Denali National Park, Post 3: Denali Road Closings and Openings

We went with Doug to the bus stop at Teklanika in hopes that not all eleven would make it for the hike. When the Discovery Hike bus came, we learned that no one had canceled, but we could hitch a ride on the bus. As we went the driver told us that night rains had been particularly heavy and that there’d been land slides at Polychrome Pass and the crews were working to open the roads. The rivers were fuller and browner than the day before. Buses were delayed and reportedly stacking up.

The Discovery Hike had been moved because the original site had too much water. After Doug got off with the hike group, J and I went on to Toklat, a few miles past the hike drop off point. It was raining and we got into the tent Quonset hut (you can see it in the middle far left of the picture) that served as a book store in this remote spot. The ranger there suggested two hiking options. We took the one across the road from the book store up a drainage from the mountain there. Basically it was a wide rocky area going up the mountain with a very fast, brown creek, rushing full and white down the mountain. We went up about an hour. The rain had stopped.and by the time we got back to the bookstore, it was raining slightly again. We got onto the bus waiting in the parking lot heading back to Riley Creek.



There were a lot of Indians on the bus and I learned from the two men sitting behind us this was one family, mostly from New York and New Jersey, 28 people total, traveling together, half on this bus. The other group - the under 40 group - were off on more rigorous activities. It was not a good day for busing in Denali. The bus windows were pretty muddy because the road was so wet. We had to wait a couple of times for rocks to be cleared from the road. But we did get to see a bear in the gully below. Here's a pond off the road near the Teklanika campground.

Although we had a three day pass, Doug’s sleeping back had gotten wet in all the rain and we decided to head home. We stopped to walk the trail along Savage River.


Here's the van after 18 miles of very wet dirt road at the Savage River trailhead. Then off to Talkeetna for dinner at Cafe Michele, which Doug had found in his Rough Guide: Alaska. I’m afraid we’d been depriving him with our camp food. He politely said it was good, but cooking over a campfire takes a while and using the coals has uneven results. Worst of all for Doug, we’d somehow left the salt at home. Not a problem for us, but a serious one for Doug. So here is Doug's dessert at Michele's. [What's wrong with this Cheesecake picture? Well, by size and color, the cheesecake should be the main focus of this picture. But the line of the plate and the lip of the creamer and both point toward the huge cup of coffee pushing the eye in that direction. So the eye is bouncing between the cup and the cheesecake. At least that's how I see it.]

Now J is driving and I’ve pulled out the laptop for the first time on the trip to get this done as we drive into Wasilla and on to Anchorage. It’s just past midnight and pretty much dark. There’s a little patch of sunset to the north where there’s a break in the clouds.

[I'm posting this Thursday morning after having breakfast on the deck. Sleeping bags and tent parts enjoying drying out in the warm Anchorage sunshine. I still am partly in Denali, especially when picking photos for the blog. These mountains and valleys took hundreds of millions of years to come about. What is happening to Ted Stevens seems much less important in that context.]

Denali National Park, Post 2 : Late Sun, Mountain Views

By the time we got our dishes washed and were getting ready for bed, late night sun turned on the green glow on a mountain top above us. The rain seemed over. We made it through the night with no rain and there even appeared to be some clear sky to the west. J got off the bus at Polychrome Pass - all the colors glowing in sunlight - where she bonded with a caribou that walked right up next to her.



























Doug and I went on. We rounded a bend - I forget which pass - and there were both peaks of Denali in front of us. By the time we’d gotten to Eilson, there were some little clouds passing by, but the Mountain was mostly visible. [on the way in - the best pics are in the Pentax still]











This next picture is when we got back to Eilson from Wonder Lake. No more Mountain.








And we’d seen caribou, moose, bear, and sheep. Nothing real close to the road, but close enough to see well through the binoculars. As we got closer to Wonder Lake, the Mountain, in her modesty, added more and more clouds to cover up. By the time we got back to Eilson it was as though there was no mountain there. We’d added beaver, fox, common goldeneye, and white fronted goose to our sightings. And nearing Igloo campground we watched as a nearby golden eagle repeatedly dove after snowshoe hares that scattered below.We also saw a grizzly digging after ground squirrels. One ran off without the bear seeing. The bear's head is in the hole he'd just dug.

By the time we got dinner dishes washed, it was starting to drizzle. During the night the rain was a steady rhythm. Doug knocked on the camper about 7:15 am when the rain had stopped. Whoops, my alarm hadn’t gone off.

Denali National Park, Post 1: Aramark and the Park Service

It's 1:45am on Thursday. We've been home long enough to get most stuff out of the van. I was in the back seat from Talkeetna to Anchorage and after a nap I pulled out the computer and began notes for the Denali trip.

I'm not sure how much of this I'll get written in the end. Probably just short notes in passing.

• There was the big rain last night at Denali that caused a number of rock slides and slowdown of the buses, but things were cleared up pretty quickly.
  
• There's the finicky weather and the luck of the draw as we drove up in rain on Monday afternoon, had some beautiful clear views of the Mountain yesterday when our Wonder Lake bus ride was scheduled, and then it rained again last night and was cloudy and rainy much of our time in the park. Enough so that we came home early because Doug's sleeping back was wet and the forecast was for more rain.
  
• And then there's the sense I felt here and there of the lack of communication and coordination between Aramark and the Park Service.
  
• And finally, the bus drivers are frustrated and hopeful that Aramark will settle in their favor and they won't have to go out on strike. It's got to happen while the tourists are still here if will have any impact.

But before posting I looked at my email where I get copies of the comments that people posted on the blog. So, Steve Heimel, it was your comment that alerted me to the fact that while I was doing important things at Denali, and consumed by weather and mountains, animals and bus schedules, cooking over coals, and doing lots of catching up with Doug, you all had such mundane things as political indictments. It all seems so boring in comparison. So, here's the first post.

Note: The photos in the next posts will be from my Canon. I grabbed my old Pentax for the trip because I wasn't sure where my battery charger was and my battery was low. It turned up in the car. A major reason why I've become addicted to the digital camera: I still have pictures to take on the roll in my camera, but the digital pics are already on the computer and ready to go. BTW, there are outlets at Eilson where one can stick a battery charger between buses.



We got out of the house before 9am Monday. It was cloudy and cool. The view from mile 135 was of clouds obscuring even the foot hills. You could see the river. Within an hour it was raining hard. Aramark employee at the WAC (Wilderness Access Center) gave us a handwritten note to put on our dashboard to show we had reservations at Teklanika (and so could drive to the campground) and a printed paper to put up at the campground.

Reservations for Discovery Hikes had to be made at the Visitors’ Center (Park Service, not contract Aramark employees.) There was only one place left on the Wednesday hike (Tuesday we were scheduled on the Wonder Lake bus) so we signed up Doug. We were given a paper that confirmed the booking and were told we had to go back to the WAC to pay. What? After some questioning back and forth, the young man serving us asked someone else, who quickly ascertained that we already had TEK passes and didn’t need to do anything more.

If you camp at Teklanika Campground (mile 30 of the road in the park) you have to reserve for three nights. You can get a one day bus pass for the park with a reservation for a specific bus on your first full day. After that you can use the pass on a space available basis anywhere after mile 30. They call this special bus pass a Tek pass. When we made the reservation, I understood the person to say it was good for the next two days. But when we got there our campground host said, no, only for the second day. Since we left on the second day, we didn't test it. The drivers really didn't ask to see the passes inside the park.

At mile 12 at the end of the paved road at Savage River. you get to the stop where you can’t go any further in a car unless you have a campground reservation at Teklanika. The ranger there looked at the handwritten note in our windshield and asked if we had a green card. No, that was what they gave us. Do you have the campground paper? That we had, so the ranger took the windshiled note into the little booth and soon came back with a green printed card to put into our windshield with our dates. The Aramark employees at the WAC were supposed to give us the green card.

This was our first sign of conflict between the contractors - Aramark and Doyon - and the Park Service employees. When we left today, a day early, I told the campground hosts we were leaving early so they could notify the reservations people that there would be an extra campground available at Teklanika. When we got to the ranger at Savage River where you exit the permit needed area, the ranger there said we should stop at the WAC and let them know. I said I told the campground hosts. The answer: Yes, but they are Park Service and reservations is Aramark. I'm supposed to go the short road to the WAC, park the car, walk to the building, wait in line because the Park Service and the private contractor can't communicate? Some people want to help out by notifying Park people that they are leaving early, but when they have to give up precious vacation time to do, I suspect most people won't.

Long Life Noodles

Doug biked along for my run this morning and we found a moose with two calves on the Campbell Creek bike trail between the Alaskan Native Medical Center and Lake Otis. We also found some spawning salmon in the creek. We did a little part of the garden tour that had six houses on one street on the hillside then made it to X & WY's for dinner. There were several other folks with China experience and as good Chinese food as you're going get in Anchorage.










And long life noodles for Alex and my belated birthdays. Here's Alex's dad making the noodles. He prepared most of the food. He learned to cook during during the Cultural Revolution when he was sent to Inner Mongolia and was assigned to cook.


Tomorrow morning we head out for Denali. Back on Thursday night, so I expect the blog to be pretty quiet. We had a little sunshine today and are hoping to see a certain mountain tomorrow as we drive north.

The Conversation Picks Up 38 Years Later

...as if it were just a couple of days ago. Due to modern technology I was able to see the Anchorage airport arrival schedule on my laptop at home and see that Doug's plane was several hours late. And I could check the Frankfurt airport's departure schedule to see exactly when it left. If anyone wants to practice their German in Anchorage, just go to North terminal when a Condor flight is due. Most of the tour people waiting were speaking German as were most of the arriving passengers. We waited with them for people to come out from Customs through that door on the left of the stairs, or down the stairs.

Doug's napping now and a little disappointed about the rain after I reported the sun out yesterday. And he's been correcting my version of events that he's been reading on the blog. In his version of things, we met at the youth hostel in Amsterdam, not the Heineken brewery, where he says he's never been. And I didn't stay at his flat in London, but rather in the flat of friends of his, since he didn't have a flat in London.

He gave me a copy of Private Eye which bills itself as

Private Eye is the UK's number 1 best-selling news and current affairs magazine edited by Ian Hislop.

It offers a unique blend of humour, social and political observations and investigative journalism.

before heading for bed. I can't imagine a magazine like that selling in the US. It's all words with a few cartoons. I guess they still read in England. The content is a blend of a blog, newspaper, news of the weird, Saturday Night Live.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but it's the size of a normal magazine, but in newsprint. You can double click anyone of these images to enlarge them.

Pebble Mine Goes Digital

Sitemeter is a program that monitors hits to websites. As I was checking last night, I noticed, blinking on the top of the page was an Anti Prop 4 ad. The
Anchorage Daily News just reported

The huge amount of advertising on the proposed law, set for statewide vote on Aug. 26, is creating one of the state's costliest political battles in years.

Preliminary disclosures to the Alaska Public Offices Commission show that supporters and foes of Measure 4 have raised at least $3.6 million so far for their ad campaigns.

And as I went to the ADN site to get the quote I noticed that the same ad is running there. This is one issue that Alaskan voters will need to study.

My initial knee jerk reaction was that we shouldn't trust any company that calls itself "Northern Dynasty." What kind of people call themselves 'dynasty'? But we need to look into what the proposition says. Here's a link to the state election site's version of the Proposition 4.

Salmon and Placinta

We had a great dinner with I, his parents, and grandmothers tonight. Unfortunately, I
is teething so there were a lot of tears interspersed with smiles and showing off his new vocabulary, all in Romanian. Being bi-lingual is a great advantage and they know he's going to be immersed in English soon, so his mom speaks to him just in her mother tongue as does the Grandma visiting now from Moldova.




But Mom's teeth must have been fine as you can see her smiling beautifully through the wine glass.









Grandma N made this placinta - it's filled with cheese and potatoes and kept calling me back.







And when we got home there was an email from Doug - it sounded like his flight to Frankfurt was ok.

Yak and Yeti and Habitat for Humanity

After Potter Marsh yesterday, we had dinner at Yak and Yeti last night. I usually stick pretty close to vegie and fish, but I couldn't resist the lamb curry - and on special occasions I've wandered off the diet. And it was delicious, but my stomach let me know it isn't used to meat afterward. They were very sparing with raita that comes with the curry and rice. The samples at Costco are bigger.



But this is a great addition to the Anchorage restaurant scene. It wasn't as crowded as the last time we were there (that was a winter Saturday night) and so it was much more relaxed.








After we took a walk to work off some of the dinner. We see these interesting new buildings. Obviously apartments or condos.




Then we saw they were Habitat for Humanity homes. Wow! They have a hip urban look. And then I realized that I had seen these when they were first getting built. Sky's dad had brought some young folks up from Juneau to work on them and I had been at the site a couple of times. These look pretty impressive, just off Spenard.

"Each day is like a work of art to him."

This was in a Fresh Air piece this morning. The girlfriend of Philippe Petit was quoted as saying this about the man who tight rope walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. The piece was about a new movie - Man on Wire - that is coming out about Petit.

