"this is not civilization"

That's the title of a novel by Robert Rosenberg that was a University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University Book of the Year for this past year.  And probably what tonight's UAA Classrooms for Climate conference meeting speaker Majora Carter was thinking when she decided to clean up her South Bronx neighborhood.

The UAA/APU Books of the Year program is a powerful partnership between University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University that brings faculty, staff, and community members together to understand common themes. The books serve as the catalyst for discussions of larger issues of local and international significance.

[This] program started in 2006 as part of a Ford Foundation Difficult Dialogues initiative--one of only 26 in the country--to provide a safe environment on campuses for discussions of challenging topics. UAA and APU are now national leaders in this area. 

For me the title was intriguing, plus, it was about a Peace Corps experience.  Every PC experience is different, yet there are common themes - feeling totally lost as you enter a foreign world and language while people have unrealistic expectations of you and want to use you for their own purposes which you don't understand, making great friends, and always wondering whether you are doing more harm than good.  Here's Rosenberg's hero as he arrives in his town in Kyrgyzstan.

In Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka Jeff received what felt like a hero's welcome.  Over his first few days his neighbors on Karl Marx Street introduced themselves in a continuous wave.  Expectations were high;  they seemed to believe he could change their lives.  The attention was jarring. . . the villagers offered gifts of warm bread, eggplant and cabbage from their family plots, strawberry and cherry compote, boiled mutton, and plastic bags filled with cold triangles of fried dough.  They explained just to what length Anarbek [his host] had gone to refurbish the old brick townhouse.  The previous year the occupants had repatriated to southern Russia.   The house had served a six-person family for three decades, so the village deemed it large enough for one American.  Anarbek had arranged for its purchase with the village akim.  For an entire month he had shown up each day with his wife and two daughters to renovate the home and bring it up to Peace Corps standards.  He had installed a Western toilet (the bathroom did not have running water;  Anarbek would work on that, they said) and a series of electric radiators (the street's electricity seemed sporadic;  he would work on that).  His daughters had hung printed curtains made from bedroom sheets, pounded out the carpets, and scrubbed the several years' accumulation of Central Asian dust off the floors.  Anarbek requisitioned a heavy steel gate for the front door, a strict requirement stipulated by the Peace Corps, but in the neighbors' opinion an unnecessary precaution.  For the previous quarter of a century, Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka had known no crime.

You can learn more about the Book of the Year program and the two new books for next year

Part 2:  

Wednesday, May 4th 

Wendy Williamson Auditorium. 

 7pm - FREE (free parking too)

Majora Carter presents -

Hometown Security: Climate Adaptation, Social Innovation and Local Solutions

The theme for the two books this year was service.  That theme and the title "this is not civilization" seem a good segue into another UAA activity - Classrooms for Climate.

Classrooms for Climate is organized by the Chugach National Forest and UAA in partnership with the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center, Alaska Geographic, and the Northern Forum. Alaska is ground zero for climate change, and the Chugach and neighboring landscapes, with world famous glaciers and watersheds, are an extended classroom for researchers, educators, and students around the world seeking to understand the potential physical, biological, cultural and socio-economic impacts. Each of the participating institutions recognizes its own unique role as a “classroom” for understanding and responding to climate change. All are committed to working across geographic and institutional boundaries to build knowledge and craft sustainable and effective solutions. This symposium is a first step in bringing together partners in inquiry, education, and management from across Southcentral, Alaska and beyond.

The partnership between the university and the Forestry Service picks up on the theme of service.  And tonight's speaker at Wendy Williamson Auditorium,  McArthur Award winner Majora Carter,  probably thought that life in the Bronx was less than civilization and decided to do something about it. 

Majora Carter simultaneously addresses public health, poverty alleviation, and climate change adaptation as one of the nation’s pioneers in successful urban green-collar job training and placement systems. She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 (with the help of a small Forest Service grant) to achieve environmental equality through economically sustainable projects informed by community needs. By 2003, she coined the term: "Green The Ghetto" as she pioneered one of the nation's first urban green-collar job training & placement systems. Her organization spearheaded new policies and legislation that fueled demand for those jobs, improved the lives of all New Yorkers, and has served as a model for the nation.

There's a lot more about her (and links to even more) at the UAA website.  From all I've heard about this woman, the free talk tonight at Wendy Williamson is another one of those incredible Anchorage opportunities to meet a world class thinker and doer.  It would be nice to think that our mayor and assembly members might show up to learn about how to integrate economics and environment and humanity.

Do You Know the Five Pillars of Islam?

Nihad Awad, according to a flier handed out at the talk at Alaska Pacific University (APU) last Friday night, is "the national executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest non-profit Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States."  The rest, from my notes, is an abbreviated version of what I heard him say. [Translation:  my rough notes should not be taken as authoritative word on Islam, but the spur for you to find out more. Like at the website of the Islamic Community Center of Anchorage  which broke ground for their masjid last week.]

He began briefly talking about growing up in a refugee camp in Aman, Jordan and learning about the US by watching television - one of two sets in the camp.  Hollywood doesn't send out a good image of the United States he said.  Nevertheless, it was a place that he wanted to see for himself one day, but never dreamed he would be able to.

Schooling in the camp wasn't very good.  It was in a tent and he didn't learn much.  But something must have worked because he got a chance to go to college in Italy, where he learned Italian and got a degree in engineering.  And eventually he made it to the United States.  He is now proud to be a United States citizen.  The talk then turned to his understanding of Islam.


