Book reviews

I am reviewing two books, and it is tough work.  Mostly it is tough because taking the time to thoroughly go through these books and give them a solid look is hard given all the other stuff I'm doing; they're very interesting works.

The first is by Catherine Phillips, Saving More Than Seeds: Practices and Politics of Seed Saving, for the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development .












The second is by a local author, Dan Osborne, Alaska's Tanana Valley Railroads. Both will go to the John Trigg Ester Library when I'm done reviewing them. JAFSCD gets my review of Phillips' book, but I'll post the review of Dan's book here.

The Penultimate Issue

Here she is at the LiBerry Music Festival, Carey Seward, musician and playwright, founder of Seward's Follies, on the cover of the penultimate issue of The Ester Republic. Or possibly the last issue, but what I put on the cover was the word "penultimate," thinking that perhaps I didn't mean it but too tired to look it up. Hah! My subconscious really didn't want to let it go.
At any rate, now I have that ambiguous possibility waiting for me, the hope left in print on the early October 2012 issue of Ester's only paper that it might in fact return, left there due to bleary eyes and a late night trying to get the last damn issue to bed and off to the printer, once again without enough of the right kind of help, despite the good intentions of so many good people.
And now, people still ask me from time to time if the Republic will ever return, or they tell me they miss it. I miss it too.

I think about what the next issue tagline could be:

• the Resurrection Issue (implies it'll go on living, if the Romans don't get it)
• the Zombie Issue (much more probable scenario, at least insofar as the condition of Madame Publisher is likely to be)
• the Revival Issue (I doubt I'll get Religion, but who knows?)
• the Reawakened Issue (it was asleep all along, just hibernating here in the north, folks)

See how much fun this could be?
However, the Republic won't be back until the library is built. I just can't handle two enormous projects at the same time. (No guarantees, folks!)

Revamping the Republic

Life has been exceedingly hectic of late, and looking at the date of my last post on this blog, I realize just exactly how hectic it has been. I've finally reached the point of maximum overdrive, and so in July I wrote an editorial threatening to shut down The Ester Republic if I didn't find help and a way to deal with the workload. I held a meeting in August to begin reorganizing the paper and book publishing biz along some sort of nonprofit lines, and gratifyingly, eight people showed up.

Whew. I wouldn't have to shut it all down after all.

Well, maybe. We had an excellent discussion, and came up with several ideas and directions to go in, which I described in my August editorial (and also notes from the meeting). I set up a few pages on the whole reorganization on the website, but since then I've been able to do almost nothing on the research I intended or the job descriptions. Jeremiah Shrock has been helping me, and has come up with a couple of draft recruitment posters, but in general, things have gotten even worse, and yours truly is pretty fried.

The paper is two issues behind (one is at the printer now) and about three months' worth of data entry in arrears. October looks to be the most intensely busy month in my entire career with the John Trigg Ester Library (annual membership meeting, seed program launch, final design meetings, grant proposal writing, etc.), but fortunately it is my last one as a board member.

So, November will be devoted to catching up at the Republic. I will be posting job descriptions here and on the revamp pages. Events related to the reorganization will also be posted here and there, and on Facebook. And the fancy new recruitment posters will also be coming up soon.

The Republic ain't dead yet (and neither is the Publisher, although lately she feels like something the cats dragged in). And the Publisher's Deadline will sail at Readers on the Run this weekend, so we aren't sunk yet, either.

The Food Policy Conference: computers and workshops

I was having significant computer problems while in Portland (the laptop kept conking out) and the hotel computer wouldn't let me have more than one window open at a time. Very frustrating. However, now I am back and with excellent connectivity, so I can tell you all about the conference and easily link to the pertinent websites!

On the way down and back, I was reading Gary Paul Nabhan's book, Where Our Food Comes From.

