We're not dead yet!

That Monty Python reference holds true: it may be months since Madame Publisher has posted on this blog, but she's still kicking. It's been a far-too-exciting fall and winter (a seemingly never-ending cold, a broken wrist, and serious debt in RepublicWorld), which interfered in the publication schedule. However, the Republic is heading for some pretty cool changes, some of which have already begun:

Twitter: yes, the Republic (although not really the Publisher of same) has joined the modern sound-bite era with a Twitter account. @EsterRepublic (the Publisher doesn't quite understand this esoteric 140-character means of communication, but she has the skilled help of two web-savvy teenagers).

Facebook: the Facebook page now has two new additional admins (the aforesaid web-savvy experts). Actual news may begin appearing.

Website redesign: after an editorial/marketing meeting yesterday, in which several excellent ideas were aired, the assembled group decided that it was time to redesign the website--to make it more functional, take advantage of all the nifty things that the web offers, and easier to find stuff. I actually have a team of people at work on this! Hoo!

Fundraiser: A massive fundraising shindig is being held at Hartung Hall on Feb. 25, 7 pm (that's a Saturday night): the Miners Masquerade Ball. That means costumes! There will be a toasting and speechifying contest (pay attention, Toastmasters!), a beard and moustache contest (men's and ladies' divisions), potluck food (bring edibles), live music (Lost Dog Old-Time String Band!), and DANCING. This will replace the Birthday Bashes, but there will likely be awards for the Publisher's Picks, and certainly prizes and games and other fun things. More info on this festival soon.

Foundation: The Republic is going to be working on creating a long-term support structure for the paper, etc. This will involve creating a nonprofit foundation (as discussed long ago and now revived): the People's Endowment for the Ester Republic, or PEER.

So that's the quickie update. More shall be appearing here in due time.

Independence Day in Ester

It's that time of year again! The Ester Fourth of July Parade will start at noon (ish) in the village square, pass the Judicial Review Booth (don't forget your judicial discernment enhancements, a.k.a. "bribes") in a semi-orderly and goofy fashion (after the veritable flock of youthfully driven and wildly decorated bicycles zooms past the judges at high speed), take a breather to impress the judges suitably, march (or jog or dance or stroll or drive or jig) down our illustrious and tree-lined Main Street, take a left (of course) onto Village Road, saunter past the Ida Lane Gazebo and the Ester Post Office, take another left onto the Old Nenana Highway, and trudge in the hot sun or rainy fog or clouds of mosquitoes or whathaveyou to the Ester Community Park, where said parade participants will turn left for a Final Time, there to participate in an Excellent Picnic & Party put on by the Ester Community Association, and receive Fabulous Prizes Recycled from Years (and Dumpsters) Past!

There will be GAMES and QUANTITIES OF WATER (most if it NOT in a glass but all over you if you don't move fast enough) and LOTS OF FOOD (if you bring donations or picnics) and loads of your neighbors and friends and dogs and kids and FUN FUN FUN!

If you would like to be one of the gaily-dressed and irreverent Paraders Extraordinaire, show up in the village of Ester at 11 am and heed the Directions of the Parade Director, who shall be recognizable by A Booming Voice (or maybe a loudspeaker or just a pointy finger) and (probably) A Silly Hat. Be Prepared to Sign In (this is so the judges and the Ester Republic newspaper publisher can tell who you are later, after all the notes and whatnot have been obscured by chocolate, water, beer, ice cream, and barbecue sauce), and award said aforementioned FABULOUS PRIZES.

Jest don't ferget that bribagery. And Food for the Picnic (bring extra to support the hungry paraders around you). And donations for the Pig Purchase, and to help out the Ester Community Association, which puts on this silliness every year.

As per usual, Do Not Expect Political Correctness. We like our parades Irreverent, Political, Punny, not necessarily Mature, and Not Too Long. Also Loud (the Ester Fire Department will be there, and the Red Hackle Bagpipe Band is coming again, YAY!). And with LOTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS. (Bring a sign.)

If you would like to be a Designated Spectator, be sure to Cheer and Clap a lot, because most of the parade participants are amateurs, and need encouragement. It takes a lot of chutzpah to make up a costume and a theme the night before and get all those drill team moves sorta down in the 24 hours before the parade. Spectators are also encouraged to bring Food, Beverages, and dogs and kids and their Uncle Ned.