Muslims, he said, believe in the same God as do Christians and Jews.  He was surprised when he learned that in the west they talk about Allah as though this were a different Muslim god.  Allah is simply the Arabic word for god.  He cited a survey that found that 10% of Americans believed that Muslims believe in a moon god.

You're not a Muslim, he said, if you don't believe in Jesus and the miracles of Jesus, in Moses, and in Abraham.  A difference is in the nature of Jesus.  For Muslims, I think he said, Jesus is a prophet, not God.


Mohammad did not write the Koran, he said.  He couldn't have because he was illiterate.  It was revealed to him over 23 years by the angel Gabriel.   He pointed out that millions of people today have memorized the whole Koran in Arabic.  (This reminded me how remarkable the human brain is and how we are all capable of far more than we realize.  Before radio and television many Americans also memorized the bible.  Now we can't even memorize our passwords.)


He said there are five pillars of Islam:

1. Declare there is only one god.  (Sounds like the first of the ten commandments)
2. Daily prayer, five times a day - He said that talking to God five times a day was a great source of peace.
3. Giving charity - to the poor, orphans, the stranded, etc.  "You're not a good Muslim if you go to bed full, but your neighbor is hungry."
4. Fasting - the sick, travelers, pregnant and nursing mothers are exempted.  
5. Pilgrimage - The Hajj

[These match the five pillars of Sunni Muslims according to Wikipedia, but Wikipedia says Shia's five pillars are different.]

He also talked about Reason and Human Rights.


Reason

• God asked us to use our heads
• Education - obligation for men and women
• Independence of Women - equal responsibility to build and protect the family, women keep their own names

Human Rights

• Dignity is important
• In charge of the environment - shouldn't waste the earth
• Sanctity of human life - "Killing of one innocent life is equal to killing all mankind."  Conversely, "Saving one innocent life is equal to saving all mankind."

Not your image of Islam?  That was the point of the talk.  Just as Awad got his first (false) image of the US through television, he said Americans get their view of Islam through the news media.  It's like outsiders basing their opinion of  Christianity on people like Hitler and Timothy McVeigh.

Here's the end of his talk:





One of the questioners was about the book I'm reading for this month's book club meeting - No god but God. Reza Islan argues that the battles we see in Islam today are not about the West and Islam, but rather they are a modern reformation among Islams, a struggle for who will define Islam. Will it look to the past or will it adjust to the modern world. He suggests that Islam in the US can and should play a major role in this debate. Did Awad agree, asked the questioner.

He did. He believes that real Islam is very consistent with American ideas of equality and justice and thus US Muslims have a critical role to play in the world of Islam.

[Again, this is my take on what happened - leaving a lot out.  If something doesn't look right, contact Nihad Awad to get clarification.  And then leave a comment to correct my errors.]

Let me add another note.  I was reminded of a conference I attended in India several years ago.  In one panel on Islamic justice in Pakistani villages, the panelists all said that Islam in the villages was still mixed with local tribal traditions that were not based on Islam.  It is often these non-Islamic tribal customs that result in the abuses of women and others that lead to outraged Western headlines pointing at how primitive Islam is.  

Hear APU's Pres While You Wait to Hear Who UA's Pres Is

While we wait to hear from the Board of Regents to announce their presidential selection, you can hear APU's new president today.  I got this email today:

Just two days into his tenure as Alaska Pacific University’s new president, you can hear Dr. Don Bantz talk about higher education. He’s the guest on today’s edition of “Talk of Alaska”. The broadcast is from 10am to 11am. You can tune in on your local public radio station (KSKA 91.1 FM in Anchorage) or listen online via your computer’s mp3 player at http://kska.org/listen.m3u.

The interview will be archived at aprn.org for later listening as well.

Alaska Pacific University President Search Finalists

APU announced this morning:

The five finalists to be the 9th President of Alaska Pacific University and the dates of their campus visit are:

• Dr. Betsy Vogel Boze, former Campus Dean and CEO Kent State University at Stark, North Canton, OH Monday & Tuesday November 16th & 17th
  
  
• Ms. Bernice Joseph, Vice‐Chancellor Rural, Community & Native Education University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK Thursday & Friday November 19th & 20th
  
  
• Dr. Don Bantz, Academic Vice President & Provost Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA Monday & Tuesday November 23rd & 24th
  
  
• Dr. J. Andy Sheppard, Academic Vice President Southwestern College, Winfield, KS Monday & Tuesday November 30th & December 1st
  
  
• Dr. Steven Corey, Executive Vice President Prescott College, Prescott, AZ Thursday & Friday December 3rd & 4th
  

[Update  2:45pm: APU wants to keep the candidate review process in house.  It also turns out that one of the candidates is someone I know fairly well and I've met one, possibly two,  of the other candidates.  I'm used to the far more public process at UAA, but that is a public university and APU is private.  So I'll respect their decision  to only invite people in the immediate APU community to meet the candidates and await their further announcements.]

Alaska Pacific University President Search Nearing Finish Line

[UPDATE  Nov. 16: Finalists have been announced. Click on link.]

The search schedule puts the final 3-5 candidates coming to Anchorage in November/December so an announcement about those finalists should be made any day now.

September/October 2009	Recruiting continues. In late October, initial screening/filtering of leads to selection of 8 to 12 semifinalists.
November 2009	PSC interviews semifinalists at neutral airport location, selecting 3 to 5 finalists. Background checks are conducted on all finalists.
November/December 2009	Finalists are announced and visit campus, meet with all constituencies, including Anchorage community, and undergo comprehensive interviews/Q&A with Board of Trustees.
December 10, 2009	Scheduled Board of Trustee meeting. Trustees select the top candidate, Chair leads contract negotiations.
January 2010	New President introduced to the APU community on campus and the wider public.

