Trump's Supposed To Be In Alaska Today [Updated]

 It's after 4pm.  He was supposed to speak at 3.  I can imagine them trying to get him to the arena and then to the stage.  Kalshi doesn't seem to have bets on the time, but they do on the subjects:

Screen shot:

 A lotta white faces waiting for him.  YouTube is covering it:

[The video is still available after it was over.  Trump starts about 2 hours 16 minutes.]

I don't think it will help Dan Sullivan. Not sure what's going to happen in the US House race. I'm guessing the incumbent Nick Begich is ahead. But there is a lot of campaign activity going on. Lots of Outside money flooding the airwaves and mailboxes with nasty lies about candidates.  

There are also supposed to be protesters outside the arena in Wasilla. Here's a picture from folks protesting at Church and Parks Highway.

[UPDATE 6:25pm:  Trump took the podium, about 4:35pm.  He spoke for over 90 minutes.  He seemed to be on task at the beginning - pushing voting for Dan Sullivan "not the fake Dan Sullivan" and Nick Begich.  He also endorsed Bernadette Wilson for Governor and said the other two Republicans should drop out.  He also told people to vote yes on Prop. 2 to get rid of ranked choice voting.  

He told countless lies about how everything in the United States is twenty times better than in all of history because of Trump.  He was typically derisive about Mary Peltola and Bill Hill.  It was unclear how many people were in the arena because the camera was focused on the podium.  

He also promised every voter $5000 if the House and Senate stay Republican.  That would seem like a blatant bribe, but if Congress stays Republican he doesn't have to worry about that.  If they change to Democratic, he needs to start worrying about being accountable.

He also raised some of the current GOP talking points about Democrats being Communists, about them being a threat of cutting school kids up to change their gender, and men in women's sports.  

I find it a little ironic that he had two Black (what I assume were) Secret Service men, and that the music at the end was the gay anthem,  YMCA.  Though I guess that's a song Trump heard a lot in the 1970s when he was a regular at NY City disco clubs.]

Some Things Still Work: Ballot Arrived Today

Despite all that's been written about how the post office is/might hold up mail-in ballots, today (10/9/26) our ballots arrived.

The US Senate race is showing in the picture.  For those of you who don't have ranked choice voting, you can see what the RCV ballot looks like.    

Yesterday (10/9/26) according to the Alaska Division of Elections website, the ballots were mailed.  

One day!

If Trump's team isn't planning to delay ballots, they're at least doing a good job of getting Democrats to believe they will and to spend a lot of time getting ready to counter any such moves.  

At least in our household's case, things worked well.  

 

Anchorage Trails Making Biking Spectacular

 I'm close to my summer goal of 1600 kilometers (a bit over 1000 miles.)  Last year I was able to start in March already.  This year even in April the trails still had ice and snow.  And then we took two weeks off to visit family and friends Outside. 

But I'm at 1564km.  The finish line is in sight.  Anchorage bike trails are a big part of why I'm able to do this.  Not only are they car free and go on for miles and miles within the city, but they are beautiful.  So here are a few pictures from the last week.  

This stop at Goose Lake offers a different view every time.  It's also a spot where people feed ducks, so they often come over if someone stops here.  

It had rained during the day, so this was an early evening ride.  

This is the lake at the Waldron Park soccer fields, filled with geese.  I can hear them arguing - "it's time to head south" but the procrastinators are ready to take off yet.  This is on the Campbell Creek South trail, not far from the eastern entrance on 47th Avenue off of Lake Otis.  

Another late afternoon at Goose Lake, a different view altogether.  But the same spot as the first picture.

Thursday I had an 8:30 dental appointment which is on the way to the Campbell Creek South trail.  This time I picked it up off of Tudor and through the neighborhood near Tudor Elementary.  It was about 9:30, overcast and a bit mysterious.  I'm generally on this trail in the afternoon.  But the mood is always much nicer in the morning.  I was trying to catch that mood and the creek that the trail follows.  

It was only after I took the picture that I noticed I wasn't alone.  To the left (of the picture) a young bull moose was resting.  Another perk of these trails.  

Since the trail goes along the creek, we cross bridges here and there.  This one is near where the trail goes under a railroad bridge as we get close to Taku Lake.  

