Reset 2

2007-10-10T12:56:00.000-08:00

S10 test. Chugach Mountains, 10x zoom.

The reset continues, with a little help from my PFD. This pic represents part of that: a new camera, a Nikon Coolpix S10, that arrived yesterday — still learning my way around it, obviously, but I'm pretty damn happy with the 10x zoom. And it's got me posting pics to Flickr again, for the first time in several months. Good for me, because taking pics gets me out more walking & stuff. Tomorrow lunch I might just go out & see if I can find the moose that's reported to have been hanging out near the Engineering building. And with 10x zoom, I can take a pretty good closeup pic without running the danger of being trampled to death. Always a good thing.

Day before yesterday: another PFD goodie — a Concept 2 Model D indoor rower, colloquially known as an "erg," short for "ergometer" because it measures (Gk. metron) work (Gk. ergon). That's what I hear most, anyway: 'erg" — but it also can bear the nickname "ergo" — which make me think of the Latin phrase I learned when I was on the Speech Team back in high school: post hoc ergo propter hoc, a logical fallacy (often encountered in debate) meaning after this, therefore because of this (&, as the debate guys on our speech team used to add, usually irrelevant). But in this case, maybe not so irrelevant nor false, since its because of this hoc, that is because of the ergo, that I will have the post-effect of having burnt off plenty of the fat that I put back on after last year's depression, & then some. So, if I'm gonna call me ergo a name, let me name it Hoc.

In any case, in these the early stages of training, this morning I rowed 1,910 meters in along about 12 minutes. Amazing how just that little bit of physical work increased my energy through the day. Which indeed I was feeling a couple weeks ago when I was dancing most mornings too. By Oct. 25th I think I'll be far enough along that I can successfully take on & complete the Skeleton Crew challenge, which called for 31,000 meters from Oct. 25 to 31. And following Hallowe'en (or, as I shall celebrate Oct 31/Nov 1, Kekri)? The beginning, of course of NaNoWriMo, when I fully kickstart my writing again: a principal object of doing this reset. I reckon by that time I'll have a regular erg workout pretty fully integrated into my daily life, which will help with the writing flow too.

Cold, the blog

2007-10-01T14:12:00.001-08:00

Okay, I just got done setting up & writing the first post for the blog I'll be using for the writing of my NaNoWriMo 2007 novel, entitled Cold. The URL cold.blogspot.com is already taken. So I settled for cold-brrr.blogspot.com. It'll be a cold-brr damn month, this November, in more ways than one!

The blog is private for copyright reasons, but I'll be inviting a lot of friends, family, & Internet acquaintances to it so they can keep up with it if they want. If you haven't received a direct invitation, but would like to see what I'm up to this next couple of months, write an email to yksinainen at gmail.com to ask me. I'll email you an invitation. In this email, there'll be a link which will let you do one of three things:

* Sign in to an existing Google account.
* Create a new Google account.
* View your blog as a guest (no account required).

In the first two cases, you'll be given permission to view my cold-brr blog anytime you're logged into your Google Account. As a guest, you can see my blog by clicking the link from the invitation email, but this guest pass will expire after two weeks. After that, you'll need a new invitation. That's okay with me: just ask me when you need a new one.

The writing of the novel will be in November; but I'll also be posting backstory notes & the like to the blog during October & probably during the writing itself.

NaNoWriMo 2007 registration opens tonight. Time to get ready for what promised to be a wild ride.

NaNoWrimoLesbo

2007-09-28T20:54:00.001-08:00

NaNoWrimoLesbo
Originally uploaded by yksin

I did this icon, based on the main NaNoWriMo icon, for a Facebook group for lesbians/dykes who are writing novels during NaNoWriMo this November, and/or who have lesbian/dyke characters in the novel they're going to be doing; or who are friends/family offering moral support to either of the above. Dunno if anyone will join; guess we'll see. Meantime I'll use this for my NaNo posts here too.

NaNoWriMo 2007: What I'm gonna write & how I'm gonna write it

2007-09-28T12:48:00.000-08:00

It was a cold-arse night two years ago — evening, really, just after work, but this is Alaska, so it was dark, & yeah cold (& I say "arse" instead of "ass" for the benefit of my non-Amurrican friends who speak different brands of English) — & I was walking from the bus stop at Northern Lights & Seward Hwy. to a café to meet my sweetie, & as I was crossing in front of Sears the question came into my head:

What does cold feel like?

Pretty obvious, you say. Damn right. But I'm a writer, so next thing comes into my head was, Now who would be asking that question? And immediately after that: And who would she be asking? (Notice how I'd already made one decision: that the asker was a she; the one being asked became a she pretty damn quick too.) And on from that: What would be their circumstances, such that such a question would be asked?

Well, just as much as I'm a dyke (hence she & she), so am I a great lover of science fiction, so: by the time I'd gotten across Benson Boulevard & into the warmth of Café Felix to join my honey for tea, I knew that my characters were two young women who lived on a planet in the late, but still very cold, stages of terraforming. She #1, the asker, had never been but briefly outside the warmth of the habitats in which most of those involved in this project lived; She #2, the asked, had been. And #2 would take #1 out there, so she could know what cold was, firsthand. They'd also become lovers, of course, though the point here is not a love story per se.

That was about it. I had the idea, it floated around in the back of my mind.

Then last winter came about, & the dark of November, more cold-arse nights. Under the influence of the cold, the story began slowly to embroider itself. Completely in my head, until one day maybe last February I wrote some of it down, maybe a page. No further, because that's when I decided I'd be doing NaNoWriMo this November, & I want all the writing to be fresh, to save as much as possible for the discovery of the writing. But I will add that somehow I decided the first time I previews of the Showtime series "The Tudors" that #2, the asked, will be named Boleyn; #1 is probably going to be named Maev, not quite sure yet. At the story's commencement, they are both 17, meeting each other again for the first time since they were 12, when some disgrace or another sent Boleyn's parents, & her with them, into some kind of exile, maybe assignment to hardship duty at some remote facility of the terraforming project.

We'll see what else comes out in the first draft of writing.

How I'll do it: on a blog right here at blogger.com. It'll be a private blog, for copyright etc. reasons, but I'll be inviting friends & family to the blog so they can read it if they want, & to comment or even make story suggestions. If you're interested, just ask. Just be aware that a first draft written at such a pace won't be polished. But I'm not a half bad writer even on the fly, if I've got my momentum going.

Stay tuned.

Oh. The title of the novel? Cold.

NaNoWriMo 2007: What it is

2007-09-28T12:14:00.001-08:00

I've heard about it for several years; this year I've decided to do it. But before I say further, perhaps I should explain what it is.

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month; here's its website, & here's the article about it on Wikipedia. The basic idea is to write a short novel's worth of material — 50,000 words — in a month, an average of 1,667 words per day, which is about 6 pages of double-spaced manuscript. The guys who made this event up held it the first time in July; since then they've done it in November to take advantage of the crappy weather, so they say. I reckon it'll take some creativity be sure Thanksgiving doesn't get in the way, but on the other hand that's also a four-day weekend so that's more full days for writing. And of course despite the word "National" in the event's title, it's not restricted to U.S. citizens, so all you non-U.S.ers don't have to worry about Thanksgiving anyway. (Though perhaps you have other November holidays to worry about.)

The reason I haven't done NaNoWriMo before is because I've already had a novel-in-progress, which requires a bit more thought than one month would give it. Obviously, since I'm still working on it. And why take on another project that might distract from the one already going? Well, partly because what with this & with that, lots of my writing efforts have been sabotaged (including self-sabotaged) already. I decided to do NaNoWriMo mainly for one reason: to clean out clogs in my pipes, to get the creative flow & momentum going again, to just get down & get to work. And then, once the month is over, to keep that momentum.

The NaNoWriMo "rules" (most of which are based on the honor system, since they don't check up on you) say that a na-novel needs to be a new project — i.e., people shouldn't be working on stuff they've already worked on. All the work of the month, every word set down, should be "new" work. Fine by me. I've actually got a project in mind, that came into my head one cold night two winters ago — maybe it was even a November night. But that's for a separate blog post.

The earworm rush is on

2007-09-27T08:03:00.000-08:00

I was doing my prep for the day this morning when I noticed I had a song stuck in my head — they call it an earworm — in this case, the theme song from "Beverly Hillbillies." Why, I thought, why do I have the theme song from "Beverly Hillbillies" running through my head? This is annoying. And I quickly ransacked my mind for a remedy.