The search is being conducted by Witt/Kieffer  a company that does things like executive searches.  There's a 17 page brochure about the job and APU in pdf form.  From page 10 I've gotten this list of the traits they are looking for.

Alaska Pacific University is dedicated to the service of Alaska Native populations. Its president must both embody and advocate for a university that is responsive to and supportive of a highly diverse community. A demonstrated track record of enhancing diversity is therefore required.
In addition, the ideal candidate will possess:

• a commitment to active learning and to innovation in the academic program, including a working knowledge of non-traditional delivery systems (especially distance learning);
• a deep understanding of and demonstrated commitment to both traditional and non- traditional students;
• an accessible personal style that fits the intimate environment of the small university, combined with an unrelenting commitment to students as the centerpiece of the university;
• exceptional financial skills as characterized by significant experience with both budgets and investments;
• considerable and successful experience as a manager of people and programs with an emphasis on team building;
• a commitment to and track record of supporting shared governance; a commitment to impacting the earth’s environment in a positive way;
• an understanding of the role of private university education combined with an ability to articulate and advocate its continued importance and value; and
• the core attributes of great leaders (in addition to those noted above): honesty, intelligence, energy, enthusiasm, optimism, adaptability, transparency, decisiveness, courage of convictions, tolerance for ambiguity, and a good sense of humor.

Finally, Alaska is a unique subset of the United States. Its people, culture, topography, and climate are truly different than what most in the “Lower 48” states experience. Alaska is one of APU’s most vital assets, and its people are among the university’s most important – and diverse – constituencies. Personal resonance with Alaska and Alaskans is critical to the president’s success. Both candidates and the APU community want to be confident that the new president (and his or her household) will thrive in this singular environment.

The choice of APU's President is one that should be of interest to all Anchorage residents.  Universities play an important role in a community.  The new president can energize the community by developing greater educational opportunities for Alaskans (and others), by working cooperatively with UAA, and by making the campus a center for research into Alaska issues.  Or, if the new President isn't a great choice, we will lose the potential of this resource.

Putting Up, Taking Down, and Taking Off

University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) art professor, Mariano Gonzales, has a show at Alaska Pacific University (APU) which asks the question "Why are Americans still dying in the Middle East?" and asks visitors to put up their answers on a large white poster. According to Phil at Progressive Alaska, apparently this has embarrassed the President of APU who got his own paper to write a response. No, the question isn't neutral, but for those who believe those deaths are serving an important purpose, Professor Gonzales offered a big piece of paper to convince the world they are right.

War does set up a dilemma. People generally justify their enlisting to patriotic reasons - for those who aren't drafted - and then when they die, their families have the choice of believing their soldier died a hero or died in vain (or worse.) For most, that choice is easy. Even if it doesn't match reality. Anything that challenges that choice pushes a very strong emotional button.

Alaska Report blogger Dennis Zaki reports in an email that he keeps having problems with people using his photos without permission. I've written a bit here about photos and copyrights. It seems Dennis got ticked off enough with Dan Fagan for putting up his (Dennis') pictures without permission that he got Fagan's website (the Alaska Standard) suspended for a bit until the offending picture was taken down. Here's what I got when I went to Alaska Standard on Wednesday.


The site was back up when I checked on Thursday.

A final brief note. I saw in the LA Times yesterday a short piece on Levi Johnston's deal with Playgirl to take off his clothes. I'm a little sheltered here in the big city so I hadn't seen this bit of 'news' when it hit the ADN. With all the free nudes available on line, we know that Playgirl isn't just paying him for skin shots, but for Palin related skin shots. Let's see now - abstinence only education leads to teenage moms leads to teenage dad getting paid to pose nude. Isn't America great?

So many books, so little time

I had a meeting Monday morning at the UAA library and as I was walking out, a book in the staff picks section caught my eye.
It was the Dan Dailey book, but then the old copy of Jane Eyre was cool too.


Then there was the book of the year shelf. These two books will be used in classes across the curriculum. I know. I mentioned to the persona at the front desk that probably it should be labeled "Books" of the Year. Both are by Alaska authors. Milkweed Press which publishes Shopping for Porcupine writes

Shopping for Porcupine by Seth Kantner was recently selected as one of two Books of the Year by the University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University. Shopping for Porcupine will be paired with the other Book of the Year, The Whale and the Supercomputer by Charles Wohlforth, during the 2009-2010 academic year at both universities. Together, these books will be used to facilitate dialogue related to the theme "responding to climage [sic] change in Alaska." More specifically, the UAA/APU announcement notes that these texts "reveal many of the changes that have occurred [in rural Alaska] over the past half century and demonstrate what's at stake for rural communities facing the effects of climate change. . . . They call upon both Native wisdom and Western science to address the problems associated with climate change, and they illustrate how profoundly climate and cultural change can affect both people and entire ecosystems."

Of course, Palin fans know that this is part of the liberal conspiracy to end progress and destroy Alaska's economy.

Just before I got to the front desk and the exit, I passed what I thought was the new books shelves. But as I started checking on these books, some are relatively old. Still the variety of different books reminds me how much I have to learn. Here's a sampling of some of the books I saw. Click on the book covers for more info on the book and/or author.


In the case of the fish book, it turns out it was first published in 1987. Maybe this is a new edition. And you can see the ones that had plastic covers didn't come out to well. Sorry.