The Food Policy Conference: computers and workshops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the Food Policy Conference: Neighborhood to Nation in Portland

I'm in Portland, Oregon, attending the Neighborhood to Nation Food Policy Conference, sponsored by the Community Food Security Coalition. A few Alaskans are here: Bob Mikol (TA for Craig Gerlach's Comparative Farming and Sustainable Food Systems class, among other things), Danny Consenstein (Alaska Farm Service Agency), Alli Harvey (with the Alaska Center for the Environment's Local Food project), Diane Peck (Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, Obesity Prevention and Chronic Disease Prevention), Rachel Garcia (intern with the Alaska Community Agriculture Association), Eleanor Wirts (UAF RAP grad student and musher), Johanna Herron (Alaska Farm to School), Mark Carper (UAA and the Alaska Food Policy Council), Kelsey Bearden (fellow student from Comparative Farming), Lisa Sadler-Hart (Sitka Local Foods Network), and myself (UAF School of Natural Resources & Agricultural Sciences, Ester Republic reporter and publisher, librarian, gardener, AK Food Policy Council member, Ester Community Association member, et cetera). I'm down here in large measure because of Gerlach, SNRAS dean Carol Lewis, and Diane Peck. There were others from Alaska, too (Danielle Giles, Nikos Pastos, and Ryan Zinn, but I didn't meet them--Zinn was a presenter, from the Fair World Project).

And I'm having a blast. This is a great group of people, a good 640 strong, from 46 states and DC, plus Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec. I attended a short course (Food Policy Advocacy 101) this morning and the plenary gathering this afternoon. The plenary speakers were great, talking about poverty, food deserts, exploited food service and other food industry workers (did you know that the federal minimum wage is only $2.13 an hour? ridiculous!), community gardens, community organizing. Talk about inspiring people.

After the plenary session, we broke out into networking groups, and Eleanor and I went with the Canadians while the rest of the Alaskans networked with the Northwest region. THAT was interesting. We told them we were crashing their party, and they accepted us with good grace and not a few jokes ("I can see Alaska from my house!"). The stereotype of the polite Canadian was not actually blown, despite a not-very-serious attempt to dispel it ("Fuck off!" from one speaker and apparently frequent Facebook poster (not sure if this was a joke, actually) at an opportune and humorous moment of self-teasing about being all polite--I guess you had to be there, but the whole group laughed). There was much emphasis on relationships between people, talking about developing mutual trust and respect between food producers and others in the food system. I was struck by the quiet, polite, and respectful discourse, along with the deep level of political savvy and pronounced opinon concerning the recent majority government positioning of Steven Harper and his party in the Canadian federal government. Very different in approach and delivery than US types, but lots of zing and pow (quite politely phrased, though)!

I've met a lot of fascinating people with great projects and amazing accomplishments. One man, Raymond Figueroa, from New York City, is working with a community gardening project (Friends of Brook Park) taking on abandoned spaces and turning them into a way to give locals control over their food and a way to make a difference in their own lives, to bring dignity back.

JTEL survey and some thoughts on the library

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Bicycling network!

Due to the determined efforts of some boy scouts from Troop 92 and several residents on Gold Hill Road, DOT may construct a bike and pedestrian path along Gold Hill Road. Gold Hill has been pretty dangerous for bikers and walkers, as there is NO shoulder whatsoever, and there have been accidents, kids and adults struck by cars. Adding this path to the road would, as did the bike path along the Parks Highway, improve safety and really encourage more bicycling, skateboarding, skating, and so forth. And it would provide those ski teams with a safe place to practice during the summer, instead of scaring the bejeesus out of drivers.

DOT is holding an open house on the topic at the Annex, Thursday, December 9, from 4 to 7 pm. DOT is looking for comments from the public on this, and will have four alternative plans. Al Beck, the engineering manager, emphasized to me that this project has come from the grassroots up and needs the feedback from the community. Is preserving the trees important to you? speak up. Is there an alternative design that they should consider? bring your ideas with you. Should the scope of the project include the whole of Gold Hill Road or only part of it? now's your chance to let them know. Any aspect of the project: how it should be executed, where, if, all of that: let them know iat this meeting. If you can't make it in person, you can still comment or ask questions to inform your comments, by contacting Beck at 451-5359 or e-mailing him at albert.beck@alaska.gov. If you want, you can fax them to 451-5126, attention Al Beck.

Alternative one: widen the shoulders on each side of the road, making each shoulder a one-way bike lane. (See the overall road view, with property lines, earthwork lines, existing road, and proposed road limits, in a PDF at DOT.) This alternative would, it looks like, double the size of the roadway (shrubbery would have to be cleared, too).

Here is a cutaway view of what might be a typical section of the road (showing filled roadsides and ditched or cut roadsides).