Which was this:

The bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle
And the <something (hills?)> the greenest green in Seattle
Like a beautiful child
growing up free & wild
full of hopes & full of fears
full of laughter full of tears
full of <something> through the years
in Seattle....

Recognize that? It's the theme song from "Here Come the Brides," an old TV series about lumberjacks (remember David Soul? Bobby Sherman?) in early Seattle & the potential brides imported from New Bedford, Massachusetts. I haven't seen this show seen since I was a kid when it last aired in 1970. But I still knew the music well enough to have it as an earworm.

Then, as I was driving to work, it occurred to me that the earworms seemed to be traveling — from Beverly Hills, to Seattle — why, they seemed to be moving —

North to Alaska
They're goin' north, the rush is on

(Starring John Wayne, no less.)

Apparently the earworms went through San Fransisco too fast for their hearts to get stuck there. Too bad. Then maybe my mind could've been left in peace.

Reset

2007-09-26T14:22:00.000-08:00

A few things have gradually fallen by the wayside since my period of depression last year around this time. And so, time to reestablish some default settings in my life, hence the title of this post. In terms of daily habits, it's been going on three days thus far, in the areas of: physical activity; food; writing; keeping in touch with friends & loved ones; work; finances — amongst others.

Potato attack

2007-06-27T11:41:00.000-08:00

Now, here's the kind of item that blogs are made of...

...at least sometimes. A nice way to come back to posting here now & then.

This comes by way of the Alaska Newsreader blog at the Anchorage Daily News, but it originally appeared in the Unalaska Advertiser's police blotter:

6/19/07. Tue. 0828. Suspicious Person/Activity – Court officer reported that the court building had been bombarded with a baked potato. An officer responded and noted potato and cheese on both the building and windows. No investigative leads were discovered.

(Unalaska is a fishing town in the Aleutian Islands.)

Dissolve

2006-11-17T15:03:00.000-09:00

It was as I'd hoped yesterday: the grey was dissolving. Though it took a night's sleep to really turn the trick. Not quite enough sleep — I'm still pretty tired — but at least I feel more than dead inside now.

Dissolving is very much how it felt, how it often feels when the grey begins to leave. Maybe the pit too, I'm not sure. In either case, though, there's strong physical sensation that goes with the feeling of unease & depression, especially in the gut/womb area. So when it goes it's like a mass of some sort being broken up & dissolving away. But I wasn't certain, having been up later than I'd hoped last night, that it would really go all the way, just because of not enough sleep. Then I woke this morning, hitting the snooze on my Palm (which has acted as my alarm clock for several months now), feeling the weight of Vai, my cat, against me, & I thought, It's gone. But I didn't know for sure until I'd been up for awhile, because often I don't know. Often when it's still there, I don't know until I've been vertical for some time, & the grey slides back into place. It didn't today, thankfully.

It's also like a fever breaking. And with that analogy in mind, I'm taking care not to push myself now anymore than I did yesterday. Fever broken doesn't mean the ordeal's over. Still need bed rest. Still, in my case, feel fatigue & the potential to return to grey, if I am unwise.

Not that grey is a bad color, by the way. This is a particular kind of grey... dusty & bleak.

Tonight: vegging out a bit with the TV. The boy, when he returned from his summer/early fall job in King Salmon, turned me into a Battlestar Galactica fan, & now I've seen all of Seasons 1 & 2 on DVD, I'm entering the middle of the first half of Season 3 by having upgraded my cable service a couple of evenings ago. Too bad I missed several Season 3 episodes already, but I'll just have to snatch them in reruns I guess. In the meantime, I've caught up on the story by reading episode synopses. But I'm afraid Rozz might come back to a TV addict. Ewwwww.

The grey

2006-11-16T16:31:00.000-09:00

Depression, despair, blah blah blah: whatever one might call it, it's been a factor of my life for a lotta years — all of my adult life, & some before, at least as far back as the summer after my junior year in high school. Perhaps, given limbo (see below), as far back as sixth grade.

My extensive experience leads to a language about it. Thus, I can classify it into three major modes:

limbo, which is usually so low level as to be unnoticed except in hindsight;
the grey, which is functional but emotionally dead;
the pit, which is quite terrible. I seldom go into the pit anymore, & when I do, I'm pretty fast at getting out again, but it's highly unpleasant while it lasts.

I'd say I've been in limbo for several weeks. Had a brief but very unpleasant bout with the pit early last week, then was okay... & now, for the past three days, the grey.

The grey is like a great grey landscape of bleakness, just dust & stones. Emotionally dead: I can't rouse me, nor can anyone else, to laughter or fun, certainly not joy; but nor can I be roused to great negative passions like hatred, anger. Annoyance, maybe. It's hard to talk in any but the business sense, by which I mean I can conduct the necessary communications to accomplish my job, or buy something at the store, but it's not good for banter, it's not good for discussion of politics or my feelings, it's not good for intimacy. Better off to leave me alone. Better for me to be left alone. No, correct that: it's can be very good to have company, but company needs to be quiet & nondemanding. I need not to be made to talk.

It's not like the pit, when I desperately need to talk & friends to listen & touch, hold, let me know it will be okay.

So how do I get out of the grey? Pretty much as I get out of the pit, other than what I need of friends is different. So, I get lots & lots of sleep. I make sure I'm still eating well. I don't have high expectations of myself. I vedge out. I pull back from overcommitments as well as commitments to stuff that prevents me from doing the good stuff (like writing) that feeds my spirit. And when my energy picks up, I do that good stuff that feeds my spirit.

In some ways it's just as well this is happening: as with last week's pit, this week's grey is forcing me to reevaluate a few things, & to make changes that will hopefully kick not just the grey in the butt, but also the limbo that has surrounded me for the past few weeks.

I feel like the grey is kinda dissolving right now. The fact that I can write this is evidence of it. Aa couple more good night's sleep will probably kick it, enough that I can have more energy to take care of the changes that need to happen.

So... that's where I'm at.... & that's where I'm going....

Rozz's last day in Anchorage

2006-08-31T12:01:00.000-08:00

Rozz departs late tonight, or rather tomorrow extreeeeeeeeemely early, on a redeye flight to Seattle to go to acupuncture school. It won't be until December that she gets a break to come home for Christmas. In fact, a three-year program, with only three 3-week breaks per year. So we'll be doing a lot of the long distance relationship thing.

I think we'll be fine.

But all the same, I've got the butterflies right now.

A job for the boy

2006-06-23T16:26:00.000-08:00

Okay, so he's a man now. Well, just as my mom would tell me I'd always her little girl, Jesse will always to me be "the boy." Said with affection, of course. Of course. Yes.

Anyway, the boy called me up at work, & looks like he's got a job! Not going to blurt our where out here publicly on the Internet, but it's in a place whose work I respect, he'd be getting $10/hour, & he might be starting Monday. Or at least what the guy told him was, bring your Social Security card on Monday. So Jesse was going to head downtown to the Federal Building with every ID he could get hold of to see about getting a card to replace the one in the wallet that was stolen from him in school one day a few months ago.

He's pretty excited. He's eager to be able to contribute to rent & other household needs. And I think he'll find it pretty exciting to have some leftover to do with what he wills, too.

Now that's a thought right there, with these changes afoot. Assuming Rozz gets the finances together to actually go to SIOM, Jesse & I are going to be... well. Roommates. There's still a family relationship, of course. And I reckon that as he begins to earn, I'll be helping him figure out how to handle his own budget, for real. He did have classes in those kinds of skills when he was in school (sure wish they'd've done that for me when I was a kid), but there's a difference between the theoretical from out of a workbook, & the reality of actually having an income, & actually having bills.

Meanwhile, looks like we need to have a celebration tonight.

Summer solstice

2006-06-21T17:33:00.000-08:00

Solstice. A changing of the year, from increase to decrease.

Well, that's summer solstice anyway. Winter solstice goes the other way. It's very yin-yangy, how the longest day holds the seed of the dark of the year, & the shortest day holds the seed of the year's light.

