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Tuesday, October 20, 2026

The Ruckus Room, No Kings, Voting

 




Saturday was No Kings Day again.  But in Anchorage the energy has been dispersed in many directions.  I joined the car parade that StandUp Alaska organized.  Cars with "Vote" messages all over paraded through Mountain View, Fairview, and Government Hill.  








There was also a bicycle component.


Meanwhile the League of Women Voters had a Democracy Fair at the main library.  Democrats had people going door to door to urge people to vote for their candidates.  Others waved signs at a busy intersection  



The car and bike paraders ended up at the Ruckus Room which I'd never heard of.  It's in a closed dispensary that was renovated for over a year and now has some spaces for rent for community activities.  

It's at 2612 Eagle - between Northern Lights and Fireweed.  

I was impressed with this Tolkien vibe door, and the decor in general.  

It's a clean and interesting space if you have relatively small events.  There are even several very small rooms.  



The owner and operator of the Ruckus Room is Shel Weitzman.  



Blogger notes:  This blog has been competing for my time with life. I feel the pressure of the Óle writing group for something new each week.  And time seems to go by so fast.  Maybe that's a facet of getting older - a year is a much smaller fraction of my life than it was 50 years ago.  A week goes by like nothing  So, I wanted to write about No Kings and also about the Ruckus Room because the space there is cool and people should know about it.  No Kings gets plenty of coverage, but I had never heard of the Ruckus Room until Saturday.  And Shel appears to be a warm and interesting person.  I'm sure he's got a lot of interesting stories.  He did, for example, mention that his teenage sons helped with the remodeling.  And most posts take longer to write than it might appear.  Especially when I add a video in.  

My school volunteering has been limited this fall.  Monday mornings at the Rilke Schule and we haven't worked out time yet at Tudor (with the teacher I've worked with before Lake Otis was dissolved.)

And I'm signed up to be a poll worker and also to be an observer when the Division of Elections goes through the absentee and then the questioned ballots.  Which got me to drop off our absentee ballots on the first day - yesterday, October 19 - at the Division of Elections and then go see how the first day of voting was going at the Mid-town Mall (formerly the Sears Mall).  

There was a long line!


The second picture was taken from the red star looking back to the entrance to the polling place, but also including the alcove that goes to an entrance to the mall and where the line looped and comes out back into the mall.

The third photo is also from about the red star in the first picture and looks at the alcove and back out at the line going off into the distance in the mall.  

And there was about an inch of snow outside this morning - the first of the season!

And tomorrow and Thursday is the AFN (Alaska Federation of Natives) Convention.

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1 comment:

  1. Jakob in IrelandWednesday, October 21, 2026 at 8:58:00 PM AKDT

    Good morning, everyone! So we wait and watch over here in Europe. News is filled with the possibilities of this election to be contested by your president. It is beyond unbelievable to so many of us here.

    And that's responsible journalism I read based in major newspapers in the US. Here, it's speculation on 'What next in the madness that is America and the plunder of its values by a too-large public that still yearns for 'change'.'

    And I should report on one very tiny, but significant change in the temperament of your country: I visited newly discovered family in Minnesota farm country back in the teens. It was wonderful meeting them. Many farmers, people with common-sense and the values to undergird it. Friendly to us as a gay couple, mildly 'put-off' by our 'big city' ways, but family.

    We stayed in contact through phone calls and letters, the Christmas cards for years... and then, silence this last year. No returns to call messages, no letters, no emails or posts on Facebook. Nothing.

    I realised it was 'over' when I sent warm congratulations on my cousins' 50th wedding anniversary this past summer... to no reply whatsoever. No, they're alive; I'm alive. But family contact is lost.

    My husband has a dear sister, who like so many other Americans, voted for Trump as often as she could. Her husband did as well when he was still with us. And we bit our tongues. Eugene bit his tongue, too. We carried on with love across the miles and we still do... I hope.

    Is this happening to others there? Are deep relations cracking now? Are we all just too tired to hold up the love against the incessant hate that MAGA is so very much about? Have we crossed our 'red lines' in holding fast to family itself in this culture war gone mad?

    I put this question to any of your readers, long & short timers. I left the USA nearly 20 years ago now. I try to stay up as one does living away from a place called 'home' once upon that time. But do I KNOW America any more?

    Thanks for any good replies to what seems, to me, to be that fatal unravelling of what really matters: The relationships with the very people 'we came in with'. Peace, everyone. I pray the Republic will stand.

    ReplyDelete

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