A spike in viewership

Hmmm. Judging by the spike in the number of viewers on July 3rd, it looks like a lot of people were checking this page to see if and when Ester was going to hold its parade and picnic!

I have been very, very bad about writing here on a regular basis, folks. For one thing, it's summer.  My garden is EXPLODING. Every spare minute I have is spent outdoors trying to keep up with the weeds and create more potato beds. When I'm not there, then I am either a) washing the dirt off, b) relaxing at the Eagle (with smudges all over my face), c) at the library (either gardening or doing some sort of work), or d) at work on campus.

Right—and then occasionally I read a book. For a few pages.

The only reason I'm doing this right now (at 2:49 am) is because I fell into bed at 6 pm and woke up at 10:30 pm. And tomorrow's a work day!

Oh, but my review did get published: "Seeding a culture of remembering: a review of Saving More Than Seeds."

Book reviews

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

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












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

Farms, schools, soil, and dirt

As the Comparative Farming & Sustainable Food Systems course has progressed, I have, predictably, gotten farther and farther behind in my reading. In part, this is due to the continuing snowstorm of papers, theses, articles, poems, essays, and miscellaneous book recommendations we keep getting from our professor, Craig Gerlach, and his teaching assistant, Bob Mikol (not to mention the occasional suggested piece from various students in the class). There is just no way to keep up. I'm keeping a couple of binders and printing out the various publications I get from them, and I keep finding new and interesting titles to purchase at Gulliver's. These include:

The Taste for Civilization: The Connection Between Food, Politics, and Civil Society, by Janet A. Flammang, and The End of Food, by Paul Roberts

Likewise, I've not been able to keep up with blogging on the class. Johanna Harron came in to talk to us about the Farm-to-School program set up by the state of Alaska (she's the program's only employee so far). The program covers school nutrition, local food systems, and education around food. Nancy Tarnai did an interview with her about her thesis project and about the program.

Last week, Mike Emers of Rosie Creek Farm taught the class, concentrating on soil, dirt, and some farming how-to. So far it has been very interesting. He told us about the phrase "organic farming," apparently coined by one Lord Northborne in 1940 in his book Look to the Land. Mike also told us about Rudolf Steiner, the father of biodynamic agriculture, or the view that a farm as a whole should or can be seen as an organism.

One thing Mike said sticks in my mind: "Farming is a manipulative process." It's all about managing sunlight, water, and soil, he said (and plants and animals, of course). Maintaining economic and ecologic sustainability is a matter of minimizing off-farm inputs to sustain the farm in perpetuity. That requires a lot of work, a lot of manipulation of the systems on the farm. He offered a list of useful books, bringing in well-worn and frankly battered copies of each of them:

• The New Organic Grower, by Eliot Coleman
• Organic Vegetable Production
  
• Building Soils for Better Crops, by Fred Magdoff and Harold van Es
  
• The Soul of Soil, by Grace Gershuny and Joe Smillie
• Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America, by Steven Stoll
  
• Sustainable Vegetable Production from Start-Up to Market (dated but still great, Mike said)

He also recommended an article by William S. Cooter, "Ecological Dimensions of Medieval Agrarian Systems," published in Agricultural History.

Mike mostly concentrated on soil. He described four basic elements of soil that are important to the farmer: structure, soil organic matter (the key to how most organic farmers manage the soil), biology, and nutrients (including water). There was quite a bit of interesting info in this discussion, which explained a few things that I'd never quite understood, although I've been working with soil scientists here at SNRAS for a good decade and had seen some of the terms. Plants, Mike said, decompose into very small, complex particles that have negative charges, which attract cations of the nutrients plants need and hold onto water. The cation exchange capacity of soil is its ability to exchange positive ions of nutrients between organic matter and plant root hairs. Good tilth exists when there is good soil structure and high soil organic matter. Humus is compost broken down further into soil organic matter, very tiny pieces that are useable by plants. Most farms in the country, Mike explained, have very low SOM, about one half of one percent, because of erosion, soil compaction from heavy machinery, chemical contamination due to salt buildup from chemical fertilizers, and poor tilling practices that destroy soil structure.