It wasn't until I came up to Alaska that I felt it. In the Lower 48 you notice how much lighter it is in the summer, & how much darker in the winter — but you don't notice it like you do here. Even this far south of the Arctic Circle (which I've been north of only once), night never becomes as pitch dark at the height of summer as it does southward of here. And in winter, well, on some days I never see sunlight, just depending on whether I leave my office or not (I have no windows), or whether my coworker across the suite has his office door open (he has windows). So I notice it. And every solstice, summer or winter, I feel the seed of its opposing solstice in it. On a day like today, bright as it is, I feel a bit blue.

I was going to say that I wasn't afraid of change, but that'd be a lie. I'm afraid of change, yes I am. But not so afraid of it that I can't roll with it & be with it & sometimes even rejoice in it. Just like crisis: "opportunity rides on a dangerous wind." Change isn't always dangerous, though often enough it is. In any case, there's opportunity inherent in there, be I only positioned to see & make use of those opportunities.

I'm afraid of the changes in our lives right now as Rozz prepares to be gone from here for three years, as we prepare for the less radical but definitely unpleasant task of finding a new apartment & moving. But I guess we'll work it through.

Changes

2006-06-20T16:34:00.000-08:00

My birthday was a few months ago, but I kept forgetting to take the personal holiday off that comes with it, as a job benefit, until now. End of the fiscal year coming up, don'tcha know, & these personal holidays are by way of "use it or lose it." So I took today & went on up to Side Street for some writing.

Several changes in the offing or the actuality today:

First, I had to make a new hole in my belt because it was growing too loose. This is the second time I've had to make a new hole this year — I think the first was in mid-April sometime. This is evidence that my spare tire is becoming more spare, in spite of my weight still being the same. But with all that walking & biking & dancing I've been doing, on top of my change of diet (see Terveys for details on all of that), I've probably been putting on muscle that's taken the place of lost fat. Muscle weighs about 3 times as much as the same volume of fat — i.e., muscle is much more compact. Though hovering for four months at the same weight is still kinda bothering me, so I plan to see if there are more adjustments I can make to how I eat & exercise. First & foremost thing being: picking up the dumbbells & barbell again.

Second, this isn't really a new since we had decided on it a few weeks ago: we're shortly to be moving. We've already put in our notice with our landlady for a move at the end of July. This is simply to find a more affordable place, as things have been too tight for too long. I hate moving, but there y'go: sometime you just gotta do it.

Third, I got a new cell phone. This is to replace the cell phone I fritzed out by wading up to my tits across a creek on Memorial Day with my cell phone forgotten in my vest pocket. And this time, it's a Nokia, so I am finally being a good little Finn in my choice of cell phone.

Fourth, Rozz showed up at Side Street to give me the good news: she's been accepted to the acupuncture school she interviewed with when we were down in Seattle in January. She had a second interview yesterday over the phone, & felt pretty nervous about one of the questions they asked, but that's all forgotten now.

Now come the butterflies. Three years: assuming she can get the finances together to actually go, that's how long she'll be down there, with only three three-week breaks each year. I won't be moving to Seattle, nor will Jesse.

We've talked about this for a long time, so we have some preparation. How to keep our relationship alive & strong when we're separated by a two or three hundred dollar plane flight. But yeah, it's still a bit scary.

Eye contact

2006-06-09T12:51:00.000-08:00

I was on my bike at the intersection of Northern Lights & Lake Otis, waiting to cross Lake Otis. This is a busy intersection, so it's not one I mess with: I wait for the light. Along came a pickup truck, right up beside me, signaling a right turn. The driver, a middle-aged woman, was primed to go. She was one of those drivers who is itchy to go — she kept releasing the brake so her truck would jump forward a few inches. I remembered something I'd read a couple of weeks ago, probably on the Municipality of Anchorage's "Ride [a bike] to Work Day": make eye contact. Be sure the driver is aware of you before crossing the intersection.

Good advice, I thought, when I saw her truck jump forward another couple inches. So I looked at her. She looked back at me. Eye contact. Good.

The light changed, showing the walking figure that indicated that I or any pedestrian had the right of way. But also, the pickup jumped forward again.

So I looked at the driver again. She looked back at me. Eye contact, & a hand gesture: go. So I went.

I biked down Lake Otis, made my shortcut across the UAA campus, got onto the sidewalk up Providence Drive, & — a few minutes after my encounter with the pick-up — was there on my bike at the intersection of Providence Drive & UAA Drive, waiting to cross UAA Drive. This, too, is a busy intersection, not to be messed with. So I sat there waiting for my signal. Along came a small white car, crosswise to me, its young female driver intent on making a right turn. She pulled right smack in front of where the sidewalk ramps down to the street for wheelchairs & bikes & other sidewalk-sized wheeled conveyances — right smack dab in my way. She craned her head to the left, watching the oncoming traffic for a break so she could make her right turn.

She didn't see me at all. Not when she arrived, though there I'd been sitting, on a blue bike with a blue windbreaker & a blue bike helmet — pretty damn obvious, really. But she never looked to her right. She was only concerned with the oncoming traffic to her left. Eye contact? No such thing here.

The light changed in my favor. But the driver didn't notice that anymore than she noticed me. I started shouting, trying to get her attention: she was in my way, & she wasn't aware of me to begin with. Her windows were rolled all the way up (it was a cool morning), & perhaps her radio or stereo was on too loud; at any rate, she didn't here me. Then I made my mistake: I edge my bike off the curb in front of her car, still shouting to get her attention.

She saw the break in traffic she was looking for, & let her foot off the brake. Her car moved forward a foot, maybe two. Maybe she even had her foot on the accelerator. Then she turned to look where she was going & finally — finally! — she saw me, her mouth a round O of shock & surprise as she slammed on the brakes to barely avoid hitting me.

I was relieved to find myself still upright & astride my bike, but I was plenty angry too. She rolled down her window, apologizing, but I'm afraid that I wasn't very receptive — I was shouting, "You need to look both ways!" & "It was my right of way & you were right in my *#@&*$# way!!!" etc. I told André at work later, "That driver needs a remedial driver's ed course... but I guess maybe I gave her one."

But it was me too. She would have been in the wrong had she hit me. But though I had the right of way, it wouldn't have done me much good if I was a pancake splat on the road. She needed to look both ways; I needed to have eye contact. Before I put myself in the path of her car.

Update: The much briefer Start Walking version of this story, along with a rundown of just how rundown I felt today, can be found at Terveys.

Superdykes

2006-05-30T12:47:00.000-08:00

So DC Comics, originator of such comic book heroes as Superman & Batman, is now unveiling a new lesbian superhero: Batwoman, who is actually a recast of a minor DC Comics character who I gather was killed off in the late '70s.

Per the New York Times:

Another effort to link old and new characters [several already having been mentioned in the article] centers on Kathy Kane, the gay Batwoman who will appear in costume for the first time in a July issue of "52." Batwoman was introduced in 1956, but she was one of several, often silly additions to the Bat family, including Ace the Bat-Hound (1955), Bat-Mite (1959) and Bat-Girl (1961). In her latest incarnation, Batwoman is a wealthy, buxom lipstick lesbian who has a history with Renee Montoya, an ex-police detective who has a starring role in "52."

Well, that's good. And bad. It's nice to have a lesbian enter the realm of superheroism — much more one who actually has a relationship of some form with another lesbian, instead of being the only lesbian in her world — but a wealthy socialite lesbian? Okay, I guess some do exist, but geez, how many more of us are just regular everyday people who have to work their hineys off to pay their bills, without the help of an accountant.

And whaddaya bet that Kathy Kane & Renee Montoya are the only two lesbians you ever even see in Gotham City? You know how it goes in mass media: it's either only one lesbian all alone (more likely a gay man), or it's just one couple. When we have a pretty wide & various community ourselves, y'know?

The NYT goes on:

Even so, it's something of a surprise that there are any gay characters hanging out in Gotham City. Last year DC issued a cease-and-desist letter to a New York art gallery for displaying watercolors by Mark Chamberlain that depicted Batman and Robin in intimate positions. "That's not what this is about," Mr. DiDio said. "We're basically showing a different cross section of the world."

Oh now, that's a shame. No slash? What are you gonna do about all those horny lesbians just hankering to see Laura Croft get it on with...? oh well, whoever, just so long as Laura looks just like Angelina Jolie, & the other character looks just like whoever the horny lesbian reader happens to be.