Think about it. Each day is like a work of art. What if we all approached each day thinking of time as a canvas? Each day is ours to make into a work of art. Living as a work of art. Communications with others as a work of art. Walking as a work of art. Simply making creative use of the time, place,and energy we have each day. Changes in weather, health , and the world around us are simply different media with which to experiment and gain new insights about life.

What would your life be like if each morning you lived artistically in whatever you did - cleaning the house, attending a meeting, biking to work, shopping, visiting the dentist, relaxing, talking to friends? How can you do these things in ways that are beautiful, create new meaning, cause others to see or feel things they didn't see or feel before?

I think children do this naturally. Why do we lose this?

[See my review and clip from the film.]

Patronizing Businesses With Political Posters

So, what do you think? If you see a business that has a poster for a candidate that you are opposed to, does it cause you to go to another store or do you just go in and shop anyway? What if it is a candidate you favor? Do you buy more? Would you go to a new store because they support your candidate?


Ideally, we should be able to treat our fellow citizens the same no matter which candidate they favor. But when the political divide gets wider and wider, and rhetoric gets hotter and hotter, I can't help but wonder whether the money I would spend in the store might not end up supporting candidates I oppose.

Would it be better if they left the sign off? Then they still might use my payments to support candidates I oppose, but I wouldn't know. (Well I could look at the APOC reports.) Does posting a sign on your business constitute an in-kind donation? What if Conoco-Phillips put a huge banner down the side of their building?

I remember once asking the owner of an ethnic restaurant about the large poster of a candidate in the window. "The candidate eats here often and asked to put it up. We couldn't say no." Notice how skillfully the owner did not tell me if they supported the candidate or not.

Do such posters help a candidate? Do yard signs help a candidate? I would gess they do help persuade the undecideds. If you see lots of signs, especially if you know and respect the people whose yards they are in, you get a feeling that this person has widespread support. Especially if you want to fit in, be like everyone else. But some people may be turned off by the signs, especially if they are put up illegally.* (See below) I tried finding some articles on this, but didn't come up with anything recent. I guess people just assume it works.

For people who feel strongly against a candidate, seeing that candidate's poster in the window of a store they are about to enter, surely has to cause them to pause. Do you tell the owner why or just leave quietly?

The owner has the right to express his or her opinion. Is not shopping at a store that posts a sign for the candidate you dislike a political boycott? I think that going seeking the information about which candidates which business owners support and then telling people to avoid those businesses moves more into the boycott territory. Customers have a right to shop there or not. Business owners can support candidates many ways. If they want to post signs at their business, they have to consider the possible impact on their business.

But I do think the restaurant owner I mentioned above could have declined, saying that they didn't want to offend potential customers by having any political signs. They could then offer to have a sign at their house if they did support the candidate. Or, conversely, they could also allow the opponent to post a sign, though the opponent would probably assume they support the other candidate and wouldn't ask.


*While trying to get some information for this post I did find this about putting signs on roadways from the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities:

1. Campaign signs placed within the State’s road and highway rights-of-way are deemed unauthorized encroachments under AS 19.25.200 – 19.25.250 and will be removed by DOT crews without notification. Vehicles parked in rights-of-way that are used to display political advertisements are also prohibited and subject to removal. Political campaign signs are considered outdoor advertising.

2. AS 19.25.105(a) states, “Outdoor advertising may not be erected or maintained within 660 feet of the nearest edge of the right-of-way…” This section deals with advertising outside the corridor, but also addresses advertising that maybe placed within the corridor on bus benches or trash receptacles. If the sign is on private property, DOT must provide a 30-day written notice of removal to the sign owner and property owner.

Potter Marsh New Boardwalk

We kidnapped a friend from his office today and took him with us to check out the new Potter Marsh Boardwalk. When you go to the boardwalk from the parking lot, you turn left (right to the old boardwalk) and you walk further into the marsh and away from the highway.





The boardwalk is much higher above the marsh than the old one and shakes with relatively little motion. At one point about seven people were standing at the end of the new boardwalk, none walking, no one near us walking, and the boardwalk swayed.




We didn't see a lot of bird life. We were there about 3pm. We saw a couple of grebes, a whole family of Canada geese, and lots of swallows.









But there were salmon coming through the large pipes under the highway. Without a polarizing filter it was hard to see them through the camera, but if you look really carefully you can see one or two.

Lufthansa Strke - Turning the Unexpected Obstacle into an Adventure

Our visitor is due Saturday at 11:30am on the Condor flight from Frankfurt. The idea of a non-stop flight from Europe to Anchorage sounded great back when he was booking. But today he forwarded the following email he just got:

> Sehr geehrte Gaeste,
>
> bei einem eventuellen Streik des Lufthansa Bodenpersonals empfehlen wir
> Condor Gaesten, die einen innerdeutschen Lufthansa Zubringerflug nach/von
> Frankfurt gebucht haben, die Bahn-Anreise nach/ab Frankfurt. Der
> Flugschein nach/ab Frankfurt kann als Zug - Fahrschein genutzt werden.
>
> Wir bedauern eventuelle Unannehmlichkeiten.
> Ihr Condor Team
>
>
> Dear Passengers,
>
> Due to a possible strike of Lufthansa airport personnel, it is
> recommended
> that Condor passengers with a booked Lufthansa connecting Flight within
> Germany to/from Frankfurt, take the train to/from Frankfurt.
> The flight coupon will be honored as a train ticket.
>
> We apologize for any inconveniences.
> Your Condor Team.
>
>

He also wrote that the trains from London to Frankfurt are full until July 31.

Meanwhile the bus drivers in Denali have also voted to authorize a strike.


One way or the other this will work out. We used to tell our son, the year we lived in Washington DC and we went on weekend trips to see the sights and he said he didn't want to go: "You're only seven. We can't leave you home alone. You have to go. So, you can choose to have a terrible time or you can choose to have a good time. It's up to you. But, if you choose to be miserable, you may NOT make the trip miserable for the rest of us." He usually ended up having a good time.

So Doug can fret each step of his trip, or he can let it all go, and do what he needs to do and then observe the whole thing like he might a tv show about an airline strike and how everyone copes. I hope he can do the latter. This is a vacation, he isn't being airlifted out to have a premature baby like Sky's mom. It'll be ok. And maybe the rain will be gone when he finally gets here.

Easy for me to say, I just have to sit and wait for him to arrive.

Happy Birthday Moni, Ropi, and Alex

Today's a big day for birthdays. My daughter's, Hungarian blogger Ropi's, and family friend's Alex.



In addition I want to thank my wife for the greatest birthday present I ever got, my daughter.

Things People Search

Here's my latest of collection of search terms that got people to this blog:

• turning wife over to sexual demonic powers (Columbus Georgia)
  No comment - I think this got to the post on Eliot Spitzer
  
  
• i know my first name is steven (from Start.no, a Norwegian search engine)
  This turned out to be the title of a movie about a seven year old boy who was kidnapped, but it has a lot of words in common with What Do I know?
  
  
• how to tell if people dont like you (san diego)
  
  
• what do birds have in common
  With what? This got to post on ten common birds of Chiang Mai
  
  
• how to get ready for a dentist appointment in 1 day (Tennessee)

• western union, little india
  Sometimes people get exactly what (it would appear) they want.
  This got to this picture of the Western Union shop in Little India, Singapore
  
  
• interesting cow parsnip facts
  And they got to a long post with pictures and links on cow parsnips
  
  
• motor vehicle called hummer (from Malawi using Eng us)
  They got a picture of Senator Lyman Hoffman's Hummer
  
  
• charity ceo "reporting unethical behavior" (Chicago)
  doesn't sound good
  
  
• instructions for life
  That's a pretty ambitious request. They got Victor Lebow, then went on to Buddhism
  
  
• what do you do when the company act unethical
  another person with a real problem
  
  
• land hidden above alaska
  let me know if you find it
  
  
• preparation for porn
  I'm embarrassed to say What Do I Know showed up as #1 out of about 14 million hits for this one. They got something on Anchorage's Soapscum porn - theater production. I guess there aren't many posts that have "porn" and "preparation" in them together. By the way, that post has what used to be the most popular picture that people got through Google Images.
  
  
• how do they get you brain out when your dead
  This got them to the post on Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. BTW, I was getting enough queries for a while about how the name came about, I added a bit at the top of the post guiding people to Siberart's comment explaining it.
  
  
• "[Alaska Politician Name]" "[relative]" gay
  I hope this was a gay rights group just trying to make a connection, but rather doubt it
  
  
• unethical to take lower bids (Commonwealth of Kentucky Dept. of Information Syst)
  It's usually unethical to take higher bids. They got to the post on whether it was ethical for legislators to get discounts at the Baranof Hotel
  
  
• names of people for unclaimed money from chugach electric for year 1988
  My post on the Chugach list had links to get all the names. I hope they got some money. There were a few that were looking for that list.
  
  
• people that are not famous and born on december 10 200
  The post on famous people born in 1908 is one of the most popular (after Victor Lebow), and people get there looking for all sorts of dates, but this is the first one looking for people who were NOT famous.
  
  
• victor tile shop in jaipur
  Well, I have a post on Victor Lebow and another one about a shop in Jaipur (India). I think these folks got the shop, but not a tile shop.
  
  
• what's the difference between english and french weather (London)
  The first four words got them to the post on the difference between a hurricanes, cyclone, typhoon, and tornado?.
  
  
• palin's new ethics commissioner is a fraud
  Do we have an ethics commissioner?
  
  
• i now how to do chinse staircase but i do not now how to start it
  I had to look this up. It appears that a Chinese staircase is a stitch for what I would have called a lanyard. At Boondogleman.com you can see one.
  
  
• soap petrol tank
  This was a story about what I thought was a pretty obscure solution to a leaky gas tank. It never occurred to me that I'd have three or four people searching using these words.
  

And for those wondering what picture gets the most hits now, it's the Burmese dragon tattoo.

Falling Rain

The summer's most eagerly awaited sequel is now here. The end of the epic trilogy that began with Falling Leaves, then Falling Snow, is now at hand with the climactic Falling Rain.



I guess Doug, we won't be able to say, "Gee the weather was great until you got here." Actually, I'm working on squeezing out the last drops before you get here.

Palin and Monegan - What’s it all mean?

I don’t have any more facts than the rest of you who read the newspaper. Well, maybe a few insights from people who know the players, but not much. But I do know something about administration and human resources. The ADN's editorial this morning (there were also not one, but two different front page stories on the topic) called for an investigation of the Monegan firing:

The big question is whether Monegan was fired for not doing the Palins' bidding and firing Trooper Wooten. If so, that would be an abuse of office.

I'd argue that we need to separate the issues better. There are, it seems to me, two key issues.


1. The firing. This happened. Everyone agrees. It is important to remember that a Commissioner serves at the pleasure of the Governor. The Governor need not give any reason for the firing. Commissioners are not regular civil service positions that have protections against arbitrary terminations. These kinds of protections for career civil servants are there so public administrators are protected from arbitrary termination without cause. Ideally, this allows public administrators to do the right thing despite pressure to do some shady deal for a boss.

But the higher ranks are exempt from those protections. These are known as political appointees. The rationale for these folks is that a new politician needs to have people loyal to her vision of how things should be, to the platform she was voted in to carry out. But if a governor (or mayor or president) no longer trusts or is comfortable with a political appointee, there are no legal impediments to instant termination. There may be political consequences, but there are no legal violations.

To call for an investigation of the firing of Monegan is a waste of time and money. What she did was legal and was her right. What can the result of the investigation be? Nothing.


2. Pressuring the Commissioner to fire someone for personal reasons.

On this the facts are in dispute. We don't know exactly what happened and the players disagree. In a previous post on whether it was ok for legislators to get discounts from the Baranof Hotel during the special session. I raised two key ethical problems for public officials - undue gain and improper influence. Improper influence occurs when someone takes criteria into consideration that are outside the normal process for making a consideration. The Department of Public Safety has a union contract with its troopers that spells out the steps for terminating a trooper.

When it becomes necessary for the Employer to initiate disciplinary actions against any member for just cause, such actions shall be administered in a fair and impartial
manner, with due regard for the circumstances of the individual case. (p. 19)

If attempts were made to cause the Governor's ex-brother-in-law to be terminated that were outside of this process, then we could be getting into improper influence issues.

Undue gain happens when someone gets, through use of their position, something that they are not qualified to get. In many ethics laws, this usually means something of value was exchanged. Doing harm to an enemy fits into this, certainly in the public's mind.

But let's look at some of the possibilities:

• What can a sitting governor say or not say to her commissioners?
  
• If a Governor hears of a wrong doing by a state trooper that was not a relation, would anyone complain if she mentioned it to the Commissioner and asked that he look into it? I think not.
• If the Governor herself feels harassed or sees questionable behavior by a trooper and mentions this to the Commissioner, would that be a problem? Again, I think not.
  Both of these situations would involve the Commissioner, rather than the Governor reporting to the individual trooper's supervisor. But we expect the Commissioner to be aware of what is happening in the organization and he could pass the tip on to the supervisor.
  