So, here's the workshops and sessions I went to:

• Food Policy Advocacy 101: short course. I took a ton of notes on this half-day course. There was much discussion on strategy: constituents, allies, opponents, and targets. They mentioned an organization called the Midwest Academy, which trains people on how to organize for social change. They discussed what each of these elements were in a strategic advocacy campaign (constituents: those people you directly represent; allies: those who are on the ground for you; opponents: those who don't like what you represent and will work against you; targets: the specific people who can give you what you want). They described coalitions and recruitment, and how good communications, personal relationships, clear roles and responsibilities, transparency and accountability, a broad reach, and consensus-building are all important to making a coalition that works. In coalitions, formalized agreements can really help keep things clear and accountable. They recommended coalition letters, a memorandum of understanding between organizations, and formal agreements and titles for individual volunteers who build that coalition and make it work.
  

Throughout the conference my role in the library seemed most relevant, even though I was down there on behalf of food and agriculture organizations. This was because much of what I heard about was community organizing—work engaging the public and getting them involved in policy issues that directly affect them. I was pretty astounded that hardly anyone there had heard of the idea of a seed library (more on this later).

• Regional networking with the Canadians: lots of joking around (very politely!) by an impressively savvy bunch of food activists who were NOT happy about Stephen Harper and his government's potential impact on food policy.
• Food systems planning: this wasn't what it was advertised to be, and I and several other participants left it feeling quite shortchanged. Still, it was interesting, and the People's Budget came up in discussion.
• Building diverse local food policy leadership: this was basically about being inclusive, avoiding discrimination and privileging, and using a nifty tool called an interrelationship diagram. This workshop was conducted by Kolu Zigbi, of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, and Rodrigo Rodriguez of the Southwest Organizing Project. These two were dynamic, interesting speakers, and excellent workshop teachers.
  
• Planning for the future of food: this was a presentation of four strategic action plans at four different levels, from neighborhood to city to county to state. The plans were Food for Growth, from Buffalo's West Side in New York state; Transforming the Oakland Food System (California); Multnomah Food Action Plan: Grow and Thrive 2025 (Multnomah County, Oregon); and the Michigan Good Food Charter.
• Accessing and using food data to support collaborative policy decisions: this was all about a great GIS mapping and database synthesis project by CARES. Really powerful tool, but only as good as the resource databases (which seem to be considerably out of date in Alaska, but this may change now that the 2010 Census is done).
• Local food systems: this was pretty frustrating until I finally deviated from the prescribed discussion points and asked people in our group what was working for them. Then the discussion took off like a rocket and I found out about all kinds of cool things: neighborhood cooperative chicken flocks, the growth in communal community gardens in Port Townsend (up from three to 25 in one year in a community of about 8,000), an eat local week program focused on a 100-mile diet in public schools, the part of the USDA’s SNAP that allows for purchasing of food plants (something new to many at the workshop including me, although it has been part of the program since 1973), a local theme garden with plants labeled in Latin (a Roman theme), a marketing co-op for urban farmers (Urban Abundance), rotating free tastings by vendors at a local farmers’ market, a food & market calendar created through a collaborative effort from many local health and food organizations and businesses, using faith-based and other community organizations to publicize information on local food, and so on.

Overall, the conference was great. I'm really glad I went.

Midterm madness: agriculture and libraries and cats

I focused my recent editorial on agriculture, which fits right in with my life the last couple of years: gardening and garden expansion, the Alaska Food Policy Council (which I got involved with via my job at SNRAS), the Alaska Community Agriculture Association (ditto), the Sustainable Agriculture Conference, and most recently, my class with Craig Gerlach on sustainable food systems and farming. It's a giant editorial, three pages. But the midterm is going to be a monster, probably around 24 to 36 pages. It's grueling, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to get it done in time!

And then there's the new kittens, who are wildly energetic, and the grantwriting workshop that Susan Willsrud and I are doing for the Ester library, and the new plans for it, and who knows what all.

Right now, my life is so frantically busy I can't keep up with myself.

JTEL survey and some thoughts on the library

In the course of the last few years and working on the library, it's struck me how much the vision of what the Ester library should be has grown: we've gone from viewing the library as a glorified book exchange (by "we," I mean the ECA library committee and the JTEL board) to working hard to create a true library and community space. Any venture like this, where many people from a large cross-section of the local population are involved, eventually takes on a life of its own and grows beyond what the founders or early participants envisioned or even wanted. It starts to become part of the community itself, to be defined by it and also to help define what the community is. Events and institutions are shaped by people, but people are also shaped by those events and institutions. I think this can cause some discomfort—all people may not necessarily like where it's going, or where it means the community is going.