And why no Batman & Robin? Why, it just positively makes you hunger for the Rage comic books as written by Michael Novotny & drawn by Justin Taylor in "Queer as Folk." Queer superheroes, living & protecting in queer communities, complete with sex. Do us dykes deserve any less?

Which is just another way of saying: I really really doubt that Marvel & DC Comics can give us the kinds of lesbians that really reflect anything real about our lives.

Not that we should expect them to, I guess. Mass media never does, no matter whether you're talking about lesbians & gays, or anyone else. It's still good that they're doing a lesbian Batwoman. But if I were looking for dyke heroes, that's not where I'd look. I'd look in our own writings, & our own lives.

Dirty feet

2006-05-28T22:19:00.000-08:00

It's been plenty warm for the past week, and I haven't been wearing shoes at all. Instead: sandals. But since I'm also doing an awful lot of walking, it means my feet get pretty dirty. This is the result of today's walk to & from Kaladi Brothers at Title Wave, my regular Sunday writing venue (& more news on writing progress in Field of Words), which on the way back included a little trip along a dirt trail by Westchester Lagoon. Rozz was with me. Thanks to taking a longer route to/from Kaladi Brothers than our normal direct route, we both walked over 10,000 steps without a lot of extra effort (more on that in Terveys, today's Start Walking news).

The air was clear today after last evening's smoky atmosphere — due, I learned from a glance at the front page of the Anchorage Daily News, to a fire at Pt. McKenzie. I haven't read the story on it yet, to know what caused the fire or how big it was or if it's completely out. But it's a reminder that, yes, we are now in fire season, & yesterday's is undoubtedly not the only smoky sky we'll experience this summer.

Now I'm home, my feet are clean, I've done a bit of picture processing & blogging, & now it's time to close up & go back to spend some time with Rozz.

Field of Words: Breaking through on Ophelia

2006-05-28T22:12:00.000-08:00

Some good news on writing progress; full scoop in Field of Words.

Horsetail forest

2006-05-23T14:04:00.000-08:00

The hill up Arctic Boulevard between the Chester Creek valley & Fireweed Lane is covered with horsetail in the summertime. As of yet they're young, but beautiful for all their commonness.

Flex

2006-05-15T18:05:00.000-08:00

People Mover bus & downtown Anchorage

This week we're beginning flex-time for the summer, as we've done the past few years. The first summer we did it, I worked four ten-hour days & had the fifth workday free. I took Wednesdays off & devoted it to writing. Or I tried to devote it to writing: in practice, I'd be so tired from the long workdays that I'd spend a lot of my writing day falling asleep at my table in the café at Barnes & Noble.

So in succeeding summers I did four nines & a four, as I say it in shorthand: working four days of the week from 7 AM to 5 PM (with an hour for lunch), but on Wednesdays working just in the morning, & using the afternoon for writing. This worked much better, especially since it got me up & out of the house a lot quicker on the writing day anyway. That's the schedule I used for two or three years in succession.

Last year, though, I switched to an even better schedule: taking Monday, instead of Wednesday, as my half-day. That way with the writing I can build on whatever momentum I've got going from Sunday, Sunday evening & Monday morning being far less of a pause in the work than a longer interval. Since I'm really working hard to get more momentum with my writing, this seemed like a good schedule this summer too.

So at 11:00, off I went to hop a bus to the other side of town, where my home-away-from-Side Street-away-from-home writing venue has been established as the Kaladi Brothers café next to Title Wave Books. I wouldn't say I got a huge amount of writing done today, but it's a pattern in development at least.

Afterwards, on the walk home, I decided to make good on the Start Walking program by taking a longer route home than usual. So I made my way over to the bike trail that parallels the off-ramp from Minnesota up to Hillcrest Drive & West High, took it down to Westchester Lagoon, & then eastward on the Chester Creek Trail as far as Valley of the Moon Park. (Cross reference: The Start Walking account of this day at Terveys.)

Rocket at Valley of the Moon Park

The deciduous trees are still by & large bare of leaves, but the days have grown warmer, & I got a bit sweaty going home. Still pleasant. Actually, the worst part of things was that I for the Start Walking program I had to count my own steps, because the accurate pedometer still hadn't arrived. I counted to 100 a whole bunch of times, & every time I reached 100 it was stick a finger of my left hand out, or bring it in again, as a marker of another century. I only use my left hand so I can use my right for other things; luckily I have enough short term memory to recall how many times the fingers of my left hand have been completely opened or completely closed, each of which represents 500 steps.

I went actually into the park to get a few pics of the play rocketship that gives the park its other, informal name of Rocketship Park, & then up Arctic to my own street. I established that my longer route was about twice as many steps as the direct route from Kaladi Brothers, & got a good 4200 steps out of it. And was delighted when I got home to find that my Amazon delivery had come through: my new pedometer (& a heart rate monitor) had finally arrived.

Rozz & I watched "Chutney Popcorn." I wouldn't call it a great movie, but it's definitely a good movie: about an Indian (as in India, not Native American) dyke living in NYC, & her sister can't get pregnant, so she offers to act as a surrogate mother for her. I very much liked the main character, & was very appreciative that #1 there is an actual community of dykes around her, including her girlfriend, instead of her being "the only dyke in the world" as is so common in movie depictions of lesbian/gay life; & #2 her family dealt with it & talked about it. Her girlfriend's mother was pretty cool too.

Field of Words: Hiisi

2006-05-14T22:11:00.000-08:00

An internet acquaintance of mine started up something called The Scheherazade Project, basically a way of sharing stories on whatever themes she throws out from week to week. This week's theme is fear. The piece I wrote is called "Hiisi." Read it at Field of Words.

Sunflowers for my mother

2006-05-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

Mom, these are some of the sunflowers Mark's work sent for Dad, because they were your favorite flower. I was always lousy at remembering Mother's Day or your birthday early enough to get a card to you. But Mom, today I remember & love you. I'm taking good care of myself. I promise.

ICE as an acronym

2006-05-11T12:03:00.000-08:00

It's a damn good acronym. It stands for Immigration & Customs Enforcement, one of the successor agencies to Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) when INS was reorganized under the Department of Homeland Security.

Now, I've always thought that Department of Homeland Security was a very Orwellian name, appropriate to the New Orwellian Future of Bush/Cheney. The only thing wrong with the acronym ICE in fitting under this paradigm is how honest it is: no doublespeak here. INS was scary: ICE is scarier.

I haven't said much about it through all the immigration protests going on these days, because for self-protection I have had to maintain a reserve in face of the daily news. I've got a problem with despair, see, & to survive, I've got to keep myself from getting too damn close to the edges of the pit. But of course, this time last year a certain Australian I love was visiting in Great Falls, Montana, & little did we know that she was on the cusp of being under ICE's control.

Yep, at the end of that visit to a "friend," she was dobbed in to the U.S. Border Patrol (we are about 99% certain that the dobber was the supposed friend in Great Falls), was arrested, spent a few frightening days & nights in a county jail in Havre, Montana before being transferred to a contract facility in Aurora, Colorado — under contract, that is, to ICE. Where she came face to face with some of the other stories of misery & injustice & grief of women caught up in this nation's immigration net.

She was in detention a total of four weeks before we managed to bond her out, last June. Bonded her out, got her back to Detroit on a Greyhound, & just before her court date in November bought her a plane ticket home. Immigration Court agreed with the ticket: they said, go home, & get this paperwork signed. So she went back to Oz on the ticket I bought her, got her paperwork signed at the American embassy in Sydney, & got word back from the Australian post office that her paperwork proving she'd left the U.S. as per the court's order had arrived with the appropriate office of ICE in early January.

End of story, or it should be.

But here, five months later, ICE still hasn't closed the case. And therefore my credit cards that I used to secure her bond are still in hock to the bond company, unusable.

Bastards. Bastards. They will take your money in a minute, but damned if they'll let you have control of it back. And yes, this is a hardship.

Well. The woman at the bond company said she'd call up the ICE office tomorrow & try to find out if I would ever be able to get use of my credit back again.

Terveys: Start Walking: Sick at home

2006-05-09T19:02:00.000-08:00

Having received my Start Walking pedometer, my first day on program was marked by staying home sick with a cold. But it got better over the course of the day, enough that I danced for over an hour. Unfortunately, the pedometer is next to useless. Read more at Terveys.

Biking: A Saturday tradition

2006-05-06T23:43:00.000-08:00

Or it's becoming one.