If you missed it above - click on book images for more info on book/author.



From the London Times review of this book (click on the book cover to link to the whole review):

Though it was domesticated more than 3,000 years ago, as the editors say in their introduction, “hardly any other food plant is as modern as the soybean”. They might have added, “or as controversial”. For, as press coverage has revealed, the clearing both of the rainforests and cerrados (savannas) of Brazil to grow soy, and the building of dams that are supposedly designed to help in its cultivation, are having dramatic effects on the survival of indigenous peoples and on climate change and biodiversity.

In the early twenty-first century, when surgery can be done microscopically and human achievement seems limitless, 2.6 billion people lack the most basic thing that human dignity requires. Four in ten people in the world have no toilet. They must do their business instead on roadsides, in the bushes, wherever they can. Yet human feces in water supplies contribute to one in ten of the world’s communicable diseases. A child dies from diarrhoea – usually brought on by fecal-contaminated food or water – every 15 seconds. . . [for more click on Big Necessity image above]

In her review of Stop High-Stakes Testing: An Appeal to America's Conscience by Dale D. Johnson et al., Luanna Meyer questions the premise that anyone can achieve "the American dream" through education. Specifically, she argues that the United States’ system of public schools and universities does not equal the playing field among the rich and the poor, and, in fact, public schools are just another place that allows poor children to fail. The book authors and reviewer alike sharply criticize the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), arguing that holding schools accountable via student test scores, without addressing fundamental issues of poverty, disparities in health care access, racism, funding inequities, etc., will only reflect what is already known—that children from middle-class and wealthy families will outperform poor children on standardized tests.. . [for more click on the cover above.]

With a title like this, I love to imagine what I would write if I were writing this book. Only then do I open it to see what was actually written. This was published in 1987.

Appadurai’s introductory article, “Commodities and the Politics of Value,” outlines a socialized view of commodities. He argues that commodities may be said to have social lives because they embody value, as created by a society. Moreover, Appadurai stresses that “commodity” is only one possible phase in the social life of an object; as it travels within different regimes of value, it may exit and reenter the commodity sphere. Commodities therefore communicate complex, context-dependent messages operating within a culturally constructed framework. . .

From what I think is the introduction of this book (click cover for link):

Distribution of scarce resources permeates almost all spheres and levels of social life. Scarce resources are not only distributed in the family, but also in the contexts of work, sports, friendship relations, the political arena, public organizations, legal settings, and more. Distribution of scarce resources is a problem affecting society at the micro, meso and macro levels. The micro level includes the family, friendship relationships, school, sport and work teams; the meso level includes work organization, the court, while the macro level includes political bodies, national economy, and others. In the family, for instance, problems with regard to the distribution of household tasks are common. In school, teachers have to decide how much attention to give to each student. On the meso level, public administrators are faced with the problem to determine whether or not to construct a new bus lane (see the chapter by Markus Müller and Elisabeth Kals in this volume) or how to tax different categories of citizens in the municipality for costs for water cleaning. The distribution and redistribution of income via taxation is an example of a distribution issue on the macro level.

You know the drill, click on the picture for more.

Bueker finds that naturalizing and voting are distinct processes. Level of education, income, and length of eligibility, predict both processes, but an immigrant?s country of origin frequently overrides these other characteristics and works differently in each. Immigrants from countries with the highest likelihood of naturalizing tend to have the lowest odds of voter turnout, while those immigrants from countries with the lowest odds of citizenship acquisition are the most likely to vote, once naturalized. Further, country of origin matters as much for how it interacts with other key characteristics, such as education and income, as for the independent influence it exerts on these two political processes.

From the book's website:

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.

In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; what of our everyday stuff may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.

From his NYU homepage:

My research and writing on revolutions, social movements, and terrorism have been motivated by both "real world" events and by debates among scholars. These often pull in different directions: Like many social scientists, I have been attracted to a sociology that tackles the most urgent personal and public issues of our age, but I have also felt compelled to leap into more academic debates about how this might best be done. I first became interested in revolutions in 1979, during the summer before my senior year in college. 1979 was a year of revolution – in Iran, Nicaragua, Grenada – and it was a year that saw the publication of Theda Skocpol’s classic study, States and Social Revolutions, which I quickly devoured.

The link for this is a pdf file. From the School of the Art Institute of Chicago:

To coincide with its 30th anniversary, the Video Data Bank is publishing
FEEDBACK: The Video Data Bank Catalog of Video Art and Artist Interviews (TempleUniversity Press). Founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976, theVideo Data Bank is a pioneering institution in the media arts movement, and houses anddistributes one of the world’s largest collections of videotapes by and aboutcontemporary artists.
Edited by Kate Horsfield and Lucas Hilderbrand, FEEDBACK is both a catalog of theVDB’s extraordinary collection and an invaluable historical survey of over 40 years ofvideo art. The 360-page volume includes annotated listings of 1,500 titles by over 500artists, from Vito Acconci to Julie Zando, as well as essays by Gregg Bordowitz,Vanalyne Green, Kate Horsfield, and Peggy Phelan that explore the aesthetic,technological, and cultural histories and methodologies of video making as an artpractice and political tool.

This one was published in 1994 and I couldn't find any decent links for it - just people trying to sell copies.


This is becoming a much bigger task than I intended. But I'm getting close.