The problem of poor tillage was broached in the movie The Plow That Broke the Plains. The culprits in poor tillage are (aside from a farmer's failure to understand the value of good soil structure) excessive use of the moldboard plow, the disc harrow, and the rototiller. Good soil has clods (little ones) that hold moisture and nutrients. Too much tilling breaks up these clods, and accelerates microbial action which then releases carbon and breaks down the soil organic matter. Rototilling, in fact, can turn your soil into powdery dust. Overtillage did just that (combined with drought years) during the Dust Bowl.

Mike described machinery that has been invented that doesn't destroy the soil structure, or at least not as much: the chisel plow, the articulating spader, and a couple of other gizmos. Mike liked a company owned by a pair of inventor brothers, I think this company in Pennsylvania.

We then went on to talk about green manure, fallowing, and cover crops, no-till methods which seem to require either herbicides or crushing implements to keep the off-season greeneries from becoming weeds later on. No-tillage farming results in more perennial weeds and it cools the soil---not an advantage in the north.

More later!

Cross-posted at SNRAS Science & News.

Previous posts in this series:

Seven industrial agriculture myths

Farming systems and Food, Inc.

Financial finagling in food and sustainability
Food systems, policy, and foodsheds
Food systems and shizen
Sustainable food systems class

Seven industrial agriculture myths

Phil Loring started writing articles on this theme for me in the Republic, but he hasn't finished the series yet. Now I find myself studying this same topic in my Comparative Farming and Sustainable Food Systems class. The myths are those described in Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. They include:

1) Industrial agriculture will feed the world.
2) Industrial food is safe, healthy, and nutritious.
3) Industrial food is cheap.
4) Industrial agriculture is efficient.
5) Industrial agriculture offers more food choices to consumers.
6) Industrial agriculture benefits the environment and wildlife.
7) Biotechnology will solve all the problems of industrial agriculture.

The section on these myths in Fatal Harvest has been reprinted on Alternet; I've linked to them above, but here's the short rebuttal:

• Myth number one is a classic case of misdirection: it implies (as typically presented) that somehow the problem of hunger is one of a failure to produce enough food, and the answer is that industrial agriculture is the only means whereby we can produce sufficient food to feed all 7 billion of us (or the anticipated 9 billion by 2050). Actually, people go hungry because of politics, economic shenanigans, poverty, and landlessness. Industrial agriculture actually increases the incidence of hunger by raising the cost of farming (by a huge factor), by forcing farmers off their land, by focusing on high-profit export crops rather than food crops for local consumption. The World Bank and other international financial institutions have promoted policies that have supported industrial export agriculture, for example, and have caused hunger through free-market and globalization policies.

• Myth number two was thoroughly debunked for me by Food, Inc., although the movie didn't go into why this folderol is accepted. Part of the reason, as pointed out by the authors of Fatal Harvest, is that industrial food is very very consistent: it looks clean and wholesome. But looks can be deceiving: from the poisonous chemicals it's grown and treated with (as pointed out by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring) to the concentrated, empty junk of modern processed food (as described in Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock, and many other authors since), industrial food is really, really bad for you.

• Myth number three is something you can believe only if you ignore the staggering health, environmental, and human costs of industrial agriculture—a technique commonly known as "externalizing costs," and an everyday part of our modern economic thinking. It is, of course, insane to think that actual costs (not those that are mere ticks or sheafs of the paper/exchange medium) can simply be shunted aside and not counted. They show up, somewhere. It is monumentally selfish and dangerous to all of us for a few business owners to shove those costs upon us for their short-term gain. Industrial agriculture is very, very expensive, and that pleasantly consistent-looking food costs us a bundle, even if we don't pay it at the cash register. We pay for it at the doctor's, in the price of gas, in our taxes, in the length (or shortness) of our lives, in the moral cost of cruelty to animals and extinction of species and varieties, in the human cost of culture destruction, etc. Farming the old-fashioned way is a labor-intensive business, and industrial agriculture, being far more mechanized, thrust a whole lot of people out of work.

• Myth number four is partly a product of myth number three: industrial agriculture looks efficient if you don't have to count all the costs (such as destroyed, contaminated, eroded, lost topsoil, for example), and if you don't count the fact that agriculture is supposed to produce food, rather than a commodity. Industrial agriculture is very good at producing huge amounts of commodities on large amounts of land. It isn't very good at producing a lot of food per acre, though. Gardens, and small, diversified farms, are much more productive per acre. Even Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations simply outsource their land and other input needs to external sources. It really isn't a very efficient or good use of resources. (See this PDF report by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.)