• If a member of the Governor's family is a trooper and the Governor has issues with his behavior, can she mention it to the Commissioner? She could be accused of covering it up if she didn't.
  
• And finally, the case at hand, if the ex-husband of the Governor's sister is a trooper and the Governor thinks his behavior raises questions about his fitness as a trooper, can she mention this to the Commissioner?
  

It is clear, that if the Governor lied to get the trooper fired from his job hoping this would jeopardize her ex-brother-in-law's custody of her sister's children, that this would be a problem. But, if she really believed that he was unfit to be a trooper because of behavior she witnessed or heard about, is telling the Commissioner about it improper influence? In the context of what is done all the time, I would say no. In terms of a perfect world where no one ever was in a gray area, it would be a problem. One also has to wonder why someone would want to jeopardize child support payments by getting him fired. But it does appear that the Heath family thought this trooper was not fit to be a trooper.

But we don't know the facts - whether her concern about his fitness was genuine or whether this was an emotional reaction against the man who she perceives as doing her sister wrong. And from what we're learning about the trooper, he's no gem either.

• Is the Governor responsible for what her relatives say to the Commissioner?
  
• If she told them to go tell him and this can be proven, then yes.
• If she said something like, "Do what you want, but don't involve me" probably yes.
• If she said , "Don't do it," but they did it anyway, probably no.
• Is the Governor responsible for what her subordinates say to the Commissioner?
• If they say it on her behalf, at her behest? Yes.
• If they say it without telling her and she notifies the Commissioner as soon as she finds out, I think not.
• What does pressure mean?
• The Governor says she never pressured the Commissioner. The Commissioner says she did. "Pressure" I would argue here is in the eye of the beholder. But like all things, the word "pressure" means different things to different people. There's probably a continuum from "offhand comment" to "threaten with a gun". I suspect that the Governor and the Commissioner would mark the spot where 'pressure' sits on that continuum in different places. She may think she just mentioned it to him. He may think that when the Governor mentions something, it is always more than idle chit chat.
  
• Again, we don't know what she said. If we had a tape, we could play it and let people vote whether it fits their idea of pressure. We know she didn't say anything like, "You fire that guy or else" or anything even remotely close to that. If she had, then Monegan wouldn't have been so surprised when he was fired.
  

• What might be the outcome of an investigation?
  
• The investigators find clear proof that the Governor used her position to pressure Monegan to fire the brother-in-law.
• They don't find clear proof.
  

• If they find clear proof, what can they do?
• This hardly seems something that we would impeach a Governor over, especially when her popularity ratings are much higher than the legislators' ratings. If Bush can authorize torture, manufacture excuses to get into Iraq, and on and on without there being impeachment proceedings, then this option is going nowhere.
  
• There could be a vote of censure
• They could end up doing nothing
  

• Who wins and who loses here?
• Winners
• people who don't like the governor - they get the satisfaction of seeing her embarrassed and her golden glow tarnished a bit
• people who might benefit from the Governor being weakened
• The Oil Producers - AGIA passed last night in the House, but as John Coghill said when urging people to vote for the bill, there are no winners yet, we're just a little closer and we have a little more information. There is still a lot of negotiation to do. This still has the Senate vote and a weaker Governor can't negotiate as hard
• Sean Parnell's political opponents - He's been closely linked to Palin. If damage to her rubs off on him, then that helps Don Young in the primary. If Parnell beats Young in the primary, it helps Berkowitz or Benson, whoever wins the Democratic nomination. If this causes Parnell to lose to Young, this would also help the Democrats who believe they have a better chance against Young than Parnell.
  
• the legislature - they've been unable to stand up against Palin's popularity; if that lessens, then they gain
• Who loses?
• The Governor
• The Lt. Gov and US house candidate Sean Parnell
• The people of Alaska
• The time and money spent on this by whoever investigates
• The spiritual loss when people find out she's not superwoman
• The National Republican Party as they watch what they've billed as a rising political star
  

I'm sure others can add more people I've forgotten


Ultimately, as I think the chess pieces several moves ahead to see where this might go, I see much ado about nothing. This wouldn't have been a blip on the Alaska political scene five years ago, but then neither was buying votes outright. But unless there's evidence she strong armed Monegan, it is highly unlikely anything will come from this investigation beyond "he said, she said." In the end I think it will be the difference between their interpretations of "pressure."

This did not cause the Governor to lose the AGIA vote, but the timing of this was terrible. Her opposition didn't make up this issue just before the AGIA vote. She created it by firing Monegan. If she thought she'd done anything wrong, surely she would have waited until after the AGIA vote to fire him . But given we've seen several politicians sent to prison for things they think were ok, that isn't a foolproof argument either. Or maybe she's lived in such a positive publicity bubble for so long that she thinks she can't do wrong.

Part of me would like to see the ethical bar raised a little further. So an investigation would cause people to think more carefully about all their conversations. Another part of me thinks that we have to let governors and legislators have a sense of freedom of thought and speech that doesn't cause them to say nothing for fear of violating something.

One way out of this would be for the Governor to acknowledge that ex parte communications with a Commissioner for personal family gain is totally inappropriate and that she knows that and wouldn't do that. However, she has come to realize from this whole discussion that as Governor, perhaps people weigh her words much more heavily than they did when she was just Sarah Palin from Wasilla. So, what she thought was merely casual communication may have been interpreted as pressure by the Commissioner.

Now, let's get back to work solving the trooper shortage, alcohol problems, finding more and diverse energy sources, and on and on.

24 yeas - 16 Neas - AGIA Passes

AGIA yes.

There was a call for reconsideration and the vote changed to 28 yeas 12 nays.

AGIA Hearings On-Line Now

You can listen to the legislator is debating AGIA still now this evening. You can watch or listen here:

http://www.ktoo.org/gavel/stream.cfm

click on watch or listen. You can use windows media player.

They should be voting before they go home tonight, unless the anti folks stall this long enough to prevent a vote.

7:09 - Recessed until 8:15pm

8:20 - People are back in the chambers, but the sound is background music. They aren't back in session yet

8:26pm - they are back on - Rep. Samuels

8:33pm - Rep.Ralph Samuels has gone through all the failed business projects that the State of Alaska has invested in. Now he's saying that Trans Canada's interests are only to take care of their shareholders. They have no interest in our State Interests. Trans Canada needs the gas in their hub. We're going to guarantee them a price in their hub instead of negotiating them on the cost of the gas.

It would be interesting to make a list of the predictions these legislators are making so we could see who was right down the line.

Samuels: The oil companies are making business decisions and we're making a political decision. Time is on our side now. We can wait. No customers, No Credit, No pipeline.

Gardner: I want to clarify. Eagle River rep said TC will go to the FERC and try to get the highest price they can, but so will all the others.

Seaton: Some are forgetting why we're in this position we're in now. We could see declining oil production that would lead to huge budget gap in a few years. We have money now because of high oil prices. The probability is that oil prices will fall back down and before we get a project going we'll be looking at budget deficits. So were here. Stranded Gas Act problem was that we had to prove it was stranded. The process we're in got us around that big hurdle. We now have a licensee who guarantees...??? ...we don't have to prove anything.
What is the difference between AGIA application and DEnali? The must haves: Denali people didn't like the must haves. They put them in their powerpoint, but when we asked them here, if they would commit to expand if there was nominated gas, etc. He said no we can't do that - goes back to owners - Conoco and BP. That's the point that makes the most difference to us. Why would C and BP say they want to spend all this money to ship someone else's gas? They wouldn't. Of all we talked about the only thing that was different - they didn't want an open pipeline and rolled in rates. These companies are shipping every day in Canada that have rolled in rates. What's the difference between ehre and Canda? Ak has the upstream. We'd be left with a monopoly pipeline producer group. That's why we're here - the must haves.

Cissna: I wasn't going to talk, but I've had so much time I wrote a long speech. One of my early Alaska jobs was working for an independent oil company and got to learn about oil companies very well. What I learned - saw the huge power of people who came to the state. These huge multinational corporations saw us as tiny weak player. That was 40 years ago. That power was nothing then. Also, see how Alaskans have grown more and more dependent on oil and federal money and separation of government and the people. We've become like dependent people do. We don't see the choices we could make, we got locked into how things are. What I see with AGIA - we have many issues going down hill as we focus on one thing - our relationship with these multinational corps. AGIA brings a card into the picture. It makes a statement about our being sovereign. ARe there problems? I gotta tell you. We have huge problems no matter because Alaska is very small. AGIA gives us one card that we can play here. We have a chance to really take some control. I think this is the chance to do something really good for the state.

Coghill wrap up.

Vote coming up 8:49pm

8:50
Rep. Coghill - let me tell you why I'm going against some of my friends and for AGIA. Over the years we've had oils. We've given out leases. Those who got the leases were the winners. Our life has been prosperous because of those leases. We picked some winners to do those leases and we began.
Here we find ourselves again with those leases not being produced. Timing and econonocs paly a big role.
When we put out the rfa based on conditions we set up. If nobody showed up - I would have said, a competitive process, we asked too much. But Trans Canada showed up. We picked the winner based on the application process we put forward. Is that picking a winner? As far as TC and their credibility? Yes. But getting it all done? No, because no gas going to market. We're picking someone who will work with us to get us to market. We have to pick a partner. we're defining who's at the table and what they look like. Aligns 1) what we think the state should have getting the oil to market. 2) gets us lined up with a pipeline dealer who knows how to do this.
Some people called this buying something. It has costs and rewards. Rewards for us, knowing what it will cost to get our gas to market at reasonable terms. Negotiating complete? No. STill have to find alignment. I think our case stronger knowing who the pipeline builder is and how they get to their costs. Or we could wait for the producers who have their leasers - owners of lease, of oil, of pipe - going before FERC. Who are we then? We aren't surrendering our ability to tax etc. - we know at least one part of what's going to hapen is agreed upon. That's good. ARe we getting at tax deal right away? I don't think so. Still under negotation. If you go in under position of strength, you have a little more....
Some people spoke elequently about why we shouldn't own it - and some spoke eloquently against owning. This just gives us a good partner that helps us understand things we don't know. This forces information out into the open. Should they walk out because it wouldn't work with us, we get the work project so we can see all the costs. It might be worth it for us to walk out sometime. But not looking for way out. How do we get the parties lined up to get Alaska guys sold for value beneficual to us, the oil companies, the pipeline, and the customers. There may be better ways to do this, but this is the best we have available.
Through a competitive process we got ourselves a good partner who can help us get that alignment we need to be successful. I hope you join me in granting this license so we can go together in a certain timeline with a certain product for the benefit of Alaska.

Voting now

Sky's Family Flies Home to Juneau

Sky's little sister got the ok to leave the hospital today. Everyone was happy. Here Dad shows her off after having fed the baby while Mom is packing her stuff.










After finishing the bottle, she looks pretty contented.











And after getting outside for the first time in her life, she also had her first car ride. First to our house, then a second ride to the airport and home to Juneau.

Short Hatcher Pass Walk Before Blogger Fundraiser

There was a party in Wasilla to help raise money to send the official Alaska blogger representative to the Democratic Party - Linda at Celtic Diva who invited Alaska Real to join her. Since we were going to drive all the way out to the Valley, we decided to go a little early and get some quality nature time in Hatcher Pass, one of my faorite spots.

Naturally we left much later than we planned, but we got a little time lazing on the rocks at the main river and then went for a short hike.

There were lots of flowers out, including this monks hood.

Everything was so lush and green. Who could landscape something this amazing?

Labrador tea.

Blue bells

Near the top we found flowering skunk cabbage.

Looking back down and across the valley.

We crossed a short bridge.

Cow Parsnips

Wild delphiniums

Green, lush, thick green, wherever you looked.

Except for the dots of color of the flowers - wild roses here.

A fiddlehead fern just budding - ready for picking and eating.

By the time we got to the fundraiser, I had used up my need to take pictures. I figure there were enough other bloggers there to document the event. But there were many luscious looking cakes for auction. This is the least ymmy looking, but I couldn't resist the interesting color coordination.

And when we made it back to Anchorage, I couldn't resist this shot of the rainbow welcoming us home.

Bugs, Boleta, Barbecue, and a Tacky Green Russula

Sky found a lady bug on the deck yesterday. He's here from Juneau while his new baby sister gets strong enough to go home. Pam, at Grassroots Science had written about lady bugs, something she heard on NPR:

Calling all kids! Cornell University wants you to find and photograph ladybugs. John Losey, a professor of entomology at Cornell University, hopes children will help document ladybug populations around the
country. Some native species are dwindling, while exotics are on the rise. To participate in the project, go to the Lost Ladybug Project Web site or send an e-mail to ladybug @ cornell . edu

So I decided to take a picture. The bug wouldn't hold still, but this one on M's hand gives a sense of the color, spots, and size.



Then he found this dragon fly, who did hold still. It was only afterward that we saw it was eating some other bug with little wings. It looks to small to be a fly. Not sure.