Now, I considered (as I did last Saturday) posting this in my health blog Terveys instead of this one, but I decided that, hey, this isn't just a separate topic now: this is something that I'm integrating into my life. Not only that, but consider that my stated purpose for this blog — besides the sometimes trivial record of the workaday details of my life — is to write here about what puts the cool breeze in me. Doing what I'm doing is certainly doing that.

So back to the point: this is the second Saturday in a row I've taken my bike to go downtown for writing at Side Street Espresso, my favorite writing venue. Today I even managed to get all the way up the bike trail curve around the hill next to L Street without having to dismount & walk it. Huff & puff, but hey, gets my metabolism going, & I know I'll get stronger with time.

And maybe with properly inflated tires, too. I was gonna pump some air before I left home, but the bike pump had magically dissappeared. So I called up the boy, who had spent the night at a friend's house, & asked him about it. Yep. He's got it in his backpack. Just in case he ran over some glass on the bike trail. I forgot to tell him what Rozz pointed out after I concluded the conversation with him: a lot of good the bike pumps gonna do him if glass rips a big hole in his bicycle tire.

But never mind. My tires are a little low, but I made it. Got some productive work done, & when Side Street closed at 3:00, I headed down to the Coastal Trail.

It was warmer today than last week, though quite a bit windy. There was an Alaska Railroad passenger train sitting down at the depot when I got down to the start of the trail, & after a couple of minutes pedaling I could hear it come up behind me, so I hopped of my bike to get some piks. Got quite a number of pics, in fact, because for the inscrutable reasons that only railroad employees know, the train later backed up past me again, kids waving at me as it passed. Presumably it went back all the way to the depot.

Then a little later, while I was sitting down just offtrail for a little picnic lunch, it came by again. And then it backed up again. Maybe it came by again later, too, but by then I'd finished my lunch & hopped back on my bike to continue my ride. Was this just some little Saturday "see what it's like to ride the train" quickie for the tourists? Tourists, in early May, before the trees have even popped with buds? (These people in the picture to the right weren't tourists, just other Coastal Trail fans passing by.)

Did I mention the wind? When I was eating lunch, it blew a sandwich bag away once, & the lid to my container away later on. I managed to retrieve both items before they blew off onto the mud flats, & got everything weighed down better so it wouldn't happen again. That's my picnic spot in the photo to the right, where the little white items that look like trash, but are really my food containers, are sitting.

A little cold on my hands as I went down the trail — or up, there are a couple of slight hills that raised my metabolism again huff puff huff puff.

Last week there was still a lot of ice on Westchester Lagoon, though it had melted away from shore; this week it was all gone. The trees are gonna pop any moment.

After I got home & wiped the sweat off my beaded brow, Rozz & I headed down to the local Lutheran church where one of her Tai Ch'i students was demonstrating the 20-movement form she'd been learning in the church's first annual talent show. It was a lot of fun! From the little boy who sang a song to the pastor who regaled us with lumberjack tales told in Robert Service-esque poems, it was a real taste of the kinds of face-to-face communities that can still form even in this mass media age. Call it the positive side of Christianity. I was actually sad that we had to leave after intermission, because we had to get our Natural Pantry shopping in before they closed at 8:00.

From there, we went to our best friend Chris' house so that he could try out on us the really cool game that he & his girlfriend in Utah have been inventing. I'd tell you more about it, but I'm sworn to secrecy. Suffice it to say, spending time with Chris & Rozz playing that game was a great cap-off to a great day.

Even if my cold that started up yesterday was growing steadily worse.

Terveys: Morning routine

2006-05-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

My morning routine has changed a lot since end of December, when I exchanged my long-lived bad exercise & dietary habits for a healthier way. Today's morning routine is described at Terveys.

Terveys: Bike day #4

2006-05-05T12:11:00.000-08:00

Another day riding to work on the bike. Read all about it at Terveys.

Montana "seditionists"

2006-05-04T12:16:00.000-08:00

As a born & bred Montanan with German ancestry on my paternal grandmother's side, I embrace these heroes of sedition.

Especially since all it was really was free speech.

Mont. Governor Pardons 78 in Sedition Case
May 4, 4:49 AM (ET)

By MATT GOURAS

HELENA, Mont. (AP) - For casually saying that American troops were "getting a good licking" in France during World War I, a blacksmith named August Lambrecht was imprisoned for seven months in 1919.

After being released, he and his wife fled Montana for fear of being imprisoned again. He died in Portland, Ore., in 1957 - unable to outrun his conviction for sedition.

It was a black mark his family felt was grossly unfair.

"This is America," said his great-grandson, David Gabriel. "Having freedom of speech and saying what is on your mind doesn't make you a criminal and it shouldn't."

Gabriel joined about 40 family members at a ceremony Wednesday where the governor signed pardons for nearly 80 people convicted of sedition amid the war's anti-German hysteria.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer said the state was "about 80 years too late" in pardoning the mostly working-class people of German descent who were convicted of breaking what was then one of the harshest sedition laws in the nation.

"This should have been done a long time ago," said Schweitzer, the son of German immigrants. They were the first posthumous pardons in Montana history.

The list of those pardoned included farmers, butchers, carpenters and cooks. One man was charged merely for calling the conflict a "rich man's war" and mocking food regulations during a time of rationing....

Sounds a little too close for comfort, when you think of what some of the virulent Bush supporters would like to do with critics of either Bush or his unneccessary & immoral war.

Good job to the Montana Sedition Project for their work restoring the honor, if belatedly, of these common people.

Terveys: Start walking

2006-05-04T12:03:00.000-08:00

My job & our health insurer have started up a Start Walking program to run through September 30, to encourage employees to walk or do other exercise to increase their physical fitness. I've decided to sign up for it. Read more about it at Terveys.

The god thing

2006-04-30T10:32:00.000-08:00

From the continuing conversation in an online group about life philosphies/religion/spiritual paths -- one person there says stuff about religion, especially the organized varieties thereof, that could almost have come from my mouth, with one interesting difference: she is an atheist; I am not.

Or at least I use the word "god" — what's that all about? This is what I wrote there.

Though I believe in god, I think the way I believe in it is pretty much on par with what many self-defined atheists & agnostics say. god (lower case g) isn't to me some transcendent Boss of Bosses: my definition is, god = the universe & everything in it, whether we understand it or not. god is one with all that is, has been, will be, not separate or "superior" to us. We're all just part of it. Is there an afterlife? Beats me. Will we be judged? I doubt it — except in the moment-to-moment of life when we're judged by ourselves & each other. If justice comes from god, it comes not from some Big Guy in the Sky, but from ourselves & how we treat ourselves & one another.

I've got the same issues with organized religion that many atheists & agnostics do. Maybe the only difference between their fundamental perspective & mine is that they see the wonder & incredibleness of the universe & world & all that's in it & don't feel need to call that anything in particular, whereas I apply the name "god" to it. But with a lower-case g because god is as common as rock, as common as a molecule of oxygen, as common as anything.

Why is it that I want to use that word? What does it do for me? I guess because in part it points toward the mystery. god is common, just really the fabric of the universe, but it's also mystery... we don't know whether we call ourselves atheists or agnostics or Christians or Jews or Muslims or Buddhists or any of the other "ist" & "ism" names how all this works. Any time science learns how to "explain," answers a question, it gives rise to umpteen further question: there is no end to them because we, just tiny motes of what-god-is, can't fit any more into our understanding than what we can fit into our thoughts, our speech, our books. As my calculus tutor used to explain, no system can contain a metasystem. No matter how much we understand, there will always be Mystery beyond that. Which is why, I think, people who are wise are also people with humility: however much they know, they are aware how very little that really is.

Somehow, for me, using that word god keeps me mindful about all that. But I don't think one must use that word to be conscious of it.

I believe that there are as many paths as there are people to follow them -- whether "religious" or not. But I often find people who say being so "accepting" of other people's different paths that they let them get away with all manner of evil. "They were only following their path." "All perspectives are equally valid." Bullshit.

The fundamental judgment I make of people, including myself, is not whether they follow a particular religion, or any religion at all, but whether the things they do & say cause harm. The most simple, most profound, & most succint statement of ethics & spirit that I've ever heard came from the neopagan movement: Harming none, do as you will. But if doing your will causes harm, then damn right I'm gonna judge you for it. And feel that your path sucks the big one. And maybe hate you for it too.