Personally, I think that this growth of vision is fantastic. I've always liked Ester, in an abstract sort of way as the village closest to my childhood home on Ester Dome Summit. It's felt like a place with a center, a heart. Yet, it also has all the flaws of a small town, which I've reluctantly had to accept, and I've seen Ester divide into some ugly pieces during crisis, as well as come together in a neighborly, noble way during other crises. The problem with small towns is that they can become parochial, suspicious and jealous places where difference of opinion or change is unacceptable. The people living there can become so fond of the image of the place that anything that exposes or challenges or changes the image—the messenger—becomes the enemy, and never mind if the image is true, or if the image and/or the reality could be better.

Yet no place is perfect, and a neighborly, friendly, independent yet welcoming community is not something that just happens. You have to create it, tend it, rather like a garden. I think that's one vital function served by the Ester Community Association: it tends that neighborliness by helping to maintain the social fabric of Ester through events and through tending the actual physical environs of the village.

The Ester Community Park is another really good example. It's maintained by volunteers and the ECA. It's a physical center to the village. Any town needs gathering spots, locations that people can come together in. Ester is small, but it has the Golden Eagle, the post office, and the park as physical "market squares" where people interact. The physical structure of a place helps determine whether it encourages meeting and talking and all those other community-building events (parties, barbeques, hanging out), or whether it does the opposite and discourages human interaction. The park actually creates a space to meet—and thus creates community, village life. That's one reason why farmers' markets are so important: they strengthen communities because they create a physical space where people actually talk and hang out and do things together—which is what a community does. A place with a bunch of buildings in it, a "bedroom community," isn't a village. It's not a destination, it's a place where people store themselves in between the times when they are in some other spot where they really live—living being all those things you do when you are interacting with people, creating things, enjoying your life. The park, and gathering places like it, helps create a place where we live.

Those spaces in Ester each have their devotees, their clientele. They aren't neutral, because no place can be all things to all people. The Ester market is an example of something that happens at the park that attracts a certain group of people that you won't see at any other events or places. The same thing is true of the rink and the soccer field. The entire park brings in quite a variety of people, but some people never go there, or go only once a year. Same thing with the post office, or the Eagle, or Hartung Hall. The music jams at the hall and at the bar bring yet another group. In the Ester vicinity, there are other community-creating spots, like the Annex, or Calypso Farm, or Gold Hill Liquor. All of these add to the liveliness and sheer pleasure of being part of the Ester community. If we only had the Eagle, or only the park, or only the post office, our town would be poorer for it—and we'd have to create something that would fill that void, or lapse into being a suburb of Fairbanks.

The library just hasn't been able to be a gathering spot, really. It's been too small, too crowded. Now, however, with the Ida Lane Clausen Gazebo finished, that's beginning to change. We've got a new hang out, a new and different place to create and tend our community life. The fundraisers we sponsor are important for that community-building, and are held at places that themselves help enhance village life: the Eagle, the Malemute, the Annex, the gazebo.

When the library building is done, the dynamics of the village will change further—there will be yet another spot where community can be created, and it will reflect some of the characteristics of existing gathering spots, but it will also be different, because it will attract its own clientele, new people who may have lived in the vicinity but never participated in village life before because there was nothing really here that was right for them. So the new building will in fact change Ester. I think it will make it better, stronger, a nicer place to be. This is something that the Noel Wien Library and its library van simply cannot do for us. They can enhance our intellectual life, and the van can enhance our social life once a month, and if we go all the way downtown we can do our living at the library, in Fairbanks—but having a library, a real library, right in the village, will add something wonderful to the village and much much larger than the books and movies on the library's shelves. Being a vibrant part of Ester's community life is what the Ester library is growing into, and it will be far beyond what the JTEL has been over the last decade. It's becoming much more than what I ever envisioned, certainly—and I'm very glad of that.