• Steve Hannaford, in his book Market Domination! the impact of industry consolidation on competition, innovation, and consumer choice, thoroughly explores the phenomenon of pseudo-variety, and exploded myth number five in an article he wrote for the Republic about the problem, using beer as an example. Minor variations in content and major variations in packaging do not food differences make. Another particular problem is the disappearance of heirloom varieties of food plants. Food that can handle the conditions or requirements imposed by the industrial food system (such as long shipping distances, rough handling, uniformity of appearance and flavor, resistance to pesticides, fast growth, precisely timed harvest, etc.) loses the myriad choices that varieties adapted to a wide range of needs and microclimates offer. All those small, comparatively skinny chickens, for example, that lay small but tasty eggs and have small breasts and grow sort of slowly, but have a penchant for insect pests and chickweed. Soft-skinned tomatoes that bloom and ripen throughout the summer and have peculiar shapes and interesting stripes and spots. And so on. This variation is not adapted for industrial conditions, and so isn't sought. As smaller, diversified farms are forced out of business through land acquisition, fewer crops are grown, and more of only a few varieties. This has lead to disaster in the past and very likely will again if we keep to our present myopic course.

• Myth number six is a mix of chutzpah and nonsense. I was boggled when I heard this particular one, but a major part of this claim is that industrial agriculture is supposed to be more productive per acre than other forms of agriculture (such as organic or sustainable agriculture). I looked into this, however (some months ago, actually, before I took the class), and industrial agriculture is NOT more productive. Gardening and diversified farming are, in fact, far more productive of food. According to a new study by Jules Pretty, et al. in Environmental Science and Technology, "crop yields on farms in developing countries that used sustainable agriculture rose nearly 80% in four years." That alone doesn't refute the idea that industrial agriculture is more productive. An excellent and well-sourced article in Grist magazine reveals the truth: industrial agriculture requires massive inputs that degrade agricultural, environmental, and human systems in order to get high productivity for a limited number of foods. Industrial agriculture is comparatively sterile, and uses resources up, rather than building them up. It most decidedly does NOT benefit the environment.

• Myth number seven, that biotechnology will be, essentially, a panacea, really depends on how it is used and if its use doesn't simply cause more problems than it solves. Biotechnology as applied to food is typically used to a) patent varieties, b) create pesticide, herbicide, or disease resistance, c) create greater productivity in crops, or d) create genetic and cosmetic uniformity and/or predictability (in other words, to reduce biodiversity). Sometimes it adds nutritional value (as in "golden rice"). It creates industrial foods, crops or varieties that are adapted to industrial needs. The Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, has a Frequently Asked Questions page on agricultural biotechnology that provides quite the interesting contrast to the concerns I keep finding about biotech crops. While BIO answers concerns in a very even-handed tone, it does not address the basic assumptions about how agriculture should be conducted, and the philosophic underpinnings that differentiate agroecological principles from industrial ones. The site reiterates some of the basic assumptions about what the problems of agriculture are (such as, people are hungry because not enough food is grown, and biotech will help grow more food), rather than looking honestly at the results of our current agricultural system (such as inequitable distribution of food, hunger caused by poverty, farmers unable to grow food because they've been forced off their land by economic or political causes) and asking if they are really what we want or need—and then determining if biotechnology can address those needs. Another site, AgBioWorld, is even less connected to what the issues are, and is a good example of completely missing the point. This site does a lot of answering the more emotion-laden worries, the pig-in-a-poke or straw man arguments, rather than providing answers to genuine, fact-based concerns. Skipping through a plethora of articles and scholarly pieces on biotech, I did find one that talks about the issue of patent law and policy and their effect on how well (or if) biotechnology is used to benefit, say, poor small-scale farmers. It's an 87-page PDF, but talks about the unintended consequences of US patent law and policy on, among other things, researchers "applying biotechnology to the solution of developing-country food security problems."

