Mike Musick wins a seat on the assembly!

Mike Musick was elected to the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly yesterday, with a resounding 62 percent. The News-Miner has an article about the results, and here's what they say about Mike:

The race for the vacant Seat G pitted Musick against [Bonnie] Williams, with Musick taking 62 percent of the votes.

“I think we both ran a good, positive race,” said Musick, who credited his win to help from his wife, Ritchie.

In his campaign, Musick, the project manager on the recently completed Cold Climate Housing Research Center, promoted energy efficiency as a way for the borough to save money and called for training programs to prepare residents for gas pipeline jobs. He said the assembly should also consider property tax exemptions for seniors and others....

[Charlie] Rex and [Nadine] Hargesheimer both expressed confidence in Musick’s addition to the assembly. “I think Mike’s going to be a good assembly member,” Rex said. “He’s well-versed on borough issues.”

I think his election was in part a result of the general annoyance that the electorate felt for Bonnie Williams, but I think the other part was just that Mike made good sense and he listened to people. Pretty much what you want in an elected official.

And this makes the first win for a member of the Tanana-Yukon Green Party in far too long. I think that as people like Mike get into office, more of the public will realize what Green philosophy, government policy, and public service means, and will stop succumbing to the fear-mongering tactics and stereotypes thrown out there by the likes of Don Young.

Young: champion of the religious state

This is getting ridiculous. How many bad votes can one US Representative make?

Representative Don Young voted for HR 2679, the Public Expression of Religion Act. The bill prevents lawyers who've won suits against the government for violating the separation of church and state (known as the Establishment Clause) from collecting attorneys fees. This means that the lawyers have to take these cases on pro bono or be brought by those wealthy enough to sue the government (it's not cheap to do this). If the goverment has been found guilty of breaking the law in this manner, it should have to pay for the costs of bringing a lawsuit to get them to straighten up, it seems to me. In fact, as constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky points out in this Washington Post column, there is legal recognition of the barrier money plays for individuals, and a federal statute to provide for paying for fees in the event of a "defendent who acted wrongfully", in this case, the government.

The Public Expression of Religion Act is a deliberate attempt to prevent people from suing the goverment for wrongful action in supporting religion. (Attorneys don't get paid if they lose the lawsuit.) It's just one more attempt to cripple our Constitution.

The Pro-Torture Trio: Ted Stevens, Lisa Murkowski, and Don Young

All three members of Alaska's Congressional delegation have voted for unprecedented expansion of powers for the president. And when I say unprecedented, I mean NO president of the United States has ever been trusted with this much sheer control over the lives (and deaths) of suspected criminals. Note that word: suspected. Not convicted, not proved, simply suspected. For those of you out there who really are conservatives, not just knee-jerk follow-the-leader types, consider that the Military Commissions Act eviscerates the power of the courts and utterly shreds the Constitution. Our Declaration of Independence included these famous words: "all men are created equal". Not, "all citizens of our land": ALL men. Citizens, noncitizens, whatever. The principle has been expanded over time to include women, too: people. All people are deserving of equal protections, equal rights. Even those suspected of crimes. Even those who have actually committed crimes. Rights are not privileges: they are inalienable, something you can't just toss because it's inconvenient.

But that's what Don Young, Ted Stevens, and Lisa Murkowski have done: they've tossed out the Constitution because it's inconvenient. They've endorsed the Administration's use of torture, and they've endorsed the Administration's "right" to get away with it scot-free. They've voted to change the War Crimes Act, they've retroactively protected the president and his administration for any war crimes they may have committed or authorized since 2001, they've voted to redefine the infliction of severe pain or rape so that it doesn't come under the heading of torture, they've voted to allow the use of coerced evidence and secret evidence which the accused can respond to but can't see...in short, they've voted to turn the United States into a "decidership".

But of course, it's not just noncitizens who can be imprisoned without charge, tortured, etc. Citizens can be stipped of their rights, too.

Lynndie England was convicted in 2005 for doing far less than what this bill will allow. Doesn't that make you feel proud of what America has become? One set of barbaric rules for the peons, and another for the rulers.

A craven Congress kowtows to the king

Well, the Military Commissions bill passed in the Senate, and our senators were among those voting to allow the president to do whatever he wants to whoever he wants, a privilege not granted to monarchs since 1215.

I quote from the New York Times editorial of September 28, "Rushing Off a Cliff":

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

Apparently, the Republican Party line is that accusation = guilt, the end justifies the means, our intentions will pave the way to Heaven, and torture is a-okay.

From a September 26 letter to Congress signed by 609 legal scholars:

the bill's provisions rewrite American law to evade the fundamental principles of separation of powers, due process, habeas corpus, fair trials, and the rule of law, principles that, together, prohibit state-sanctioned violence. If there is any fixed point in the historical understandings of constitutional freedom that help to define us as a people, it is that no one may be picked up and locked up by the American state in secret or at an unknown location, or without opportunity to petition an independent court for inspection of the lawfulness of the lockup and of the treatment handed out by the state to the person locked up, under legal standards from time to time defined by Congress.

So, don't you feel all warm and fuzzy now?

What in the HELL are they thinking?

The House passed it. The final bill number was apparently HR 6166; the Senate version is S 3930. And Don Young traded our freedom away.

We are SO screwed.

Young may vote for HR 6054

I called up Representative Young's Washington office this morning, and spoke with a staffer there, trying to find out how Young plans to vote on the belowmentioned mess of a Military Commissions bill. The staffer wasn't sure, but thought that Young was leaning toward voting for it. If this bill passes, there goes 600 years of basic protections.

I registered my urgent request that he NOT vote for this, based on concern for its habeas-stripping provisions and the lack of a check by the judiciary on the executive. The staffer wanted to know if I was military. The problem is that this bill doesn't just cover the military, or military situations, or times of war.

Again, I quote Lederman:

if the Pentagon says you're an unlawful enemy combatant -- using whatever criteria they wish -- then as far as Congress, and U.S. law, is concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to "hostilities" at all.

This definition is not limited to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It's not limited to aliens -- it covers U.S. citizens as well. It's not limited to persons captured or detained overseas. And it is not even limited to the armed conflict against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, authorized by Congress on September 18, 2001. Indeed, on the face of it, it's not even limited to a time of war or armed conflict; it could apply in peacetime.

Contact Don Young about this--we are potentially in deep trouble, folks.

An unchecked Executive branch

HR 6054, the Military Commissions Act (PDF), is a mess. The draft legislation approved recently 20-19 in the House Judiciary Committee would "make the President the sole arbiter of the meaning of the Geneva Conventions" and would strip the courts of their ability to oversee the Executive. No habeas corpus or civil actions, by anybody. Senator McCain's defense of this crap is horrific. As one writer put it, what did the administration do to break him when the Viet Cong couldn't?

The new amendments broaden certain truly obnoxious powers and muddy everything, rather than "bringing clarity". I quote Marty Lederman:

It is worth noting one thing about the breadth of the habeas-stripping provision, both in the new draft and in last week's version, that has thus far received inadequate attention in the public debate. That provision would eliminate the right to petition for habeas for all alleged alien enemy combatants, whether or not the detainee has been determined to be an "unlawful" combatant -- indeed, even if the detainee is deemed a lawful combatant (e.g., a POW) -- and no matter where they are detained, including in the United States.