The survey that the JTEL is conducting right now, about the library and the community, and what's important about libraries, has me thinking about all this. Working on the budgets and the plans and preparing for grants and writing up policies and all that has been a contributing factor, too. We're creating something larger and better than ourselves, something that will outlast us, and, I hope, make Ester grow into something better than it is now. That's worth working for.

Addendum: I spoke with Judy Stauffer this evening about my essay above, and she reminded me of an important point. Part of the reason that we continue to have a post office with a postmaster, and not just a Fairbanks contract station, is because we have a library here in the village. Libraries, like schools or museums, are considered cultural institutions, and such institutions are the mark of true municipalities (as opposed to, say, suburbs of towns or cities). At least, we were told that this was one of the requirements for maintaining a post office in a village back when Ruth Jasper retired as postmaster and Ester was faced with the potential loss of its post office—or the demotion of its only legal existence to a Fairbanks station-for-hire. The other institutions that we needed were: a village government or community association, a newspaper, a park, and a fire or police station. This may no longer be the case (I haven't been able to verify or refute it). Still, it IS something to consider.

Local Et Cetera, Librarypalooza, and other doings

I have decided that, come hell or high water, layout WILL commence on March 1 on the Local Et Cetera. That goes pretty fast, and then it goes to press. The Local Et Cetera is the little phone and community book that I put out every few years. This edition's contents include:

• Nuclear Ester
• Recipes from The Ester Republic
• the Ester Community Market
• the Ester Hockey League

So get your listing or ad in pronto!

But that's a while yet. In the meantime, the 7th annual John Trigg Ester Library Lallapalooza & Book Bash is coming up on the 27th, and organizing and publicity is in full swing. I've been posting about the JTEL Sewing Consortium over on the JTEL blog. I've been having a wonderful time working (slowly) on a quilt for the auction and fashion show, made from twenty-five old library t-shirts. Maia Luick made some shirts, and Amy Cameron (the organizer for this, as per previous fashion shows) and Shannan Turner have been making skirts. Amy's making a kimono, which I plan to bid on! (The Consortium is just whoever wants to help out with the sewing and t-shirt conversion.)

Squoze brain, words came forth

The writing biz has been VERY intense lately. I'm working on the strategic plan for SNRAS, the introductory document for the Alaska Food Policy Council, trying to keep up (unsuccessfully) with the Republic, and working on Ester library policies, PR for the Lallapalooza, and a community survey for the library. Last night I finally hit the opposite end of writer's block, where the block o' grey matter has created and composed and spewed forth every last drop of literary goodness (and badness) that it possibly can, and the writer (that would be me) is left with a well-scrunched sponge of an organ that can hardly think or comprehend visual, audio, or any other sensory signals, and is in serious need of a re-dunking in the waters of mindless pre-thought.

I was, to put it mildly, wrung out.

I am looking forward to doing something that does NOT require thinking with words. My plans are to do some good old-fashioned quilting for the JTEL Sewing Consortium's t-shirt fashion sweatshop. Tonight at 6-7ish. Looks like Shannan Turner will be able to join me. Yeah!

Completely wacked out

Yers truly hit a wall of overwork late Monday night, complete with stupid insobriety and messy meltdown. I'm just counting down the minutes until the library's annual meeting is over with and I can get back to the usual excess of work, instead of the extraordinarily crazy excess of work. Books coming down the pike very shortly:

• Wings of Fire, by Frank Keim
• The Long View, by Ross Coen
• Freebird, by Layla Lawlor

After these, I may just give up book publishing. I'm certainly not accepting new manuscripts, and I'm now taking one month off a year from the Republic.

Marathons and fun runs

Hoo boy.

Today, for the first time perhaps ever, I ran in a race, Readers on the Run, for the John Trigg Ester Library. Sort of. I more or less jogged and walked. Mostly walked, especially by the last loop. Readers on the Run is a five-kilometer fun run, a benefit for the library, and I helped start it (2008) and publicize it for the library (2009), but this is the first time I've ever entered it. It was fun! We had some GREAT silly costumes this year, especially the two pink fairies (Brook and Shiway) and the green-faced stick guy (Darwin). Oh, yes, and the poodle out walking her dog (Lisa). I came dressed as Her Editorship the Green Queen, and managed, through skill and clever strategy, to come in last. I did not, alas, receive a prize for Red Lantern finisher. Oh, well, you can't have everything. I did get a big rousing cheer from the crowd.