Tramping in the woods

2006-04-29T23:34:00.000-08:00

Lichen forest at the foot of a birch tree

Just in case my earlier bike jaunt wasn't enough exercise for the day, we packed me, Rozz, Jesse, Jesse's dog Sweetheart, & Jesse's bike (unnamed) into the car & drove out to our old neighborhood in East Anchorage at the very edge of Ft. Richardson Military Reservation, where we went for a walk.

Juniper moss

The trail wasn't very good for biking: very muddy. But that was more Jesse's problem than ours, though we did have to take a lot of side trips into the brush to avoid soaking our feet.

But don't call them side trips. They became ends in themselves.

Consider that it's just barely spring here, but most of the trees haven't even budded out in leaves yet, pussywillows but no flowers. To a certain cast of eye, the forest is dead & dreary — little color to it but brown & grey, dead leaves crackling underfoot, the trail in a mush of mud & brown puddles.

Lichen

But look again, & there is so much green: the dark green of black spruce needles, the brighter greens of moss & juniper moss & creeping jenny & club moss carpeting the floor. But what I noticed most this trip was the lichen: all kinds of lichen, & lucky for me my camera takes damn good macros. I took a lot of them.

I gather Jesse rode his bike to the powerline & followed it left as far as it goes before that steep drop to the little tributary creek, then came back, & took a little nap waiting for us. But Rozz was investigating things her way, & I was investigating them mine, with the camera, so by the time we got to the powerline we didn't have much more than time enough to take a look at the wolf scat Jesse had found, fibrous with moose hair, & then head back. (Normally, we have no deadline for a jaunt like this, but we needed to get some groceries at Natural Pantry before the closed at 8:00.)

Jesse in the saddle

We all cut through the woods through most of the walk back to the trailhead, Jesse pushing his bike along. He found a really cool cottonwood tree that I was called over to see: a huge thick grandma (or grandpa, didn't check its sex) of a tree that sometime in its youth had for some reason dipped its trunk downwards, toward the ground, missing it by a foot or so before it grew upwards again.

This was our first trample in the Ft. Rich woods this year. It's good to go there, every time. I miss living so close that it's just a step out the door & a walk across the parking lot.

And then we went & got our groceries, & then we stopped by Blockbuster & got some DVDs, &amp; then we went home & watched them.

Biker dyke in the making

2006-04-29T13:31:00.000-08:00

Bike helmet & pomegranate tea

Took the bike up today to Side Street for writing. Instead of taking the steep hill up E Street to get downtown, I took the bike trail towards Westchester Lagoon and cut right to take the more gradual climb along a bike trail that curves around the hill next to where L Street comes down & turns into Minnesota — that trail eventually runs out & connects up with the sidewalk along 15th Avenue. Didn't quite make it all the way up the hill before I had to dismount — huffing & puffing — but hey, I'm sure it got my metabolism moving. When I got my breath back, I had a ride on the flat the rest of the way to G Street & my favorite writing venue.

Can't say I got a huge amount of writing done, though Deb (co-owner of Side Street with her husband George) complimented me again on my haircut — she says the very short hair softens my features. Spent some time looking through Mountain Bike Anchorage again, to check out what trails might be suitable for my level of fitness & biking expertise, & which trails I'd be better doing afoot. Then I did do a bit of writing work (will cover that in Field of Words), before Side Street closed at 3:00.

Westchester Lagoon & Chugach Mounains

I rode my bike down to Elderberry Park, ate my lunch, & then took the coastal trail back down to Westchester Lagoon. This gave me a little more of metabolic boost because that stretch of the coastal trail has a few shallow hills. Stopped a few times for pics, more of which can be seen in my On the bike set on Flickr. And then home.

Along the bike trail

2006-04-28T18:44:00.000-08:00

Took the Chester Creek trail home — an easier ride homeward than workward because there's more downhill, less uphill. And I can take my time. So I did, stopping along the way to take a few photos.

Still a lot of overflow from meltwater onto the bike trail at a couple of points, as shown here. Which is one reason I've been taking the street route on the way to work: at that time of morning, this overflow would be ice, something I prefer not to ride on. The culvert tunnel under the Seward Highway still has a lot of ice too.

Raven in flight

2006-04-28T17:01:00.000-08:00

A lucky shot: I have historically had one heckuva hard time getting good photos of ravens in flight.

I've noticed that the ravens don't seem to be leaving town very quickly this year, in fact for the last couple or so years. It used to be that when the seagulls started flying in, the ravens would go; & any ravens that stuck around were likely to undergo major seagull harassment. But down in Homer I've noticed that the ravens, crows, & gulls all seem to coexist fairly peaceably, if not quite as friends. Maybe the ravens up here are fed up with gull attitudes, & have decided to be stubborn? I just know it's nice to have them around. I've got more affection for them, than for gulls.

Good news from the boy

2006-04-28T12:48:00.000-08:00

He passed the reading portion of his high school exit exam! With a whopping good score, too.

He'd already passed the writing & math portions last fall, would've passed the reading too I think if he hadn't forgotten he was testing that day. I was a little surprised — but very pleased — that he passed those, because he'd had problems with them when he'd done the tests before.

He's come a long damn way from when he first arrived with us, having had so chaotic a life that his education was way behind for his age. At age 9, he couldn't read at all, & in fact it wasn't until he was about 13, or maybe it was 14, that he began to read independently.

Never mind that the Alaska high school exit exam requirement is a crock of shit. He passed! Now he can graduate! Yeehaw!

Terveys: Bike day #2

2006-04-28T07:59:00.000-08:00

Second day riding my bike the four miles to work. Read more about it at Terveys.

A brief spiritual history

2006-04-27T12:22:00.000-08:00

In an online group I'm in, the topic came up of our religious/spiritual history, & how it integrates or doesn't integrate with our sexual orientation as lesbians.

Here's the short version, as written there (with some emendations).

1.

Junior high Jesus freak

I was raised in the Episcopal Church (the American version of the Anglican Church), but sometime during the summer after sixth grade I found a sort of emptiness inside of myself that I knew had to do with the god thing. My sister came back from a music camp where some Jesus people stuff had been going on, & next thing you know she & I were the only two Jesus freaks in Columbia Falls, Montana. I used to read anything I could get my hands on about the Rapture, & speaking in tongues, & all kinds of evangelical stuff. I even have a picture to illustrate this ;) — which I usually entitle "Junior high Jesus freak."

I don't know how I reconciled this with being a Trekkie — I was a bigtime fan of the original, & at that time only, series.)

But,

first I was a Jesus freak
& then I turned the other cheek

Which is to say, I started questioning some of the things that the evangelical Christians were saying. For example, if homosexuality was a sin, why did I see in Time magazine that some denominations were ordaining gay ministers? This was long before I came out, too. I also remember reading an article in a Jesus People newspaper from Spokane called The Truth that attempted to explain why Abraham's wife Sarah let her husband take the kid (Isaac) up the mountain to sacrifice hiim like a goat: being a good wife, the story went, she accepted his decision because he was The Man & women always obeyed Their Man. And I thought (but in far less profane language), Fuck that shit! I'd kill Abraham before I let him kill my kid!

But the biggest question was raised by the popular Christian slogan One Way, as in, there is but one way to God, & Christianity is It. The stuff I was reading told me that if a person was a really good caring loving person who treated other people with care & respect & compassion, that person would still go to hell & suffer eternal damnation simply if she or he hadn't accepted Jesus as her/his personal savior.

I decided that a god who would set up things this way was an immoral god, & so by the time I completed junior high, I had ceased being a Christian.

But I never ceased believing in God. Over time this became lower case g: god. Over time, after flirtations with Zen Buddhism, feminist witchcraft, Unitarian Universalism — not to mention getting a B.A. in Religion (1981) — my "confession of faith" gradually became "god is the universe & everything in it."

I have been afflicted all my life with depression & despair, & it is what has probably shaped my spiritual journey more than anything. That's what the hole I felt in my gut at the beginning of my "Jesus freak" period was about. My coming out & acceptance of myself as a lesbian at age 19 when I was in college was the first strong spiritual foundation that I had to deal with that: because I was accepting Who I Am, & beginning to live according to my own integrity, instead of according to arbitrary rules & regulations foisted on me by other people.

2.

After the Aha!