Finally, here's a picture of the trail itself, just after going under C Street and over another bridge over the creek.  This stretch of trail goes about eight miles without ever intersecting a street (except through tunnels under bridges).  But there are houses and businesses around the trail everywhere.  Much of the trail has enough buffer you don't see them.  In other spots you do.  

These trails keep my head healthy.  There are a few more posts that show Campbell Creek and other Anchorage trails in different locations and seasons.  You can find them in the labels section in the lower right hand column.  

There Is No Such Thing As "The Government"

People often complain about 'the Government" as though there were one big government.  But the truth is, there are many governments.  Not just in the world, but inside the United States.  Beyond the Federal (national/USA) government, every State has a government and every city and town has a government, and on and on.  

From the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis:

"In the most recent Census of Governments, which was conducted in 2022, the Census Bureau counted 90,837 governments in the U.S. In addition to the federal government, the 50 state governments and the government of Washington, D.C., there were 3,031 county governments, 35,705 township and municipal governments, 12,546 independent school districts and 39,555 other special-purpose local governments."

We have governments to do the collective things we need to do, that the private sector won't,  can't, or shouldn't do.  And in a democracy, the people have a voice in who gets to run the governments.  It can get messy, but ultimately, the people are in control  

The idea that there are over 90,000 governments in the United States is not something that most USians seem to know.  Instead they rail against "The Government" not even distinguishing between those who are politicians and those civil servants who actually keep the many governmental agencies running.  Instead people, upset with whatever agency they think has done them wrong,  generalize from the specific government agency to the "Government."

On the other hand, when someone is frustrated with Home Depot or Delta Airlines or ATT, they call out that specific company by name.  They don't vilify "Business" or "Capitalism" in general.  

All that's an intro to Michael Lewis' book Who Is Government? which is my bookclub's selection for this month.  

He starts out talking about how the Obama administration had set up a transition team to brief the new administration after the election.  Whether Trump or Clinton won, they had prepared documentation and presentations to bring the incoming administration up to speed as quickly as possible.  

"A thousand or so Obama officials were waiting for them, along with briefings that had taken them six months to prepare.  But then, days after the election, Trump simply fired the 500 or so people on his transition team.  "Chris, you and I are so smart that we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves."  he told a perplexed Chris Christie, who assembled the team.  

Then he appointed Rick Perry as his secretary of energy.  In his own presidential campaign, Perry had called for the Energy Department's elimination - and was forced, at his Senate confirmation hearings, to acknowledge that he'd had no real idea of what went on inside the Energy Department, but now that he'd spent a few days looking into it, he really did not want to eliminate it.  At that moment, it became clear that none of these people, newly in charge of the United States government, had the faintest idea what it did.  (The Energy Department, among its other critical functions, manages our nuclear weapons.)  And they weren't alone!  I didn't really have any clue what went on inside the department either.  People capable of ruining panel discussions and dinner parties with their steady stream of opinions about American politics were totally flummoxed by the simplest questions about American government.  Questions like:  What do all those civil servants do all day inside the Agriculture Department?  (They preserve rural America from extinction, among other things.)"

So Lewis decided to take advantage of the Obama transition team to find out and spent time at the Energy Department and the Commerce Department learning, as a journalist, about what they did and interviewing employees about their jobs.  He eventually discovered an organization that gave awards to outstanding Federal Employees.  

The book highlights eight of those remarkable employees.  Two of the chapters are written by Lewis and the other six by different authors.  

The stories will take most people by surprise.  The two by Lewis are so well written, and so interesting, that I encourage people to find this book and read it.  It will give you an entirely new sense of what government does.  

Of course, I acknowledge that not all Federal employees are as brilliant and dedicated as the eight in the book.  But few resemble the stereotype of lazy wasteful employees either. 

In the 1980-81 school year I had a Fellowship at NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)  My boss at Oceanic and Atmospheric Services, set up a series of meetings for me with the heads of the key agencies he coordinated.  I got picked up by a car and driven to meet with the Director of the Weather Service, for example, and got briefed on all they did.  So I can understand how Lewis felt taking in all this information.  

My unit was made up of men (mostly) who were natural scientists - with advanced degrees in meteorology, oceanography, and such subjects.  I did ask my boss why he'd hired me - a social scientist and not a natural scientist.  His answer, "Because you're a social scientist."  