I got interviewed by Channel 11, which apparently knows a fun feature when they see it (it's supposed to be on during the 6 o'clock news tonight). I don't think the News-Miner came out this year, although Molly Rettig, who is a reporter for them, was in it, so maybe they'll have something too. The Republic, of course, plans a major tale of terror on it.

Nancy and Ed and Jeff and Stanley worked hard on the event, and Amy Cameron made some beautiful posters and t-shirts. Here's the basic graphic:



Monique took photos of the poems and racers, as did Trey and Hans, who also helped out during the race. We had 42 people enter the race this year! That means we're adding about 10 people a year, although next year's increase may be bigger, because Running Club North says they'll put the event on their calendar next year.

Now on to the marathon:

the library board (Monique, Nancy, and me, especially) have been working our buns off and our eyeballs out on library stuff. Monique has been plowing through the Nolo Press book on setting up a nonprofit, How to Form a Nonprofit Corporation, to write up our proposed revised bylaws. They're very thorough, and very good, although (as I told Monique) I squawked when I first saw them, because it makes 22 pages' worth. But they cover what they need to cover, and they're clear, and they provide a good solid operating manual for the corporation. She's also working on the usual minutes and a business plan for the library. Oh, and trying to work a full-time job in her spare time, so to speak.

Nancy has been meticulously going through the receipts, invoices, donations, t-shirt sales, bookshelf sponsorships, memberships, et al., making sure that not only are we on the dot for this year, but for previous years. I was not a very good treasurer, and Margaret was much better, but Nancy's cleaning up and backtracking, which is a time-consuming job that requires a strong orientation to detail, and I don't envy her! She definitely has my gratitude.

I've been working on grantwriting and the annual meeting packet. We have five positions up for election on the JTEL board this year, so we've all been soliciting potential board members. We're preparing for the annual meeting on October 24th (only two weeks away! gadzooks!). I spent better than ten hours yesterday working on the website, writing up a timeline and a task list for the next four years (organizational structure tasks, design and construction tasks, and program tasks and ideas), working a little on the President's Report, . Greta and I also did a teleconference with a couple of the people at the Alaska Community Foundation to discuss the possibility of setting up a foundation for the library.

Greta's been working on the board biographies, duties, officer positions, etc., along with the endowment. Eric's been working on the insurance and the power pole, and Melinda is working on the community revenue sharing program and the Fundraiser Report for the annual meeting.

It's a marathon, to be sure. And we've still got two weeks to go!

Grantwriting workshop

This week I've been taking a five-day intensive workshop on grantwriting for the John Trigg Ester Library from the Alaska Funding Exchange, and it has been well worth it. Man, what a lot of information. We're covering how to write letters of inquiry, grant proposals, budgeting, timelines, grants management, finding funders, various resources relating to grants and grantwriting.

We've already gotten one grant,the state appropriation, and this course is going to be very helpful for managing it. This sort of thing has always seemed so, I don't know, obtuse, and now it actually it seems if not fun, certainly satisfying and interesting. The information I've learned will be good for the Republic, good for the Ester Community Association, good for Ester at large, potentially. One particularly exciting thing that I've learned about is the Alaska Community Foundation.

The design biz

Design is a lot more fun than publishing. For example, I'm designing CD covers for the recordings of the groups that played the 2010 LiBerry Music Festival. Here's the one I've gotten done so far (The Banana Girls Marching Ukulele Band):


I'm almost done with the one for Musical Rumors. I'll post 'em as I get them done.

Addendum: Here's the outside of Musical Rumor's CD, with a tip of the hat to "Java Jive," one of the songs they performed.

Music weekend! Build a library with a song

I have been practicing my ukulele like crazy the last week. Well, I should have been practicing like crazy, since the Banana Girls Marching Ukulele Band has a gig this Saturday, but in point of fact I have only been practicing like crazy for the last two nights. They're mostly songs I know, so I should be okay. Last night I confused myself a little by going back to my baritone. I quickly returned to my lovely concert uke—trouble at the festival if I forget which instrument I'm playing!