Or, as Hilzoy on Obisidian Wings put it, "We can all be enemy combatants!"

Lucky us.

Balkinization has an ongoing review of this legislation, as does Obsidian Wings.

Devine pillow fight

and no, that's not a typo. Hans and I watched Waking Ned Devine last night. I've seen it before, but it was delightful to see it again. I laughed so hard my sides hurt. For those of you who don't know this movie, it's about a tiny village (52 residents) on an Irish island. One of the residents wins the Irish lotto, and dies from the shock of it. His buddies find him dead with the winning ticket in his hand, and (after a beatific vision) realize that Ned wanted them to have some of his "chicken dinner". So now the trick is to get the whole village in on the scam...

Among the scenes that live in my memory is of the old farts riding a motorcycle at top speed, in the nude, through the countryside...

Anyway, after recovering from laughter, Hans and I had a marvelous pillow fight. He knows some tricky martial pillow art moves, though, complete with sound effects and "Haieeeee!" exclamations. Very good sideways feints. But I got him pretty good, until he trapped both my pillows (we were double-fisting it). Of course, then it was a draw, because he couldn't whap me without letting go of my weapons of down-filled might, whereupon I'd whap him upside the head good. (He had to take off his glasses.)

Don Young casts the right vote

Young voted against HR 4844, the Federal Election Integrity Act, which aims to prevent noncitizens from voting (as though this is the most urgent problem with our voting system right now). SitNews has an excellent article on the subject. He was one of three Republicans voting against it (why does EVERYTHING seem to come down on party lines these days?), but it still passed, 228 to 196. The bill requires photo ID when voting, plus--and this is the stickler--proof of citizenship. The League of Women Voters is not happy about this.

Now, how many of you out there have proof of citizenship? And how many of you are thrilled by the idea of a national ID card, which, in essence, this would require?

Representative Young, I blasted you in my editorial, but you did good here. I'm just sorry it wasn't enough to prevent the bill from passing. And I'm really sorry that Congress is wasting its time on legislation like this, instead of dealing with the fundamental problems in our electoral system, like the unverifiable Dieboldization of our votes.

Resign, Rumsfeld!

Last night at Mike Musick's meet & greet at the Golden Eagle, Luke Hopkins told me about a resolution on the borough assembly consent agenda (PDF) for the September 28 meeting, introduced by Hank Bartos and Guy Sattley, that will call for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation (PDF). KUAC had a short bit about it this morning, in which Bartos demonstrated the support for this by military families by playing a telephone message from the father of one of the Stryker Brigade soldiers killed. Bartos, like others, thinks Rumsfeld is doing a very bad job. Among those others are six generals.

The list of calls for resignation is growing longer.

Satanic values

The inversion of values in the modern Newspeak of politics comes out clearly in this, the most appalling and clearly BAD idea I've seen yet coming from the "Christian" Right: The Traditional Values Coalition ("Empowering People of Faith through Knowledge") is all for torture.

The Traditional Values Coalition asked members of Congress to support President Bush's reform of prisoner treatment policies because "this is a war unlike any other we have fought -- the enemy is faceless and deliberately attacks the innocent."

Oh, really? you mean the innocent have never been attacked before? Ever?

TVC Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon said American military and intelligence experts are hampered by a vague "outrages upon personal dignity" statement in Article Three of the Geneva Convention of 1950.

Actually, "outrages upon personal dignity" is pretty easy to determine. Sorta like right from wrong. (Here's a hint, Rev: torture is Wrong.)

"We need to clarify this policy for treating detainees," said Rev. Sheldon. "As it stands right now, the military and intelligence experts interrogating these terrorists are in much greater danger than the terrorists. Civil suits against our military personnel are tying their hands as they try to get vital information which will save the lives of our young military people and the innocent."

Um, like those who've been accused of crimes that haven't been proven? Like, lessee, the Canadian computer consultant who was falsely accused by people who'd been tortured, and was tortured himself into confessing crimes he didn't commit?

"Our rules for interrogation need to catch-up with this awful new form of war that is being fought against all of us and the free world. The post -World War II standards do not apply to this new war.

Nope. Apparently only medieval standards apply.

"We must redefine how our lawful society treats those who have nothing but contempt for the law and rely on terrorizing the innocent to accomplish their objectives. The lines must be redrawn and then we must pursue these criminals as quickly and as aggressively as the law permits.

And if the law allows for a presumption of innocence or for humane treatment of the accused or for, lessee, civil rights, well, then, to hell with the law! Or at least, change it so we can ignore all that pesky civilized stuff, like no terrorizing the innocent to accomplish our objectives.

"And since this debate is, at its very core, about preserving the traditional value of prosecuting injustice and protecting the innocent, TVC will score this vote in both the House and the Senate. We encourage all of our supporters and affiliated churches to contact their elected representatives and let them know we support President Bush's efforts to update our methods of interrogating terrorist detainees in order to provide greater protection for our troops and the innocent."

Yes, indeed, that IS what this debate is about. Too bad that this value is about protecting ALL of the innocent and prosecuting ALL injustice, whether it is committed by Their Side or Our Side. Looks to me like the good reverend is only concerned about bad things done by people he lables as enemies, and isn't too worried about bad things done by the people he votes for. Because, of course, in his eyes, the means justifies the ends.

What an appalling, spiritually impoverished excuse for a religious leader. He is the embodiment of exactly the opposite values that he claims to be fighting for.

Stevens: champion of the big guy

Well, Uncle Ted is proving himself, once again, champ for the guys with the bucks, and to heck with the good of the community or the little guy. Kudos to Alaska Report for spotting this delightful column at the Nation on how ol' Teddy is going to try to shove through that stupid telecom bill that will destroy Internet neutrality. Just so you know who's paying for his vote and influence, take a look at this page at the Center for Public Integrity, showing contributions from 1998-2004 (or 2000-2004, depending).

He's accepted a fair chunk of change from the media moguls. According to Open Secrets, Stevens has accepted $225,250 from the Communications/Electronics sector in the 2006 election cycle alone, putting him in the top 20 (Ms. Clinton is number 1, interestingly). Between 2001 and 2006, Stevens accepted $530,833 from this sector. Seventy-four percent of Stevens' overall contributions come from Outside. If you look at the industries supporting Stevens for this same period, you get some interesting numbers (Open Secrets explains why the numbers don't add up):

1. TV/Movies/Music: $195,871
2. Lawyers/Law Firms: $181,392
3. Air Transport: $173,650
4. Lobbyists: $166,784
5. Defense Aerospace: $111,000
6. Oil & Gas: $103,940
7. Retired: $102,650
8. Telephone Utilities: $99,550
9. Telecom Services & Equipment: $96,700
10. Real Estate: $89,450
11. Misc Defense: $88,000
12. Transportation Unions: $85,000
13. Computers/Internet: $84,162
14. Sea Transport: $82,891
15. Defense Electronics: $80,750
16. Leadership PACs: $72,310
17. Food & Beverage: $66,850
18. Securities & Investment: $61,562
19. Health Professionals: $58,700
20. Public Sector Unions: $55,000

One of these donors, Verizon, paid for a poll that "Tubes" Stevens has been spreading around as evidence that the public doesn't want Net neutrality. Too bad it's a slanted poll.