In my unit, they were all 20 to 30 years older than I was.  And I learned a lot from them.  A key lesson was about knowledge networks.   These men had served in NOAA for many years and in many parts of the United States.  (I wasn't the only one who had lived in Alaska.).  And what they brought to policy making was both personal expertise but also a network of people around the US who worked for NOAA.  People they had worked with at some point in their careers.  People they could call and immediately find out what was going on at any point.  

So, do find a copy of this book.  It's very readable and inspiring.  And also somewhat depressing knowing that some of these agencies have been gutted by the Trump Administration.  But you'll have ammunition for when you talk to or write your members of Congress - both House members and Senate members.  

If you read this book, you'll meet a man who spent over a decade figuring out how to lower the death rate of coal miners by making roof collapses far less likely;  the man in charge of National Cemeteries;  a woman who seeks out signs of life beyond our universe; and another woman who specializes in finding cures for raw diseases.  

Traveling Pics

We're on a fairly last minute trip to celebrate a birthday with family and friends.

We left a cloudy Anchorage a week or so ago, but the sun was there.

A change of planes in Seattle and a view of Rainier as we head east.  Our flight left Anchorage late and there was some question about whether we'd catch the next flight.  But it was late too.  

I'm guessing this was over Montana.  I'm always amazed at how much "empty" land there is when you fly over the US.  

As the Anchorage Assembly decries the lack of buildable land in town, we passed over miles and miles of such property.  How big do we want Anchorage to be?  Big enough that it is indistinguishable from cities in the Lower 48?

So this was in Chicago.  Oak Park to be precise.  Some of you will know why I took this picture, but I imagine most won't.  If you look closely, this bike has a generator to power the battery for the lights.  I had one of those on my very first bike.  When you want the light to work, you let the top of the generator lean against the tire, and as the tire turns, it generates electricity.

Here we are in Chicago  - picture from the transit train.

And we transferred to the subway downtown.

                                                           

 Which became the 'el' 9elevated) soon and we even passed practically through Wriggly Field during a Cubs game.

It took a bit to figure out the system, but by our second day we were getting around pretty well.  Until the second to the last station, where the train stopped but didn't start again.  There was an announcement that there was a person on the tracks ahead.  That was about a 30 minute delay.  

 And here's Lake Michigan.  I've been reading Halldór Laxness' Independent People.  This picture of Lake Michigan reminds of me of the passage when the girl Asta Sollilja is leaving her home in rural Iceland for the first time.  She marvels at the changing landscapes.  But then they reach a stretch that is more desolate and unchanging.  

"The chill isolation of the moorland plateau reigned over these two wayfarers and they were silent.  The dreary monotony of the landscape dulled their senses;  she  began to feel hungry and no longer looked for or delighted in the things that were strange to her. 

Again and again the girl waited for the next hilltop to refresh the eye with some variation, some new prospect, but always it was the same endless repetition except that the gleaming waters of the lake had long since been left in the rear.  She had lost all her anticipation and had long grown tired of expecting anything in particular when the road, turning suddenly, dipped downward along the side of a deep ravine with river at the bottom.  And when she looked eastward along the gap, expecting to see another hill in front of her, lo and behold, there was nothing to see; it was as if the world came to a sudden stop before her eyes and the depth of the skies took its place, though with a different shade of blue.  Or was it that the sky was supported out on the horizon there by a gleaming wall of blue-green glass?  This strange blue color seemed to embrace all the mysteries of distance, and she stood for a moment overwhelmed by the prospect of such infinity.  It was as if she had come to the edge of the world.

"Father," she said in a perplexed and hesitating voice, "where are we?"

"We've crossed the heath,"  he replied.  "That's the ocean."

Lake Michigan is not an ocean, but it does extend out into the horizon like an ocean.  Can you see the blue green glass supporting the sky?

Responding to Anon on Ranked Choice Voting

Anonymous commented on a  previous post about Ranked Choice Voting (RCV).  They  raised common issues  about RCV.  I decided it was easier, if I responded in a new post.  This is it.

