Uncle Ted doesn't want you to know

what the feds are spending your money on. He's put a hold on a bill that would provide information to the public on federal spending. The bill is sponsored by Tom Coburn (R-OK) (who tried to block the oinker bridge) and Barack Obama (D-IL) and is called the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act. It would create a database open to the public where citizens can track government spending.

According to Stevens, though, he's concerned about bureaucracy and having a cost-benefit analysis on such a database.

Hmm. Didn't realize he was concerned about government spending. Wouldnta thunk it, what with that bridge money and all...

A programmer's confession

Clinton Eugene Curtis was hired to create a hidden vote-rigging program in the Florida 2000 election. This testimony means extremely hot water for Tom Feeney (R-Florida), who hired him to do it, and implies hot water for all those elections (like the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004) that Greg Palast has been jumping up and down about. He testifies that if the vote is off of the exit poll in any significant measure, the election is probably rigged, since the vote could be flipped, say, 51 to 49 percent. The company he worked for, Yang, had a spy in their midst who was convicted of attempt to sell secrets to China, but got only a fine and no time, apparently. Curtis decided to testify because of this.

Check out the video on the link above, and then think about this: we had an election here in Alaska in 2004 in which the exit polls did not match the results. Don't use those touch screen voting machines. In fact, since absentee ballots are on paper, it might be better to use those.

A bad week

Chris Barefoot, Ester village resident who wrote about the 2004 tsunami and Koh Phra Tong, Thailand, in a letter and later in an article for the Republic, died a couple of days ago, very suddenly. Chris was a good man, and had been planning to go back to the island of Koh Pra Tong for the winter to help them create a community-controlled tourist industry. He had quit his job at the University of Alaska, found a housesitter, and was going to leave in a few weeks.

He's going to be missed.

Wish list

Here's what I'd like to see for the Republic:

• a regular fossil fuel industry investigative column
• a regular economics column
• a regular fishing/marine science column
• regular alternative energy articles
• regular recycling/how-to articles (how to skin a moose, how to compost, gardening, etc.)
• regular recipes and cooking articles
• regular voting/participatory democracy/community-building articles with solutions and investigative reporting
• regular arts reviews and reports (a gallery beat)
• regular history articles, particularly the history of Ester and the Tanana Valley

I get lots of opinion, politics, reviews. I'd like some other stuff.

Groundbreaking!

Yesterday, right after Ed Clarke of Soils Alaska went in and bored a couple of soil samples on the library property, Scott Allen went in with his bulldozer and did some stump removal. All of a sudden we have a drive and rough clearing where the starter building will be! A bunch of us went over to look yesterday evening, and then another group later on. It's all very exciting. Looks like there's a lot of silt. Woo-hoo!

Library concert--wahoo!

The concert for the library was FANTASTIC! Those of you who didn't make it, you really missed out. I'm sort of mildly interested in local music, and never really excited about big-name musicians coming to town, but this--this was incredible. We ended up with twelve musicians:

• Tim Easton
• Rod Picott, a last-minute addition to the lineup, a guy from Maine and a really good musician with a wonderful voice and beautiful songs.
• Leah Probst and Leighton Nunez of Lousiaska.
• Jeff Kanzler, Eric Graves, and George Gianakopoulos. I know George from when we were taking painting classes at the U; I'd never heard him or the others play. Really good.
• Nate Montgomery and a guy named Josh who played together in the first set. Also really good. I hadn't really heard Nate play much before; I was impressed.
• Marie Mitchell, Jen Otey, and Sherri Hadley (I think--first name definitely Sherri). Marie (formerly of Lousiaska) and Jen played at the last library lallapalooza, so it was good to see them helping out the library again.

I had a wonderful time. A bunch of us librarians were over at big tables by the stove with the cool library t-shirts that Jamie Smith designed for us. We sold a BUNCH of the longsleeved shirts (it was a tad wet and dreary out there) and quite a few of the shortsleeved. We did well, had a blast, and met a bunch of really neat people.

Death of an artist

Pat Davis, eldest daughter of Neil Davis, died on Monday due to cancer. Pat was a marvelous artist, a jeweler, sculptor, spinner, and just about anything she put her hand to. She frequently had a whimsical quality to her work, a lightness and joyfulness that is evident in just about all her pieces, even the yarn she spun. (I've got a few balls of these.) She ran a shop in Wasilla for several years called Chain Reaction Studios, and moved back to Ester a couple of years ago. She was my next-door neighbor, and I didn't get over to see her enough. Visit your neighbors and your friends, folks. They won't always be there.