In a blog post I found on www.brighthub.com, a few more "advantages" were listed:

• longer food shelf-life or availability (also known as the Twinkie phenomenon or the winter tomato)
• less constraint in number of croppings per year (again, not counting the true cost of using up the soil, water, etc.)
• greater availability of human labor (read: more unemployment)
• faster time to market (and what does it mean if the market is halfway around the world as opposed to down the road?)

Sustainable Table has a long list of concerns that deal in large measure with profound
philosophical and quality of life issues that are only partly addressed by the agricultural industry. It seems almost that holders of these two viewpoints are talking past each other rather than to each other.

Cross-posted at SNRAS Science & News.

Earlier posts in this series:

Farming systems and Food, Inc.

Financial finagling in food and sustainability
Food systems, policy, and foodsheds
Food systems and shizen
Sustainable food systems class

Food systems, policy, and foodsheds

The second week of my Comparative Food Systems class has readings in Anna Lappé's book, Diet for a Hot Planet, going over Hamm's seven principles for a healthy food system, reading an article by Jack Kloppenburg and others on the foodshed, an article on rural Alaska food systems by my professor, Craig Gerlach, and researching definitions of "food system." In the meantime, I've been working on the Alaska Food Policy Council's introductory paper on food policy and the Alaska food system, so these two projects dovetail quite nicely. It adds up to a lot of reading—interesting, definitely, but a lot of pages.

So, to start: Lappé makes the argument that not only is small-scale, diversified organic farming that caters to a local market sustainable and good for communities, this type of agriculture is climate-friendly because it: produces fewer comparative greenhouse gas emissions than industrial farming; requires less energy inputs from fossil fuels; improves the soil; and actually sequesters carbon in the soil rather than releasing it. Her description of the energy-intensiveness of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations is horrific—and never mind the inherent cruelty of them, she hasn't even gotten into that so far. She does talk about the unhealthiness of the modern diet in terms of the amount of processing food undergoes: highly processed foods, like Pringles or Pop-Tarts, use a huge amount of energy and resources—and they're just not that good for you.

Lappé describes seven principles of a climate-friendly diet:

1. Reach for real food (food that has fewer ingredients and isn't processed or transmogrified a lot is likelier to be less climate-destructive)
2. Put plants on your plate (eat less meat—most modern meat is grain-fed, which is energy-intensive; if you eat meat, eat meat that is raised humanely and sustainably, because these practices, like grass-fed beef, produce less greenhouse gas emissions—grain-fed cattle produce more methane than grass-fed cattle!)
3. Don't panic, go organic (industrial chemicals require large energy inputs; nitrogen fertilizer produced through the Haber-Bosch process, for example—and then there's all those petrochemicals used for pesticides)
4. Lean toward local (less shipping, for one)
5. Finish your peas…the ice caps are melting (food waste is a waste of energy resources; institutional composting makes use of food waste and reduces land-fill emissions)
6. Send packaging packing (the throwaway society wastes humongous amounts of resources; I think we should institute a law like that in Germany, where the producer or seller of packing must take it back from whoever they sell it to. For example, the customer buys a box of chocolate, but returns the box to the store—the store has to take the box, no charge. Then the store can return their collected boxes to the supplier of the chocolate—and the supplier can't charge them. The cost to the retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers has reduced extra packaging dramatically in Germany. Lappé has not mentioned this law so far in my reading.)
7. DIY food (grow and cook your own food: better for you and lots less processing—and therefore lots less energy intensive)

Hamm's article, assigned last week, was also interesting but a bit less easy reading than Lappé's book. (My editorial eye kept twitching—he'd have had red ink all over his paper had I gotten to it before publication.) His operating principles for a healthy food system are that it would:

1. insure community food security for all residents
2. be community based
3. be locally integrated
4. be reasonably seasonal in nature
5. present primarily opportunities rather than problems
6. connect health across the layers of the system
7. be diverse

This is, of course, not at all what our current food system looks like. Our current food system is highly energy-intensive, unseasonal, deters connectivity between the different layers of the food system, is almost completely disassociated with local communities, is rarely distributed or minimally distributed within a community, and is rife with pseudo-diversity and ultra-processed crud disguised as foodoid items.

You can tell where I'm coming from, can't you?

A concise definition of "food system" comes from the San Francisco Food Alliance's 2005 San Francisco Collaborative Food System Assessment (PDF), which says

A food system describes the cycle of growing, distributing, eating and recycling our food, and all the factors that affect it.