Even the American Electronics Association thinks what Stevens' bill will do is bad for the ferment of creativity and commerce that the Internet provides. They've written a report called "The Case for Net Neutrality".

So it looks like the entertainment industry is the main thrust behind his antipathy toward internet neutrality: he is #2 in the Senate, behind Hillary again, in donations from the TV production and distribution industry for 2005-2006. I guess now we know why he confused "pipes" with "tubes': he must have been thinking cathode-ray tubes, not Internet carrying capacity of cable...
Interesting what you can find out here, hey what?

Going solar: Not so SNAPpy

Looking further into prices for my solar power setup, it appears that a grid-worthy inverter will cost more than $1,000, which would almost double the cost of setup of a solar photovoltaic system for the office. Eventually, I'd like to feed back into the grid, and it would pay for itself pretty quickly, but I just don't have that kind of cash on hand. So, no SNAP for the Republic.

At least not yet.

Hans and I went down to ABS Alaskan and took a look at the various goodies they have there--so delightful. I filled out the electric load form incorrectly, apparently, and so it looks like I'd be using less power than I thought. I hope.

Going postal in Ester

Today about 60 to 100 people gathered at the Ester post office to celebrate the centennial of postal operations in Berry & Ester. Bill Akiss roped me and Frank into speaking, and a bunch of postal bigwigs were there, along with Ruth Jasper, several campaigning politicians, and about every wasp and yellowjacket left in the village. It was great. The theme was "100 years of serving the arts and mines in Ester", or something like that. Lots of artists brought their paintings and sculptures and whatnot to display, we had carrot cake, and extremely excellent special cancellation stamps and envelopes. VERY cool. I spoke about how the community saved the post office, which saved the village in its turn. Frank talked about hearing Led Zeppelin for the first time on the post office grounds-to-be in 1971. "I haven't been the same since!"

It was great fun. Many photographers were taking pictures, and I plan a big story on it in the next Republic.

Going solar: a SNAP

Well, I'm going to see about becoming a SNAP producer for GVEA. My little list of electrical equipment for the Republic office produced a rather larger electrical load total than I expected, and when I count surges for things like the heater startup and a coffeemaker, it gets a bit pricey. So I called up ABS Alaskan and Todd Hoener, Esteroid in charge of the Sustainable Natural Alternative Power (SNAP) program at Golden Valley Electric Association.

Looking over the basic requirements for a producer, I have to purchase and install the electicity-generating equipment (i.e., the solar panels, etc.), get an electrical permit, fill out the applications and agreements, and pay for hookup with GVEA (misc. fees and account setup, working out to $110 bucks plus line extension, which could be pricey). Then there's all those inspections and whatnot.

Only one problem (well, aside from all the cash): if I set up on this program, will I be able to power my office off of my battery when GVEA has its inevitable midwinter power outages?

Road kill

This week's Carnival of the Green has a story on it by Jacobito about a personal experience with a hit-and-run driver who (probably) killed a bicyclist right next to him. Jacobito muses on the daily sacrifices to the almighty automobile that we make:

We seem to think secular society gave up sacrifice years ago, or that sacrifice only occurs by soldiers in war to consecrate the nation. I don't know though. More people die in car accidents than all our wars combined.

Who are the real victims of sacrifice? Who is really consecrating the nation, making it sacred? Or are we consecrating something else? What? Cars? Transportation? Speed? Oil? Technology? Individuality? What is the meaning that all these bodies, like the one I saw last night, give and to whom or what do they give it? Its easy to say thats its meaningless death. I don't think so though. The consistency, normalcy, complacency, and universality of such deaths in the USA are too blatant to ignore. If the highway is our national graveyard, the cars the tombstones, the police and ambulances the priests, then what is the prayer that ties it all together?

I've been bicycling quite a bit this summer, to and from work about 5 or so miles each way. The road is littered with corpses: hares, birds, squirrels, voles, wasps, bumblebees, butterflies, dragonflies...our roads are paved with deaths, most of which we don't notice. There are the deaths from impact, the deaths from air pollution, the deaths from oil spills, the deaths from cancers caused by chemicals made from oil, the deaths from wars over oil.

We drive Death to his appointed rounds, enablers and apprentices, all of us. Switching to ethanol, or electric, or hybrid, won't relieve us of this. Driving less, or more slowly, will. Yet, the car has given human beings an incredibly valuable freedom, and this is why all those bloody, flattened corpses are ignored. The ability to leave one's little hamlet and go somewhere else without taking all day to get to the next little village, or a week to get to the next city, is a driving force in our vibrant modern cultures. The ability to move, to go, to explore is now available to the mass of people, not just the wealthy or crazy few.

Still, cars are expensive, in more ways than one. Bicycles give a similar freedom, although not as fast; so do scooters and motorcycles and small cars. These all cause a lot less damage then do the big cars Americans seem to love so much.

Small is beautiful!

Esteroid running for borough assembly

Or is Mike Musick an Esterite? Ah, the perennial question...but never mind that. Mike's running for Seat G (Guy Sattley's seat) on the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly. His opponent? none other than Bonnie Williams! I'm hoping to have an interview with the two of them for the next issue of the Republic. Ought to be interesting reading, don't you think?

Why we shouldn't re-elect Don Young

I've been working on this editorial, going through Young's voting history public commentary (and they ARE appalling). Here's what I've got so far: so much seniority the guy's a fossil (we need some fresh ideas); actually bragging about bringing in pork (he really likes being known as a spendthrift and source of government waste!--think bridge); privately funded trips; homophobia; really rude and discourteous language to just about anybody, including high-school students; according to Young, there is no such thing as global warming or shrinking glaciers; again, per Donny-boy, his opinion is of equal weight to the years of study and analysis conducted by thousands of scientists worldwide; major campaign funding for years from VECO, Wal-Mart, and Carnival Corp. (the cruise ship company)--big biz from Outside, note; votes for the bankruptcy bill (you know, the one that screws you in the event of major medical or weather catastrophe), the Energy Policy Act (the one that gave all those tax breaks to the oil companies and hardly any support to renewable energy), and for the National Uniformity for Food Act, that prevents Alaska from requiring farmed fish labeling or GM fish labeling....

anyway, that's a start. If anyone out there has some other reasons why we shouldn't re-elect this man, let me know. I'll be writing 'em all up and putting 'em in my editorial.

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.

Going solar: panel possibilities

Back in the old days, solar panels (photovoltaic, that is) were made from wafers of sliced crystal sandwiched together with, essentially, wiring (material to transmit the electricity generated) in between the crystal slices. Nowadays, they can be made from spray-on plastic of the electrical transmitting variety (tho' these are experimental and not very efficient). What I can easily buy, of course, will be much different than the cutting-edge technology still being experimented with at research institutions. Here's a little list of what I've been finding on the web:

Photovoltaic glazing or thin film photovoltaics: This is a system of photovoltaic panel sandwiching used in windows, such as shown here on Wisconsun, or it is photovoltaic window glass, or it is a film that covers the glass and generates and conducts electricity (very good in big high-rise buildings). As I don't have much in the way of window space in the Republic, these options aren't very useful for conversion of this rather non-solar building into a solar one. I do, however, have good roof space. Many thin film photovoltaics are flexible, which is a valuable property, and can be mass produced easily, but don't necessarily have good efficiency.

