AIFF: Sunday Offers Impressive Crime/Prison Lessons

 I missed the noon movie Sunday.  I just needed a little more time to recuperate. 

Saturday morning had a great set of Alaska themed or made films.  I was very pleased that we are past the days when Alaska films were any Alaskan project where someone writes a story and goes out (usually) into the woods and experiments with how their cameras and mics work.  

That elation didn't survive Sunday's Alaska Shorts Program.  There were good ones mostly.  And that's all I'll say.  

The afternoon Documentary Feature - The Body Politic - was a riveting look at Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott.   We see Scott elected into office as a young Black man who saw his first shooting at 10, and vowed that the basic approach of mass arresting of Black men had to be replaced.  The alternative was to give people options in life other than crime and prison.    He comes into office after 327 (maybe it was 37) people had been murdered in the previous year, vowing to cut murders by 15%.  But pro-active reaching out to folks is a long term strategy and takes a while to work.  He monitored every murder as they outpaced his target.  The Republican governor, who controlled prisons, parole, and critical social services, refused to meet with Scott and said he needed to beef up the police to stop the crime.

The discussion afterward included director Gabriel Francis Paz Goodenough, film subject Erricka Bridgeford, and another film maker whose name and role I didn't quite catch.  Ida, the director of the festival is on the right.  Ericka is in the middle.  

You can read more about the film from a Baltimore paper and read an interview with the director here.

The next shorts program began with another excellent film - The Bond - which was short and packed a powerful punch as we see an incarcerated woman having her baby, shackled, and then having the baby taken from her.  The filming, the story, the acting were all just right.  

The last program were three films related to prison and domestic violence.  

Infraction told the true story of an inmate who the judge had, at some point concluded was innocent, but was still locked up.

Seeds of Change told the story of a farmer who takes on the project of setting up a farm adjacent to a prison and then utilizing prisoners to work on the farm.  The fresh food is served in the prison.  The film shows the effect of the farm work on the prisoners who worked there and the effects of having fresh food prepared well on the prisoners. 

Where I Learned Not to Sleep  - The camera follows two retired police who grew up with domestic violence, doing training programs for police on how to approach domestic violence situations.  

The whole afternoon and evening illustrated the need to treat citizens, abused women,  and prisoners with dignity and respect to break the cycle of violence and criminality.  

There's much more to say, but this at least gives you a sense of what I got out of the festival on Sunday.  

Good Bye Vic! Miss You Already

[Fishcher photo from a University webpage
which no longer is working.] 

I believe this is a picture of Vic when he was a delegate at the Alaska Constitutional Convention.  

Like his good friend Lidia Selkregg, he was someone who made everyone he talked to feel special.  

 

 Here's some of what I wrote about Vic's autobiography - To Russia With Love - on his 95th birthday, four years ago. 

"There's something of a Forrest Gump quality to Vic Fischer's life - he lived through many historic moments in the history of the 20th Century, and played important roles in a number of them.  His father was the famous journalist, Louis Fischer, who was married to a Russian writer.  He was born in Berlin in 1924 spent his early years in Berlin and Moscow, escaping from Stalin purges through intervention from Eleanor Roosevelt in 1939."

Many remarkable men and women have made Alaska their home.  None of their lives was more remarkable than Vic's.  

 

Vic at his 95th birthday party in May 2019.

In the legislative halls of Juneau 2010

Vic was at the rally to gather signatures for the Dunleavy recall in 2019.  I'm pretty sure Dunleavy would have been recalled if it hadn't been for COVID.  The organizers got the required 28,000 signatures in two weeks.  That's phenomenal.  So getting the recall petition certified was easy.  But the next round required another petition to get it on the ballot.  And as the group was ready to start the second petition, COVID shut everything down.  No gatherings.  People weren't going places like the library or the DMV where it was easy to get signatures.  And the recall movement died of COVID.

Here's Vic in Juneau talking to Rep. David Gutenberg.  I was blogging the legislature and a question had come up about what was intended in the Alaska Constitution regarding the Boundary Commission.  Vic, who'd been a member of the Constitutional Convention was there and I was able to get his interpretation of what the Constitution intended on that issue.  Unfortunately, that video is a blank on the page, so I can't post it now.  [I saved some videos on Vidler which eventually started charging.  They did help me by sending me all the video I had up there, but it was a complicated process of redoing them all.  I got a number redone and up on YouTube, but not all.  I'm guessing that's what happened to this one.]