Sky was a regular explorer of our backyard and soon came up with this boleta. It was perfect. The recent rains had stimulated a lot of mushrooms, but such a beautiful boleta.








Sky wanted to keep it and we wanted to barbecue it - since the coals were already hot. He wasn't too happy when I sliced it up and put it on the grill. It was more than delicious.





But he found some more mushrooms. Looking at my mushroom field guide, I think this is a tacky green russula. There were five or six. Says "good" under edible.








Here are the gills.

Thinking Clean

Sky's baby sister was born two weeks ago prematurely. She's at the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Prov. We went to visit the other day. Before you can go into the room, you have to put all your stuff into a locker and scrub your hands up to your elbows for two minutes. Then someone takes you in.

OK, this gets your hands clean, but what about your clothes, shoes, face, hair? What it really did was make me think about clean and dirty. Even though I'd just scrubbed up, I didn't want to touch anything. I looked at the door knob, all the surfaces, and thought, is that clean? I didn't want to hold the baby. What if I breathed bad stuff on her? What if she got infected from something on my shirt?

I did take the baby, who felt so very light, and held her while the tube of milk emptied through her nose. There was a mixup - Mom had planned to breast feed her, but for some reason this was set up. The baby doesn't have to work so hard this way I was told, but it seems so wrong for a baby to feed through a tube in her nose.

I'd left my memory card connected to the computer so no pictures. Was my camera clean enough to touch with my newly scrubbed fingers anyway?

And I'm still thinking about how dirty everything is. Making me stop and wash my hands for two minutes had a powerful effect on my awareness.

Makers and the Owner's Manifesto

My family didn't buy a lot of stuff, but they saved to buy good stuff, then kept things forever. Long time readers of this blog know that we finally bought a new washing machine last year when our 32 year old Maytag gave out and that I was pretty excited to find automaticwasher.org, a site dedicated to keeping old washers and driers alive.
Our first VW van lasted almost 25 years. Our Sony Triniton television is going on 33 years now - though it's having problems now which means we hardly watch any tv. I still have my Pentax camera that I bought in 1971, though it's been mostly sitting on the shelf since I finally went digital two years ago.












So when I caught this short piece from Day to Day on NPR about Mr. Jalopy my ears pricked up. [Once you get past all the intro stuff (about 1:15) you hear the story.] Everything about the story twitched some critical part of my being.

For example, one of the most visited posts on this blog was inspired by the Victor Lebow quote on how we had to be changed culturally, from humans to consumers. I like things that work, that are made well, that last. So everything about this show felt right.

My time in Thailand over the years has shown me how the rest of the world takes our discards and makes them live again. We've become so disconnected from the source of the things we depend on, that most of us couldn't function if we suddenly had to make our own environments. That's not good. There's nothing wrong with having fantastic technology. But there is something wrong when we have no idea how the things we depend on - food, clothing, shelter, music, transportation, etc. - are created and get to us and where they go afterward.

For all those reasons, I liked this interview. One part of the interviewe covered The Owner's Manifesto which I'm quoting below.

From Makezine.com:

If you can't open it, you don't own it: a Maker's Bill of Rights to accessible, extensive, and repairable hardware.

By Mister Jalopy

The Maker's Bill of Rights

• Meaningful and specific parts lists shall be included.

• Cases shall be easy to open.

• Batteries should be replaceable.

• Special tools are allowed only for darn good reasons.

• Profiting by selling expensive special tools is wrong and not making special tools available is even worse.

• Torx is OK; tamperproof is rarely OK.

• Components, not entire sub-assemblies, shall be replaceable.

• Consumables, like fuses and filters, shall be easy to access.

• Circuit boards shall be commented.

• Power from USB is good; power from proprietary power adapters is bad.

• Standard connecters shall have pinouts defined.

• If it snaps shut, it shall snap open.

• Screws better than glues.

• Docs and drivers shall have permalinks and shall reside for all perpetuity at archive.org.

• Ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought.

• Metric or standard, not both.

• Schematics shall be included.

Sun Makes Brief Appearance in Anchorage

I try to listen to all the advice about how to stay healthy. I value life and hope to live a healthy one as long as I can. I had no interest in smoking, so that wasn't ever a problem. I do watch my diet and eat mostly, but not completely, vegetarian. I stay away from high cholesterol foods. I exercise regularly, but never had an interest in things like marathons or other extreme activities. I believe pain survives in the process of natural selection because it tells us to stop doing things that are bad for us.

But I do ignore the medical literature in some areas. I know coconut oil is high in cholesterol - but there is no way I will give up Thai food. Since coconuts aren't an animal source of cholesterol, I'm counting on future researchers finding out that it has different properties from animal fat cholesterol, and may even prolong life.



But the other advice I ignore big time is to stay out of the sun. Having grown up at Southern California beaches, I had no choice but to think of a sun tan as desirable and any chance I get to lie out in the sun, I take. I've learned, of course, growing up in the sun, how to slowly roast my skin so it gets just red enough that it will turn brown overnight without burning. I do use sunscreen when I know I'm past that safe point. And I wear hats to keep my bald head from burning. But sunlight is essential for Vitamin D. And this addiction to the sun helps me understand how cigarette smokers and alcoholics can rationalize their addictions. We can all feel superior to people with weaknesses we don't have, but it is the weaknesses we do have that help us empathize with others who aren't perfect either.

So today was one of the few times this summer (as you can tell from the picture, though the sunny parts of the picture are also badly overexposed) that I could indulge and I did. :)

Techno Evil - UAA Email Phishing Scam

Here's a reason why it pays to do things that improve your critical thinking skills. Some people would argue that people who fall for computer scams have only themselves to blame. But we all have times of vulnerability - we're tired, busy, distracted, too trusting. Some people just do not have the cognitive skills to see through these things. There are lots of people out there - fetal alcohol syndrome folks - for example - who appear to function ok, but whose reasoning and judgment abilities are physically damaged.

So, I'm sure there will be some UAA email account holders that fall for this scam. Additionally, a lot of students are going to be pissed at the university for threatening to cut off their email in seven days. This is a total FRAUD.

Here's the email:

From	")'>UAA UPGRADE TEAM *BETA*
Sent	Saturday, July 19, 2008 9:31 am
To	Undisclosed recipients: ;
Cc
Bcc
Subject	Confirm Your University of Alaska Anchorage Web-Mail Account

Confirm Your University of Alaska Anchorage Web-Mail Account

Dear uaa.alaska.edu Web-Mail Account User,
This message is from uaa.alaska.edu Web-Mail messaging center to all uaa.alaska.edu Web-Mail Account users. We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail center. We are deleting all unused uaa.alaska.edu Web-Mail Accounts. You are required to verify and update your Web-Mail by confirming your Web-Mail identity. This will prevent your Web-Mail account from been closed during this exercise. In order to confirm you Web-Mail identity, you are to provide the following data;

Confirm Your Web-Mail Identity Below;

First Name:...................
Last Name:...................
Username : ...............
Password : ................

Warning!!! Any uaa.alaska.edu Web-Mail Account user that refuses to verify and subsequently update his/her Web-Mail within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his/her Web-Mail Account permanently.

Thank you for using uaa.alaska.edu!
Warning Code:VX2G99AAJ

Thank you in anticipation for your co-operation.

Sincerely,
Web-Mail Service
University of Alaska Anchorage


Scam watch offers the following list of warning signs for phishing scams:

• You receive an email claiming to be from a financial institution. This message may seem to be from your bank or from a bank that you don’t have an account with. The email contains a link which leads you to a website where you are prompted to enter your bank account details.
  This is scamming a university, not a financial institution.
  
  
• The email does not address you by your proper name.
  There is no personal name at all.
  
  
• The email might contain typing errors and grammatical mistakes.
  Web-Mail is usually written webmail. And they left the 'r' off 'you' here - "confirm you Web-Mail identity' but otherwise it's pretty good.
  
  
• The email might claim that your details are needed for a security and maintenance upgrade, to ‘verify’ your account or to protect you from a fraud threat. The email might even state that you are due to receive a refund for a bill or other fee that it claims you have been charged.
  Here's where it gives itself away the most.
  
• it claims the system is upgrading
• it wants you to verify your account
• instead of offering a refund, it threatens to shut down your account in seven days
  

Cynics Unlimited has an even more detailed list with another sample phishing email. They define phishing this way:

Phishing, in practical terms, is an attack used by hackers to gain access to private information such as credit card numbers, social insurance numbers and user passwords. Rather than breaking down a physical or technological barrier, phishing is a social engineering attack where targets are typically duped into providing this information directly to false versions of legitimate websites run by the hackers. Personal information can then be used for fraudulent purchases, resale to third parties and even identity theft. While there are no universal statistics on the number or nature of phishing scams, most security websites agree on the following:“ (then comes their list of things to look out for).

Cuddy Family Midtown Park - Almost Ready

To get to the Peter's Sushi fire site the other day, I ran through the new Cuddy Family Midtown Park (CFMP). I say 'new' because although it's been there a few years, with a path and an amphitheater, now the speed skating rink is in, there's a couple of small lakes (ponds?), and it looks like lawn has been seeded. There's also an asphalt path that wanders around the edges of the park.
The northwest end - which you can get to from the Loussac Library parking lot was full of poppies this week.

There's a small amphitheater near the west entrance. It's been there a while and is already starting to look uncared for. There's a lot of potential for outdoor concerts and even some theater. But this is no Greek amphitheater.

Here's the west entrance at the end of 40th. Never heard of 40th? This is just south of 36th and C. Or just north of Tudor and C. The previous post puts this into a larger context.

This map shows you where the pictures were take from and the direction I was shooting. Google Earth is a little behind the times as you can see from the pictures. But you can also see the scrubby trees that were cleared to make this park. If I understand the function of bogs right, we've traded a natural water filter for lawns that will probably be fertilized and maybe pesticided. Or maybe the parks people have gone organic.

Here's a veiw looking toward Loussac Library not far from the east entrance off of Denali. This is off that new out of the way road into the Loussac parking lot. You can see the road barely in the upper right of the picture.


And here's a view of the tiny lakes, looking west from near the east entrance.



Finally, a panorama from the south side of the park near the back of Lowe's (on Tudor). This is three different pictures spliced together, so the right side is basically looking north and the left side more to the west.

This isn't one of those typical Anchorage parks where they chopped down a bunch of trees to add some playground equipment or sport fields. As I recall, uncertainly, this had some stunted bog spruce. There's still some of that green on the Google Earth map It looks like its going to be rolling lumps of lawn. Maybe they'll even put some trees back in. It's in a residential-free island surrounded by Tudor, C St., Denali, and 36th. So it's not a neighborhood park.

The speed skating rink will probably attract a certain crowd. There really aren't too many places to sit and watch the skaters - a few small benches. Sitting on the grass knolls might be good, but they'll be under snow and ice when there are skaters.

And there isn't a lot of parking. Well, there's Loussac's parking lot, but it's pretty full most of the winter. There's room for some cars down on the park end if there aren't too many people using the park.

Well, it's just in the beginning stages, so let's see what other amenities come in - picnic benches, covered table areas, seating near the rink, etc. And some trees maybe. It does look more like a Lower 48 Park than any other one I can think of. The water is artificial lakes, the lawn areas were sculpted, and the natural vegetation was nearly completely cleared out (except for the edges of the Loussac parking lot) and replaced by...well we'll have to see.

B Street & 40th Street Anchorage

We spent a year in Washington DC long ago. We explored much of the area and our maps were worn out at the end. I came back thinking that I could take a map of Anchorage and mark off every road I'd been on and that we were small enough that I could
eventually mark off every road.

Well, I didn't. But in the 31 years I've lived here, green open space has been replaced by view blocking buildings of various sizes. Or by new roads like Elmore Road. And quickly we forget what things looked like before and we adjust to the new use of that space.

Both thoughts - checking out all the roads and documenting the changes - came together Wednesday when I ran over to B St between 40th and Tudor to look at the remains of Peter's Sushi. This is a street that is hidden off the beaten path. So let me show you some pictures. First, with the help of Google Earth.

First an overview of the area I'm talking about. The red box is enlarged below. But this is between 36th and Tudor (Loussac and Lowe's) and C Street and Denali. It includes the new Cuddy Family Midtown Park which is pretty messed up in the Google Earth photo and now has a finished speed skating rink and lawns that have just been started. Pictures in the next post. The red star is at the intersection of 40th and B Streets.


Again, part of the documentation here comes from the Google Earth picture below which has dirt where the RE/MAX building is now. You can also see how tiny - just a path really - 40th is between B and C Streets. Pictures of now are below.

This is the red square from the first map with pictures of the buildings that are in the maps. Another way to do this is to go to Google Street map.

4oth and B Streets looking NORTH. On the left is the new RE/MAX building.

This is 40th and B Streets looking SOUTH. Note that whoever built this street didn't consider pedestrians or cyclists because there is no sidewalk.