It’s Okay Mom is the true Alaskan story of Linda Thompson, a parent of three children all with challenges. It begins with life in the wilderness of Lake Clark region before her first son is born. Once baby Erik is in her arms, people want her to institutionalize him. When her twins are born, she faces life/death realities as they present themselves. Her husband’s job slowly draws him away from home when they move to the capital, Juneau, and he becomes the Director of Subsistence under Governor Sheffield. The marriage is slowly crushed. Linda returns to the wilderness of Alaska to be a Bush teacher, raising her surviving boys alone, standing by them, no matter what.

It's getting later and I couldn't find something good specifically about the book. This is about one of the editors, Jefferson Cowie, from Inside Higher Ed:

Everyone knows that rock and roll is all about kicking out the jams: ditching uptight squares, taking long rides in the dark of night, and being a street fightin' man -- or woman. As The Who put it, it's about hoping to die before you get old.
But what does rock mean to a new generation of uptight (if updated and wired) squares, afraid of the open road, who have little fight in them? What does rock mean for a generation that has never been allowed to be young -- let alone hope to die before they get old?


For my students, the answer is simple. Rock and roll is about family happiness.
I discovered this disturbing undercurrent of rock-as-the-soundtrack-of-familial-bliss when I began teaching a college writing class this semester. The undergraduates' first assignment was to assess the personal meaning of any song of any genre. . . [get the rest by clicking the picture]

`

Maybe it was because I thought these were all new books, I didn't realize that I had read this one until I got home. Here's a snippet from a review on booksiloved.com.

The highlight of Daisy's life is when she becomes a garden columnist for a newspaper, and has many fans who write to her, asking about remedies for blights on flowers and other such topics. When she loses her job to a man for no good reason, she never completely recovers from the shame of not having a public identity.

Why would we want to read about the rest of Daisy's existence, which is, for the most part, conventional and predictable, based on filling others' expectations and fighting despair? We read the rest of this fictionalized autobiography because Shields has a way of addressing her character's inner realities with lyrical affection and quiet irony. Because the story is told from many points of view over time, we are offered a complex, historical understanding of Daisy's life. . . [get the whole review by clicking on the book cover photo.]

From the UC Irvine Drama Department website:

Annie Loui works as a director/choreographer and creator of inter-media theater works. She trained with dancer Carolyn Carlson (at the Paris Opera), and studied with Etienne Decroux, Ella Jarosivitcz and Jerzy Grotowski. Original dance/theater pieces have been seen in France, Monaco, West Germany, and in the United States at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, among other venues. She has choreographed for the American Repertory Theater, Trinity Repertory Theater, and off-Broadway for the Signature Theater. Longtime member of the Brandeis Theater Arts Department; she also taught extensively for the Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard before coming to the University of California, Irvine, where she runs the Movement Program for the MFA Actor Training...

From booknews:

This text/reference offers a visual approach to moving target indication (MTI), moving target detection (MTD), and Air Traffic Control Radar Beacon systems, illustrating concepts, relationships, and processes with b&w illustrations, photos, and images, including illustrations of oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer displays, on every page. Early chapters cover radar's history, the role of the professional radar engineer/technician, and the science behind radar. Later chapters cover circuitry and hardware, secondary radar systems, microwave transmission, radar transmitters and receivers, the Doppler effect, and radar displays. Mathematical explanations rely only on basic trigonometric concepts, keeping the information accessible to those new to the field. . .

From a New York Times book review:

More Americans were executed in 1999 than any year since 1952, and the execution rate has gone up 800 percent in just a decade. Over 3,500 prisoners, an all-time record, now await their fate on death row. Strange, then, that Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell should state in the preface to ''Who Owns Death?'' that even as executions soar, the days of the death penalty in America are numbered. They reach this conclusion by a careful study of the psychology of capital punishment among governors, judges, prosecutors, jurors, victims' families, wardens and witnesses. They analyze our society to see if we indeed are obsessed with a ''culture of death,'' as Pope John Paul II has put it. It is a remarkable testimony to the authors' skills and the clarity of their writing that whether one is for or against capital punishment -- and few issues are as polarizing in modern society -- by the end of this book the reader will agree that, for better or worse, inexorable social forces are carrying us to the eventual abolition of the death penalty. . . [Click the photo to get the whole the review.]

Political Reporting Issues: The Press Does Ray Metcalfe

Bloggers overlap with various other more traditional categories - diarist, gossip, and journalist seem to be among the more common. When we morph into a journalist form enough, people start sending us press releases. I don't get too many. APU's Engaging Muslims series started sending them after I posted on the first evening of the series. The Alaska Report has sent out links to some stories. And I've been getting Wednesday sneak previews of the Anchorage Press. I've always wondered how, say, NPR gets their stories. How many come from their reporters actually going out and finding a story and how many are based on press releases? Of course, the email I mentioned yesterday offering to exchange links falls in a related category of self promotion.

I write all this because as someone new to much of this, I don't take these things for granted, and I want to comment on them before I do. Most of us probably don't know why certain stories become news and others don't. And part of me wants to work on stories that others aren't working on, and not be a promotion site. Or work the stories in ways others aren't working them.

So this story from the tomorrow's Press (well, by the time I'm done it will be today's Press) is about something I've been thinking about. And I have mentioned that Brendan Joel Kelley, who wrote the story and emailed it out to various reporters (the list isn't visible) and I had lunch a couple of weeks ago. He ended up paying for mine because mine was only $5 and I had a $20 and a $1. I contributed the $1. I mention this because I think politicians who have their lunches paid for by people lobbying them on various issues should tell us who they talked to and if they got a free lunch out of it. And I'm willing to disclose that even though I don't have to.

Anyway, I'm not ready to do this story, but I think there are a couple of angles here to be explored that Brendan doesn't explore.