But I do have this video of Vic speaking at the "It's Our Oil" rally in 2013.  You can see the whole video (with other speakers) at the original post.

Alaskans have lost one of our greatest statesmen and a great human being..  

A Lesson In Simple People Power From Sweden, Late 1800s

The Story of Gósta Berling by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlof is the story of people in rural Sweden in the late 1800s.  People deal with evil spirits and the word of God, the beauty and the dangers of nature, and the challenges of making a living in the northern regions of earth.  There are rich people and poor, good and evil, hard workers and lazy.  

It shouldn't be surprising how much human beings then and there are like people here and now.  

The villagers have walked out at the end of the Sunday services in the local church.   Their protest is quiet and simple and effective.  A lesson for us today to think of ways to creatively make our protests known. 

This excerpt takes place in a later chapter called The Drought.  It's late summer and there has been no rain since June.  Crops are dying, forest fires are burning.  People are getting desperate.  All are questioning if it is their behavior that has caused God to withhold the rain.  

"It was a Sunday in August. The service was over. The people wandered in groups along the sunny roads. On all sides they saw burned woods and ruined crops. There had been many forest fires; and what they had spared, insects had taken.  

The gloomy people did not lack for subjects of conversation. There were many who could tell how hard it had been in the years of famine of eighteen hundred and eight and nine, and in the cold winter of eighteen hundred and twelve, when the sparrows froze to death. They knew how to make bread out of bark, and how the cows could be taught to eat moss.

There was one woman who had tried a new kind of bread of cranberries and corn-meal. She had a sample with her, and let the people taste it. She was proud of her invention.

But over them all floated the same question. It stared from every eye, was whispered by every lip: “Who is it, O Lord, whom Thy hand seeks?”

A man in the gloomy crowd which had gone westward, and struggled up Broby hill, stopped a minute before the path which led up to the house of the mean Broby clergyman. He picked up a dry stick from the ground and threw it upon the path.  

“Dry as that stick have the prayers been which he has given our Lord,” said the man.

He who walked next to him also stopped. He took up a dry branch and threw it where the stick had fallen.

“That is the proper offering to that priest,” he said.

The third in the crowd followed the others’ example.

“He has been like the drought; sticks and straw are all that he has let us keep.”

The fourth said: “We give him back what he has given us.”

And the fifth: “For a perpetual disgrace I throw this to him. May he dry up and wither away like this branch!”

“Dry food to the dry priest,” said the sixth.

The people who came after see what they are doing and hear what they say. Now they get the answer to their long questioning.

“Give him what belongs to him! He has brought the drought on us.”

And each one stops, each one says his word and throws his branch before he goes on.

In the corner by the path there soon lies a pile of sticks and straw,—a pile of shame for the Broby clergyman.

That was their only revenge. No one lifted his hand against the clergyman or said an angry word to him. Desperate hearts cast off part of their burden by throwing a dry branch on the pile. They did not revenge themselves. They only pointed out the guilty one to the God of retribution."

“If we have not worshipped you rightly, it is that man’s fault. Be pitiful, Lord, and let him alone suffer! We mark him with shame and dishonor. We are not with him.

It soon became the custom for every one who passed the vicarage to throw a dry branch on the pile of shame.

The old miser soon noticed the pile by the roadside. He had it carried away,—some said that he heated his stove with it. The next day a new pile had collected on the same spot, and as soon as he had that taken away a new one was begun.

The dry branches lay there and said: “Shame, shame to the Broby clergyman!”

Soon the people’s meaning became clear to him. He understood that they pointed to him as the origin of their misfortune. It was in wrath at him God let the earth languish. He tried to laugh at them and their branches; but when it had gone on a week, he laughed no more. Oh, what childishness! How can those dry sticks injure him? He understood that the hate of years sought an opportunity of expressing itself."

The book's copyright is long over and you can read the book at Gutenberg.org or you can listen to a Swede reading it in English at the Internet Archive here.   This chapter is Part II, Chapter XVI.

Bill Allen - My Respect For Him As A Pre-Modern Man In A Modern World

When I heard last week that Bill Allen had died, I immediately wanted to write a bit of a remembrance.  I sat through three different political corruption trials in 2007 and 2008 where he was a key witness for the prosecution.  He had already pleaded guilty and would explain each time how he had given money to different Alaskan GOP politicians so they would vote favorably for the oil industry, for his company VECO in particular.