To make it as clear as possible for the reader to distinguish between us, my comments are in BLUE and the commenter's comments are RED  

"These are things to consider when you are waxing poetic about RCV:"  

From US Dictionary:   

"The idiom "waxing poetic" describes the action of speaking or writing in an increasingly enthusiastic or eloquent manner. Often, this phrase is used when someone starts using a more florid or poetic language than might be expected or necessary."

This was a pretty fact based blog post.  Not particularly enthusiastic for ranked choice nor particularly florid.  I did speak positively about open primaries, saying they led to bi-partisan majorities in the legislature.  The basic tone is a fairly muted support of RCV as in this quote:

"There is no perfect system.  Whatever system you have, people figure out ways to game the system.  Ideally, we will not get rid of Ranked Choice Voting in November and we can learn how to make it work."

"Ballot Exhaustion" & Disenfranchisement: In RCV, if all the candidates you ranked are eliminated in early rounds, your ballot is marked as "exhausted" and discarded before the final tally. Consequently, the winner often claims a "majority" only of the remaining active ballots, not a true majority of all voters who cast a ballot. 

You don't necessarily get a majority in any non-RCV election if it's a three or four way race, say  if there is a Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent on the ballot.  In most elections, the one with the most votes - not a necessarily a majority - wins.  The Anchorage Municipal election for mayor partially addresses this by requiring a runoff if no one gets at least 45% of the vote.  

At least in RCV you get to pick a second and third choice - meaning if your first choice candidate doesn't win, you get a chance to vote for a second choice candidate.  That doesn't happen in the old system.  In that system, if your first choice doesn't win, your vote is essentially exhausted too.  

⁠The "Center-Squeeze" & Non-Monotonicity*: RCV can produce bizarre mathematical anomalies where gaining support can cause a candidate to lose, or losing support can cause them to win. A moderate candidate who is the acceptable second choice for almost everyone can get eliminated in the first round simply because they lacked enough intense first-place votes, leaving two polarizing extremes.

First, I agree, that it's possible for someone to be everyone's second choice, but they wouldn't get onto the general election ballot because they didn't get enough first place votes.  Probably not likely, but possible.  But with closed primaries, that candidate probably wouldn't make it to the general election. If you had three candidates on the general ballot under the old system, I don't know that the hypothetical moderate would win either  and we wouldn't ever know they were everyone's second choice. 

Complexity & Higher Error Rates: Ranking multiple candidates increases the cognitive load on voters and leads to higher rates of spoiled ballots (e.g., unintentionally ranking two candidates first or skipping ranks). This complexity disproportionately impacts older voters, non-native English speakers, and lower-income communities.

I was a poll worker at two elections that were RCV.  My station was the scanner, where the voters put their ballots into the voting machine.  The machines spit out ballots that are marked incorrectly - for example, two candidates are marked as second choice.  The voter gets to have a new ballot and vote again.  The old ballot is turned in, torn up, and put into a destroyed ballot envelope.  All in front of the voter.  That didn't happen very often.  But I do suspect that some people's brains are wired so that an RCV ballot is harder for them to figure out.  But my experience is that it was a very small percent of voters. Voters made mistakes under the old system too. 

It would be an interesting study to be at a scanner and try to find common factors among people whose ballot is rejected because they marked the RCV ballot incorrectly.  It would also be tricky to do because of the confidentiality of elections and avoiding intimidating voters.  

Delayed Election Results: Because all ballots must be centralized and fully processed before any elimination round can occur, RCV slows down the reporting process. Late-arriving mail-in or military ballots can delay final results for days or weeks, which erodes public trust in election integrity.

It does take longer to tally votes if no candidate gets a majority in the first round.  But many races only have two candidates in the general election.  The problem, as I understand it, lies with the fact that for the second round, you have to wait for all the absentee ballots to arrive before tabulating the second round percentages.  But that is also a problem with regular voting that is close. 

For this you could do a study to see how many close votes are delayed until all the absentee votes are in for an RCV election and a regular election.  In Alaska you could compare the primary to the general, though we probably get more candidates in the primary than normal because of the open primaries.  Having a president who constantly tells the world that the elections are rigged, does a lot more harm to public confidence than a few dragged out elections  Most voters understand the need to wait for absentee ballots to come in.  

But why does it matter?  As long as the winner is determined before they need to be sworn in, there is no problem except that people are impatient to know who the winner is.  