Alternative two: create an attached two-lane path on one side of Gold Hill Road. (See the overall road view PDF at DOT.)

Here's the cutaway of the attached path.



Alternative three: create a separated bike path (as on the Parks Highway). While this is probably the safest, it takes up the most room and wipes out the most trees. (See the overal road view PDF at DOT.)

Here's the cutaway of the separated path.



Alternative four: take the existing road and make it one-way for automobile traffic (the map shows that as toward UAF), using part of the road for a bike path. This is rather a novel approach, and would serve to encourage bike and pedestrian traffic over vehicular traffic. It would also be the no-disruption version in terms of road-widening or property impact. I don't think it would fly, though--there's just too many people living on the road who rely on cars. Here's the cutaway of this version.

Grantwriting workshop

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

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

Music weekend! Build a library with a song

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

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

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

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

Volunteering is on the rise, fortunately:

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

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

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

And it'll be FUN!

Gazebo weekend

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

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

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

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

Yeah!

Library, gazebo, garden

Library:

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

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

Gazebo:

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

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

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

Garden:

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

The Ester library and money issues

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

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

Ye Olde Independence Day Celebration and Hoo-Roar

Yes,it's that time of year again. The annual 4th of July parade & picnic is about to deluge Ester with gazillions of people who aren't into the militaristic display at Pioneer Park or the (now not-happening) Fairbanks parade. Folks who like a bit of political and social satire (well, okay, a LOT of satire) with their floats come out to Our Fair Republic for a lot of beverage-through-the-nose-snorting fun on Independence Day here where Progress Is Our Least Important Product. For those unsuspecting innocents who don't realize that off-color and politically incorrect silliness is the usual fare at this event, consider yourselves forewarned.

After the parade comes the Park Picnic, put on by the Ester Community Association. A large roast beast (usually a pig) is served up to the public, purchased and cooked by the Ester Volunteer Firefighters' Auxiliary, along with the usual hot dogs, potato salad, watermelon, et cetera, from the ECA. Be prepared to bring a large side dish full o' your most succulent potluck food, and to shell out a donation. The money raised at this event (also known as Organized Eating and Fun & Games) is used to help Ester firefighters in the aftermath of a fire, keep the park ship-shape, and pay for all that food and beverage and flatware provided to the public.

Details: parade check-in (for participants) 11 am, Main Street & Ester Loop. Kids on bikes should wear a (preferably wildly decorated) helmet. Getcher paper plate when you sign in so the judges can tell who you are so's to give you a Fabulous Award. Don't forget to bribe the judges early, well, and often.

The parade starts at noon for all you Designated Spectators, and the picnic starts after the parade reaches the park. Be prepared for Silly Games and Water Sports (willing or non).

Rumor has it that the Red Hackle Bagpipe Band will be back and in surprising costume. The Banana Girls will return but may not be as organized as last year. There is also a rumor that actual Republican candidates will walk this year. Let's hope they're not as serious as the Democrats have been. Other than that, the Publisher has no word of the contents of aforementioned parade.

See you there!

Library meeting today!

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

Back to the membership lists...

A land planning alert from Roy Earnest

The Department of Transportation has several Ester-area projects on its slate. Roy Earnest sent me this note about the plans:

The STIP (Statewide Transportation & Improvement Program) is money set for the future at best and money that can be pulled at any time when it is at its worst. Please keep in mind that nothing is for certain when looking at monies set to future programs. The Gold Hill Bike trail in probably the firmest of the three projects that fall under STIP. Futher letters from the community are helpful but the ranking (or points given to the program) are high and the project looks like a go.

The Old Nenana and the Potter road project are both well place point wise but letter or comment to the DOT (specifically to Margaret Carpenter) are needed and necessary.

First, the Potter road to Destiny Drive (Name: Cripple Creek Road upgrade has an ID number 24522. The upgrade will use asphalt concrete to pave the existing gravel surface, including realignment of the substandard series of curves. The road will give better access to VFD and residents. The project is slated to begin and end work in 2010. If this upgrade interests or affect you directly please let Ms. Carpenter know at margaret.carpenter@alaska.gov.

The Old Nenana/Ester Hill Rehabilitation Project has an ID number of 7461

Project Description:
Rehabilitation along the ONH will include improving shoulders, drainage, signage, and guardrails.

Issues:
1. The Old Nenana Highway has steep grades, narrow roadway (20-22 feet), poor pavement conditions, and steep slopes. The sharp curve at the bottom of the hill is an issue to the DOT so they are looking into safety-related improvemnets. Because this area is especially hazadous in the winter when the road gets icy, there is probably going to be some kind of change in this area.