The Ester library is having its fifth music festival on Saturday (that's August 21st, all you music lovers, from 2 till who knows when—the BGs are appearing at 3 pm at Hartung Hall). I'm planning on making a pie for the pie contest, too.

The library has consumed an increasing amount of my time. I have to say, it's wonderful. Makes me feel like I'm doing something not only useful, but worthwhile in a lasting sense. Years from now, decades from now, the organizing that the library board is doing will have tangible results. There will be a building, an actual library that people in Ester can walk or bike to. It will have art on its walls, its grounds, in its very structure, that is made by Ester artists. The collections will have all kinds of information about Ester, and, because Ester residents have donated the books and movies and puzzles and games that are on its shelves, it will be particularly suited to the interests of the local populace.

Volunteers have come out of the woodwork to help on the library. Sometimes, I must admit, I feel quite grumpy about lack of help on this or that project, but when I sit back and think about it, really a lot of people do come to the various events and work parties and whatnot. Organizing records and volunteers is a lot of work in itself, but when people work on a project together, it creates a real sense of ownership and pride. It builds community, and something like a library is an amazing thing that will give back to the village, and keep on giving.

Volunteering is on the rise, fortunately:

Both the number of volunteers and the volunteer rate rose over the year ended in September 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. About 63.4 million people, or 26.8 percent of the population, volunteered through or for an organization at least once between September 2008 and September 2009. In 2008, the volunteer rate was 26.4 percent.

I think this is true in Ester, too, where community participation has always been high, but lately seems to be increasing.

Monique Musick came up with a beautiful phrase that fits the LiBerry Music Festival perfectly: "Build a library with a song." And that's what every one of the musicians playing this Saturday are doing: they are volunteering their time and skill to help build a library. Everyone who comes and donates at the door or enters a pie or bids on a judgeship or a pie is helping to build their community library.

And it'll be FUN!

Gazebo weekend

Man, oh man, what a weekend. I'm sore all over and tuckered out. Hans and I worked like hell on the library gazebo all week, getting the structural strapping on and gluing corks in the bulletin board. Then we had a hell of a time directing volunteers, cleaning up the premises, installing this and that and cutting and hammering and sawing and chiseling and painting and sanding and digging and lugging and...well, you get the picture. People mostly didn't arrive until noon, which had us feeling sorry for ourselves in the morning because we got there at nine each day, and then sorry for ourselves in the afternoon because then we couldn't concentrate on the tasks we were hoping to get done because we had to help people find tasks to do. But despite all that, it was amazing. A ton of people showed up and a ton of work got accomplished. It was great. I wrote a big thank you to all the volunteers I could think of on the JTEL blog.

There's still more to be done, but Hans and I are going to take care of the rest of the ceiling and the varnishing this week. We hope. I'll post photos as soon as I find my camera.

The gazebo is beautiful, and is now officially the Ida Lane Clausen Gazebo. Bobby Lounsbury read a wonderful biography of Ida, and Ray Hadley described first meeting her. George also spoke, and Shannan Turner told a few anecdotes about her, one from her sister and one from Christie Ragan Barstad. Joe Thomas showed up to the dedication party, and asked for a tour of the library land, so Maggie Billington and he and I walked up to the (extremely overgrown) library drive and proceeded to view the cliff, the car garden, and driveway & parking site, and the actual library site itself. Oodles of people came. I keep remembering more of them: the Lounsburys, Jody and Jerry Hassle, Janet Thompson and Dave Sala (who took a tape recording of Ida at the Malemute that Jill Cameron had and recorded it onto a CD so we could play it as background music for the event), Jill, Amy Cameron and Joe Geiss, Kate and Maggie Billington, Scott Allen, Ray Hadley, Ruth Jasper and Shannan Turner, Hans and me, Nancy Burnham and Don Cameron, Ginger Meta, Sarie Brainerd, Jeff and Corinna Martt (who brought bratwurst and a grill), Margaret and Stanley Rogers, Kayt Sunwood and Sine Anahita, Monique Musick (camera in hand), Greta Burkart, Lynn Kulp (with homemade mocha ice cream!), Brad Rouda and a friend of his named David, and a whole lot of wasps (who concentrated on the salmon, so we left them to it).