The picture here takes its name from what my sister-in-law termed the aha! experience — a profound spiritual experience I underwent in August 1984, when I stopped hating myself, stopped living continually at the edge of or inside the pit of despair. It happened like this:

I had a long long battle in from about 6th grade to about age 25 with depression & despair. Thought about suicide a lot. Never did attempt it, but that's mostly because I knew it wouldn't be just an attempt. And because I couldn't do that to my family. About age 25, had a spiritual experience (nothing to do with any organized religions though) that put the end to most of the self-hate, though I've never been completely free of the despair or occasional, & sometimes very debilitating, bouts of depression. And still, being a dyke is one of those things which gives me the greatest strength to get through it....

I had been doing a lot of stuff that year (1984) trying to deal w/ my depression/despair stuff. One thing was to get involved for a time w/ a 12-Step group (similar to AA) called Emotions Anonymous. I did a lot of writing about the first three steps, & most crucial was the stuff about "Came to believe in a power greater than ourselves that could restore our sanity" (or however that goes) & "Made a decision to turn our lives & our will over to the care of god as we understood god."

My problem was, how can I turn my life & my will over to the care of someone I don't flat fucking trust? Mind you, I had by that time a B.A. in Religion, knew craploads about a whole big variety of religions, was an adherent of none of them because much as I believed in god (lower-case g), which I define as "the universe & everything in it," I didn't trust any of the Gods that various religions put up as who I should be kowtowing to.

When they told me who to put on the throne
I said no, I will not be ruled
the gods they showed me were tyrants
who displeased me with their judgments,
their injustice, yes, their cruelty.
— from "Mielikki"

So, in short, I made up my own self-defined "religion." I reckoned that the universe & everything in it (god) is awfully damn hard to develop a personal relationship w/, so I had to whittle it down somehow, so I "invented" a sort of big sister/helping spirit/personal guide type of "imaginary" being to act as my personal connection to the "all of the above" that is god.

I named her Mielikki, after the Finnish spirit of woodland. The name comes from the Finnish word mieli which means mind or heart or desire, plus the suffix of endearment -kki. It's sometimes translated as "darling" but to me her name means "my dearest desire." She is an "imaginary" being that is bigger than myself, while at once she is a part of me... like my gut feelings (which have always been more accurate than my conscious brain-thoughts about how to live life). So her "will" is the same a mine: what is best for me, to be most fully me. If that makes sense.

That was February/March of that year that I did that work. Fast forward to August: I was spending about 20 minutes each night before falling asleep doing a sort of meditation breathing in & out to the phrase "Thou art / with me" (a borrowing w/ slight rewrite of part of the 23rd Psalm). Although some things were changing, I was still pretty messed up, still self-hating, & still going a lot into deep ugly pits of suicidal ideation. And then I was fired from my job.

My job was at a bookstore, one of several in a large Alaska-owned chain called the Book Cache, & the reason I was fired made no sense. I got confirmation later that I was fired for being a lesbian. But the important point is that as I was leaving the mall, in a matter of just a few steps down that hallway by the phonebooth, a whole bunch of thoughts went like at-tat-tat-tat through my brain:

"This doesn't make sense. Why me? I should just give up. First last night" [a particularly nasty evening in the pit] "& now this. I'll never be free of this depression. I should just kill myself.... " blah blah blah.

And then: "Thou art / with me."

And with that thought, it all just... changed. I knew my brother & sister-in-law & friends wouldn't let me die in the gutter. I knew I'd get through this, & would find another job. I knew I would be okay. (And I also knew that even if she was just a made up figment of my imagination, Mielikki was right there.)

And I went & got on the bus & went over to my brother's & sister-in-law's house to tell them about it.

Although I've had my bouts in the pit since then, I've never hated myself since, & have generally known that I could get through whatever hard times I have. Well, usually. Mielikki is still here — one of, & the most central of, what I now refer to as my "household gods."

I call this belief in something I can't prove, & even made up, but which is beneficial to me & nonharming to anyone, intentional belief. It works pretty well.

-- Mel

(Mielikki is also the title character in one of my eternally-forthcoming novels, Mistress of Woodland.)

Terveys: Bike day #1

2006-04-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

Finally got my butt off the bus & onto the bike. Read more about it at Terveys.

Hair, not the musical

2006-04-16T15:23:00.000-08:00

Time for a haircut again. A buzz cut, actually — which somehow turned into my preferred hairstyle last year when I did it just to get at the damn folliculitis that was for some reason attacking my hair follicles.

Now I know I need a haircut when it gets long enough that I have to comb it. Or that bit in the top middle sticks up funny & makes me look like a kewpie doll. [wince] That's almost bad as my previous indication of needing a haircut: someone telling me that I bore a similarity to the songwriter Paul Williams. [double-wince]

(Once long ago someone told me I looked like Jodie Foster. As if! But that beat being compared with Paul Williams.)

I used to have fairly long hair when I was younger — thick, at least shoulder length, I think at one point it even went halfway down my back. I didn't mind that, except I hated my parents' insistence that I wear barettes to keep it out of my eyes. Used to take 'em off as soon as I got out of site of the house. Then at some point during high school my hair began getting a bit thinner, something I attributed to stress but which was more likely to do PCOS, which I was later diagnosed with.

I still kept my long hair until the second year I was in Alaska, when I paid Shaunta, the nine-year-old daughter of the family whose basement room I rented, to cut my hair. It's been short ever since, though I usually get the haircut from someone just a little more experienced with the scissors.

Sphagnum moss & sundew plants

2006-04-14T12:17:00.000-08:00

Ft. Richardson Military Reservation, Anchorage, Alaska. 5 Jul 2003.

This is one of my favorite "early" digitial photos, when I was first really getting a grasp on the power of the macro functions of my camera. I started taking a lot of ground shots: not necessarily focusing on individual plants, but upon the micro-community of several plants that grew wherever it was they were. This one has sundew, sphagnum moss, horsetail, just to name three... it's just so complex & rich. Like life.

Evidence of a visit

2006-04-11T13:18:00.000-08:00

But I'm not sure when this visit occurred. We get a lot of moose in the wintertime — they especially like to chomp on the crab apple trees that hang over the fence from our neighbor's yard.

Moose nuggets are also commonly found in tourist shops, thanks to a local cottage industry in shellacking them & making joke gifts with them — e.g., earrings, knobs on the top of swizzle sticks.

Some people who've viewed this photo on Flickr go ewwwww, but I reckon our backyard with it's winter's worth of Sweetheart poo will look worse.

Tracks

2006-04-02T13:10:00.000-08:00

Just because it's break-up doesn't mean that it's spring. Another snow this morning. By this evening, it had all melted away, but we've still got a lot of the winter-stuff that's still taking its time to melt away.

Candle

2006-03-31T12:10:00.000-09:00

Because I'm thinking a lot about my mom today. This is one of a whole bunch of candles we lit right after I got back from Spokane, two weeks after her death.

Candles

2006-03-31T12:02:00.000-09:00

Because I'm thinking a lot about my mom today....

Excavating

2006-03-29T13:06:00.000-09:00

Well, it really got impossible to drive in and out of our driveway, so we spent a couple of hours with shovels & a borrowed ice-pick to do some major excavation work, try to hurry the opening of our driveway along. Meanwhile, we've gotta park on the street.

Drainage ditches

2006-03-28T13:03:00.000-09:00

Workers from the Municipality came to cut lines in the ice to provide drainage for meltwater into the storm drain right in front of our driveway. This was welcome, because otherwise we live on lake-front property during break-up. But a couple days later, the drainage lines have grown so wide that it'll wreck our car to drive in & out of there.

Meltwater lake

2006-03-25T12:54:00.000-09:00

We took a walk up to Bosco's, the comic book place, to see if if they had V for Vendetta comics, since we'd just seen the movie. Since we brought Sweetheart along we had to take turns hanging out with her outside while the others went inside. I took the first turn, & caught a few breakup shots, like this meltwater lake in Spenard Center's parking lot.

They had a couple of V for Vendetta comics but we didn't buy any. I did enjoy the movie a lot more than I thought I would, & I really appreciated the story of the lesbians imprisoned/killed by the fictional fascist dictatorship, which became a key motivating story for the movie's main characters.

Break-up

2006-03-23T12:39:00.000-09:00

First day of spring.