Organic photovoltaics: These are systems using carbon-based films or organic polymers. Global Photonic Energy Corp. is one company developing this technology. Capturing a wider spectrum of light and converting it to electricity makes a PV cell or panel or sheet more useful and efficient. These types of panels are also flexible, and keep getting described as "nanotechnology"--they're concentrating on molecular levels of construction, here.

Quantum dot photovoltaics: These are high-efficiency nanotech photovoltaics. Basically, they are nanocrystals embedded in a colloid. These can be incorporated in a film or flexible sheet, but are still experimental.

These are pretty cool, but they're not going to be all that available for a while yet. Solar panels operate more efficiently at cold temperatures (lucky Alaskans!) The more I look, the more it appears that, if I'm willing to learn a whole lot about wiring and electricity and widget-tinkering, I can wangle a decently cheap system. (Of course, the question becomes, do I really want to DO all that, or just pay somebody else to do it and not have to think about it?)

I've been finding some nifty, not necessarily related, sites in the process of looking this stuff up:

Captain Ozone (Go take a look. Go on. I dare ya.)
4 Hydrogen (Really clean power.)
The Energy Blog (The Energy Revolution will change your lifestyle!)

Going solar: electric load

The first step to going solar is figuring out what one's electric load is. A load in this sense is any item that draws power, from a telephone to a lamp to a circular saw to a computer monitor. A local company, ABS Alaskan, has a handy page with forms for determining how much power one uses. I can always look at my electric bill, too, but GVEA doesn't tell me anything other than the total usage. It doesn't let me calculate the electricity draw for all the powered appliances and tools and widgets that I have in my office, nor what my potential peak use could be.

Here's ABS's step-by-step how-to list:

1. List all your electrical appliances.
2. Determine the power draw for each item. This means wattage, and whether it runs on alternating or direct current. (Amperage and voltage can be used to figure the load, too, if wattage isn't listed.)
3. Estimate appliance usage time, in hours per day.
4. Look for extra efficiency, or where the load can be reduced.
5. Determine your AC power needs: find the AC appliance with the highest wattage, then figure out how many AC items will be plugged in at the same time and add that together. (This helps you determine the size inverter you will need.) Also check to see what the start-up power draw is on each AC appliance (some things, like refrigerators, draw way more on start up than they do once they've gotten going). This will help determine the power surge requirements for your electric load, and thus the size of your inverter.

Here's ABS's load calculation form.

Going solar

Solar power, I'm told, is actually a viable option in Alaska. Jim Sykes' place in Palmer is powered with the sun (Sykes, if you didn't already know, is a frequent Green Party candidate in Alaska and one of the party's founders in this state), so I know from personal acquaintance that it's possible. I edited the third edition of the Solar Design Manual for Alaska, and it was an interesting job; lots of good information in that book. The main problem with going solar is that the initial outlay of cash is hideously expensive for those of us with tight cash flow. So I doubt our house is going to get solar panels any time soon.

However, the Republic office may have the option. There's a handy hole in the roof (former stovepipe) that could fit a light tube, and since the office doesn't require much electricity (enough to run the computer, monitor, printer, scanner, and lights), the business may be able to afford the ghastly amount of moola I'd have to shell out. I'm checking into electric load and system prices now. One nice thing about having a business is that one has business expenses, and these aren't viewed by the IRS in the same way that plain old household expenses are.

It's still pricey, though. A solar panel that would do the job is going to cost me $650 to $1000 smackers, and I still have to get the battery and converter and all that. I'll keep you all updated as I find out more.

Easton in Ester

The Ester library is having another fundraiser. We've signed the lease for the last bit of property on Village Road, so now we have the whole east side to put our library and gazebo on. Which will take cash to build!

Fortunately, Tim Easton, who plays wonderful folk/rock/cool music stuff and has been up to Ester several times before, has decided he'd like to do a benefit concert for the library! So on Saturday the 12th of August, I will be at the Malemute to listen to him play some truly excellent music. There will be at least one opening act, Jeff Kanzler, whose name I don't recognize but he is a local musician. He's been recording with 10th Planet Recording, which speaks well of his music in itself.

With friends like these, the library is sure to do well! Thank you, Tim & Jeff--and especially thanks to Jeff Stepp, who came up with the idea and has been helping organize this event.

Too good to pick just one

This issue of The Ester Republic was just too much fun! And I got it done early. It won't hit the newsstands until this weekend, but the contributors and subscribers are already getting their copies (usually they don't start getting them until after the distributors do). I received so many great photographs that I wasn't able to print use all the photographers or all the excellent photos; I couldn't choose! Monique Musick had so many beautiful shots that I ended up with four different covers.

Carnival of the Green #35

I am absolutely delighted to be the host of this week's Carnival of the Green! I've been lax lately about checking out the Carnival posts, but now that I'm hosting it, I've been going and checking out all the cool info out there on green and Green doings. The originators of the carnival are City Hippy and Triple Pundit. Here's what City Hippy says about the carnival:

[It] is a summary, a digest, of the green blogosphere. When we say green we mean sustainability issues etc as opposed to plain old general Green Politics.

A different blog hosts the carnival each week. Last week, starting July 3, it was Headway Youth, by Phil Smith in Newcastle. Next week, beginning July 17, it will be hosted by Powering Down, by Aaron Nuline in North Carolina.

So--on to the carnival!

Jennifer Killpack-Knutsen at Jen's Green Journal has started a blog community called Climate Crisis Action Team, featuring ideas on how to avert global warming. Her carnival post is a Planet Cool Down Tip: Eat locally produced food. Good advice!

On the topic of eating, GrrlScientist at The Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) has a few tasty tidbits about insects on her post, Bugs: They're Not Just For Birds Anymore! As Grrl says,

Now that you've eaten all that barbeque for the holidays, have you thought about barbequing scorpions, tarantulas, crickets, and worms? After all, they are the protein source of the 21st century! I always wanted to know how to cook those cockroaches in my apartment...maybe with vinaigrette?

The foodies among you may prefer this:

PT Ford at Why Travel to France explores an eco-friendly getaway in Provence called "Apres La Sieste". The facilities were built completely with recuperated raw, natural materials from the region and took two years to build by the owners, a young couple who left the rat race of Lyon to live a more sustainable and calmer lifestyle in beautiful southern France. Ah, la belle vie en France me manque! (thanks to PT for correcting my French)

And across the Channel:

You've heard of eagle owls in England if you've read Harry Potter: now read about the deeper issues these birds provoke. Wildlife artist and field biologist Carel Brest van Kempen muses on his blog, Rigor Vitae: Life Unyielding, on the wildlife management and philosophical implications of eagle owls invading (or is it colonizing?) Great Britain.

In the far East:

Harlan Weikle, managing editor and co-founder of Greener Magazine, comments on some public transportation in Tibet:

Completion of the Qinghai-Tibet Sky Rail last week marks an end from to the traditional autonomy of remote Tibet, but the environment may soon intercede and once again, Tibet will be an island in the sky.