The place is wonderful for parties on a summer day, I can tell you! It's an amazing space. I brought Ida's Clip Joint sign, someone else brought a photo of her, and we have a copy of the dedication on the cork board. Amy Cameron brought a few posters, so now the cork board is Officially Open for Posting.

Yeah!

Library, gazebo, garden

Library:

This last week I spent considerable time updating the John Trigg Ester Library website and the Friends of the Ester Library website. They both still look a bit funky to me, but they're serviceable, and there's a lot of good information on line now. The monthly board meeting is coming up tomorrow; these meetings have been running two hours, up from one hour or less when we first started meeting. There's been so much going on (fundraising, designwork, construction & work parties, nonprofit applications, etc.) that we end up not having enough time to get through evverything.

Matt Prouty has been working on the revision of the library plans to one storey, and should have them for us at tomorrow's board meeting, along with the new cost estimate. The site plan is the big thing needed, so that we can get on with our driveway-building and site-clearing. I haven't done any scything of the grass jungle in the drive this year because I figure that there will be massive dirtwork done soon. I'm hoping we can have a tree-felling extravaganza in the next two weeks.

Gazebo:

The gazebo is really part of the library project, but since it's a separate structure, and smaller, and almost done, I think of it separately. We'll probably have a work party or two, coming up July 24 and 31. This will be pretty cool, actually. We will be doing the following tasks:

• building benches
• cleaning up the woods
• making a two-sided 4x8-foot corkboard to put between two of the gazebo posts
• putting in the final ties on the ceiling
• taking out the center post
• putting the metal skirting on the posts

Hans and I planted the hanging baskets and four flowerpots at the gazebo this summer, and I've been going down there once a week or so to water them (most of the baskets are under the overhang of the gazebo roof--a couple will catch a little rain, but not enough). There's a bunch of wood scraps and leftover pieces from the roofing last year that need to get cleaned up, and plenty of corks and peeled logs. We'll need to buy some sealant or stain or something to help preserve the benches.

Garden:

The garden is beginning to explode. (Fortunately, I have a cookbook for just this type of emergency.) The potatoes are HUGE. I hope all that energy they're putting into leaves and stems is translating into lots of potatoes underground. I managed to give/sell the last of my extra tomatoes and corn yesterday, but I still have to get sufficient dirt to plant the rest of the tomatoes I have that still need transplanting into big buckets. Lots of little green tomatoes all over the yard. The beans (black coco bush) have finally started to flower, and the fava beans are blooming and making lots of pods. The brassicas keep wanting to bolt, though. (Cabbages are still holding out.)

The Ester library and money issues

The John Trigg Ester Library recently got an appropriation approved by the Alaska Legislature and past the governor's desk. The same appropriation, for $50,000, made it through the legislature last year, but was vetoed by Sarah Palin. This year, Governor Parnell went ahead and allowed it. It's not a huge chunk of change (to the state, that is—to the library, it's a LOT of money) and it will mean jobs in Ester and a bunch of work done on the library. The library itself, of course, will take much more money to do right. And by right, I mean to take into consideration the various green and economic considerations deliberated on over the years of working out the design details.

One concern I have is that we have decided to eliminate the second floor so as to reduce the cost and increase the library floor space. This means that our rental spaces are gone, and that was one major way we hoped to keep the library self-sufficient financially. The construction cost reduction by doing this is significant: perhaps 30 to 40 percent off the top; but without those spaces we would have to rely exclusively on donations and fundraisers to provide an operating budget. Perhaps we can change the design on the main floor to include one small rental space. If we can't rent it, well, so be it, but at least having it will enable some money to come in from time to time, and I think that's important.

Lallapalooza leftovers

This Friday is First Friday, when all the galleries have their new show openings. One of my favorite local artists, Inari Kylänen, is going to be at the Annex, along with the Lens Fest show. I've been seeing it go up, and the photos are really wonderful. Some marvelous portraits. Inari's paintings are fantastic (in several senses) and I'm already figuring out how I can purchase one...the big problem is making a choice!