This is a view from 40th and B Streets looking EAST. There is nothing here but a tiny parking lot and a park entrance. People working in the offices along B Street or people coming to the park from the south have no sidewalk along B St to this park entrance.

This is two pictures loosely meshed together to give you the sense of looking WEST from 40th and B (the red star in the two maps above.) According to the top map, this was just a path not long ago. Looking this way actually jarred, briefly, very briefly, a memory of walking in Singapore at the end of April - looking toward a busy street (C Street) with tall buildings, particularly the glassy Arctic Slope Building.

We ride down streets with lots of buildings that we never go in and we have no idea what goes on in those buildings. So I went into two of the buildings on B Street (the others seemed like there was basically one tenant; 3 buildings were DOWL engineers, another TTT Environmental) and took pictures of the list of tenants.



Above is the Northwest Building and below is the list of tenants in this buiding.






The Park View really has a park view, in the back. I'll put up pictures of the park in the next post. The directory, which looked very good in person, proved to be a bitch to photograph, what with the reflections of the light from behind. As I look at it now, I should have used my flash. Since I normally dislike how a flash changes the mood of the scene, I forget all about it in situations like this. In any case you can enlarge the pictures and squint if you want to read it.




Note that B St. is something of an oddity because A St here for a block or so is in between C St and B St. The dilemma is that north of here is where A street splits off to the right from C St. There is no A St to the south. There are a few tiny pieces of B St to the south (map on right) and a few blocks to the north (map on left)

40th Street is another that appears here and there. A new section of 40th is scheduled to become a reality from Lake Otis eastward through what is now mostly woods and a big hill near the McLaughlin Youth Center. It's the dotted yellow line between A and B in the map.


From the Community Council Survey Capital Projects Needs Ranking Survey : (This is a screen capture of the original so the missing words were like that. You can click on the image to enlarge it.)



Notice the language used here:
traffic calming, increase connectivity, relieve pressure. All sounds really good, until you see another chunk of wild green in the city chewed up and spit out as pavement.

Here's just a bit of this future 40th, looking east from Laurel (another road recently punched through) at the hill south of McLaughlin Youth Center.


And then near the end of working on this I found wikimapia that has Google maps with some of the buildings identified as you pass the mouse over them. I could have gone in and added the names of the buildings I've got here, but this is taking me long enough. In any case, the link above goes to their map that coincides with part of mine.

And you can also go to Google Maps Street view to see this from a somewhat different view of the B Street. I would link it, but I couldn't. You can go to Google Maps and search for 40th and B Street Anchorage and then click on Street View on the top.

Halcro's Charges Against Palin over Monegan Firing

Andrew Halcro is a smart guy in a left brain sort of way, he writes well, and he knows a lot of people. But over the last year or two I've grown to wonder about his judgment or maybe his motivation. He seems to totally dismiss factors related to human feelings as irrelevant and seems not to care a whit about what people think about him. That can be ok if you just like making noise or have unchecked power (hear Jane Meyer on Dick Cheney) . But if you want to change people's minds, you need to show some respect for the the people with whom you disagree.

So, where I used to read his columns with care and give what he said serious weight, I'm much more skeptical nowadays. For instance, the gas pipeline decisions have unknowns that no one can answer with certainty. We can make predictions about what might happen, but there are so many variables, so many future decisions by different people all of which will be influenced by what the others do, that no one can predict with certainty what the outcomes will be. But Halcro has taken a strong stance against the Governor and against AGIA with a tone of omniscience and almost contempt for people who disagree, that I wonder whether he is just completely enamored by his own brilliance or whether he might have some ties with the oil producers. Or he has God's on his speed dial.

Since we know that he's been on a crusade against the governor for all sorts of reasons, when he lights into her over anything we have to get out the salt shaker. You might want to shake some white grains into your palm before reading on.

Today Halcro is offering his explanation of the firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. You can look at Halcro's blog post for yourself.

Basically, Halcro is saying that Monegan was fired because:

• He has not fired the trooper who divorced Gov. Palin's sister
• He has fought hard NOT to reduce the troopers' budget opposing the Governor's office
  

Halcro's alleging that the Palin family has been filing frivolous complaints against the ex-inlaw trooper trying to get him fired.

I've done grievance work in one of my lives and I know that no matter how compelling someone's story is, there is almost always another take on things. Even if Halcro put a call into the Governor's office, I suspect she probably didn't call back. But I'm sure we'll hear more about this.

Governor Palin has enjoyed a level of public image and popularity that we all know is partially earned and partially wishful thinking. As she has to decide more and more issues where interests and values are in conflict her shine is going to dim. The backbone that it took to stand up against the corruption she saw on the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and stand up to the oil producers, could, on a bad day turn into a counterproductive stubbornness. Standing firm until you get what you want, tied in with family loyalty, could turn into the kind of vendetta Halcro portrays. And Palin's silence on the firing and her not telling the Commissioner the news herself only add fuel make Halcro's fire. Maybe we'll soon find out why Lyda Green disliked the Governor so much.

Or maybe this is part of the oil producers' campaign to discredit the Governor so that they can gain back their control over what happens with Alaska's oil. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile for some other thoughts on the issue, here is a thread from a law enforcement officer forum.

Thanks to AW for pointing out Halcro's post.

Fifty Years Ago John F. Kennedy Urged Alaskans to Elect Democrats

Going through the oral history section of the UAF Archives I found this speech by Senator John F. Kennedy given Nov. 11, 1958. The rest of the United States had voted on Nov. 4, 1958 and elected an overwhelmingly Democratic Senate and House. Alaskans would be voting on November 25. Kennedy, in Juneau, is urging his audience to elect Democrats. He is introduced by Ernest Gruening. Kennedy begins 4 minutes into the tape.

[Source: While this is basically audio, it is stored in video format. This page gives all the information. This is a direct link to the audio.It is housed in the Alaska State Library - Historical Collections, PO Box 110571, Juneau AK 99811-0571; mailto:asl.historical@alaska.gov]



The Division of Elections website tells us that Alaskans followed their advice. (Well if you look closely, the numbers and the words don't match. I'm guessing they

The General Election, November 25, 1958

Immediately following certification of the August primary election, campaigning by successful candidates began for the state’s first general election. Although general elections, nationwide, are held the first Tuesday in November, the 1958 general election in Alaska was scheduled for November 25.

The most hotly contested race in the election was between two former territorial governors, Gruening and Stepovich, both running for the U.S. Senate. In the uncontested primary election race, Stepovich had "beaten" Gruening by approximately 6,000 votes. In the general election, Gruening beat Stepovich by slightly more than 3,000 votes.

Republican secretary of state candidate Karl Dewey withdrew his nomination before the general election, and the party replaced him with Brad Phillips of Anchorage.

The day of the election the Anchorage Times wrote in its lead story, "The fruits of 42 years of effort will be the result of today’s election - the official proclamation that Alaska is a State of the Union." More than 50,000 Alaskan voters went to the polls to cast ballots on November 25.

Official Returns of the November 25, 1958 General Election

STATE OF ALASKA
PREPARED BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE

Thus, Bob Bartlett, Ernest Gruening and Ralph Rivers went to Washington to represent Alaska as voting members in Congress. Bartlett was to draw the two-year "A" term, and Gruening, the four-year "B" term. They stood for re-election again in 1960 and 1962, respectively, when each was elected to the six-year senatorial term prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.

After the November 25th election was certified, Bill Egan and Hugh Wade, working with members of the newly-elected first state legislature, immediately began the challenging task of organizing the 49th state’s new government.

Also, following certification, President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 3, 1959, consistent with the Admission Act, proclaimed Alaska a State of the Union.

UAF Archives - Kennecott then and now

Kenrick linked to a University of Alaska Fairbanks Archives 1953 photo in a comment the other day on my post about the Kennecott Mill in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. The picture he linked to was very similar to the one I'd posted.

Given the blogger discussions some of have had about the use of photos we didn't take on our blogs, I looked to see how to get permission to use an Archive photo. They have a long list of fees.

At the top of the chart it says:

Publication and exhibit fees are charged for commercial and revenue-generating uses of photographic and other still images reproduced from our collections, except that these fees will be waived for Alaska non-profit organizations with tax-exempt identification numbers. This is in addition to any charges for reproduction services. Payment for services and use fees must be made in advance.

Well, I don't have ads on my blog, so I'm not commercial or revenue-generating (though blogs with ads probably would be) but I'm not a tex-exempt non-profit organizations The answer was yes - but give credit and a link and the contextual information.

Here's the info:

Collection Name Robert and Wilma Knox. Papers, 1949-2001. UAA-HMC-0461
Identifier UAA-hmc-0461-series15-1-8
Title Abandoned mine buildings in Kennicott, 1953.
Description View of the abandoned Kennecott Copper Corporation operation at Kennicott, Alaska. The concentration mill is visible on the skyline. From caption: "And here is the mine building---looking almost like a castle the way it sits on the crest of a hill and looms against the sky. There are many, many thousands of dollars worth of equipment still in the building but of course, its in such an isolated spot that no one would think of carrying any of it away. Its hard to say how many millions of dallar [dollars] worth of copper ore passed through this building when it was in operation." From sign on building at right: "Kennecott." In 1953, Cordova Airlines started a regular series of aerial tours from Anchorage to the old mining town of Kennicott and the nearby ghost town of McCarthy. This photo is from the first tour. Original photograph size: 5" x 6 1/2".
Creator Knox, Robert G.









My picture. July 5, 2008. The roof on part of the mill is missing and some of the buildings are gone and some trees have grown in.


The Archives have lots of great stuff that helps us get a context for what is happening today. Here's the last of their FAQ list:

Q) Who do I contact about making a donation of funds or materials to your organization?

Please contact: email@vilda.alaska.edu or phone (907) 474-5003 so we can direct you to the most appropriate person based on your interest or potential contribution.

AFD Investigates Peter's Sushi Fire

A friend who works on B Street told me lots of fire folks were checking out Peter's Sushi. So I adjusted my running loop to go by the burnt out restaurant. Here are some pics. As usual, double click on a picture to enlarge it.









This got me interested in the whole area of B St. near 40th and the adjacent Cuddy Family Park. I'll do more on that soon.

Lots Happening at UAA - Ron Carlson Sunday, Second City Monday

Author Ron Carlson read his short story "Blazo" on Sunday night at the Theater and Arts Building at UAA. The story was disturbing - a father flies to Kotzebue from the East to see the where his son died in a mysterious fire. The father has issues as do the people he meets in Kotzebue. But having a noted author read you his short story for free and being able to talk to him about it afterward is one of those great treats we get in Anchorage. And there will be speakers all week. This ADN article has the list. All free.

For a taste, here's the beginning of one of Carlson's stories I found on line

The N

The head nurse blocked my way and asked what exactly didn’t I understand about the word no, and I told her: the N. It is exactly what I do not understand about what she said. I’ve never understood it very well, and now it has tried to kill us, and I know that I will never ever understand that. It stands there at the beginning of a word, like what?—some guard or a wall. I mean, I think about it now, the N, the shape: up, down, up. Who can get over it? Listen: I never will. I have seen it up close, and I do not understand.

The rest is at NarrativeMagazine.



Monday night it was Chicago's Second City in Wendy Williamson Auditorium. They said no flash photography and no videotaping. This is a key Saturday Night Life farm club and the skits were well polished - even the improvised ones.

Wednesday's writer/speakers will be:

• ZACK ROGOW has published five collections of poetry, three anthologies, four volumes of translation, a children's book and two plays. He teaches at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and has a sixth book of poems due out soon, "The Number Before Infinity."

• VALERIE MINER has written 13 novels and collections of short fiction and nonfiction, including memoir and essays. Her latest novel is "After Eden." She is a professor and artist in residence at Stanford University in California.

These two descriptions and all the rest of the program descriptions are at the ADN link.

Green Party Convention and Other Third Party Presidential Candidates We Missed

While the Alaska blogosphere has been talking about Alaska bloggers going to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, I haven't seen any mention of the Green Party National Convention that took place this past weekend in Chicago. Here was their schedule.

According to CBS

(CBS/AP) Green Party delegates have selected former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia as the party's presidential nominee..
.
McKinney tapped Rosa Clemente, a hip-hop artist, journalist and activist, as her running mate.

McKinney, 53, entered politics by following her father, an Atlanta policeman who later served in the Georgia State House. She won her first seat in 1988, and later ran for and won a House race in 1992, becoming the first African American woman to represent Georgia in Congress. . .

Clamente, 36, born in the Bronx and of Puerto Rican descent, was raised in one of the nation's poorest communities, and became an activist and journalist angered by the Bush administration's response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"I choose to do this, not for me, but for my generation, my community and my daughter," she said of the nomination. "I don't see the Green Party as an alternative; I see it as an imperative."