Short and sweet! It's "all the factors" that are the hairy part, however: natural resources and environmental systems, social and cultural systems, political systems, economic systems, technology, research, education, etc. That encompasses a lot of things: disease, hunger, political will, costs, food safety, commodities trading, water rights, the Green Revolution, agribusiness, organic certification, heirloom seeds, and so on. This in turn brings up ideas like food democracy and equity, food sovereignty, fair trade, self-reliance, guerilla gardening, etc.

Kloppenberg's article, "Coming in to the Foodshed," takes the metaphor of the watershed and applies it to food. How does food move through the landscape, the community? One quote from it struck me:

Provided with an apparent cornucopia of continuously available foods, few consumers have much knowledge of the biological, social, or technical parameters and implications of food production in the global village.

Of course, much of the power of agribusiness ultimately depends on farmers and consumers not knowing. If we do not know, we do not act. And even if we do know, the physical and social distancing characteristics of the global food system may constrain our willingness to act when the locus of the needed action is distant or when we have no real sense of connection to the land or those on whose behalf we ought to act. Ultimately, distancing disempowers. Control passes to those who can act and are accustomed to act at a distance: the Philip Morrises, Monsantos, and ConAgras of the world.

(My emphasis added.) In short, it pays the big guys for the public to be uniformed or misinformed.

The thing that I am discovering about an examination of food systems and sustainable farming: food is political, and food politics are radical—because the nexus of the issue is about self-determination, freedom.

Kloppenberg, Hendrickson, and Stevenson go on (and bear in mind that this article was published 15 years ago) to talk about "foodshed work." They describe it so (again, my emphasis):

• A foodshed will be embedded in a moral economy that envelopes [sic] and conditions market forces. The global food system now operates according to allegedly "natural" rules of efficiency, utility maximization, competitiveness, and calculated self-interest. The historical extension of market relations has deeply eroded the obligations of mutuality, reciprocity, and equity that ought to characterize all elements of human interaction. Food production today is organized largely with the objective of producing a profit rather than with the purpose of feeding people. But human society has been and should remain more than a marketplace.
• Community Supported Agriculture also serves as an illustration of our expectation that the moral economy of a foodshed will be shaped and expressed principally through communities.…We imagine foodsheds as commensal communities that encompass sustainable relationships both between people (those who eat together) and between people and the land (obtaining food without damage). …[B]uilding the commensal community means establishment or recovery of social linkages beyond atomistic market relationships through the production, exchange, processing, and consumption of food. …Finally, the standards of a commensal community require respect and affection for the land and for other species. It is through food that humanity's most intimate and essential connections to the earth and to other creatures are expressed and consummated.
• The dominant dynamics of the global food system actively erode both moral economy and community. We agree with those who believe that this destructiveness is an inherent property of the system, and that what is needed is fundamental transformation rather than simple reform.

All this makes having a garden at home look like a revolutionary act. And maybe it is.

More later on Gerlach's article, "Rural Alaskan Food Systems: Problems, Prospects, and Policy Considerations," written for the Alaska Food Policy Council in August 2010.

See my previous posts on this course:

• Food systems and shizen
• Sustainable food systems class

Cross posted at SNRAS Science & News.

Food systems and shizen

Our first week in the Comparative Farming & Sustainable Food Systems course consisted of going over the syllabus, which is long and detailed and actually rather interesting. Professor Gerlach introduced the idea of shizen in it, which he described as "a spontaneous, self-renewing sacred and natural world of which humans are inextricably a part." When I look this up on line, I find shizen noho, or "natural farming," a type of permaculture. Gerlach described shizen noho as the "gardeners of Eden" method. This in turn is a reference to a book by the same title by Dan Dagget, with the important subtitle, Rediscovering Our Importance to Nature. Another one for my reading list, I'm afraid…

This idea, that we are a part of nature, and not apart from it, is one that isn't all that startling on the face of it, but the behavioral consequences that naturally (so to speak) follow are profoundly different than the ones modern industrial culture is creating. The situation we're in now (in terms of our food and social systems and the environmental results) arise from the assumption that we are not part of, or subservient to, Nature. I use the idea of subservience quite deliberately: we are used to the idea of dominion, of heirarchy, in our relationship to the natural world—and each other. We operate as though we aren't part of the natural world, as though there are no consequences to what we do (at least, not ones that affect us). This is true in farming and in our food systems.