I thought I had a post that spoke to the part I wanted to say.  But I couldn't find it.  

I just read Michael Carey's Anchorage Daily News opinion piece remembering Bill Allen, so I'll refer you to that.  I met Michael on the first or second day of the first of the trials.  He'd heard that the defendant had been a former student of mine and invited me to lunch.  I told him I couldn't talk about what I knew about Tom from my teacher-student relationship, but he still took me to lunch that day.  Michael's a good man and I appreciate his view on things.

Michael's article got me to look again back into the archives of this blog and I found what I was looking for.  It's in a post talking about the stories imbedded in the trail, in this case, cultural stories. I'd note my use of the term "pre-modern man."  This doesn't mean cave man.  It refers to the value systems prior to the Scientific Revolution and the application of science and rationality to agriculture, the production of goods, to medicine, and to government and law.  It was a time when family and power were the key things that mattered. 

From Pete Kott's Trial: The Underlying Stories September 15, 2007

"First, I would note that the main character in the trial so far has been Bill Allen. Pete Kott has said very little since the first day when the jury pool assembled and Kott stood up with the attorneys and introduced himself as "Pete Kott, the defendant." Since then he's been a quiet shadow sitting between his attorneys. Witness Rick Smith has a supporting role to Bill Allen. So let me try on this story as an interpretation of some of what is happening here in court.

We have a clash of two different cultures - a pre-modern, tribal world and a modern, legal world. In Bill Allen's world, as I tease it out of his words and behaviors, power and family are the main values. Loyalty is a second, but lower value. The law, the government, the legislature in particular are seen as either obstacles to be overcome or tools to get what you want. Allen is clearly an intelligent man. Coming from a poor family, as he told the story, where he and his family survived as 'pickers' of fruit and vegetables in Oregon, he often missed school to pick. He finally dropped out at 15 to earn money as an assistant welder. He has used his wits, his ability to work hard, and his ability to size up people, to create a business that earned between $750 million and $1 billion last year, according to his testimony. 

In the world he described, good and bad referred to how something would affect his business. Good legislation was legislation that would benefit - directly or indirectly - Veco's prospects. Good people were those who supported Allen and Veco. Money was a sign of power. And with money, this high school drop-out could show his power over the better educated. He could buy legislators. He paid Tom Anderson to be a consultant who did, apparently, very little for his monthly check. He paid for political polls for state legislative candidates. He handed out checks to legislators. They had audiences with Allen in the Baranof Hotel's Suite 604. But symbolically, he could really show his power by building the addition to Ted Stevens' house and by hiring Ted Stevens' son for $4000 a month to do "not a lot." The most senior Republican U.S. Senator was beholden to him. Surely, that's a sign of power. He even bought a newspaper - The Anchorage Times.  So all these educated people worked for him - a high school drop out who'd picked fruit as a child. 

Earlier in the trial, I'd thought perhaps loyalty was the main virtue in this world - the loyalty of the Pete Kotts. The loyalty of his Veco employees. He said he trusted Kott as a friend who would do whatever it took to support him. He told the court he'd put aside $10 million when Veco was sold, to support the loyal employees who'd worked for the company and made it what it was - not the executives, but the workers. 

But then I looked at the situation before me. Allen was the government's witness against his most loyal servant, Pete Kott. We've watched this tribal culture on HBO - in the Sopranos and in Rome. We see it in the car bombs of Baghdad. We even see it in the White House where the rule of law is trumped by the raw use of power, and the redacting of significant parts of the Constitution. If the rule of law has any meaning in this culture, it is might makes right. And when the FBI confronted Allen with hundreds of hours of secretly recorded audio and video tapes, he saw that their army of investigators and attorneys had more juice than Veco. In this conflict of power, the FBI had him by the balls, a graphic image that would say it all in Allen's world.   And to protect the ultimate core of a tribal culture, his family, he abandoned Kott and the others, to keep his family out of prison.  

This is not an immoral man. Rather this is a man who lives by a different code of right and wrong from the one that now judges him. Family and power come first. Loyalty to underlings comes next. He told the court he didn't expect anything from the Government for his testimony. He recognized their power, and in their place he would not treat his vanquished with 'fairness'. But he also had his own pride - in the powerful company he built by his own hands and wit, in his own hard work - and as he told Kott's attorney, "I won't beg" the government to lower his sentence. He'll take what comes as a man. He's protected his family, whatever else happens, happens.