I also didn't see any coverage of the Libertarian Convention that was held May 22-26 in Denver, where they also nominated a former congress person, Bob Barr. But I can't imagine that there weren't a couple of Alaska blogs that covered this. I just couldn't find any. Barr's campaign site biography begins this way:

Bob Barr is the 2008 Libertarian nominee for President of the United States. Previously, he represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, serving as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, as Vice-Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, and as a member of the Committee on Financial Services. He now practices law with the Law Offices of Edwin Marger, and runs a consulting firm, Liberty Strategies LLC, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and with offices in the Washington, D.C. area. Barr works tirelessly to help preserve our fundamental right to privacy and our other civil liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

For more go to the Barr website.

The Libertarian vice president candidate is Wayne Allyn Root

Wayne Allyn Root is the 2008 Libertarian Party Vice Presidential nominee. Founder and Chairman of a successful small business, Wayne is a self-made businessman as well as an author and television producer. Wayne's professional life has focused in the realm of business, though he maintains a deep interest in the political sphere in addition to his commercial pursuits. This dynamic has created a political perspective similar to that of the average American, and the air of a true "citizen-politician."

The rest is at another page on the Barr site. It includes a short video too.

Who else are we missing?

MapsofWorld.com offers these other third party candidates (how many third party candidates can you have? Seems like we need to start thinking about 4th, 5th, 6th party candidates, or just other party candidates): Constitution Party, Prohibition Party, Socialist Party.

The Constitution Party had its convention at the end of April, but their last online news update is from early May:

Constitution Party Chooses Baldwin - 5/18/2008
At its April 24-27 national convention in Kansas City, the Constitution Party nominated Florida pastor/political activist Charles O. Chuck Baldwin as its candidate for president of the United States. Baldwin received 383.8 votes to 125.7 garnered by Marylands Alan Keyes and a few given to minor candidates. During the...
After having been named the party’s nominee, he asked the convention to nominate Tennessee attorney Darrell Castle as his running mate, and his request was honored.

The Prohibition Party's website doesn't say a lot. They are against the sale of alcohol. The blog Third Party Watch says their presidential candidate Gene Amondson told a Florida reporter he would probably vote for McCain. One of the commenters noted,

I guess we can rule out that he was drunk when he said it.

From VoteSocialist2008.org, the nominees of the Socialist Party:

For President and Vice President of the United States: Brian Moore of Florida and Stewart Alexander of California.

Bike Testimonial

Doug, my UK friend who's coming to visit in two weeks forwarded an email from someone he'd met in Australia who'd been a physician's assistant in Fairbanks and gave him some advice about this trip to Alaska. (Surprisingly close to what I'm working on.) She now lives in Georgia. In the closing she wrote:

We have our own gas crisis going on which I'm sure you've heard about. It has inspired me to start riding my bicycle to work. I did it today for the first time, and was surprised to find out it took me only 10 minutes! I guess I should have been doing that long ago!

[Picture is the bike bridge over Northern Lights near Goose Lake]

Good and Bad Landscaping

THE GOOD




By the UAA theater arts building they've had this stone lawn for a long time that allows you to drive over the lawn, but not have a sterile paved driveway. Even though the green isn't thick, it looks good.





THE BAD

Down the street, when they built this duplex, they had a crew put black plant cover cloth all over this small hill and then covered it with rocks. Presumably this was intended to eliminate the need to do any yard work here. At the end of winter, the sidewalk is covered with the rocks.Time flies, so I don't remember if it was two or three years ago that they did this, but if we are lucky, the green will totally cover the sterile rocks before long .

Summer's Here, Really!

For Anchorage folks who think summer has forgotten about us, there are signs it's really here.



The iris have mostly bloomed and faded.
















To be replaced by the daisies














And the dianthus.






And the ladies mantle.


















But with the cool weather and grey skies, I can't blame anyone for mistaking the cottonwood seeds for snow. On the left is the whole cotton pod. On the right are the scattered seeds caught up against edge of the grass. In the middle is a clump of seeds.

What's the Largest US National Park?- Post 5: Kennecott Copper Mill

[click here for all the Wrangell-St. Elias Posts]

For me, the highlight of the trip to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park was the Endecott Mill. Copper was what opened up this area. When the first train left Kennecott in April 1911, Lone E. Jansen writes in The Copper Spike, what appears to be the most thorough book on the topic:

It was loaded with ore so rich that it was not even milled, but simply shoveled into sacks as it came from the mountain. The ore from the mine averaged 70 percent pure copper.

The first copper train was expected to be 60 cars long to bring down the great backlog of ore; however, since insurance could only be obtained on a value of up to $250,000 the train was reduced to 35 ore cars. These cars carried 1,200 tons of copper ore, valued at the maximum insurable amount, $250,000.

And things shut down rather abruptly in 1938. The tour of the mill (the mines are further up the mountain and not open for tours at this point) is unlike most US historical tours. It feels like nothing has been touched since they walked out. Nothing has been prettied up. This mill has not been Disneyfied. [All pictures can be enlarged by double clicking on them.]


The private tour - $25 per person, $10 for under 12 - is about two and a half hours. I think there is also a free Park Service tour, but I'm not sure. You walk through town past this pile of gravel where the creek flooded a year or two ago - can't remember all the details - and then past those freshly painted red buildings you go up a path through the underbrush to the top of the mill. The tour starts at the 14th floor - the top - of the mine. In the picture above you can see the mill from below and then looking down back at the town from the very top of the mill. Here, from the top, you can see some remnants of the tram (I'm pretty sure that's what this picture is) and the mountains above the mine where the copper was). The copper was hauled down in big buckets on the tram.

Miners got up to the mines, and their dormitories, by riding the tram or a 3 or 4 mile walk. They had to sign a no-liability form first, and according to our guide, a number of people weren't able to duck low enough and got whacked. He said the death records weren't well kept, but a lot of people died or got badly injured. They had a hospital of sorts on site.


These are a couple of the buildings along the creek that flooded not too long ago.













These are pictures inside the mill.














Everything in here, we were told, is original, including all the stairs. But as I look at the pictures, surely not the safety stripes, and possibly not the hand rail. But that was what made this all so remarkable. There were still tools lying around, scraps on the floor. Actually, I suspect it might have been tidier when it was a working mill. It's good we started at the top rather than at the bottom.




These tables were where ore was shaken in water to separate the copper from the rest of the rock. People worked in this mill and in the mine for 12 hour shifts. When one worker was getting up, the one he shared a bed with was finishing up. They had two holidays - Christmas and July 4th. So it was appropriate to be there July 4th.







This is a closer look at one of the slurry tables. There's linoleum on a wood base, then wooden slats to catch the various sized chunks from the ore.



At the end of the tour we were back on the main street at the bottom of the mill. Here's a picture looking back up at the bizarre building we'd just toured.




We went across the street into the power plant at the end of the tour.


One can't help but think about this strange chapter in US history. Here was this incredibly rich copper mine but it was separated from regular transportation routes by rugged mountains, rushing rivers, in country that was cold (temperatures get well under -40˚ which is the same in F and C) and snowy in the winter and thick undergrowth and hungry mosquitoes in the summer. The railroad to Kennecott from Cordova is 196 miles long, crossing rivers, gorges, and in one case five miles right over a glacier. Repairs had to be made every year. Janson writes

From the beginning, the Copper River and Northwestern was really more than a mining railroad. It was glamor, adventure and excitement. Its construction had truly been "man against the wilderness." Its people, such as M.J. Heney, E.C. Hawkins[There's only a bit about Hawkins, but this is in an interesting on-line book Alaska, An Empire in the Making published in 1913 two after the completion of the railroad], Dr. Whiting[The link has a picture about 3/4 down the page of Dr. Whiting performing the autopsy on Soapy Smith], Jack McCord and "Big Mike" Sullivan, seemed bigger than life, their achievements almost beyond the power of description, and therefore a challenge to writers to try, somehow, to describe them.(p. 149)

The tour guide told us that net profits for the Guggenheims and JP Morgan owned mine were $100-200 million, or over $1 billion in today's dollars. The workers got paid well by the going wage but the work must have been punishing and we don't know how many died. Lone E. Janson writes in The Copper Spike:

The Cordova Alaskan reported that, "A rumor from some disgruntled source in Valdez that the wages for unskilled labor would be cut from $3.50 to $3.00 a day, a reduction of 50 cents for a ten-hour day, is not the case, although unskilled labor in the states at $1.75 per day is plentiful." (p. 72). . .

Someone I talked to said that she'd heard that the Chinese workers on the railroad were treated terribly and many died. I could find nothing in The Copper Spike about Chinese workers.

"The railroad was built," said old-timer Dick Janson Sr.,[a relative of the author?] "by what they call 'station men.' Two or three men would form a 'companie' which contracted for different jobs at so much per cubic yard of rock or dirt moved, or in railroad construction, so much per station.

"They followed the heavy construction around the world, these station men, and they knew each other from other jobs and other places. Like on the Copper river, I worked with men from the Gillevara Ofoten, the Iron Ore mountain in Sweden, which is the world's farthest north railroad. . .

"Most of the station men were Scandinavians, and they had some colorful names. Sometimes you worked with a man for years and never knew his real name. There were such handles as Pickhandle Jones, The Norwegian King, Shoot-em-up Sweede, Crooked Swede, Hurry-up Jones, and the like.
...The men were of assorted nationalities, some with exceedingly unpronounceable names. If a Mr. Mxlovopovsky appled for work, the paymaster would fix a firm eye on him and pronounce, "From now on your name is Jack Robbins.". . .

Another oddity of the paymaster's window was the fact that horses were on the payroll, that services brought in exactly the same manner as a man's. (p. 72)

[The use of quotations was inconsistent in the original.]



Here's an Alaska-Yukon Railroad bibliography
I found working on this post.

Was Olson Wearing the Wire? [NO]

[Later: Anonymous points out in a comment below that Lisa Demer's ADN article says the FBI were in the next booth taping the conversation. Given they were listening to Bill Allen's phone, they would have tipped off about the breakfast meeting.]

At Alaskan Abroad, Dillon speculates from the conversations cited in the indictment that Senator Olson was cooperating with the Feds.

The question that comes to mind reading the Cowdery indictment is whether Sen. Donny Olson was cooperating with the feds at the time of the June 25, 2006 breakfast meeting with Cowdery? You have to hope so, otherwise it's pretty hard to explain away this conversation:

According to the indictment, Bill Allen asked Olson: "So you need . . . some money here pretty quick, huh?"

Olson nodded his head affirmatively and told Allen that he could use his money "to get out there" and campaign.

Olson: How much are you good for?

Allen: What?

Olson: How much are you good for?

Allen: Oh, we can probably go 25.

Olson: That's a good start...

In the previous trials, only one had an active informant throughout - the Anderson trial. Frank Prewitt, helped set up the scheme that got Anderson indicted, was wearing a wire. That was in 2004 already. (After Allen agreed to cooperate he made one call to Pete Kott to get him to verify something on tape - I think it was about getting money for polls done by Dave Dittman. And there was only one situation in the Kohring trial I recall - a meal with Frank Prewitt who carried the wire.)

Allen and Smith weren't brought into the FBI office until the end of August 2006. Before that they didn't know they were being listened to. So in June 2006 neither of them would have been carrying a wire.

But if Allen and Smith weren't working undercover yet, who was carrying the wire? Since Cowdery is the one being indicted, it wouldn't have been him.

The FBI was monitoring Suite 604 in the Baranof Hotel and was listening to Allen's and Smith's telephones. But in the previous trials, when there was tape from a restaurant conversation, one of the people in the conversation was carrying a mic or a video camera. Or was there another person at the breakfast? The indictment says:

On or about June 25, 2006, COWDERY met with COMPANY CEO and
State Senator A for breakfast at a restaurant located in Anchorage, Alaska.

No one else mentioned at the breakfast. So maybe Olson was wearing the wire.

Cowdery Indictment

Here's the indictment itself:

Cowdery-indictment source prod affiliate 7 - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Cowdery-indictment source prod affiliate 7

From the indictment we can see the key players and the charges. I'm pulling out excerpts from the first part of the indictment and posting the whole indictment below.


The Players:

JOHN COWDERY ("COWDERY") was an elected member of the Alaska
State Senate, having been first elected to the Senate in 2000. COWDERY represented
District O, located in Anchorage, Alaska. He was reelected to the Senate in November
2004.

"COMPANY A") was a privately held company that was incorporated in a State other
than the State of Alaska. COMPANY A was a multinational corporation that provided
services to the energy, resource, and process industries and to the public sector.
COMPANY A was comprised of multiple subsidiary companies and, collectively,
COMPANY A was engaged in interstate commerce in connection with the foregoing
projects.
[This has to be VECO]

"COMPANY CEO" was the Chief Executive Officer and principal owner
of COMPANY A.
[Bill Allen]

"COMPANY VP" was the Vice President of Community and Government
Affairs of COMPANY A.
[Rick Smith]

State Senator A was an elected member of the Alaska State Senate.
[Donny Olson]

STATE SENATOR B was an elected member of the Alaska State Senate.
STATE SENATOR B resigned from the Senate in 2006.

[Dillon at An Alaskan Abroad says this is Ben Stevens. But Stevens, in my recollection, did not resign from office, he simply did not run for reelection in 2006. The Feds are usually precise with details like this.]

