Lost Dog String Band and a masquerade fundraiser

This weekend, Mardi Gras gets celebrated on Saturday, Feb. 25, at the Ken Kunkel Community Hall in Goldstream.

Below is the party poster. Lost Dog Old Time String Band, with Lynn Basham as caller, is going to provide some Applachian-style dance tunes, and there will be all kinds of goodies at the potluck. Here's the program of events.

The purpose of the festivities is to provide The Ester Republic with some funds to make the transition to a nonprofit organization (and, of course, to have a lot of fun—any excuse for a party is a good one!)

I'll be the Purple Publisher, and since I'm making an official Introduction Speech (short, I promise), I'll be easy to recognize even with a mask and costume. We'll have masks for those who couldn't get one in time, and we're encouraging mining-related costumes (but really, anything goes!). Ronn Murray Photography will be providing professional-quality portraits so you can immortalize your appearence in costume, too.

Bring a dish and a donation for the hat, and there's toasting and speechifying and a costume and mustache/beard contest (gents' and ladies' divisions)! Prizes and books and back issues, too!

Reeves wants to do WHAT!?, or, nuclear power for Ester

Oh good god.

Found this first on Fairbanks Open Radio, and now in an article by Dermot Cole in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: John Reeves has applied for a permit to install a portable nuclear power plant on a 4-acre lot near Ester. He makes the following nonsensical claims: that nuclear energy is the "cleanest, safest, cheapest form of energy available" (um, yeah, when it's 93 million miles away).

Before I get into the details of this, here's the date for the public hearing on the permitting:

Tuesday, May 19, 7 pm, FNSB Planning Commission. You can e-mail the entire commission at planning@co.fairbanks.ak.us.

Hyperion Power Generation, the company Reeves would like to work with, is creating small, self-contained modular power plants, rather like the Toshiba company's proposed modular power plant for Galena. (As of last year, this power plant was still scheduled for permitting approval with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.)

Hyperion's modules are smaller than Toshiba's by quite a bit (only about two meters cubed) and use no weapons-grade material. Here's how the Guardian describes them:

The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory.

Let's see: "clean".

The biggest problem with nuclear power is the waste, both mining waste and power industry waste. The Star (Toronto) describes the problem succinctly:

The fact is the units would still produce nuclear-fuel waste – a football-sized amount for each reactor – and while it would be collected by Hyperion and managed at a central location, a large part of the population believes it immoral to create and leave behind highly toxic waste for future generations.

Can a company like Hyperion be trusted to transport, collect and manage this waste from potentially thousands of sites?

And will Hyperion be around for thousands of years to look after its mess? Will the governments of the countries in which these potential sites are to be located be stable enough to properly regulate the nuclear industry and plants within their borders, again, for thousands of years?

To claim that they are "greenhouse gas-emission free" is nonsensical, just as it is for anything these days. Transporting the module back and forth every 7 to 10 years is going to require something in the way of fuel, and there is no industrial equipment manufactured today that doesn't rely on fossil fuels somewhere in its creation. Mining uranium, of course, has its own set of problems above and beyond greenhouse gas emissions (the uranium mining industry has a lousy health and safety record).

Side note to Alaska's political bloggers: any of you recall the Elim student protest and Palin's mining plans for the Seward Peninsula? The student blog doesn't appear to have been updated since September 2007, but there's some more news items that showed up in 2008. Northwest Alaska isn't he only place that needs to be thinking about this question, though: Bokan Mountain near Ketchikan is described as Ucore Uranium's "flagship property".

[I really don't get why Palin is so pro-mining and so unfriendly toward renewable industries like fishing (which bring in more money than mining!).]

"Safest":

I'm not sure what these companies think they are doing, trying to sell nuclear power plants to people in a state riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and flooding rivers. I read a ludicrous claim somewhere (can't find it now...) that because an item is buried, it would be safe from earthquake. Um, what? the earth moves, and not just on the surface—down for miles! And radioactive material, if it gets loose, is decidedly unsafe. In any quanitity.

There are a couple of big advantages that these small modular-type power generators have over the traditional sort of nuclear power plant. One of them is no mechanical systems: no moving parts, nothing to break down and cause havoc thereby. The other is that the expense in building and maintaining them is considerably less than with a big plant. The uranium hydride used as fuel is far less nasty than the fuel typically used in nuclear power plants. And it's not going to be useful for people intending to make their own nuclear weapons.