There will be a memorial for Pat out at the Musher's Hall on Farmers Loop on August 19.

Below is an example of her artwork (or will be, once I get blogger to work). This is a crocheted (or maybe knitted?) wire jellyfish that was part of a show she had at the Artworks September 2004. She was making ceramic sculptures this summer, and these will be on display at the memorial.

Going solar: natural lighting

Natural lighting is, naturally, going to be of limited use during the heart of the Alaskan winter, but during the twilight hours of fall and spring should help quite a bit down at the office. There seem to be, other than yer average window, of which I have four, two basic types of non-skylight type solar light:

1) the hybrid solar light, which uses optical cables to transmit light from the building's exterior to its interior. I found one company offering it for commercial application. You have to call to find out the price, which makes me suspect it's out of my league. Here's some links to stories about it (PDFs, by the way).

2) the tubular skylight, essentially a skylight affixed to a highly reflective tube ended by a diffuser inside. Brands include the Sunpipe, Solatube, Sun-Tek Tube, etc.

Neither of these puppies are cheap. But then, neither are windows. I will undoubtedly go for option 2--eventually. As I noted below, I've already got the hole in the roof for a stovepipe which I won't need, so I might as well put a tubular skylight in there and brighten up that corner.

All kinds of banned books at OUR library

Here's our logo, courtesy Jamie Smith. It'll have a red book, rather than green. The t-shirts we've ordered for this batch are simply in black and white, though. Later we'll do another batch (more shirts, aprons, mugs, nightshirts). We'll see how this first big bunch go.

Banned books in the Ester library:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
the Harry Potter series
Catcher in the Rye
Justine
Juliette
Howl
Das Kapital
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Goosebumps
A Wrinkle in Time
Go Ask Alice
The Color Purple
The Handmaid's Tale
Flowers for Algernon
A Light in the Attic
Ordinary People
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret
The House of Spirits
Slaughterhouse Five
Lord of the Flies
To Kill a Mockingbird
Native Son
The Dead Zone

I'm sure there's lots of other books that offend people, plus a bunch that please people, too. Ideas will do that.

More on the library concerts

In addition to Tim Easton, local musicians Jeff Kanzler, Nate Montgomery, and Leighton Nunez will be playing at the Malemute on Sunday the 12th. This should be good.

The bidding on the house concert is picking up (now that there's only three days left), so maybe we'll do all right on that, too.

Amy Luick and I went down to Raven Screens on Monday and ordered t-shirts for the library. We just squeaked in under the wire to get them on Friday. Two hundred library dogs reading "Howl", in fuscia, orange, blue, green, white, gray, and natural. And probably some other colors I've forgotten about. Woo-hoo!

Bus riding survey

The Fairbanks North Star Borough is looking into expanding the number of routes. Public transportation is going to become more and more important as the price of gas goes up and up. While I've been biking in to work this summer, I doubt I'll continue doing it in the winter, and I probably won't be skiing in, either. (Although who knows? I might--we'll see.) If there was a bus from Ester to the university in the winter, I'd take it!

Many many years ago, they had a line to Ester, but it was at weird times (not around work start and end times). If the borough does start an Ester line, they should buy hybrid buses or some other variety of clean green machine. Heck, maybe they should build a light rail line!

Going solar: getting the village involved

Okay, I know this is a bit far-reaching at the moment to think of Ester as being a solar-powered village, since I don't even know if the Republic will be able to do it, but a girl can dream...

One development that's been stirring things in this direction around here is the work toward building a new library. At our various meetings about what we want to see and where we want to build it, supporters of the John Trigg Ester Library have expressed a lot of enthusiasm for making the new building as green as possible.

There are quite a few people in the vicinity of Ester who use alternative power (wind, sun) in their homes (Jeff Rogers and family were off the grid entirely for many years) and who are keen on sustainable building practices. Composting toilets and superinsulation are all the rage. Our dumpster diving team is probably the largest and best in the Tanana Valley. Esterites are all about cold climate housing research.

So perhaps it's not so far off the mark after all. The village is ALREADY involved, and I'm just finally jumping on the bandwagon.