Increased Costs & System Upgrades: Transitioning to RCV requires expensive updates to voting software, hardware, and extensive public education campaigns funded by taxpayers.

Upgrades - these have already been done.  Changing back to regular elections will cost more if we change back than if we keep what we have.  

Also, with RCV, you don't have the expense of runoff elections as we have in Anchorage mayoral races if no one gets at least 45%.  

*Non-Monotonicity - anyone else unable to explain that?  I did look it up.  Not sure how it applies here  Maybe because the highest vote getter can change from one round to the next when the second and third round votes get added in and the lowest vote getters drop out.  

Could Alaska Have A Mid Decade Redistricting?

President Trump called for mid-decade redistricting in Texas and other states as a way to gerrymander those states to make it harder for Democrats to win US House seats and a majority in the US House.  Could that happen in Alaska too?

First of all, Alaska has only one US House seat; the whole state is just one US House district.  So on the federal level there is no point to redistrict Alaska.  It won't result in any more seats for the GOP because there's only one seat.  

But, what if a governor wanted to change the balance of the Alaska House and Senate by a mid decade redistricting process? 

I'm guessing the answer is no.  

From the Alaska Constitution:

"§ 3. Reapportionment of House and Senate – The Redistricting Board shall reapportion the house of representatives and the senate immediately following the official reporting of each decennial census of the United States. Reapportionment shall be based upon the population within each house and senate district as reported by the official decennial census of the United States."

While I'm sure political game players would argue, "It says "shall" redistrict at this time, but it doesn't say they can't do it another time as well." I suspect that by the time it got to the Supreme Court, that reasoning would be rejected.  

And we get more instructions from the state constitution:

"§ 8. Redistricting Board – 

(b) Members of the Redistricting Board shall be appointed in the year in which an official decennial census of the United States is taken and by September 1 of that year. The governor shall appoint two members of the board. The presiding officer of the senate, the presiding officer of the house of representatives, and the chief justice of the supreme court shall each appoint one member of the board. . .

Board members serve until a final plan for redistricting and proclamation of redistricting has been adopted and all challenges to it brought under section 11 of this article have been resolved after final remand or affirmation."

Section 8 makes it clearer.  Members shall be appointed in the year in which the official decennieal census . . . is taken.  Again we might get the argument that it "may" be done at another time.  Though there is no other time we get a decennial census.  

Every district has to be the same size - generally the deviation in population needs to be less than 2% between districts.  By mid-decade, people will have moved and it will be difficult to figure out the right size for each district.  There are mid-decade censuses taken, but I'm not sure of their accuracy.  

But the clincher is in the way the Board members are chosen.  The governor has two picks, the President of the Senate, House Speaker, and chief Justice of the Supreme Court each choose one member.  If any of the people holding those roles refuses to pick a mid-decade Board member, the process would be over.  

And the Governor can't bring back the old Board, because, as the second paragraph says, Board members serve until the proclamation of redistricting has been adopted and all challenges have been resolved.  

So even if the Supreme Court agreed that 'shall' only referred to a redistricting every ten years, it doesn't preclude that the Governor 'may' have one mid-decade, it would only take one of the four people assigned the job of selecting the members to refuse.

That doesn't mean that one day a Governor won't try to do this.  I just think it would fail.

ADDENDUM:  After completing the above, I called a retired attorney friend to ask exactly what 'shall' meant legally.  Did it preclude a redistricting other than when the census data comes every ten years?  

His response was:  This is a perfect question for AI.  I said I don't use AI.  Why?  Because I read Enshitification.  He said,  "ok, I'll use AI".  He did.  Basically the AI agreed with my conclusion, with a little stronger argument.  

"Why Alaska's language is particularly strong

Three provisions work together.

First, §§ 1–3 repeatedly tie the redistricting event to the federal decennial census. Section 3 is especially direct: the Board “shall reapportion” the House and Senate “immediately following” the official reporting of each decennial census. The official Alaska Constitution confirms this wording. (Nancy Dahlstrom)

Second, § 8(b) creates the Board in the census year and provides that members serve through adoption of the final plan and resolution of the resulting challenges. That structure does not create a continuously sitting body with an open-ended power to redraw districts whenever circumstances change.