2. Recreation traffic on the ONH has increased ten-fold. The UAF ski team, Fairbanks Cycling club and walkers are all users of the road. A bike trail would be the most safest answer the money nedded for this kind of upgrade is large.

3. Fairbanks North Star Borough continues to sell off large tracts of land. They are in the process of trying to build a subdivision with 31 lots on it. The increase trafic load in the next 5 years alone are staggering.

Answers:

Widen the ONH wide enough for driver visibility and recreation users dafety. Upgrade the road to a asphalt surface that does not come apart every year due to substandard chipseal and poor foundation. Either a trail on the side or standalone seems appropriate.

The deadline for public comment is Friday, October 16. Please comment!

Luke vs. Tammie?

Hoo, boy. The Fairbanks North Star Borough voters strike again. It's a runoff between Tammie Wilson and Luke Hopkins.

Yet another reason to institute IRV or something similar.

And then there's poetry

Oh, right. Forgot another thing. We (the library committee/board) have been talking about this for a while, but it's finally getting off the ground: the John Trigg Ester Library Lecture Series. Marjorie Kowalski Cole has agreed to be the inaugural speaker, and will kick us off on Wednesday (Sept. 30, 7 pm at Hartung Hall). She'll be speaking on poetry.

Libraries aren't just passive repositories of information: they are cultural centers, hosting and sponsoring all kinds of events that bring people and ideas together. The Noel Wien library has story hour for kids, hosts talks and movies and book discussion groups, trains people to reach out to kids in the schools (the Guys Read program is a great example of this), and so on. The Ester library has so little room that it has been unable to do much of this. With the gazebo, we can do some things, and now with our library lecture series, we can do more--even though we don't actually have a space of our own in which to hold events.

Still, it's a start. And once we have our own, actual library building, we will be able to do much more for the community.

Ester fire department meeting

Just got back from the annual meeting of the Ester fire department/district. It was pretty good turnout this year. Kate Billington is the newest EVFD, Inc., board member; Bill Kopplin stepped down and Margaret Rogers and Nancy Burnham got re-elected. George Riley spoke on the fire commission. Mark Simpson invited the assembled to the upcoming Ester Community Association meeting (Oct. 11, 4 pm at Hartung Hall), and recommended that the two boards (ECA and EVFD) get together and look at ways for the two groups to work together better. It was a pretty interesting meeting. Good door prizes, too. I'll have more on this later, when I get my notes organized.

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!

Slow Money

Just discovered this interesting site, Slow Money, another form of localism in economics and food. The principles of the concept (quoted from the website) are:

I. We must bring money back down to earth.

II. We must bring our money home. We must put money back into local economies and carbon back into the soil.

III. We must invest as if food, farms and fertility mattered.

IV. We must invest as if carrying capacity, diversity and non-violence mattered; as if aquifers mattered; as if childhood nutrition and food deserts and obesity side-by-side with hunger all mattered.

V. There is such a thing as money that is too fast, companies that are too big, finance that is too complex. Therefore, we must slow our money down -- not all of it, of course, but enough to matter.

VI. Organic seed companies, organic farmers, manufacturers of organic agricultural inputs, slow food restauranteurs, niche organic brands, local food processors, producer and consumer coops, neighborhood retailers, CSAs, farmers markets, urban gardens, edible schoolyards -- without them, there can be no durable economic health or quality of life, no durable food safety or food security.

VII. We must build the nurture capital industry.

VIII. We must give investors and philanthropists the tools they need to facilitate dramatic increases in support for small food enterprises -- Slow Munis, new philanthropic charters that steer foundation assets in support of mission, funds dedicated to CSAs and organic farmland, and collaborative structures for local investors.

IX. There is something beautiful about a diversified organic farm. There is something beautiful about a CSA. There is something beautiful about Terra Madre. There is nothing beautiful about bovine growth hormone or Red Dye #4 or high fructose corn syrup. We must invest as if beauty mattered.

X. We must dare to imagine that after the Age of Industrial Finance and Industrial Agriculture comes the Age of Earthworm Economics. Let us recognize the words of one of its first proponents, who said: "I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer who puts back into the soil what he takes out." (Paul Newman)

XI. We must ask:

--What would the world be like if we invested 50% of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?

--What if there were a new generation of companies that gave away 50% of their profits?

--What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soil 50 years from now?

XII. We need slow money. . .quickly.

These principles are quoted from the website, and are rather wordy and repetitive, but you get the idea.