Our first assignment was to read an essay by Michael Hamm talking about developing sustainable, or healthy, food systems as a "wicked problem," i.e., one that doesn't have a solution, exactly, because not only do people not agree about what the problem is, but that the solution is different for each stakeholder. This is a very interesting concept. The opposite sort of problem he presented was that of a "tame problem," one in which the answer is inherent in the problem itself, and has a clear end; it's complete when solved. A wicked problem, on the other hand, can't really be completed. It's that nebulous, complex, ever-changing and evolving sort of problem that the real world is full of: a complexity of problem.

Class was canceled yesterday due to no classroom and an ill professor, but we got an e-mail assigning us to find a definition of "food system" and to come to class prepared to talk about it. (Wikipedia once again provides a good starting point.) And of course, if we're going to be talking about sustainable food systems in this course, we'd better know what a food system is.

First post on this class: Sustainable food systems class

Cross posted at SNRAS Science & News.

Sustainable food systems class

Well, I'm going back to school, or at least, I'm taking a course for credit. Craig Gerlach is teaching a course at UAF, Comparative Farming and Sustainable Food Systems. This is a 400-level undergraduate class cross-listed in geography, natural resources management, and cross-cultural studies. As you may have surmised, I am very interested in food systems and agriculture and food issues these days, and when, in the course of my work for the School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, Craig asked me to make a poster for the class, I decided that it sounded so interesting that I wanted to take it. Here's the description:

This exciting course explores the principles of food systems geography and food security, with cross-cultural examinations of dietary traditions, poverty, hunger, equity, and food access and distribution. What can be done about “real world” food, farming, and agricultural problems? Where is the contemporary agroecological system strong or weak with respect to restoration and renewability? How can we be better educated and more innovative in dealing with food production, distribution, access, and the promotion of ecosystem health? We will compare agricultural systems in the context of social, ecological, and economic sustainability. Alaska and other high-latitude food systems will be considered, including country food, wild game harvest, and rural to urban nutrition transition.

The booklist is pretty cool, too:

• Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture, by Miguel Altieri (1995)
• The World Is Not for Sale: Farmers Against Junk Food, by José Bové and François Dufour
• Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat, by Temra Costa (2010)
• The Fatal Harvest Reader, edited by Andrew Kimbrell (2002) [also, there's Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture]
• Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, by Anna Lappé (2010)
• Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine, by Gary Nabhan (2009—this one was reviewed very favorably by Phil Loring in The Ester Republic)
• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, by Michael Pollan (2008—I have this one already, but haven't yet read it)
• Sex, Seeds, and Civilization: How the Hidden Life of Plants Has Changed Our World, by Peter Thompson and Stephen Harris (2010)

There are several other interesting texts on the syllabus.

I am a little intimidated about the work and reading load that this course will require to do right, but the topic is of such interest and is so pertinent to my job at the U that I am plunging on with it. I've decided that I will blog about the course as it goes along, too—it will be a good way to organize my thoughts and work for the class, I think.

Completely wacked out

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

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

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

Music weekend! Build a library with a song

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

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

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

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

Volunteering is on the rise, fortunately:

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

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

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

And it'll be FUN!

Lallapalooza leftovers

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

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

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

La lalla la la la

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

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

Back into the fray

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

Lessee, here:

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

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







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

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

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

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

Marjorie

Marjorie Kowalski Cole died on Friday, December 4. I'm in the process of working on her book of poetry, which is ready for the printer for all extents and purposes (except that the biography of the author needs to be rewritten slightly now).

There was a memorial for her last night, to which Hans and I intended to go, except that we couldn't find St. Raphael's Catholic Church, where it was held. We drove around and around looking for it, Hans getting steadily more and more frustrated and tense because of the traffic, and me finding it funnier and funnier because the church was obviously well-protected against the possibility of atheists ever darkening its doors. We even stopped in to Fred Meyer's in a vain attempt to find a phone book and asked directions, which turned out to be to the Church of Latter Day Saints. We finally gave up and went to the Eagle, where we drank a toast to her honor with Irish whiskey.