But on to politics and global warming:

On the website The Business of America is Business, Starling David Hunter examines the Asia Pacific Climate Conference held in Sydney, Australia back in January, and what The Dirty Half Dozen who met there did and did not discuss.

Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn twits the New Zealand government on its bold (not) policy leadership in Planning to have a plan to deal with climate change.

Centrerion Canadian Politics offers a few thoughtful posts on the state of Canadian politics and an interview with Elizabeth May, Green Party leadership candidate (this is part 7 of a multipost inteview--earlier parts are also available at Centrerion). The blog also has an editorial by Professor of Economics Philippe Ghayad, who, while not so convinced about global warming, nevertheless has some tax solutions to environmental problems. Read Creative Taxing Can Save the Environment and Le Centre's preface to it.

Is it 2008 yet? Sally Kneidel, PhD, co-author of Veggie Revolution, writes about Bush's latest denial of global warming as fact, and about his promotion of corn ethanol as a solution to our dependence on Persian Gulf oil. Er, maybe.

Francis Stokes of Sludgie ("We are all products of our environment. Which explains a lot."), provides the hilarious and appalling first in a series which profiles the worst offenders of the environment in Washington: Profiles of Jackassery. Senator James Inhofe gets nicely roasted here. I can't wait to see Rep. Don Young get his!

Acidifying oceans

We are in trouble, folks, even if the right-wing punditry and the White House want to pretend it's just a little inconvenience or a bugaboo dreamed up by them "eco-terrorists": the pH of the oceans is changing due to too much CO2, and it's killing the coral reefs, which will be disastrous for the food web. Between that and the too-warm water and the melting ice (also taking a toll), we are going to learn just how dependent we are on the rest of the biosphere.

Perhaps it really is time for a Philo Dufresne-type response. Greenpeace has the right idea, I think, but this just isn't enough. You, me, and the Ralph Seekins of the world have got to pay attention. Unfortunately, it's the last type of person I'm worried about.

At least I've been bicycling. I wonder if the Republic could get a small business grant to install solar panels?

An interesting standoff in Ohio

Bob Fitrakis, the editor of The Free Press, has been running for governor of Ohio on the Green Party ticket. The Ohio media, by and large, is pretending that Fitrakis doesn't exist, which is interesting, given that the elections office (run by his opponent, the infamous Kenneth Blackwell) refused to so much as look at his better than 12,000 petition signatures (they only needed 5,000) for a month, thereby deftly delaying the Fitrakis campaign by two months (it took them a month to certify). Funny, the Democrats and Republicans were certified right away (could it be because they only have to turn in 1,000 signatures?).

Fitrakis and the Greens, in case you didn't know this, along with the Libertarians, went after the egregious corruption evident in the 2004 election in Ohio while Democrat Kerry sat on a $50 million war chest (supposedly collected to go after fraudulent voting improprieties, but somehow never used for this).

It's amazing to me that the Ohio media would avoid the hot issues that Fitrakis has dug up for them--what, actually act like members of the Fourth Estate?

Go, Bob, go!

Murky's smiling face

Well, yesterday in the mail Hans and I received a lovely little glossy green brochure addressed to "ALASKAN HOUSEHOLD" and labeled "The ALASKA Gas Pipeline", featuring the governor's cheerful face (from about 20-30 years ago) and lots of little factoids about how great his neato-keeno gas contract is. Plus, there was a note about how the brochure only cost 17 cents each (paid for by the Department of Revenue for public outreach). Not including postage, and time and benefits for the people who designed it. Being in the publishing biz, I know that in order to get the print cost down to 17 cents each, they had to order a LOT of these things, which adds up to quite a bit. Too bad it didn't include a rundown of the other proposals out there, like the Alaska Gasline Port Authority, so we could actually make an informed choice. No, this is just a little piece of pretty gubenatorial propaganda, full of very suspicious statements and missing a heck of a lot of important information:

"National leaders, including President George W. Bush and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, have made clear their support for this project"

Now, this wouldn't be the same George W. who has unstintingly and consistently supported large corporations' profits and welfare over that of the public, would it? And it wouldn't be the same Dennis Hastert who's been implicated in the Abramof scandal and hastily dumped $70,000 to charity to get rid of certain possibly tainted campaign contributions, would it? The same Hastert whose #4 campaign donations come from the oil & gas industry?

The flyer does mention oil:

New money to the state doesn't just start with the gas pipeline, it starts with oil tax reforms that will kick in now, giving Alaska its fair share of oil revenue.

But of course, it doesn't mention that oil is a separate issue from gas, and that there is no reason whatsoever to connect the two in a gas contract, and that right now the contract is illegally attempting to change taxes contrary to the Stranded Gas Act, and to backdate a change to justify this atrocious contract.

Here's what Dermot Cole had to say about this:

Under the Stranded Gas Development Act, the Murkowski administration does not have the legal authority to negotiate a gas line contract that would significantly alter tax rates on existing oil and gas production.

In fact, the law specifically prohibits negotiations that would change taxes on existing oil production.

The governor has proposed to solve this problem by amending the law to allow the inclusion of oil negotiations, making it retroactive to Jan. 1, 2004.

This brochure also doesn't happen to mention that we would be locked in to this decision for decades, with no possibility of changing it if we find out we get a raw deal...

But never fear, legislators like Ben Stevens say we don't have an option but to pass it now, because of the upcoming elections. Nice to know that these bozos are thinking of our welfare, rather than whether they'll get their job in Juneau, huh?

Richard Fineberg has some useful things to say about oil and gas and this particular contract.

Solstice

Ah, that holy day: the longest day of the year. In the summer, it's the midsummer marker, the feastday for greeness, a bittersweet day because the night begins its return.

We'll be celebrating with some Scandinavians tonight, and we're bringing snitters and sour cream for the sild. They'll be providing the akvavit and the fire. And the herring, of course.

Hoo, hoo!

More on the food co-op

The Fairbanks Food Co-op has scheduled a visioning session at the Noel Wien Library on Monday, June 19, at 6 pm. They figure it should take about two hours to come up with a Vision Statement and a Mission Statement. As Dave Lacey says:

the Vision Statement and Mission Statement will give the outside world an idea of where we are coming from.
This will be important to present to lenders, granters, and potential members in the future to get them on board and to guide us in the process. The Vision Statement states where we are now and the Mission Statement states where we want to be in the future.

Terri Barbers will facilitate, and the session is open to all who wish to see a food co-op here in the Tanana Valley.

Zarqawi: the incredible dying man

When I heard the news about Zarqawi's death on Friday, my first thought was, "What--not again?"

Al-Zarqawi has been killed more times than any man alive--uh, dead--um--well, never mind. Then I heard that they had identified him not just by the clothes on the body, and the appearence of the remains, and the fingerprints, but by DNA testing! Per the Washington Post, among others:

Zarqawi's lifeless body was immediately recognizable to those at the house, Caldwell said, and the discovery of tattoos and scars that he was known to have confirmed the identification. Fingerprint tests returned a 100 percent match, and results from DNA testing are expected within the next day or two, Caldwell said.