The story is basically about whether Ray Metcalfe is a serious candidate for the Senate. According to the story, Metcalfe says he is.

The issues this story stirred up for me - still unresolved but I can raise them here and say that I may actually follow up on them or not - are about:

1. How journalists cover politicians
2. Ray Metcalfe's political personas

The media issue is ultimately the more important long term issue and Metcalfe is more a case study to help us think about the first.

Brendan Joel Kelley writes:

Metcalfe points out that Palin exposed the Republican Party chair, Randy Ruedrich, for ethical violations, and says that he’s exposed a hundred times as much corruption as that. “Look what the public did for her. It’s not the good ol’ boys that are going to put you in office, and it’s not the guys with the thousand dollar campaign checks. It’s the guys with the five dollar campaign checks and the yard signs and the elbow grease.”

Here, Brendan has interviewed Metcalfe and is reporting what Metcalfe says. This is an important part of journalism, as reporters on behalf of the rest of us, talk to the candidates. We need to know two things about candidates:

• Content - where do they stand on the issues?; and
• Credibility - do we feel comfortable with them and can we trust them?

Television has the advantage of showing us the interview so we can judge for ourselves (though we don't know what they cut out or how different camera angles subliminally affect how we perceive the candidates.) We get the feel and intonation of the candidate that help us judge credility, but this can distract us from the content.

The written report has the advantage that it can be more in depth than most television news stories - Charlie Rose's interviews being an exception - and they can focus on the content and analyze in more depth as Richard Mauer's infrequent, long, and informative investigative reports do.

This Press piece is more like a tv interview, telling us what the candidate said and and not doing much research to find out whether it's true or not.

In the above quote, Metcalfe is trying to grab some of Sarah Palin's glow as a stalwart who refused to go along with corruption. But Palin's just isn't going to stick for Metcalfe. While Metcalfe has standing up against corruption in common with Sarah Palin, how they stood up aginst corruption and their whole demeanor are totally different.

Palin was put in a position where she had to go along with corruption or stand up and say, publicly, these guys are cheating and I can't work with them. But that's just one part of what makes her attractive to Alaskan voters and national Republican strategists. She's also a good looking woman with a warm personality who makes people (except Republican party leaders) feel comfortable.

Metcalfe, in his own words says he’s "exposed a hundred times as much corruption." Metcalfe probably thinks that makes him a hundred times more deserving of the public's gratitude. The Greeks talked about doing all things in moderation. And for many people, I suspect, it raises questions about why he seems so obsessed with exposing other people's wrong doings. And he doesn't have Palin's smiling personality which goes a long way in the trust department. And becoming a hero by turning on your former friends (Metcalfe is a former Republican) was never a sure path.

Whistle blower is the most positive word we have for such people, and some even use whistle blower pejoratively. Other words for what Metcalfe has done include tattletale, snitch, and turncoat. Don't get me wrong. I think that Metcalfe has performed an invaluable service and we need more people to follow his example, but our society is ambivalent about this kind of work. I suspect because it seems to conflict with our value of loyalty.

Spousal immunity is a principle that reflects this conflict between loyalty and turning in a criminal. In court it helps protect the necessary bond between a husband and wife that

... was thought to require a testimonial privilege, one that would both reflect and foster the loyalty that married people should feel toward each other.

For Palin, calling out Ruedrich and Murkowski was an important act, but it was one of many things she did and stood for. For Metcalfe, in most people's minds (those who even think about these things at all), it is his purpose to go after corrupt politicians. In the public's view, this isn't balanced out by other aspects of his life. It's not balanced. Brendan writes:

It’s worth asking what Ray Metcalfe is running for, as opposed to whom he’s running against.

(The article does also then give a list of things he's for.)

Brendan also raises the question whether the US Senate is the right job for someone who appears to excel in criminal investigations, asking

. . .if he wouldn’t be better suited for a job other than Senator from Alaska. Like working for the Department of Justice. Or becoming a private investigator.

Another identity issue for Metcalfe is whether he is becoming the Hillary Clinton of the Alaskan US Senate race.

His allegations against Begich are complex and involve real estate deals with local developer Jon Rubini, of JL Properties, who’s also connected to Ted Stevens through property deals. Metcalfe’s compiled his paper trails and accusations in documents that are on his website, www.metcalfe4senate.com

While he says he is serious about this campaign, the money and polls suggest that Begich is the likely Democratic candidate, with a far more significant lead over Metcalfe than Obama ever had over Clinton. If he has no chance of winning, does he have a good chance of causing the Democrats to lose?

As one rebel union member who also has issues with Begich said to me, "Yes, I have problems with Begich, but I'm going to vote for him over Stevens. But I won't be out campaigning for him." Primary elections are all about politicians from the same party showing why they are the best candidate and sometimes that involves showing the weaknesses of their, same party, opponents. But while I don't think the McCain campaign will need any help from Hillary when they attack Obama, I suspect that Stevens' campaign will use Metcalfe's material against Begich, and it wouldn't have had that material without Metcalfe.

Comparing Metcalfe to Clinton works only in one aspect - being the potential spoiler who won't let go to the point where many think he/she will enable their shared opponent to win in the general election.

And this raises another journalistic issue. Brendan raises Metcalfe's allegations and then he offers a response from the Begich campaign:

For its part, the Begich campaign has a thick stack of papers rebutting one of Metcalfe’s claims—that Begich assisted Rubini by pushing to rezone of a parcel of land, boosting its value significantly. The federal government subsequently purchased it from Rubini’s company, at what Metcalfe says was an inflated price, for the National Archives building. Begich disputes all of Metcalfe’s accusations, calling the situation a shame.