Now let's address "cheapest."

Typical large-scale nuclear power has been heavily subsidized. There's no way it could compete with oil, coal, wind. solar, geothermal--any other method. It's the most expensive form of power generation out there, excepting maybe using a gadzillion mice on excercise wheels...and most estimates of cost never even touch the expense of guarding the waste properly from 260,000 years...mostly because the plan is to bury it in the ground and forget about it. The mini-nuke option is cheaper, by a lot, but it still doesn't address this long-term problem and expense.

I'm wondering. The borough didn't have any zoning plans for wireless phone transmitter towers, so they popped up all over and caused a fuss. I'm betting they don't have any zoning in place regarding nuclear power plants, either.

Eat local week

Cracked up when I saw Alaska Grown's farmer "ad": "Local farmer seeks tasty relationship."



The farmer in their ad looks a heck of a lot like a miner to me, but the idea is pretty dang cool. There is a concerted effort across the state to get people to eat locally. It's great. Alaska Grown doesn't list the Ester market on their farmers market page, though.

Website delay

Although the paper has been out for several days, the Republic's website is still back in February. This is because I don't have internet access at my new office, so I can't upload the new pages and probably won't be able to for some time. So, for those of you who are curious, here's what is in the new issue:

• a cool cover photo of bubbles trapped in ice, by Doug Yates
• "Bobblehead Leadership at our Swell University," an opinion piece by Richard Seifert
• "An Alternative Thought," an editorial by yours truly, on media consolidation, alternative newspapers and 'zines, and the copyleft movement
• a cartoon by Jamie Smith on the Obama campaign
• miscellaneous letters to the editor from an emperor and a few of the rabble-rousers around here
• a cartoon by Dan Darrow on Tom DeLong and GVEA
• a cartoon by Jolene Schafer-Howell on walrus and ice
• a cartoon by Jeanne Mars Armstrong on teacher conferences
• a book review by David A. James on Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR
• library news update (lallapalooza coming up soon!)
• the Publisher's Picks
• an outsourced Thought Posse Report
• poems by Shanna Karella, Sarah Sarai, Gregory Shipman, and Frank Keim
• "How I See It," by jean lester
• part 2 in the self-reliance series by Phil Loring, "The Farmer-Pirate and Other Cautionary Tales"
• an error correction from the Yes Men
• "Iron Prices, Inflation, and Mining Consolidation," by Stephen Hannaford
• "Singletrack Trails Proposal for Ester Dome," by Geoff Orth and Joel Buth
• The Long View by Ross Coen, "Fire and Skiing at the Lodge"
• "The Emma Creek West Fiasco," an opinion by Hans Mölders on the borough/Ester meeting at the fire hall on March 12
• "The Missionary Position on Lyrics," by Neal Matson
• "Women's Day--Iraq: Surviving Somehow Behind a Concrete Purdah," by Dahr Jamail
• "Dose of Reality: Alaska Health Care Lobbying" by Neil Davis
• "A Conspiracy of Ravens," by Richard Seifert
• a cool photo of Dave Hyland on his mom's old Polaris snowmachine

Available for sale at a coffeeshop near you! or at least, one in College. I'm working on finding one nearer downtown.

Project Status Report and a few miscellaneous musings

For those of you interested in publishery doings, here's a little status report on the various book etc. projects:

Like a Tree to the Soil: paperback published, book signing accomplished, now working on the hardback!

Haines CD: I received the final list of readings and now need to make the final adjustments to the layout, then send it to Pat Fitzgerald and Susan Todd for checking. I'm looking forward to hearing this--I've never heard John Haines read his work.

Jamie Smith cartoon collections: I'll be sending out the revised RFQ to the printer this week (probably tonight); have to get a signature loan to cover the print cost, etc. I've got one galley each and now just need the sell sheets to send to potential distributors. Jamie came over yesterday and showed me oodles of cool posters he's done. He just gets better and better. Gangly Moose has been the recipient of much of his talent.

Mired in the Health Care Morass: blog in full swing (author on vacation for the nonce), advances received and going out to reviewers, main shipment expected before the end of the month, working on the sell sheet, and expecting the brochures next week. Gulliver's has scheduled a book signing for February 28, although in part that will depend on whether the books get here in time. Might be one week later.