Tough guy, but hey, that's small potatoes when you consider how many times he's been killed before. Matt McCollow of Online Journal has unearthed all those other apparently greatly exaggerated reports of Zarqawi's death.

Amazing that there was anything left to check out after not just one, but two 500-pound bombs. Now they're saying that he lived for almost an hour after the bombing. And according to one witness, the US soldiers there behaved like base idiots:

Ahmed Mohammed, a local resident who said he rushed to the scene shortly after the bombs struck at 6:15 p.m. Wednesday, said on Friday that he and others helped pull a bearded man he now believes was Zarqawi from the rubble.

When U.S. forces arrived, they took the man aside, Mohammed said, and kept asking him his name. When he did not respond, the soldiers kicked him and hit him, Mohammed said, until his nose began to bleed.

McCollow asks an insightful question:

Even the most credulous person would have to wonder: how many times can you kill someone before they're finally dead?

The more informed person however, might ask: How many times can you kill a dead man?

The answer to both questions could be: As long as people will believe it.

So, chumps, how many times are we going to believe? The next Zarqawi awaits!

Belling the cat

The corporate cat has just encountered some organized resistance to its supposed personhood. Measure T passed; now Humboldt County just has to get past the court battle. But an encouraging sign is that even national pubications like the Nation are paying attention.

The website Reclaim Democracy has an interesting collection of information on the concept of "corporate personhood". Thom Hartmann has written about this threat to individual freedom extensively; check out his site.

Fairbanks Food Co-op creation

A group of locals are getting together to discuss the formation of a local, whole & natural foods store. Dave Lacey came by the new Republic office and told me about it. Dave went to a co-op development workshop in May in Portland, Oregon, and the first official meeting of the organizing group was on the 7th. The next step is a visioning session (date to be determined, but it's either the 17th or the 19th) to come up with a mission and direction for the co-op to go. They're going to do a feasibility study (it'll probably cost around $6,000, so they'll be doing some fundraising).

The group clarifies what they mean by "food co-op":

what we mean by a food coop is a natural foods store similar to the old Whole Earth Store that we used to have here. It is not a buying club whereby some folks get together and place an order from some out side food warehouse. It will have to break even like any business but it will be owned by the members who contribute. The members will elect a board of directors who will direct the business operations. This gives us local control and thus we do not have to depend upon the corporate dinosaurs for our food here as much.

I really miss the old Whole Earth (when it was on College Road, where the Farmers Market is now). It was great. Things like food co-ops, the Farmers Market, CSAs like Calypso and Rosie Creek, local bakeries and farms and so forth--these all are really important to creating a good life locally, free of the stale impersonality of food shipped three thousand miles or more. It's nice to have exotic foods from the rest of the world, but to have ONLY that makes life poor.

Fairbanks Open Radio

The KUAC Listeners Alliance has spun off a community radio station organizing group, FOR. Right now they are beta testing a newsite.

KUAC finally has the recommendations of the Foraker Group up on their website. Took 'em a while. They developed a "KUAC and AlaskaOne Community Advisory Council Operating Principles" document, and posted it as a PDF on the site, with a link from the main page.

Would have been courteous to send us former task force members an e-mail or something letting us know the outcome...

O, the snow in June falls mainly on the sprouts

Well, after a couple of days watching big fat snowflakes falling all over my zucchinis, we've had a lovely summer day, nice and warm and not too buggy. My squash and sunflowers survived (they were the only plants in the ground), thanks to rubber tubs and refrigerator bins kept over their little fronds for most of two days. For extra insurance, I covered them with a plastic bag, and then covered 'em up in the dark under the plastic tubs.

Last night I left them exposed to the elements, and everybody seems to be fine.

Ah, Alaska. Thought I'd never see a good old-fashioned spring again. (Getting snow down in the valley is unusual this time of year, but I remember several Junes and a ton of Mays where we had a brief snow.)

Ester Art Walk

Ester is having its first ever art walk, this First Friday, June 5, starting around 5 pm and ending around 9. Stops are, from one end of Ester to the other:

The Firehouse Aurorarium, featuring LeRoy Zimmerman's Photosymphony show, featuring panoramic photography and music, cleverly arranged and with breathtaking shots of aurora and the Alaska landscape.

Ester Hatworks, where Judy Stauffer makes hats, scarves, mittens, jackets, blankets, socks, headbands, vests, and other warm things from Polar Fleece, a lightweight, colorful, warm, fabric with high breathability. Its sort of fuzzy, but doesn't pill up. Her designs are pretty nifty: I've got a few things made out of it myself, and Hans loves the socks.

In the HeART of Ester, operated by Amy Cameron Luick and Hope L. Colitz, which sells locally made art: cards, paintings, prints, sculpture, knit items, t-shirts, photographs, collages, books, papers, jewelry, glasswork, and a bunch of other cool things.

PhotoSynthesis, Monique Musick's photography studio, including (this month) her photographs of Denali, and of course the Women of Ester Calender.

The Old Post Office Espresso Publishing House, also known as The Ester Republic (now finally in the new digs!), selling newspapers, books, and artwork by the publisher.

The Golden Eagle Saloon, just for the heck of it, featuring the odd painting, a ton of odd snapshots, and the local characters (canine and human).

Judie Gumm Designs, Judie's silversmith studio and shop, with all her wonderful pins and necklaces and broaches and whatnot inspired by the forms of plants and animals of Alaska, ranging from very realistic to extremely stylized and abstract.

This is all on Main Street. Before you get to Ester (or after you are heading back to town), make sure you stop in to see the Doll Show at the Annex Art Space, Nancy Burnham's excellent art gallery in front of Water Wagon on the Parks Highway.

Green candidates in Alaska

So far I count three Green Party candidates:

Eva Ince, of Anchorage, a former combat medic and military wife, a mom, and longtime Green, is running against Don Young for U.S. House of Representatives.

Mark Ames, who only recently registered Green (in March), and is well known around Fairbanks for his concern about the change of the name of Alaskaland to Pioneer Park. Ames is running against Mike Kelly in District 7 for State House.

David Braun, who is running against Ralph Seekins in Senate District D. I don't know much about Braun, but he's from Healy.

First Friday Opening

The Old Post Office Espresso Publishing House, a.k.a. the New Ester Republic Press Office, will be open, with art, papers, books, and appetizers for the June First Friday. I'll be closing at 8, though, so I can go run and look at PhotoSynthesis and the Annex shows.

A bit of history: the building in which the Republic is soon to be housed was originally the Ester post office, and was built in 1971. Or thereabouts. It resided off the village square, or maybe next to Ruth Jasper's house (postmaster)--I'm not sure, gotta check--until the new, imported-log-cabin-style post office was built in 1986 or thereabouts. The building sat around for a while until Craig N. Buchanan purchased it, and sat around some more until he turned it into a gift shop/espresso house called the Ester Stash. The Stash was in the village square on the Kulp side of the parking lot.

Then Craig decided to turn it into a full-scale espresso shop, and it became Ester Espresso and moved to Berry, where the original Ester post office was located, to the Gold Hill parking lot. After a year, it was sold, and then after a bit more, sold again and moved across the street to the Chevron station parking lot, where it became Pioneer Espresso. A year and a half or two years ago, Hannah Hill bought it and it became The First Cup. And now it has returned to Ester, where the Ester post office (historical) belongs. Yay!