Last Sunday night/Monday morning, we got about 4 inches of snow. Not quite enough to shut down my workplace the next day. ;(

But since then — ah, warmth! Dare I venture to say, break-up? In earnest, this time, not the fake break-up we got in February. Warm temps by day (that is, above freezing), residential streets turned into slush & meltwater, mud-puddle water flying from people's wheels onto one's windshield... (as I told Rozz last night, break-up is not the time to be out of windshield washer fluid!)... yes! All the signs!

Break-up, for non-Alaskans, is an Alaska term related to but not synonymous with spring. It refers most specifically to the break-up of ice on the big rivers of Alaska — the Yukon, the Kuskokwim, the Koyukuk, etc. — & has over time come to also cover the melting of ice & snow in general. So in urban Anchorage, it's associated less with the great thunderous grinding noises of river ice breaking up, but with the spraying noise from a car or truck moving swiftly through a huge lane-wide puddle of water.

Or the "dammit!" of the person standing at the bus stop in reach of that great arch of spraywater.

Clouds at our feet

2006-03-21T12:41:00.000-09:00

Clouds at our feet
Originally uploaded by yksin.

We were first under clouds, then in deep fog, all the way up to our friend's place on Rabbit Creek Road & Goldenview in south Anchorage. On other days, we look down from our friend's house to the mudflats & waters of Turnagain Arm in northern Cook Inlet; but on this day, we looked down on the clouds we'd driven up through. You'd think with a sky like this it was a hot summer evening, but it was actually early January. Anchorage, Alaska. 5 Jan 2004.

More lack of signs of spring

2006-03-20T12:40:00.000-09:00

One day to spring.

This was our car this morning, before I drove to work. No complaints really: this is Alaska, after all, & we usually have snow this late. Besides, I hear they're getting big snowstorms in the Lower 48.

One day to spring

2006-03-20T12:20:00.000-09:00

Sweetheart in snow.

Just because it's March 20 is no guarantee that spring is just around the corner. We got a big buncha snow, maybe three or four inches, yesterday & this morning. But Sweetheart took it well when I took her out in the backyard this morning for her morning doo-doo-duty.

Septic tank

2006-02-06T12:53:00.000-09:00

"Septic tank" is, according to an Australian friend of mine, Aussie rhyming slang for "Yank."

E.g., Fuck off, septic tank, the near-to-last words to me of another Australian friend — or rather, I guess, ex-friend, as she made it clear in her message last week that she, a "decent person," wants nothing further to do with me. The rest of her message was rife with unfounded accusations based on her radical & paranoid misinterpretion of private emails of yet another Australian friend that this "decent person" took it upon herself to read without permission.

Well, at least a septic tank breaks down the waste, recycles & purifies & returns it to the cycles of life.

Which is just about all I can do with the load of crap this "decent person" unloaded on me.

Weather changes

2006-01-22T12:31:00.000-09:00

Through a bus window on a rainy day. Seattle, Washington, 21 Jan 2006.

Just returned from a trip to the Lower 48. We spent several days visiting my dad & sister in Spokane. This was the trip we'd planned to have happen in late December, before my mom's death led to my having to fly down last month. I'm really glad that all of us (me, Rozz, & Jesse) could go this time. After Spokane, we spent another few days in Seattle staying with my aunt, & also seeing my best friend Lori & her partner.

We also saw a lot of rain. And the Space Needle, which has been something of a matter of family myth since Jesse first came to live with us 9 years ago, when he was just 9. We probably still have, somewhere around, a crummy drawing we did years ago of the Space Needle as I saw it once when I lived in Seattle around Halloween, with a big King Kong figure on it. Then between the three of us we added in the monorail, a stick figure of me hanging from the train, Jesse hanging off my ankle, & Rozz & her dog Whylie making tracks in some glacier on Mount Rainier.

Jesse's wanted to see the Space Needle ever since. Finally he got to. We went to Seattle Center on our last day & spent a couple of hours up on the observation deck. A few other pics are in the Seattle set in my Flickr photostream.

It's not quite as rainy up here. More like snow.

Matanuska Valley farm and Pioneer Peak

2006-01-10T17:01:00.000-09:00

North of Palmer, Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska. 5 Apr 2003.

A couple of years ago, my friend Chris & I went on a photo safari along in the Mat-Su one fine April day. What could be more cool breezier than that?

Four Alaskans die in crash

2006-01-10T07:41:00.000-09:00

The Alaska Army National Guard is mourning the deaths of four crew members killed in a Black Hawk helicopter crash Saturday in Iraq, officials said Monday. The four are the Alaska Army Guard's first combat deaths since World War II.

Names of the dead crew members have not been officially released. Their next of kin have been notified, according to Alaska Guard spokeswoman Kalei Brooks.

The four were with the 1st Battalion, 207th Aviation Regiment. The Black Hawk also carried eight passengers.

— Four Alaskans die in crash: Black Hawk part of Army Guard's 207th — Cause of downing 'absolutely unknown' (Anchorage Daily News, 10 Jan 2006).

There have been other Alaska casualties in Iraq, both dead & wounded. May their families & friends be consoled. May the families, friends, communities of all those killed & harmed by this war be consoled, & find their way to peace. May this war end. May we learn better ways of achieving justice.

Rocks in clear water

2006-01-09T12:23:00.000-09:00

This is how I'm feeling today: clear & clean. A cool breeze feeling (though it's cold water in the picture). Among many things I'm reminded of by these rocks and the water over them, I am reminded of my mom, who loved this lake so much. And me? Some of the first photos of me ever taken were taken at Lake McDonald.

On a health road

2006-01-04T12:08:00.000-09:00

There'll be a lot more to say about this. Suffice it for now to say that just over a week ago, one of my responses to Mom's death became to take some pretty active steps to take care of my health.

There's no question that Mom's death was a result of long-term complications of Type 2 diabetes. Four years ago my naturopath diagnosed me as being pre-diabetic. I took half-hearted steps to care for myself then, but that didn't last. The steps I'm taking now aren't half-hearted, but full-hearted. I'm learning about diabetes & pre-diabetes. I bought a glucose monitor & am using it. I'm learning about glycemic index (GI) & glycemic load (GL), & am changing my diet in response to what I'm learning. I'm getting at least a half hour of good (& aerobic) exercise every day, & looking for other ways to get exercise just in the course of day to day living. I've lost one, possibly two pounds already: with a goal of losing 30 pounds before the summer.

Yes, more to say about this, definitely. And I sure as hell think I would be honoring Mom better by taking active regard for my own health, than following the same road that for whatever reasons she found herself on. Mom, I love you.

I posted a long comment/question responding to the item GI News Briefs in The Glycemic Index Newsletter: January 2006 about how to make a "personal" estimate of glycemic index for foods that aren't in the GI database.

Update: 6 Jan 2006: I will be keeping track of some of what I learn & experience on this journey to health at Terveys.

Cut apple

2006-01-04T12:03:00.000-09:00

For our Thanksgiving apple pies. Anchorage, Alaska. 24 Nov 2005.

A very tasty (& might I say very sexual) Fuji. Now that I'm watching my low vs. high glycemic index carbohydrates, these sweet beings are becoming a regular part of my diet.

Legacy

2005-12-12T12:16:00.000-09:00

Arrived back in Anchorage late Saturday night. Last night with my partner I watched a documentary about Ram Dass, "Fierce Grace," which title refers to his 1997 stroke which has led him to experiences & realizations he otherwise could not have had. There was a very moving section of the documentary with the parents of a daughter who had been murdered, to whom Ram Dass had written a letter very much on the same idea: that the pain & anger & confusion & all of what came with their daughter's death was her legacy to them: not something that their daughter would have chosen, but yet feelings through which they could gain to wisdom, compassion, love that was also their daughter's legacy to them. As the mother read his letter aloud to camera, I recognized it: he didn't offer them false comfort about their daughter's death, he didn't say any of the superficial blandishments that are so commonly & clumsily offered ... it's all much harder than that, & much more real. More profound.

My mother's death was different than that young girl's abrupt & meaningless murder. My mom's death was not expected, but not entirely unexpected either, given her health problems. But it is the same thing. It was not something she chose or that any of us chose; but the pain I feel at her death, & about whatever wounds within her that I don't believe ever found healing in life, are part of her legacy to me — that along with all the unmistakenly good things she gave to me — & I will carry all of it in the best way I can, & hope always to honor her by it.