Anyhoo, upstairs will be the Lallapalooza Leftovers Sale, in Studio 9 at the top of the stairs. This was Nancy Burnham's suggestion, and I think it's a great idea. Every year we have a few things that came too late to get into the Librarypalooza auctions, or that didn't go but are still really cool, and then we have to try to get them back to the donors or hold on to them for a year. This year, however, we'll be holding a sale! There are several pairs of shoes from the Footwear Fashion Flaunt, lots of nifty books, some pottery, paintings, a pastel, library t-shirts and sweatshirts, a few gift certificates, sturdy jackets, CDS by local musicians, quilted pillows and a wall hanging, jewelry, some cool origami, and a whole bunch more.

And, if I can find them, the last couple of official 2010 Republic of Ester citizenship cards!

La lalla la la la

Lallapalooza-ing marcheth on! Got a call from the University of Alaska Press, saying that they have a box of books for us to pick up for the library fundraiser. I keep forgetting they are at the Wells Fargo building. They've redone their website, and it's a VAST improvement over the old monster they had.

A bunch of artists have donated works to this year's lallapalooza. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them: Rachelle Dowdy, Sandy Gillespie, Tatiana Piatanova, Anne Sherman, Judie Gumm, Alex Lewandoski, Tom & Nelda Nixon, Monique Musick, plus a whole raft of shoemakers.

Back into the fray

Well, it's been almost two months since I last wrote here. Things have been happening to a ferocious degree, and I have become so busy that writing on my blog has been low on the list of priorities.

Lessee, here:

LALLAPALOOZA 2010: this one's been taking up a LOT of my time. The 6th Annual John Trigg Ester Library Lallapalooza & Book Bash is taking place this Sunday, February 28, from 1 to 5:30 pm at the Annex gallery, 2922 Parks Highway. For those of you who've never participated or helped out with it, it involves a large amount of preparation. The whole point of the event is to raise money to keep the current library going, but more important, to sock some away to construct the new building. We started them in 2004, and I started writing about them here when we had the 2nd one. While I was away in Hawai'i (see below) I was hoping that other folks on the board would take care of more of the details than they did, but oh, well. Kate Billington and Jan Roberts (neither of whom are on the board) got going on the auction items, though, and there are definitely going to be some cool things at the Librarypalooza. We've got some beautiful artwork so far.

UKE CAMP: Melinda Harris, Greta Burkart, Cris Fisher and I went to O'ahu where we took ukulele lessons, visited ukulele factories, hung out on the beach, snorkeled, and ate lots of fresh fruit. It was fabulous, and I've decided I like a lot of water in my life. I fixed up an ugly fake woodgrain bathroom vanity for Peter & Mom (we stayed at their house on Koko Head) with a much nicer turtle motif, and swam in the pool every morning. I bought a lovely Kanile'a concert ukulele.







UKULELE LESSONS & JAMS: I've also been participating in the weekend jams at Hartung Hall and the Golden Eagle on Sundays, and I've been taking ukulele lessons from Russ Copelin. I haven't been practicing much lately, what with all the other things going on, and I am suffering a serious uke jones....

INSIDE, OUTSIDE, MORNINGSIDE: Marjorie's book arrived from the printer while I was in Hawai'i, but Hans and Leah Hill (my marketing maven) delivered some to Gulliver's and to Pat Lambert. I took care of some more orders when I got back and have been working on the review copies and the other publicity for the book since.

And, last but not least, the FEBRUARY REPUBLIC: it finally got to the printer on Monday, and Hans is delivering it today. Actually, I suppose I should count the JANUARY ESTER REPUBLIC also, since I was madly trying to get that out the door before I left. Both issues were late, February's especially so.

So that's what I've been up to, and that doesn't even count my bill-paying job.

Library meeting today!

I've been working like mad writing up stuff for the John Trigg Ester Library meeting today. I was here until 9:30 or so last night, and was bushed. I'm still not done...it'll be fun, and Hans is off getting some ingredients for our potluck contribution. Hoo!

Back to the membership lists...