The corporate cat and the populist mouse

If you get enough people together, they can challenge a giant. And, according to the old story of David vs. Goliath, sometimes it only takes one person and a well-aimed stone. This time, it looks like a lot of people and a well-aimed initiative will be zapping the giants, at least in Humboldt County, California.

An article by David Cobb in the Progressive Populist describes an effort to pass some legislation that will change the legal definition of a corporation, and the legal rights that a corporation may have. Of course, it will only affect Humboldt County, but it would be a start. Here's an excerpt from his article:

The official ballot language includes a direct challenge to the ridiculous notion that a corporation is a "person" with vested constitutional rights. Specifically, the ordinance provides that "only natural human persons possess civil and political rights, and corporations are creations of state law and possess no legitimate civil or political rights."

There is the additional assertion that "courts have illegitimately defined corporations as 'persons' and this doctrine illegitimately denies the people of Humboldt County the ability to exercise our fundamental political rights." And to add teeth, the initiative provides that "no corporation shall be entitled to claim corporate constitutional rights or protections in an effort to overturn this law."

Somehow, however, I don't think this will be enough. A similar attempt was made in Pennsylvania in 2002, and the state overturned the local regulations (influenced, of course, by the businesses Clarion County, Pa., was fighting). Corporations, as my mother says, think like cats. They're predators, cute and fuzzy when it suits them, and at other times all talons and teeth, likewise when it suits them. But trustworthy? Never.

Still, the People's Sovereignty Movement is alive and kicking. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund says it succinctly: "The idea that communities by right may govern themselves is central to the notion of democracy."

New old office

The interior of the Old Post Office Espresso Publishing House is now Yellow. Yes, that's Yellow with a capital Y. The walls are yellow, the trim is a warm red, and last night Spencer (I got to hear all about his pug, Bandicoot) and I slapped on a first pale yellow coat onto the ceiling. Hannah had done the interior trim earlier, and came back (after practically NO sleep last night--woman's on a crazy schedule) and did the second coat on the trim.

Hans built the first window box for me last night: 72" long, 8" wide, and 6" deep. Or so. I have plans for my numerous sunflowers, nasturtiums, and lobelia. I'm starting to think about furniture.

The place is going to be GREAT.

Don Young, quack scientist

Our amazingly arrogant representative has once again shown that sheer chutzpah on the part of one well-placed man can outweigh the considered opinion and solid research of thousands of scientists and years (decades!) of studies. Young, who has been working to prevent legislation that would finally have us taking some responsibility for global warming, managed to strike the (to him) offending line from a House bill that would recognize that yes, global warming is a problem, and yes, fossil fuel burning is contributing to this, and yep, it's humans burning the stuff that are causing a bit of a problem. Not only that, but Young thinks that Greenland is cooling (that'll be news to all those shrinking glaciers) and that somehow, the United States is not the chief culprit in this. Says Rep. Young, plaintively: "It is never the fault of the bigger countries that burn as many barrels of oil as we are doing today -- not per capita, but as many barrels of oil. It is never their fault." Problem is, of course, there AREN'T any other countries that burn more fossil fuels. We use the most gas and the most oil, not only per capita, but in total as well. As the Anchorage Daily News pointed out,

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States burned 20.6 million barrels of oil a day last year. The second biggest consumer, China, burned just under 7 million.

So he's right. It ISN'T their fault.
Don Young has never been one to let facts get in the way of his opinions, however. Remember, his uninformed opinion is worth just as much as years of research and thousands of scientists. Just ask him--he's said so in public before.

Painting and plants

Yesterday I went to Anne's Greenhouse and picked up a basket and a bunch of flowers for the Republic office, went home, put 'em in baskets (I still have a bunch of lobelia left), and carried them down to the office. Then I went over to the library and removed the Ester Republic sign and went back and hung it on the side of the building. A cheer went up from the other side of the street: Hillary and Kate gave me a yahoo.

I finished up the prepping, and then Hannah came and the Painting Commenced. White primer coat #1 went on, then we took a break for dinner. I found my Jocasta Innes decoration techniques books, brought 'em down, and Hannah and I pored over them for ideas. Then we put on primer coat #2, telling each other about crazy people we have known, family members, friends, etc. She got to hear all about my aunts and cousins and wacko ex-boyfriends, and I heard about her grandfather and parents and miscellaneous zingy friends (at least one of whom is my friend too). A wonderful yak and the painting went fast. And the place looks SO much better.

So today--ta dah--we start painting with Sunnyside yellow.

Old Post Office Espresso Publishing House

The building is in the village square! Yesterday Hans and Hannah (the owner) and I spent many hours spackling and sanding and mopping (and mopping) and scraping and removing weird bits of wire and staples and peculiar chunks of plywood apparently stuck on the wall for no particular reason. And we did some mopping.

Foam Man made his appearence also, foaming leaky holes in the walls, around the windows and electrical conduits and oil line and whatnot. You could tell he was a superhero (saving energy through insulation! keeping BTUs inside with a single foamy squirt!) because of the tell-tale superhero sound he kept making: FWOOOOOOSH! capital letters and everything.

Oh yes, and did I mention, we did a lot of mopping?

Ted Stevens vs. net neutrality

Senator Stevens' telecom bill will change internet regulation such that internet servers can distort what appears on a search or limit content posted according to what you can pay--or perhaps, what they don't want you to see. Here's what Buzzflash has to say about it:

The United States Congress is currently drafting a bill known as “The Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Efficiency Act of 2006”, known as “COPE.” This means privatizing the Internet, by allowing such private corporations as AT&T, BellSouth, Verizon and others to actually own it, and, in the process operate the Internet and other digital communications services as private networks. The bill very, very clearly states that “certain classes of Internet providers may-- not unreasonably-- impair, interfere, restrict or limit applications or services such as Web sites or voice-over IP phone connections.”

So the public will no longer have open access to the web. We'll only have what the big guys want us to see (unless we already know exactly where the information is, or the info provider happens to find a free and open service provider). Read Josh Silver's discussion of the regulations and net neutrality--and the megabucks these companies are trying to make off us.

And this bill is all very chummy, as Jason Lee Miller points out in his Webpronews.com column: Stevens' biggest campaign contributors include those who would benefit most by this legislation--News Corp., Verizon, Viacom, AT&T, Sprint...are we surprised that our senator is apparently bought and paid for?

The San Francisco Chronicle describes how this works, and how the House dropped net neutrality. In the Senate, in an example of typical Democrat thought inversion, Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye agreed to cosponsor Stevens' version of the bill: "My co-sponsorship...is not a demonstration of support for the bill itself." Uh, isn't co-sponsorship supposed to BE support for what you sponsor? It sure functions that way...

Stevens' rationale is that the FCC should monitor the market over a five-year period and then figure out what to do, which sounds reasonable, except that, of course, his bill will already establish or allow certain reprehensible practices, as per above.

Save the Internet.com has more on this, as does Free Press.net.

The full committee hearing statements and webcast are here.