I'd only gotten to know Marjorie (although I knew her by sight before that) from her contributions to The Ester Republic. I was delighted that she submitted her book manuscript to me for publication; Inside, Outside, Morningside should be out in January or February. My favorite poem by her is still "Ice Cream."

One of the things I liked about Marjorie was that she was feisty. She stood by her convictions. She founded Call to Action Alaska, a chapter of the national Catholic activist group Call to Action (which supports women's ordination, among other things). They helped bring Col. Ann Wright up to Fairbanks for her first speaking tour in Alaska. I think Wright stayed at Marjorie and Pat's house.

Ester and Alaska have lost a good person and good writer who made the world around her a better place. I will miss her.

Bar blogging, books, and music

Well, the below two posts were a little rough; I'm not used to this live blogging thing. Missed parts of the conversation between Don and Mike (where Mike explained that yes he had heard of the bag ordinance and no, he'd voted against it).

I spoke with Pete Bowers during Mike's musical event about the possibility of bringing the Into the Woods cabin to the library land; that would be nifty to get that historic building back in action again. From Everything2.com:

An excellent coffeeshop/alternative bookstore located in Fairbanks, Alaska very near UAF and next to the Oaken Keg. Yours truly slaved there one summer cleaning books and pulling espresso for darkness starved poets, celtic musicians, drunken carnies and your average itinerant Alaskan workers.

Into the Woods paid $7/hr. in books and a portion of the evening tips. The other portion of the tips went to the mandatory 11:55pm run to the Oaken Keg for Into the Woods Afterhours, a key reason to work there indeed. There's nothing like drinking beer with your employer at 2 in the morning and wishing it was dark so you could actually get some sleep.

And an entry on the end of its existence as a bookshop and indeed, a cabin in the woods where it was built:

A small town bookstore/coffee shop died too quietly January 1, 2001. Into the Woods was the renegade bastion of human evolution; set neatly off from the road it was hidden from everyone by old and cool Alaskan forest.

I worked there off and on for a few years and in that time we had weekly Celtic jams, French classes and films, a G'wichin table, Green party meetings, song writing workshops, poetry readings and several surprisingly well-received concerts. Open noon to midnight every day we could find a willing worker the bookstore was one of scant few businesses in this mostly frozen (frozen in so many more ways than literal) town that didn't encourage the sterilely generic Seattle-Starbucks look that is growing so hip up here.

Our last year was too much of a struggle though. The owner had to take a job up North to keep the shop open and summer light-all-the-time mania burned out our over-worked employees at a monthly turnover. Finally an unfortunate and overly principialed brawl with the land owner (the University of Fairbanks) left us owing back rent, no access to the bank roll and a letter of eviction.

So, we rallied the troops and wrote a petition, spoke with the President of the University, raised money to cover back rent, cleaned up the land and worked on the shop itself. Then we asked for another chance. In retrospect I think we were too idealistic to think that the University would take our bid over the possibility of renting the land to some commercial business that would bring in far more money than our beautiful no-profit.

We moved 8 years of books and life out of the cabin then decided to take the shop with us. In an endeavor unlike any other people filed diligently out of the proverbial woodwork to help move out and move the building. The actual structure of Into the Woods is now 3 miles out of Fairbanks waiting empty in different woods.

Last month the University evicted the neighbors on the old land and razed their house, taking quite a few old trees out with it. We resorted to civil disobedience and took 5 dead stumps back to the University in time for Earth Day. We left them at the Commons, the cafeteria, the dorms and at the office of the President. Nailed to each stump was a signed letter stating our disbelief of their total disrespect for the originality and heritage of the land and a high class glossy photo of an amanita from the land. A couple days later we spoke with the President to gauge his reaction... he smiled blankly on a said he had absolutely no idea of what we were talking about.

The university didn't end up leasing the land to anybody. The trees are still standing, the property remains an empty lot. But the cabin was rescued, along with the manuscript that describes its history. Pete Bowers and John Goodhand have had it, still ready to move, on property near Cripple Creek Tire & Auto (now known as Everything Auto, I think, but nobody calls it that). Pete wants to use it as a place for music and poetry slams, which I think is just fine. We could move the library books associated with both, open it up as a place to practice or jam, put out a donation jar to pay for electricity and fuel, and keep it going in the spirit it developed as a bookstore and coffeehouse back when Connie Huffman was running it.