“He throws these allegations around because they make good political hay and he never has to back it up,” Begich says. “Honestly, I run my campaign focused on the issues that I want to talk about; Ray would rather throw grenades and he doesn’t really care where they land."

This is the same sort of 'he said, she said" journalism we get every day, which clouds the issues in voters' minds, but doesn't dig deeper into the validity of the claims. We need some people to read through all of Metcalfe's allegations and take his tour and then go to the Begich people and sort through their responses. And then map them out. Are the allegations merely correlation without evidence of cause and effect? Are the responses credible and do they effectiely refute Metcalfe's claims? I know Metcalfe believes he's right, so do Pete Kott and Vic Kohring. I don't mean to lump Metcalfe with those folks, but merely to point out that believing you are right is not the same as being right.

One person who has a better perspective on these things than I do, says that Begich has some blindspots like everyone else. A member of his campaign just as vigorously defends Begich's actions on the waste issues. But good journalism should do some of this work for the public. And I say some people instead of someone should do this so we have various people reviewing and then interpreting the evidence.

One other thing wasn't quite clear to me. Did Brendan actually take the Metcalfe tour of Anchorage? He writes:

There’s a tour of Anchorage that Ray Metcalfe likes to give to journalists, politicians, FBI agents, and other interested parties. He calls it his “three-hour tour,” although it could probably go on longer. The tour hits everywhere from base housing at Elmendorf to parking lots in downtown Anchorage to a lot in Midtown near Loussac Library to a road in a sprawling development in South Anchorage.

This second quote (below) indirectly hints that he did, and I suspect he did, and he just didn't realize anyone would even question it, but it would be helpful if he just came out and told us directly that he took the tour.

One wonders, when you take the three-hour tour and listen to Metcalfe pontificate on his passion for independently investigating political corruption, if he wouldn’t be better suited for a job other than Senator from Alaska. Like working for the Department of Justice. Or becoming a private investigator. Or charging money to tourists for the three-hour tours.

I noticed at the trials that the Main Stream Media (MSM) and us bloggers didn't really do the work. The FBI and the prosecutors did all the work. We just had to be in court and listen and take notes.

The same thing is true about the Republican and Democratic conventions (I was out of town for the Republican convention, but the other bloggers were there) and the AGIA workshop last week. The Governor's team at the Department of Natural Resoures did all the work, we just listened to what they reported.

Metcalfe did the real work of the journalists of doggedly tracking down information and making sense out of it. And whether that makes him a good candidate for the Senate, I can't determine, but we owe him a great debt for the hours and hours of work he did so well. But I also wonder about people who spend so much time exposing other people's failings. In some cases such people appear to have some complex pyschological issues - such as evangelist Ted Haggard or New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Others appear to simply have a strong sense of justice such as Ralph Nader whose life has been thoroughly investigated with no evidence found to impugn him.

The facts allow for lots of different interpretations. Getting enough information is a long and difficult job. Right now I think too many people claim to know the answers when at best, all they can really do is guess at possible ways to interpret the data. And reporters have a real role in helping the public in this process - and bloggers can fit in that role of reporter.

Alaska Overnighters 13

My daughter emailed:

Hey -- It looks like my friend Paul is in a show. Maybe you guys would want
to see you...
m

So, what else could we do? Fortunately we got there a little early and got good seats, because Grant Hall was full. It appeared from the audience reaction that many of the people were involved with theater and knew each other.

Four playwrights were picked last night. From what I understood, they were each given a title, a director, cast assigned to specific characters. The playwright needs to write the play and the cast perform it 24 hours later. Given the conditions, this was really amazing.

The plays ranged from quite good to ok. But all the acting was worth seeing. They assigned another set of four plays for Sunday night, so there is still a chance to this. John McKay, the attorney who represented the Anchorage Daily News and KTUU in Federal Court during the corruption trials, was assigned as one of the playwrights for tomorrow night.
It was dark and the actors moved, so I figured I'd make the pictures small so they weren't too blurred.

Another All New Show - 8pm Sunday, Grant Hall at APU. $10 a seat. Great deal.

The Enigma that is Vic Kohring

Here's some of what his defense attorney said about him in his opening argument:

John H Browne Opening Argument uploaded by AKRaven

(audio edited from court recording posted on ADN's site today)

It's true that he's a giant teddy bear of a man. He seems to smile at everyone he looks at in court, as if acknowledging an old friend. He asks the prosecutors how their lunch was after the noon break in a cordial tone you might use with someone you know well.

I'm trying here to put down what I know from observing him in court and from what he says on the surveillance tapes that have been played.

• His legislative bio says he was born in Waukegan, Illinois in 1958.
• It also says he received a B.A. in Management Science in 1987 and an M.B.A. in 1989, both from APU.
• He's anti-government and anti-tax. (according to his attorney's opening argument and Kohring himself on some of the tapes)
• He's pro big business and certainly pro-oil development. A couple of times he called Rick Smith (all the calls that have been introduced into court are ones where Vic goes through Rick Smith to get to Bill Allen if I recall right) to tell him that he's been working on a bill that includes even more incentives than just the investment incentives for major oil companies.
  

The other side of the picture.