Third—and probably most important—§ 10 says that the resulting final plan:

“shall be effective for the election of members of the legislature until after the official reporting of the next decennial census”

That is considerably stronger than merely saying the Board must redistrict after every census. It specifies how long the resulting districts remain effective. (Nancy Dahlstrom)"

I was surprised to learn our Lt. Governor Nancy Dahlstrom had written about this.  So I hit the links - ha!  They take you to the Lt Governor's page that has the Alaska Constitution on it.  AI seems to give Dahlstrom credit for writing the Alaska Constitution

It looked at what the Alaska Supreme Court had said - that Alaska was designed to have one plan per decade.  

The AI also compared Alaska to a few other states and concluded that Alaska more emphatically stressed the decennial nature of redistricting in Alaska.  

ADDENDUM 2:  The Enshitification link is far more interesting and significant than what I've written.  I urge you to take some time to listen to the interview of Cory Doctorow at the link.  I had intended to do a post of Enshitification but never got it done, so just listen to the interview.  And there are no ads.

The Odyssey - My Thoughts On The Movie

I read The Odyssey at UCLA as a freshman.  That was a long time ago, but while I don't remember all the details, I do recall the basics, and the excitement I felt reading it.   Professor Pasinetti read passages of our assigned books aloud to the class in Greek, Latin, and Italian.  He made the literature come to life.  At the time I had just started college and knew nothing about him other than what I saw in class.  The Wikipedia link above added a lot about his life for me.

We don't have IMAX in Anchorage and so I didn't hurry to see it.  But finally we thought we should and spent a rainy Tuesday afternoon at the movies.  There weren't many others in the theater.  

From the beginning, the images seemed dark, literally.  I assumed it was to emphasize they were night banquets with just candle light or scenes in a cave.  The daylight scenes seemed more normal.  But the blue credits on a black background were hard to read and I left the theater wondering if the projector lamp was just weak. If so, that may have affected my opinion of the film.

In general, I wasn't impressed.  I think there were two basic reasons:

Troy today (2025)

1.  We were in Turkey last year.  When we got out of Istanbul, we took some tours - in Cappadocia, at Gallipoli, and another at Troy.  The guides in Turkey are excellent - they train, they get licensed, and
they know their local history really well.  But even so, you just get a peek at the places you are visiting.  

The movie was like a guided tour through the book.  Look quick on the left to see the suitors in the banquet hall, now on the right you can see men hiding inside the Trojan Horse, and as we come around the curve up ahead you will see the Charbidis biting off the heads of the sailors.  We stopped at some places and walked around a bit, but what we  got was a guided tour with short glimpses of the epic story of Odysseus.  .  

2.  We got director Nolan's visualization of key scenes of the epic.  It's his vision of what things and people looked like, and what scenes were important to portray.  In my reading of The Oddesey, Circe didn't manually reshape human bodies into pig bodies.  She cast a spell over them to transform them. Of course, every movie adaptation of a book is the director's vision of the book.  

But The Odyssey is no ordinary book.  It's a 3000 year old poem, first passed down orally before it was written.  Nolan skims the book and gives us visuals of some of the more dramatic scenes.  His Trojan Horse is no more Homer's than is the Horse Turkey has erected at the site of ancient Troy (On the right.)  

When someone listens to the story teller relate the tale or reads a modern book version, each listener and reader conjures up their own image of the events.  Once someone has seen the movie, they've had Nolan's image stamped into their imagination.  Their own imagination, their personal interpretation, is eclipsed by the Nolan image.

But I'm not too worried.  The book will remain available.  Professors will continue to assign it in classes, and Nolan's film will fade away as just another film that tried to capture The Odyssey.  

I realize that many reviewers have lauded the movie.  But how many of them had actually read The Odyssey?  How many were simply movie critics?  Or people online trying to get hits so they can increase their income?  

Here's an excerpt from Book X - story of Circe turning the men into pigs from The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Odyssey.  Far different from Nolan's image.