This man who ruled by the pre-modern values of power and personal loyalty is put on trial by the rules of a modern state, where rationality, not personality count. Where merit, not loyalty and personal connections, is the standard. (A merit system generally prefers college degrees to dirty fingernails.) His behaviors are judged, not by power, but by laws. The kind of laws he paid legislators to write in his favor and that he ignored when they were in the way.  

I think it is important to recognize the good qualities in Allen. This is a man who, it would appear, was raised in a culture where poverty was bad and thus money was good. No one was there to help him, he had to help himself. The modern, civilized world failed him. It forced him to work as a child. The school system didn't work for him. The idea of rule of law wasn't, apparently, one he learned from his family and he wasn't in school enough to get it there. With what he had, he built a large corporation which gave him the power to take care of his family. He played well by the rules of tribal culture. 

And lest those of us who believe in the rule of law get too smug, tribal instincts are alive and well under the veneer of civilization we wear. We see it flare up in divorce courts, at football stadiums and boxing matches, among hunters and fishers. It's part of our humanity. We're still learning how to balance the tension between protecting our own and helping others, between the freedom of the individual and the good of the larger community.

 

The Trump Folks Are Lined Up To See Their Messiah In Anchorage Today

I biked over to UAA's Alaska Airlines Center to see how the Trump rally was going.  The doors were scheduled to open at 11am.  I got their about 10:40am and this is what it was like.  This is the south side of the center, where the apparent entrance was.  People were lined up to the road that goes into the parking lot.  Then around the corner to Providence Drive and along Providence to just about ????.  

Below is along Providence Drive.  I don't think this what Alaska Airlines intended when they contributed enough money to get their name on the building.  

I saw about 10-15 Anchorage Police cars, and then there were these ominous all black SUVs with blinking red lights all over them.  

This guy was telling the crowd about Jesus.  

There was a tiny group of protesters.

This guy had loud speakers on his bike and started playing Macho Man on them loudly.  Not sure if that was genuine or ironic.  

Only people who lived in the dorms could park down this road.  

I asked one man who looked vaguely official what his role was.  "Private Security" he said.  I asked how many people he though were there.  "The 5500 seats are going to fill" he replied.  

I'm sure he's right.  5500 people represents .000357% [1.8%] [Thanks CE, I thought this seemed wrong but was in a hurry.  As it says above, a private security guard gave me the 5500 figure.] of the Anchorage population.  The picked a venue they were likely to fill up.  Not sure how much bigger they could have gotten.  Mulcahy Stadium has 5000 seats for baseball, and you could add more seats on the field.  Sullivan Arena can hold almost 6300 for ice hockey and more with seating on the floor level, but Trump wouldn't want to have a rally in a place that just was used as a homeless shelter.

" . . . his father remembered a time when the dead person was carefully wrapped in birchbark and then fixed high in a tree."

 

I'm going to offer you the chapter "Cradle to Grave" from Louise Erdich's The Night Watchman. As I read it my body absorbed, in a new way, the meaning of the Anglo rulers rooting out the traditions, language, and knowledge of indigenous peoples.  And I realized that the GOP and evangelical Christian advocates of rooting out any mention of LGBTQ realities, women's rights, or the true history of the United States, of slavery, or even scientific truths,  rises from the same need to maintain one's own 'truths' by eliminating any competing 'truths.'

Stamping out other knowledge leads to ignorance which leads to total obedience.  Or so these would be tyrants believe. but the human mind has always  been resistant to these attempts.  Though the technology of modern marketing chips away and there are humans who would like to possess technology that controls what others know and think.  

Not only does such annihilation of ideas create obedience to "the one Truth" it delegitimizes the knowledge of the other culture.  This passage also shows us what we lose when we wipe out other cultural knowledge.  

My apologies to Louise Erdrich for quoting such a long passage.  This blog takes no ads and raises no money.  My hope is to share your wisdom and possibly get more people to read your book.  

"Thomas worked on the grave house while Wood Mountain finished up the cradle board.  They were working in Louie's barn because he had all of the tools - the saws, planes, rasps, the splitter, vise, hammer, and the sanding rocks.  Neither of them spoke.  Thomas was using a sharp chisel to dovetail the ends of the boards.  He didn't like using nails in a grave house.  He made a few rafters for the roof and then planed out the necessary shingles.  He'd seen them made with tar paper or bought shingles, but he felt close to Zhaanat as he worked - she had asked him to make the grave house because she knew he did it the old way.  Except, Thomas wondered, was this the really old way?  Biboon said that his father remembered a time when the dead person was carefully wrapped in birchbark and then fixed high in a tree.  It seemed better.  You were eaten by crows and vultures instead of worms.  Your body went flying over the earth instead of being distributed to the tiny creatures living under the earth. This grave house probably came about after they had been forced to live in one place, on reservations.  Mostly, they had Catholic burials.  He wanted to ask Wood Mountain which he thought was better, tree or dirt.  However, Wood Mountain was finishing the cradle board. 