• He's a humble sheet rocker, when he's not in the legislature. (Defense attorney Browne)
• He lives in a trailer in Wasilla and sleeps on a couch in his legislative office in Juneau. (Browne)
• He did not have enough money to eat. (Browne quoting Bill Allen)
• The only employment his legislative bio lists was government related - such as his legislative work and membership on the Wasilla Planning and Utilities Commission and the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation
• The only heading his legislative bio lists related to business is "Business and Professional Memberships" which include just: Palmer Chamber of Commerce and Wasilla Chamber of Commerce.
  

So, that means we have an anti-tax, anti-government, pro-big oil, and presumably pro-business in general man with undergraduate and graduate degrees in business, who on his professional legislative resume lists no private sector work in his 49 years. And by all accounts he has very little money - he lives in a trailer and while in Juneau from January to May, sleeps on the couch in his office. Some of that poverty might be explained by the fact that he is supporting, presumably, the household of his wife and step-daughter who live in Oregon. Of course, explaining that as the reason for his not having enough money to eat is a little embarrassing since he's supposed to maintain a residence in his district. But since he lives in a trailer in his district and most other legislators have to support two households while in Juneau, that doesn't really explain it.

What about his sheet rock business? We know from the previous trial that Pete Kott continued to be active, when the legislature was not in session, installing hardwood floors. And his legislative bio lists him as " Owner & Associate, Kott's Hardwood Flooring: 1996 - present" though his business support was tempered by his pro-union stance.

I can't see anything in Kohring's bio that accounts for the time between his high school graduation in 1976 and his graduation from college in 1987. Was he in college for 11 years? Was this when he did sheet rock work? And there were four or five years from when he received his MBA in 1989 until he was elected to the House of Representatives. Did he start a business? What did he do? It isn't reflected on his legislative bio. Why not? Wouldn't such a pro-business candidate want to emphasize his private sector work experience?

Why does such a strongly anti-government advocate only list government work on his official bio?
What influences in his life have led him to be a staunch supporter of business on the one hand, and a state legislator who is so poor he sleeps on his couch in his legislative office? A vow of poverty may be a noble thing, but I can't recall it being part of a pro-capitalist ideology. And the ideology doesn't fit with someone taking cash handouts from lobbyists. He said in a surveillance tape when he asked Allen for a loan to cover his credit card debt that he didn't want any payments that he didn't work for. What non-legislative work did he do for Allen in exchange for the $600 to $700 we saw on the video, not to mention the other times Allen says he gave him money because he felt sorry for him?


Browne called him one of the hardest workers in the history of the Alaska legislature, ever. Surely such a hard worker with an MBA could have earned enough money when the legislature was not in session to live off his $24,000 legislative pay plus more than $150 per diem. Do Alaskans really want people managing the state's budget who can't manage their own personal budgets? Here's a staunch anti-government, no-tax zealot, who won't vote for any legislation that raises taxes, even though the oil companies being taxed support the bill. He did say he would be willing to vote for it if the assessment of 20% were called a fee instead of a tax.

This is a man, it seems to me, who has painted himself into a corner by signing a no-tax increase pledge. In the 2006 session he was faced with what he sees as legislation necessary to develop the gas pipeline, which he sees as critical for the state. But he can't vote for it because he signed the no tax increase pledge 12 years earlier, though it's ok to tell others to vote for it. It's commendable for a politician to stick to his promise. But not when it's a promise that now is going to do harm to the state and people of Alaska. It made more sense to him to stick to a principle he espoused before he had any legislative experience or apparently business experience than to say, "After 12 years in the legislature, I now realize that life is more complex than I thought. There are times when voting against a tax will do more harm than the tax will do. Since the oil producers - the people being taxed here - are saying this bill is essential to getting the gas pipeline built, I'm going to make an exception here." Nixon went to China, but Kohring couldn't vote for the PPT bill.

So we have a man of contradictions. A man with degrees in business who is too poor, despite a hefty per diem, to afford a place to stay other than his office when in Juneau. Why?
Is he simply ignoring his personal needs to earn a living in his zeal to serve his constituents?
Is he just unable to succeed in the entrepreneurial ventures he's studied and he believes in so strongly?
Are there other explanations?

He is quite unique and leaves me scratching my head trying to understand these seeming paradoxes.

[added Oct. 30 - For a similar assessment in a very different style, read Michael Carey's take on Vic Kohring.]

Engaging Muslims in Anchorage

Alaska Pacific University (APU) is putting on an extensive community study program this year on engaging Muslims. This weekend Dr. John Borelli a Catholic Scholar and Assistant for interreligious initiatives for the President of Georgetown University. This was a solid, academic talk - quite different in tone from Donald Johanson's 'science for the masses' presentation. Borelli got into Vatican political details in discussing the Catholic church's opening of dialog with the Muslim world. There was standing room only. The APU website describes the program this way:

Engaging Muslims: Religion, Cultures, Politics
A Community Education Project
Sponsored by the Cardinal Newman Chair of Catholic Theology at Alaska Pacific University

Global issues mandate that Americans gain a better understanding of Islam. This is especially true as we face the upcoming national presidential election. Islam is now the second largest religious community in the United States. Anchorage is now home to over 2000 Muslims.

Under the direction of the Cardinal Newman Chair, Alaska Pacific University is spearheading a project to foster a respectful understanding of Islam that recognizes the diversity in Islamic cultures as well as internal struggle within the contemporary Muslim world.



There was a series of exquisite handpainted pages from the Quuran outside the auditorium at Grant Hall. (I'm still trying to figure out how to get more control over photo sizes in iPhoto08, so this picture will be big enough to read the translated verses if you click on it.)





And as I neared home after the short bike ride from APU at 9pm the sky was dazzling.