Internet update: recent largesse for Stevens

Forwarded to me by Tom Macchia via the Alaska Greens listserve, an article on just how much cash Uncle Ted got from those media mavens:

Stevens received $130,750 from the industry during the period covering 2005 and the first third of 2006 — substantially more than he garnered from any other sector, according to the nonpartisan PoliticalMoneyLine. Top corporate benefactors included AT&T with $10,000 in donations, Time Warner with $8,000 and Sony Pictures with $8,000, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine.

Obviously they like him. But he's not the most popular guy in Congress right now--the telecom industry gave Senator George Allen, R-Va., $237,032. But then, Allen is up for re-election this year, whereas Stevens isn't until 2008.

What we're traveling in to get where we're going

I have just discovered a wonderful local blog (see link above) by somebody who also understands that we're going to hell in a handbasket, and in glorious, flagrant style, too. Wait'll Cabin Dweller sees my 49 Reasons To Throw Ted Stevens Out of Office! (alas, still in composition, but I've enumerated a few here already: voting gegen wind power, cute little junkets paid for by private interests, hasty, pork-barrel bridges, blocking bills to prevent torture, and actually coming out in FAVOR of torture (only for certain subhumans, of course, like those people who are Muslim and from Other Countries, or maybe Muslims from this country, too, lemme think about that...)

Faugh!

More on the new office

So the word is that the move will finally actually happen this weekend. Yahoo! It feels like an upward move toward professional publication, albeit a minor step. Now I've just got to round up enough advertising to pay for the rent! I'm hoping this will also improve sales, but we'll see.

Dang! I'm going to have to figure office hours and all that sort of thing, too. Probably Mondays and Fridays and every other Wednesdays, plus one day on the weekends.

Ted Stevens & Don Young: foes of wind power or champions of states' rights?

The Anchorage Daily News has picked up on a story about Kennedy and Stevens' backroom bargain to block a wind farm of the coast of Massachusetts. Young is also involved in the attempt. The main opposition to the farm is from residents of the area, Nantucket and Cape Cod, who are concerned about noise, the view, and possible navigation hazards. The NIMBY question is a real one: these are the people who will be most affected by the project. But this country desperately needs to get off oil and onto renewable sources. Nantucket Sound is great for this kind of power generation. Conservative and liberal commentators alike are annoyed by Kennedy's hypocrisy.

Groups like Save Our Sound strongly oppose the project, while others, like the Natural Resources Defense Council and Clean Power Now support it. Clean Power has an interesting discussion of the impact on birds. Governor Romney is adamantly opposed.

While I think it is important for states to have a say in what goes on in their offshore waters, this little deal stinks. I don't see that smog and derricks and drill rigs are all that aesthetically pleasing—windmills are one heck of a lot better looking—or particularly environmentally sound. Again, wind farms are better. I'm not sure about the noise problem, but I do know that when I was in Hannover (Germany) the noise from the windmills all over the place was pretty neglible, especially in comparison with the Autobahn.

The question is, what do Stevens and Young expect from Kennedy in return for this favor? (Although it appears to be blowing up in their faces: even the White House is against this provision to block the wind farm.) Perhaps help in fighting the feds on some other issue, such as drilling in ANWR?

Opening night

Hoo! what an opening! scads of people showed up, I sold a couple of pieces and Amy sold six. Hans did marvelous things with the lighting, so everything glowed. Kate has a great red handbag in the show that I covet--still unsold, so I have a chance at purchase (if we ever have enough spare cash).

Naturally, none of us got to any other openings, except for Monique's studio. Since she stayed open late and is right on the village square, we got a chance to see her photos of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge juxtaposed with those of Prudhoe Bay. She had little plaques with each set that talked about various aspects of the refuge and of oil development. One thing I hadn't realized was that Prudhoe has smog—and you can see it from a hundred miles away.

And they say we can develop an oil extraction industry up there without harming the environment. Yeah, right.

Vanishment approacheth

Well, the opening is on Friday, Cinco de Mayo, and I've been trying to upload another photo of artwork to this blog, but Blogger is stubbornly refusing to let me post any images (and has ever since my previous post about this show). So you'll just have to come see it in person. Nancy, proprietor of the Annex, is promising Mexican hors d'oeuvres.

I've got my pieces almost ready, except for the carpentry part, which Hans is doing. He had the flu, and so is now having to work on them during the week instead of last weekend as he had planned...the man is earning brownie points up the wazoo, and I'm going to have to think up something extra nice for him for this.

Moving the old post office

Hannah Hill owns the old Ester post-office-turned-espresso-stand, and operated it for a year as The First Cup, a very good espresso shop indeed. But she's decided to get out of the espresso business, and will be renting it to me for an office space. (I've been slowly filling up my husband's tool shed with back issues of the Republic and the Local Et Cetera....) I'm moving it back to Ester (with lots of help), where it will reside on the village square, across from the Golden Eagle and next to PhotoSynthesis (per HIllary, who decided that she didn't want it on the other side since that's prime parking space). Moving the building first requires digging it out via pickaxe and shovel so it is free of the frozen gravel it's resting on. Hans is talking a jackhammer, which seems rather drastic, but it depends on whether we have to move it this weekend or next. We were out there digging away (not getting very deep--it's still frozen solid) yesterday, and Hans did a bunch the day before. Slow work, but it's getting there.

Finally, Hans will get his tool shed back!

Insurgents and press people

Well! We're back from the Alaska Press Club conference and a mini-vacation in Anchorage. We stayed with Aaron Selbig and Nova Stubbs of Insurgent49, who graciously lent us their very comfortable couch and hosted us while we were there. We had an excellent time. It was so GOOD to be hanging out with fellow alternative press people. Aaron came up here in December for the Grassroots Gathering and stayed on our couch for the duration, so he returned the favor.

We only ended up going to one workshop, on reporting on gays & politics, which was very good but had only a few people attending. There was another workshop simultaneous with it that drew a lot of people, but I was still surprised by how few reporters were in this session. Actually, the whole conference was fairly small this year in comparison with the previous years I've attended. I think that pre-announcing some of the categories was responsible for this--it might be better if they saved the first place announcements in all categories for the banquet, and 2nd & 3rd place for pre-announcing.

I feel wonderfully detached from all the vexing things I left behind here in Ester; I am refreshed, and ready to do more.

Ignorance and publishing

As I become more experienced in publishing, and in particular journalism, I become painfully more aware of how little I know about the subjects I report on or editorialize about. Twenty-four pages is just not very much space for all the stories out there, or for a thorough treatment of the ones that make it into the paper. And I never seem to have enough time to familiarize myself sufficiently with the subjects I want to write about. I do research, but it never seems quite thorough enough. It's a bit depressing at times.

So on that note, we're off tomorrow for a little professional development at the Alaska Press Club Conference, in Anchorage (again, still, always), which means lots of rearrangement of schedules and driving and gasoline and whatnot. Or at least, I think we're off. We'll be late (the workshops start on Friday), but I really don't want to miss this. It's just too much fun and reminds me every year of part of why I'm publishing a newspaper.

AK Press Club award for cartoons--again!

The Ester Republic has once again won an award for Best Editorial Cartoon: Jamie Smith won third place this year for "oops", "walking on water", and "animals". Dan Darrow, alas, did not place. We still have to wait to find out if any other awards were dished out to the paper. But you should check out the other award winners!