“When they reached Circe’s house they found it built of cut stones, on a site that could be seen from far, in the middle of the forest. There were wild mountain wolves and lions prowling all round it—poor bewitched creatures whom she had tamed by her enchantments and drugged into subjection. They did not attack my men, but wagged their great tails, fawned upon them, and rubbed their noses lovingly against them.[86] As hounds crowd round their master when they see him coming from dinner—for they know he will bring them something—even so did these wolves and lions with their great claws fawn upon my men, but the men were terribly frightened at seeing such strange creatures. Presently they reached the gates of the goddess’s house, and as they stood there they could hear Circe within, singing most beautifully as she worked at her loom, making a web so fine, so soft, and of such dazzling colours as no one but a goddess could weave. On this Polites, whom I valued and trusted more than any other of my men, said, ‘There is some one inside working at a loom and singing most beautifully; the whole place resounds with it, let us call her and see whether she is woman or goddess.’

“They called her and she came down, unfastened the door, and bade them enter. They, thinking no evil, followed her, all except Eurylochus, who suspected mischief and staid outside. When she had got them into her house, she set them upon benches and seats and mixed them a mess with cheese, honey, meal, and Pramnian wine, but she drugged it with wicked poisons to make them forget their homes, and when they had drunk she turned them into pigs by a stroke of her wand, and shut them up in her pig-styes. They were like pigs—head, hair, and all, and they grunted just as pigs do; but their senses were the same as before, and they remembered everything.

“Thus then were they shut up squealing, and Circe threw them some acorns and beech masts such as pigs eat, but Eurylochus hurried back to tell me about the sad fate of our comrades. He was so overcome with dismay that though he tried to speak he could find no words to do so; his eyes filled with tears and he could only sob and sigh, till at last we forced his story out of him, and he told us what had happened to the others.

“‘We went,’ said he, ‘as you told us, through the forest, and in the middle of it there was a fine house built with cut stones in a place that could be seen from far. There we found a woman, or else she was a goddess, working at her loom and singing sweetly; so the men shouted to her and called her, whereon she at once came down, opened the door, and invited us in. The others did not suspect any mischief so they followed her into the house, but I staid where I was, for I thought there might be some treachery. From that moment I saw them no more, for not one of them ever came out, though I sat a long time watching for them.’ [emphasis added]

Somehow this sort of nuanced detail didn't come through in the movie.

 

Congressional Fisheries Debate Today - Begich and Hill; Sullivan and Peltola

Today, the Congressional Debate on Fisheries took place in Kodiak.  The Governor's debate was Wednesday.  You can watch it here.

The debate is about fish policy.  I include it here because there aren't a lot of chances to see debates between the candidates these days.  Public debates used to be common.  No longer.  

On the video below, first you hear the debate by the House candidates Rep. Begich and Bill Hill.  Then the Senate debate between Sen. Sullivan and Mary Peltola.  I'm not sure why the other two candidates in the race were not there.  Were they not invited?  Did they choose not to attend?  I don't know.  

All four candidates in the governor's race were at that debate Wednesday.  

I have a few reactions to how the candidates did, but I'll give you a chance to view the debate first.

I'd note the Bill Hill came out first and shook hands with the questioners.  Rep. Begich did the same.  Then Bill Hill went over to Rep. Begich and shook hands and spoke to him.  

We first see Sen. Sullivan and Mary Peltola sitting at the table, so I don't know whether they greeted the interviewers and each other, But the body language at the table isn't warm and fuzzy.  

Fisheries might be the least partisan big Alaskan issues.  That makes these debates less revealing, perhaps, than if we had debates that dealt with more controversial issues.  

Thoughts on Begich and Hill debate.  

I was impressed with Begich's manner and knowledge of the issues.  Hill also knew the issues. Hill's answers brought in the view of Alaska Natives and subsistence fishers.  I thought it was telling that when the questioner said a zero percent bi-catch target was unrealistic. That wasn't the question, it was an assumption underlying the question.   Hill's response was that it should be the goal.  Begich agreed.  Would Begich have said that if Hill hadn't first?  I don't know.  Mary Peltola in the second debate said no fishery has zero bi-catch but when bi-catch is in the metric tons, that's a different story.  

Begich said he had written and passed more legislation than any freshman Congressman ever.  Later he gave numbers:  13 bills, nine passed into law.  I'll see if I can find out what they were and how you research the number of bills freshman Congressmen have introduced and passed into law.  