Into the Woods revived!

Publication prognostication

Right. So, assuming my various authors haven't given up on their extremely tardy publisher, the list of forthcoming books from the Ester Republic Press stands as follows:

• Inside, Outside, Morningside, a collection of poems by Marjorie Kowalski Cole;

• Freebird, the collected comic strip by Layla Lawlor;

• Wings of Fire (tentative title), a collection of poems on birds, by Frank Keim (possibly illustrated);

• a collection of poems by Ann Chandonnet;

• a cultural history of Fairbanks revolving around the Nenana Raft Classic, by Ross Coen (manuscript pending);

• a collection of history columns by Ross Coen (possibly; manuscript pending);

• Letters from Siberia, a collection of letters home from a then-young geologist in Soviet Russia sent to work in the area of the Siberian gulags (this will depend on receipt of the complete manuscript from David Stone).

An interesting batch.

That's MY mom

My mother, the publisher, recently interviewed on 49 Writers.

What you can get me if you want to give me a present

I discovered this delightful website today, and was immediately entranced. Dandelion! Fire from Heaven! In the Library! Talk about cool.

One of the creepiest books I've ever read is Das Parfum, by Patrick Süskind. I read the English translation. I have not seen the movie. The book was so good, and so very scary, that I don't think I want to see the movie.

Top 10 most challenged books for 2008

The Office of Intellectual Freedom keeps tabs on challenges to books in libraries.

A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school, requesting that materials be removed or restricted because of content or appropriateness. In 2008, OIF received 513 reports on efforts to remove or restrict materials from school curricula and library bookshelves.

From the American Library Association, here is the list of the books most frequently challenged during calendar year 2008:

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell*
Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group
* this one is based on true events, about a male couple of chinstrap penguins who successfully raised a chick at the Central Park Zoo
2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman*
Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, violence
* I've read two of the three books in this series; very interesting works. Very good.
3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
4. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, violence
5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, violence
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited to age group
7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
8. Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
Reasons: homosexuality, unsuited to age group
9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

Whoosh! gone to the printer like a boîte de Banania!

The April issue of the Republic has gone to the printer and the PDF edition has gone to the various subscribers who get it that way. Whew. Hard-copy subscriptions to go out this weekend, probably. Here's the cover, in the meantime, for those of you who like a sneak peek:

The cover photo was taken by Leah M. Hill, of some assemblage/found art on her sister Hannah's house. I love that Banania drink poster. Cheerful, unadulterated pop racist culture in a handy, well-designed and branded package…French, colonialist identification of Senegalese blacks, with an evident parallel in Aunt Jemima and maple syrup. Alain Mabancko, novelist and poet, has an interesting entry about it on his (old) blog (in French, note) with 55 comments. The drink is made from cocoa, banana flour, sugar, grain, and honey, and mixed with milk. The French Wikipedia entry on it has more extensive history and commentary, with some great links to art, games, and the company site.

The placement of the poster within the various empty frames makes this a rather interesting piece. Great social commentary...

Still in Anchorage, still

Went to the conference this morning (after staying up way too late watching TV -- bad horror flicks with a gothic ghost twist and Knocked Up). Really excellent events this year. David Cohn of SpotUs was the presenter for two sessions, one on internet tools to enable journalists to do all kinds of exciting things, the other on models for community-funded journalism. There was also a panel on transparency and openess in government. Absolutely wonderful. I learned some amazing things today...

Anyway, called the airport to check on the flight. Everything was a go. Got there, blue skies, etc. And then, ta da, on weather hold. We didn't get to find out what that meant until 5:30, when they announced that all flights for the day were canceled. Why? well, the stuff that started falling out of the sky around then was ash. It looked like snow, it was so thick. Couldn't see the sun. Had to wait another hour to catch the bus back to town and check back into the hotel...read a lot of The Ecology of Commerce, however. (Really interesting book. More on this one later.)

So now I'm stuck here in Anchorage again, blogging away on the hotel's business computer, and, unless some miracle happens, I'll have no way home. Hans will be coming to get me. The library meeting will have to go on without me, which is probably good for the library, but which I would really have liked to have been at.