Jorgy: This one's in layout, a slow slog. I'm still working on the graphics, as is Jean Lester, and the design, although pleasing, is a bit complicated, and so it's going slowly--and I hope to god there's no major layout changes, as I'll have to redo substantial portions of the book if so. I'm almost at the point where I have a page count and so can give the printer a final request for quote--and then a price! It's a very interesting history both of Alaska from the 1920s through the end of the century, and a personal tale of aviation in Alaska as experienced by a damn good Native pilot who flew with Northern Air Cargo, Wien, Munz, and a ton of other little airlines and air cargo services. I love books like this: I learn a lot of Alaska history. Jorgensen talks about segregation in Nome, hunting and trapping and mining in Haycock, flying the DEW line, mail runs, tricky airports, the kinds of planes he flew, being in the Alaska Territorial Guard and the Alaska Scouts, lots of interesting stuff. There's a bunch of nifty pictures, too.

Ann Chandonnet's poetry manuscript: I just received this, although Ann and I have been discussing it for a while. I'll be looking it over to make sure it's something that will fit the ERP.

Frank Keim's poetry manuscript: Frank and I are still discussing this, and we'll be meeting soon.

I have a few other manuscripts in the works, too, mostly concerned with local history.

And of course, that mainstay of my publishing career, the Republic (v. 10 n. 2, issue #107, Feb. 2008) is in the works as always. I've got a ton of submissions, mostly from men this month, not very many Esteroids. I still need a movie reviewer.

Did I want to sleep? I didn't want to sleep. I've had plenty of dreams and snoring in my youth, lots o' nap time. I can do this for a while. Sure.

Whitewater Canyon

Day before yesterday, that would be, what, Friday? Dad and April and Hans and I went up to Whitewater Canyon and the Catwalk National Recreation Trail. The canyon is a narrow, high-walled affair through pink volcanic rock; the layers of sedimentary rock between the magma-laid volcanic stone are darker, still a reddish or purplish hue. Apparenty this whole area was very volcanically active millions of years ago. Lots of mauve limestone, shale, sandstone, and whatever this volcanic rock is.

The catwalk is literally that: a catwalk affixed to the canyon walls, over the cold, cold Whitewater Creek below. The spray freezes in places, so some of the creek has ice floating in it, or icicles and frost hanging down from rocks above the water. It's in the Gila National Forest, much farther north than the edge next to Gila. Our camera conked out (low batteries) so we couldn't take pictures of the more spectacular spots. But in the one above you can see the beginning of the catwalk itself. There was a silver mine (copper, too, I think) up in the canyon, and the miners built a pipeline to bring water down to the mill and a catwalk (much smaller than this one, a boardwalk over the pipes) to access it. There was a high-water mark in the canyon about two feet over our heads. The creek was anywhere from ten to twenty feet below us.

We hiked up and back about three or four miles, walking past the formal, maintained trail up to a nice picnic spot. My knees were so tired and stiff by the time we got done that I was a bit unnerved. Old lady knees--I've got to get out and do more walking.

The place is beautiful. But hoarhound, an escapee invasive plant that grows all over Gila and Cliff, is up here, too. There were prickly pears growing right out of the rock, sycamores, juniper, mesquite, scrub oak. It was fully forested. We saw a canyon wren. Lots of little birds, juncos and other things. On the way to the place we saw ravens and buzzards circling some dead thing way up on the hillside. Lots of ravens around here. It got very cold in the shade, hot in the sun.

The Tyrone Mine

Day before yesterday, we went into Silver City with Dad, who went to a Rotary Club meeting while we wandered around the very walkable Bullard art gallery/coffeeshop district. Great little area. We're going back there today.

After Dad's meeting, we drove for a few miles to take a look at the Tyrone Mine, an enormous open-pit porphyry copper mine. The mountain that used to be there is now a thousand-foot hole in the ground; giant trucks and machinery are still moving dirt and ore around. The mine is owned by Phelps Dodge (in turned owned by Freeport-McMoRan). The lookout afforded us a great view of the pit (Hans took a few photos). There were signs there talking about the reclamation of the pit, but they referred to "seeding", as though that was all they planned to do. (I'm not sure what the local requirements are for satisfactory revegetation.) Apparently, there's been a bit of controversy about it (am I surprised?). The big concern is protection of the aquifer from contamination by acid leachates from the mine. As I said below, water is a very big deal in the Southwest.