I'd also take issue with Begich's statement that he travels the state and listens and responds to every Alaska.  I don't believe that he has spoken to an open forum in the Anchorage area the whole time he's been in office.  He speaks only to private groups that limit who attends.  These generally are not announced publicly before the event takes place.  I've written a number of letters to his office and I have not received any responses.  

Thoughts on Sullivan and Peltola debate. 

Sullivan was able to tout various bills he had passed that had improved Alaska fisheries.  He contrasted the number of bills he passed to Peltola's no bills passed, without mentioning he has been in the Senate for 12 years, almost half of that time with Trump as president.  Peltola was in Congress for only two years.  

Both candidates knew the topic.  One thing that struck me was Sullivan's tone.  Whiney isn't quite the right word, but he sounded like someone who felt like he had being unfairly attacked  and was exasperatedly trying to defend his record.  Not like a successful and confident two term Senator.  I'd note that Sullivan acknowledged that climate change was one of the factors resulting in fewer fish reaching subsistence fishers.  

But you can judge for yourself.  

Rapper Listens To Beatles For 1st Time Plus Yellopain "My Vote Will Count" [UPDATED]

I've been reading Stacey Abrams, Our Time Is Now.  It's about her work to register voters and the State of Georgia's work to suppress minority votes.  In the last chapter she writes:

"I recently saw a YouTube video by a hip-hop artist named YelloPain.  The opening sequence broke my heart as he tours his neighborhood and bitterly describes how useless voting seems.  He invokes the promise of the Obama presidency, then laments all the ways life failed to improve.  His damning indictment of the act of voting seems at once logical and tragic.  But with his next verse, he rips into the fiction of voter apathy, and in his rapid-fire poetry, you come to understand that his reaction is more aptly treated as despair and disillusionment. . . (p.252)

"What Yellopain does best is a stroke of artistic and activist genius.  He deftly illustrates how understanding and engaging in the political system is an issue of survival.  Like a modern version of Schoolhouse Rock!, he explains the three branches of government, connecting their failures to our own.  From health care policy and climate action to the social safety net and high finance, our votes determine how the public and the private sectors operate and where they intersect."  (p. 253)

I thought I'd look fort the video.  Among other things this year, I took training again to be a voter registrar and thought I might learn something.  Maybe we could use the video when talking to younger voters who don't see any point of voting.  

All I had was his name - Yellopain - and YouTube.  He has lots of videos.  I went through the titles and dates (Abrams book is copyrighted 2020, so the video is at least seven years old.)

I finally got to a video of someone reviewing Yellopain's video.  It's called "My Vote Don't Count." But before I got to it, there was another video with a rapper right below the one that reviewed "My Vote Don't Count." 

The title was "Rapper Listens To Beatles For The First Time."  The cover had the rapper and a picture of the cover of the Beatles  "Abbey Road."   

Ir was late and I was in bed.  I had a doctor's appointment today at 8:30am.  I wasn't going to post anything last night, so I postponed finding the Yellopain Voting video and decided to see what the Rap meets Beatles video was going to be like.  

I couldn't quite imagine someone who had never listened to a Beatles song and knew nothing about them.  But I realized that they burst into the world's attention in the 1960s and disbanded in 1970. That's 56 years ago.  When I was in my 20s, what did I know of the great musicians of the early 1900s?  Not much.  And which current musicians would I recognize?  Not many.  Maybe I should do a video of Geezer Listens To Rap.  It's probably already been done.  

Is he going to like the Beatles?  I'd listen to a few minutes.  He said he knew nothing about the Beatles.  He knew there was something or someone called Yoko Ono but didn't know what it was.  And a couple of times listening, he gets excited by the unknown drummer.  I was quietly shouting, "RINGO STARR."

 It began with "Come Together".  As he went through the album track by track, I was reminded how good the songs and music are.  And it was fun watching someone listen to the Beatles for the first time.  It's the first video below.

[You can watch "My Vote Don't Count" below the Rapper and the Beatles, along with a more recent one, "My Vote Will Count"]

There are ads so you have to jump in and hit 'skip ad' a few times.  It also appears that others have copied this idea of listening to the Beatles for the first time on YouTube.

This seems to be the Yellopain video Stacey Abrams wrote about:

And this is a more recent version called "My Vote Will Count" which also has some of the original video.

[UPDATE 9/12/2026:  Friends have told me there's a whole genre called 'reaction videos']