The Charges

Conspiracy and Bribery

As I read this, the charge is that Cowdery conspired with Bill Allen and Rick Smith to bribe Senator A (Olson) to vote in favor of the version of the PPT tax that Veco was supporting. Then the same facts are used for the bribery charge. So count one is for conspiring to bribe and count two is for actually bribing. From the indictment (p. 10)

COWDERY also told COMPANY CEO that, when he had talked to State Senator A, COWDERY said, "Well, I could probably get some money, but we gotta get a commitment that you're gonna vote for the PPT and the . . . gas contract." COWDERY told COMPANY CEO that State Senator A said "he had
no problem with that."

NOTE: Some of the peculiarity of the language of the indictment itself is due to the need to match the indictment to the law. As I recall from the earlier trials, you need various elements:
a. “an elected public official”
b. to ‘knowingly and unlawfully conspire, confederate, etc…”
c. the government entity (State of Alaska here) has to receive more than $10,000 in federal funding
d. the ‘anything of value” “to influence or reward” has to be over $5000
Also, there has to be interstate commerce, thus the explicit mention of that in the description of Company A.

WALL-E

The opening of the movie is spectacular. The visuals are breathtaking and for the first half hour or so I was totally taken in. There is no dialogue as we see a little robot scoop garbage, crush it into cubes, then place the cubes into piles that dwarf the nearby skyscrapers in an abandoned city in dark earth tones.


I can see growth-at-any-cost conservatives shake their heads and make snide comments about liberal Hollywood brainwashing children with this sort of pollution-killed-world followed by images of bloated humans too fat to walk living in some sort of evil utopian mix of Las Vegas and a cruise ship, way out in space.

But despite the visual technology and the opening environmental gloom, the story is basically the conservative Disney formula with anthropomorphic robots who fall in love and save humanity.

I couldn’t help thinking about what Disney messages I was absorbing as a kid when I saw Snow White, Cinderella, Bambi, and all the others. The fairy tales, well, Disney just adapted the stories that were already in our culture. Sure, the various male and female roles of those stories have been well deconstructed. But what about in this movie?

Although the she robot - Eve - is Macly sleek and beautiful and the he robot - WALL-E -is, well, a geek, that isn’t so different from Clark Kent or Spider Man. And, after all, Eve is merely a probe acting mechanically and WALL-E is the one who gives her the plant that changes everything, who sneaks into the spaceship and starts a rebellion among the ship’s robots. And the movie is called WALL-E, not Eve. Cinderella and Snow White at least got the title roles, even if they had to wait to be saved by men.

And what message does the movie give us about humanity? Despite the obvious and bleak environmental message, the movie is giving us a pretty conservative feel good, we-Americans-can-overcome-anything-because-basically-we-are-the-best. You can trash your planet, then leave and wallow, fat and lazy, in do-nothing luxury for 700 years, and still manage to suddenly regain your physical and spiritual strength to fight oppression and recolonize the world. So grab another Coke and butter up that pop-corn.

Good science fiction and good fantasy require suspension of disbelief as the story violates one or two basic truths of life as we know it. But from there on it needs to be internally consistent. Once Dorothy got dropped into Oz, everything was perfectly reasonable and consistent. This story wasn’t. There were lots of little loose ends. The precious plant that signals the ship can return to earth, despite being naked in outer space, still lives. It was well protected throughout, there was no need to flash freeze it outside the ship with just some minor wilting.

The Captain, on the one hand has to look up words like 'soil,' but spits out 'mutiny' at the Hal clone computer running the ship. If 'soil' dropped out the vocabulary after 700 years, surely 'mutiny' would have too after 700 years of total rule by the robots and computers.

It never was clear whether these were the same people who left earth 700 years ago who somehow stayed alive for all that time or if this was many generations of earthlings later. If the former, how did they live that long? There were children on board - it would be even stranger if they had stayed children all that time. But the human blobs who couldn’t get off their floating lounge chairs, needed help moving if they fell off, and spoke to each other via cell-phone like screens even though they were right next to each other, surely didn’t have sex. In fact, the two who were interfered with by WALL-E at one point accidentally touched hands and their looks of surprise suggested this was a totally new experience.

I wrote most of this and then looked to see if it had already been said. I found a list of many reviews and read a few from the top of the list (people who gushed) and a few from the bottom (people who gave mixed reviews.) Some of what I wrote was said by everyone I read, but most were so dazzled by the good parts they didn't reflect on how, rather than breaking new ground, the robots (such as the anti-contaminant robot) say, were just mechanical versions of the mice in Cinderella Or they simply saw such things as homage. Kenneth Turan of the LA Times, a reviewer I generally like, interprets it this way:

Daring and traditional, groundbreaking and familiar, apocalyptic and sentimental, "Wall-E" gains strength from embracing contradictions that would destroy other films.

I saw it as pushing and then running out of steam and going back to cliché. When I started blogging it never occurred to me to talk to the people in court I was writing about. I watched as the real reporters did. Well, of course, that's how you get your story. But when I did, finally, make contact with my 'subjects' I also realized that it changed the relationship. And when I wrote I found myself having to fight back toward objectivity. Reading Turan's review, I can't help but wonder whether the LA Times' long time reviewer knows the people who made this film and whether that colored his review. I have no idea, but just a thought.

The reviewer who came closest to capturing my reaction was SF Chronicle reviewer, Mick LaSalle, who probably doesn't know the Pixar people, wrote

What we have with "WALL-E" is 45 minutes of a masterpiece and another 50-odd minutes of dithering - there as a concession that you can't market a 45-minute movie.

Cowdery's Indictment - FBI's View, His Attorney's View, Gov. Palin's View

For people (like me) who were not paying attention, Sen. John Cowdery was indicted today. The Anchorage FBI website has the following media statement:

FOR IMMEDIATE CRM

THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2008 (202) 514-2007

WWW.USDOJ.GOV TDD (202) 514-1888

ALASKA STATE SENATOR INDICTED ON PUBLIC CORRUPTION CHARGES

WASHINGTON–John Cowdery, a current member of the Alaska state Senate, was indicted on charges arising out of a federal investigation into public corruption in the state of Alaska, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich for the Criminal Division announced today.

A two-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Anchorage on July 9, 2008, charges Cowdery with one count of bribery and one count of conspiracy. The indictment alleges that Cowdery and his co-conspirators, including Bill J. Allen, the former chief executive officer of VECO Corporation, and Richard L. Smith, VECO’s former vice president, corruptly offered and agreed to give financial benefits to another state legislator (State Senator A) to influence and reward State Senator A in exchange for State Senator A agreeing to perform official acts as a member of the Alaska State Legislature.

The indictment specifically alleges that VECO Corporation, which at the time was a multinational oil services corporation, had a significant financial interest in contracts with oil producers in Alaska and, consequently, supported certain oil and gas legislation pending in the Alaska state legislature in 2006. The indictment further alleges that, in exchange for $25,000 – characterized as political campaign contributions – Cowdery, Allen, Smith and others sought an agreement with State Senator A that would require State Senator A to vote in favor of the oil and gas legislation favored by VECO. Cowdery and the alleged co-conspirators agreed to this plan, according to the indictment, through a series of telephone calls and in-person meetings.

If convicted, Cowdery faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on the bribery count and a maximum penalty of five years in prison on the conspiracy count, as well as a maximum $250,000 fine for each count.

An indictment is merely an accusation and defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty at trial beyond a reasonable doubt.

To date, there have been seven criminal convictions arising out of the ongoing investigation into public corruption in the state of Alaska. Thomas T. Anderson, a former elected member of the Alaska House of Representatives, was convicted in July 2007 and sentenced to five years in prison for extortion, conspiracy, bribery and money laundering for soliciting and receiving money from an FBI confidential source in exchange for agreeing to perform official acts to further a business interest represented by the source. Peter Kott, a former Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives, was convicted in September 2007 and sentenced to six years in prison for extortion, bribery and conspiracy. Victor H. Kohring, a former elected member of the Alaska House of Representatives, was convicted at trial in November 2007 for attempted extortion, bribery and conspiracy, and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Four other individuals, including Allen and Smith, have pleaded guilty to felony public corruption charges.


This case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, headed by Chief William M. Welch II, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke from the District of Alaska. The ongoing investigation is being led by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation.

Senator A, according to the ADN is Democrat Donnie Olson of Nome. Like the other Department of Justice press releases, when talking about convictions, it only mentions the charges that the defendants were found guilty on, not the ones where the defendants were acquitted.


The ADN has a lot of material up on their website and Cowdery's Attorney's Statement and Governor Palin's statements come from their links. I'll look through the indictment and see what's of interest in their and perhaps post the whole thing. You can double click to enlarge the images below.




And here's the Governor's statement asking Cowdery to step down from his Senate seat.




Hmmm. Do you think the Governor had anything specific in mind when she wrote these words? Look carefully for the hidden message.

Today’s news is A Good reminder that we must continue to be vigilant In defending Alaska's sovereignty against those who would undermine it in an attempt to sell out Alaskans. As we move forward, let me remind everyone that this administration is committed to putting Alaskans and their interests first, as we develop our resources in a responsible and ethical manner.

Vertical Farming - Bicyclemark interviews Professor Dickson Despommier

Pam at Grassroots Science sent me to Cizenreporter.org a while ago when he was podcasting from Thailand. Today she pointed out this podcast on Vertical Farming. I'm wary of moving farming into new high tech directions. While understanding the science is useful, the maximizing short term profits application of science to agriculture is what has made food such political issue today. And I just saw WALL-E last night so that too, I'm sure, is adding to the skepticism.

But bicyclemark at Citzenreporter.org is an example of what can be done with blogs and podcasts.

Go to the site to hear the interview.

bm269 Vertical Farming and the New Agricultural Revolution

Published by bicyclemark at 11:11 pm under Audio

There is more to urban farming than just growing crops on empty lots in cities. In fact, there is a type of urban farming that involves growing alot more food in tall buildings, making use of the latest innovations of crop growing and energy usage. My guest, Professor Dickson Despommier of Columbia Universty explains what vertical farming is why it is so important for the future of human existance.

What's the Largest US National Park?- Post 4: Camping with 5 Kids and their Parents

We met this family on a camping trip two years ago. We got to like each of the kids.(Well, only four of them were on that trip.) When our own second kid came we quickly understood that 1 + 1 equals more than 2. But five? Actually, they have the tent raising and lowering routine down. They do know how to push each others' buttons, but they also clearly love each other and are comfortable together.

I hope the pictures and video can convey a little. Top is waiting for the fireworks, with J in the picture too. This was about 11:30 pm.






There was a fair amount of reading by some of the kids.






And occasionally the parents had a moment together.





It was really clear how expensive a big family can be. It was $5 one way per person in the van from McCarthy to Kennecott. That's $35 for a 4.5 mile ride. (We walked back.) Then the mill tour was $25 a head, $10 for under 12. Two kids got to go with Dad and me. The others got to eat lunch at the lodge. (Most meals are home cooked for obvious reasons.) Here are the lucky two that went on the tour. They were mighty jealous when they found out the others got to eat lunch out. Also, I understand that there is a free ranger tour, but it was several hours later.



On the way to McCarthy we stopped to wash up at this crystal clear creek with water that woke you up much better than caffeine.






Here's S practicing flying.













This was the first morning at the Chitina campground. The wind was down, the air temperature was comfortable, and almost no mosquitoes. The video below shows the kids around the campfire.










Dad got to sleep too.

Brock emailed me a link to this - I didn't know!

What can I say? Go camping for a few days and you get behind on breaking news.

Doug Reminds Me of the Petrol Tank Hole

Doug made a comment on the post about the road to McCarthy. He said the pictures and text

...are great appetizers for my coming visit. Spikes in the road (shades of sharp rocks taking out petrol tanks on Ugandan roads!), mosquitos and and tropical temperatures suggest that travelling in Alaska can still present the odd challenge...

As he says, Doug is coming to visit at the end of this month. Last time I saw Doug he was seeing me off at the airport in Entebbe. Doug was teaching in Kampala, Uganda. That was May 1970, before Idi Amin came to power in Uganda.

I met Doug first at the Heineken's Brewery in Amsterdam in 1965 where we'd retreated in the rain instead of biking to see the tulips. The next day, with a sunny blue sky, Doug joined us on bikes to the tulips. At the end of the school year (I was studying in Göttingen, Germany that year) I crashed at Doug's flat when I was in London and we traveled a bit together through England.

When he went to teach in Uganda, I was just about to return from my Peace Corps teaching in Thailand. So, I added Uganda to my route home.

Now to the petrol tank he mentions. We were driving across the red dirt roads of Uganda in his little Ford when we ran out of gas. The road had wheel ruts and a little ridge in the middle and we bottomed out more than a few times. At one point something harder than dirt made a loud noise under the car as we were barreling along.

The petrol tank was leaking. So there we were on the road, miles from anywhere, with no gas. Then a big tanker truck pulled up. Two Ugandans jumped out to see what the problem was.

A hole in the gas tank? No problem. The got out a little gas stove and boiled some water. They put a bar of soap into the water until it was soft. Then they molded the soap so it fit very tightly into the hole in the petrol tank. They let it harden. "The truck's gas tank is locked, but we can give you the gas that's in the hose." I think we got a few liters. Then we made it to the next town by shutting off the engine and coasting down the hills.

In Alaska, Doug, we fix everything with Duct tape.

Outside Blogger Acknowledges Diane Benson is Running for Congress

Congratulations to whomever notified Reid Wilson of Real Clear Politics that Diane Benson is running for Congress. After first writing that

In November, the Republican nominee will face former State Rep. Ethan Berkowitz,

He later makes a correction. Well, he calls it a 'clarification.'

Clarification: Young, or Parnell, will not necessarily face Berkowitz in November. Berkowitz has his own primary, in which he will face Diane Benson, who ran against Young in 2006 and ran for governor in 2002. Benson held Young to 57% in 2006, his lowest win percentage since 1994. National Democrats will privately admit they favor Berkowitz, but Benson has run before and could benefit from better name recognition.

What's the Largest US National Park? -Post 3: The Road to McCarthy

[Click here for Post 1 and Post 2. All the pictures can be enlarged by double clicking on them.]


The road to McCarthy. The reason that I've never been to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park before. It always comes with the warning - it's full of old railroad spikes, be sure to have a spare tire or two.



From Anchorage we drove to Glenallen, then south for 30 miles on the Richardson Highway - the road that ends in Valdez. At the Edgarton Highway, you go east 35 miles to Chitina (Everyone calls it Chitna). This is where you gain access to the Copper River. As you cross the bridge you can see the wide river and the area where people have fish wheels and the point where people take off to go dipnetting.






There are lots of signs warning that this is private land.












The public campground is on the right just after you cross the bridge. I'm not sure what maintenance means here. The wind was constantly blowing up the glacial silt that served for ground cover.









We had a burnt out camper shell in the 'space' next to ours.




We were camped in an open area that filled up during the night. Sleep wasn't easy with all the motors running - the camper next to us, four wheelers, boats on the river, cars cruising for a campsite all night. Plus a few people practicing their fire works skills for the next day.





There were some nice camper spaces and the A family got one of those. But it was late and we really had no idea what was up ahead. The person at the National Park headquarters on the Richardson Highway said, "Most of the land along the road is private. There are some public pullouts where you can camp." In hindsight we should have done that. But we'd taken the slow route and so we camped at Chitina.




The road started out pretty bad - the washboard surface rattled the car hard. But after about six miles we got onto better surface and some spectacular views. Eventually we were going along at the speed limit (35) or better for long stretches. In the end we never saw anyone fixing a flat, nor did either of our two vehicles get a flat.


Here's the Chitina River, only a few miles out of Chitina.








Then we came to the spectacular Kuskulana River bridge. This whole road is built on the path of the original railroad line from Cordova to Kennecott, built to take the copper out from the mines. Apparently they just built the road over the old tracks and spikes regularly surface on the road from underneath - thus the warnings about tires.

A non-glacial creek where we could wash and cool off and let the kids get rid of some energy.

The day was mostly sunny and getting warm, well hot by Anchorage standards. I'm sure it was in the low 80's F (@25 C) by the afternoon















We were told there were about 90 trestles that had to be built in the 196 mile railroad from Cordova to Kennectt. (I think I heard that on the tour, so the numbers are what I remember and not necessarily right.)



















Dry weather meant that there was always a cloud of dust behind the cars. When we got separated, we could always spot the other car down the road from the dust. On the way home on Sunday we had just enough rain to keep the dust down.















The ranger at McCarthy suggested we drive down to the river side campground.









There are no park service amenities here yet, it's all private. Parking is $5 a day. The campground was $20 per night. Fortunately they let us have two vehicles in one campground for that price. The guy at the campground office had a beer in hand, and had obviously had quite a few beers in hand already that day.







Finally, in a nice campground for the next two nights.

What's the Largest US National Park? -Post 2

Post 1

We've pretty much made it our practice to stay home over Fourth of July. As teachers we had summers off and could go on the road when others were working. Two years ago we went with a group to bike the Denali Highway over the Fourth. That's when we met the A Family. So, here we were back out on the Fourth.

The National Park Service Visitor's Guide for Wrangell-St. Elias National Park says

During its height, over 100 people lived in McCarthy... When the Kennecott mine ceased operations in 1938, McCarthy shriveled into a sleepy, isolated town.

The 97-98 Milepost said McCarthy's population was 25. That would probably mean year round.

Take that into consideration when you watch the Fireworks Video. This event was held at the Glacier View Campground, about 1/4 mile from the footbridge over the Kennicott River and into the town of McCarthy.



Even waiting until midnight, it still isn't really dark enough in Alaska in the summer to have great fireworks, but you can still have fun. All sound was recorded with the video.

Bloggers v. ADN - John Dean's Broken Government - Don Young's Lobbyist Friends

This isn't about Wrangell-St. Elias, but I did say I'd started reading John Dean's book Broken Government. (He was selling copies when he spoke to the Alaska Democratic Convention.) Being out of wifi range since Thursday, I have some catching up to do. This morning I caught the front page of yesterday's Anchorage Daily News. Last night I'd read Phil Munger's Progressive Alaska chiding of MSM reporters for missing things that bloggers were getting.

These all tie in together nicely.
First, while the rivalry between some bloggers and the ADN probably makes everyone better reporters, we bloggers need to remember that the reporters have stories to report every damn day. They can't just throw up some pretty pictures of flowers or fish as filler. Just because they miss a story that one of us gets is no reason to pound them. They aren't the enemy. Even the ADN is not the enemy, though if the ADN is missing stories it has more to do with how they are allocating their resources as they face their financial struggles as a print medium in a digital age. I've spent plenty of blog space on that topic already.

Good natured rivalries like UCLA-USC, Yankees-Red Sox make everyone play a little harder and better, but the reporters don't have near the freedom bloggers have to shoot back at us. [Tuesday: Actually, Kyle Hopkins blogs on the ADN website and Robert Dillon has his own blog where he responded strongly to Phil's post. Phil responded to this post in a comment below and to this and Dillon's response on his blog today.] And we really are allies in a larger battle to get news out. If the kind of comments Phil is making here gets the ADN management to give more resources to political reporting, good. But if this friendly sniping gets old for the already beleaguered reporters, then we might lose some of the cooperation that we've had - help getting our computers into the trials, tips on stories they can't run, etc. - then that would be bad.

Anyway, in response to Phil, I wanted to commend Sean Cockerham and Erika Bolstad's Sunday story on Don Young's lobbying money , which shows that they are digging and bringing to light information Alaska voters should know.

I would like to borrow some words from the John Dean book to add some context to their story which tells how a Young staffer raised $90,000 by emailing 20 lobbyists.

This comes from John Dean's Broken Government from pages 48-49. Dean's been quoting several different observers of how Congress has changed under Republican rule. Here he's talking about lobbying.

Wolfe, too expressed concern about the vital part of the corrupting machinery, the infamous K Street Project, named after the street where many lobbyists have their offices, which "was designed not only to allow lobbyists to make contributions to legislators in return for laws that benefit themselves - this has always been part of the politics of democracy - but to transform lobbying , which has usually been understood as bipartisan in nature, into an arm of one political party; in return for access to government, Republicans insisted that lobbying groups fire Democrats from their leadership positions and replace them with Republicans."

Recognizing the damage that the Abramoff plea had done to the K Street Project, Wolfe observed that "although Democrats will surely insist that lobbyists stop hiring only members of the majority party, no one seriously expects that lobbying will return to its once bipartisan days." Wolfe's concerns, expressed in 2006, were well placed.

Althought the Republicans are keeping tight-lipped about it, I am told that the K Street crowd is doing everything possible to help get Republicans back in control of Congress. They dream of returning to those days when the GOP ran Congress, and GOP leaders like Tom DeLay boasted that he had lobbying firms writing the laws.

[This is one long paragraph in the book. I've chopped it up to make it easier to read on the screen and added emphasis. 'Wolfe' refers to Alan Wolfe and his Washington Monthly (July/August 2006) article "Why Conservatives Can't Govern."]

In the Cockerham/Bolstad article, the Young staff response is that these are all close friends, so it's ok to ask for money, they are helping a friend, not buying influence.

Anderson, Young's chief of staff, said Young doesn't make decisions based on lobbying and his relationship with Alcalde is personal.

"If Rick Alcalde could talk to you on the phone he would tell you that when he was a youngster and so forth he was kind of a rabble-rouser and everything else. The Youngs looked out for him," Anderson said. "And that goes back to the relationship the Youngs have with Mr. Alcalde, with Hector, (Rick's) father and his mother. When Rick went through some tough times and so forth the Youngs were there to help him, to kind of give him some of that guidance he needed. ... Rick credits the Youngs with being a mentor."

While I have no doubt that these people are long time friends (after all Young has been Congressman 35 years now), and some would help him even if he were not a Congressman, the whole explanation is ludicrous. He doesn't make decisions based on lobbying? Then why are all his clients paying them handsomely to talk to Young? Explaining the closeness of the personal relationship only helps explain why people pay these guys to lobby.

The scary part is that Anderson takes this all so for granted that he doesn't realize how damning his explanation is. Pete Kott and Vic Kohring both thought that their friendship with Bill Allen made everything ok, even after being convicted. "He gave us money because we were friends, not because we were legislators he wanted to influence." Tom Anderson, while appearing to have a little more sense of the problem at his sentencing statement to the court, also had trouble confusing friends and lobbyists.

As I'm reading the Dean book, the problem I'm pondering is this: Much of what Dean says is pretty available knowledge. Most people have at least a vague understanding of many of the problems. But they either dismiss the stories that weaken their own ideology or they claim that it's a problem for both parties, or that it can't be changed. If a Democrat makes the charge - well she's got a partisan vested interest. If a former Republican insider like Dean makes the charges, well, he's a disgruntled turncoat. What does it take to get a significant part of the population to get it? Or is the distraction industry - sports, video games, celebrity gossip, etc. - too powerful for people to attend to protecting the US Constitution?

What's the Largest US National Park? -Post 1

We left Thursday morning for Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, the largest US national park. We spent the 4th of July there and returned Sunday night. I've got tons of pictures, some video, and lots of things going through my mind. Here are a few of the posts I hope to be able to get up in the next couple of days.

1. The 4th of July at McCarthy.
2. The Kennicott Mine
3. Traveling with a family with five kids. (I kept thinking of Tea and her nine kids)
4. How to get to McCarthy and what's there

I also got to read a couple of chapters of the John Dean book Broken Government and have lots of thoughts from that. Let's see what I can squeeze out in the next few days.

Meanwhile, here's a map (with help from Google-Earth and Google Maps) to show you were Wrangell-St. Elias is. It's about 250 miles from Anchorage to McCarthy, just inside the Park. And a video I did around 5pm on July 4th in downtown McCarthy, a small town inside the park. We were camped across the pedestrian bridge from McCarthy. Double click the map to make it bigger.



The music in the video was recorded on the street in front of the McCarthy Lodge.

Couldn't Find Mrs. Nash, But we Found RD

We were early. Well, we were going to drop off discs 3 and 4 of The Wire (Thanks Theresa) at Blockbusters and realized we'd be really late if we did. So since we were a little early on the way to dinner with KS and CE, so we decided to say hi to Mrs. Nash, who was right on the way.
But we couldn't find her. We did find her husband RD. They were our neighbors ever since we moved in here 30 some years ago. They had moved into this neighborhood when it was in the boonies in the 1950s. Their son still lives across the street.



We had a wonderful home made Indian dinner - sorry no pics - and in the driveway I watched as gulls were pestering a bald eagle.

Tomorrow we head out for McCarthy. Never been to Wrangle-St. Elias National Park and when friends asked if we wanted to go for the weekend - well they had a different destination and I said I wanted to go to McCarthy - we all agreed. So getting up early and I have no idea when I'll have internet connection again.

Still going a little batty with my own router connection working when it feels like it. Nothing for a week, then all of a sudden it connects. Then it stops again. Fortuantely I have neighbors without passwords on their wifi.

New Zealand Green Member of Parliament Nandor Taczos Says Goodbye

A friend who lives in New Zealand sent this link of Green Member of Parliament Nandor Taczos' Veledictorian speech as he steps down from Parliament after nine years.

If only more United States politicians spoke as candidly and yet with as much respect.




Sorry, I couldn't find a way to embed this here in the blog, so you have to take the link to the New Zealand Green Party website to watch the video.

Fishing at Costco

While my blogging colleagues have been out dip netting and snagging on the Copper River and the Kenai, my wife and I had the more common Anchorage fishing adventure at Costco yesterday.












We passed on the crab legs and took home a bag of razor clams, since we'd never seen them at packed like that before.







I ate way too much clam chowder last night.