"I suppose we shouldn't tell Zhaanat we were making the grave house and cradle board at the same time," he said to Wood Mountain.  

"You think it could be bad for the baby?"

"I'm not superstitious," said Thomas, although he certainly was.  Just not as bad as LaBatte with his fear of owls and his reading of random omens in everything.  Wood Mountain said that he'd light some sage and bathe the cradle board in the smoke to take the whammy off.

"That'll work," said Thomas. 

From the top of the cradle board, Wood Mountain was using Zhaanat's finest sanding tool - horsetail plant split and glued onto a piece of wood.  It was bringing out the narrow lines in the white cedar.  He had a jar of tea and a jar of vinegar in which he'd left some pennies for a week.  After he'd sanded the wood smooth, he painted the bottom of the cradle board with the tea, which gave it a soft brown color.  He painted the top of the wood with the penny vinegar, which tinged the wood with pale blue including the head guard.  He tied several pieces of sinew to the head guard.  sometimes he found small ocean shells while working in the fields.  Some were whorled;  others were tiny grooved scallops.  He drilled holes in them and hung them from the lengths of sinew. 

"Barnes was saying there used to be an ocean here," he said to Thomas.

"From the endless way-back times."

"Think of it.  Vera's baby will be playing with these little things from the bottom of the sea that was here.  Who could have known?"

"We are connected to the way-back people, here, in so many ways.  Maybe a way-back person touched these shells.  Maybe the little creatures in them disintegrated into the dirt.  Maybe some tiny piece from that creature is inside us now.  We can't know these things."

"Us being connected here so far back gives me a peaceful feeling," said Wood Mountain.

"That's what it's all about," said Thomas.  "And now we're putting another man in the earth.  Maybe a drunk, but he wasn't always a drunk."

"Sometimes when I'm out and around," said Wood Mountain, "I feel like they're with me, those way-back people.  I never talk about it.  But they're all around us.  I could never leave this place."

The United States would be a much healthier and spiritually  richer society today had it not been for the arrogance of white, Christian conquerors who believed they had the right to dispossess the indigenous people of their land and languages and customs.  Or the right to dispossess African slaves of their freedom and their labor.  

But that need for unquestioned power and obedience still lives among many in this nation and in this world.  I have no issue with spirituality and religions that try to guide people to experience their spirituality.  The Bible or Koran and other religious texts as allegory, as fables, that bring people comfort in times of sorrow and decency in times of opportunity, are fine.  But as literal truth to be thoughtlessly obeyed, a religion becomes the tool of authoritarian tyrants and demagogues.  

Trump, among others, gave permission to many to act on these selfish, evil impulses.  We'll get past this, but at great cost.  For those whose lives have been untouched by gun violence or climate change, or racial hatred, your escape is only temporary. Actually we've all been at least indirectly impacted even if we don't realize it.  If we don't overcome the dominance of oil wealth and drastically cut back our use of carbon based products, life will be unbearable for the vast majority of human beings.  And I worry for my grandchildren.

As the passage from The Night Watchman shows, the indigenous peoples of North America had spiritual beliefs and physical skills that kept connected to each other and to the earth for thousands of years.  Knowledge the immigrants from Europe could have benefited from if they hadn't tried to wipe it out.  

Last Post Repaired - Now It's Just the Leash Laws

[ UpdateMarch 3,2022  11:30pm -Whoops. I meant to only put up the part about the leash law enforcement.  Not these other notes that weren't finished.  But I somehow copied them to here as well.  I'm going to edit them out of this one and put them up in the next post.  Sorry. ]

The top of the sign says, "Leash Laws Strictly Enforced."  I looked around,  There wasn't anyone in sight and I couldn't help but think:  "By whom?"  

I'm all for leash laws.  It made me think about how people ask/tell other people what to do.  I'm guessing this was written by a very rule oriented person.  The kind who is a stickler for all the rules to be followed.  They tell us about the rule with a threat.  

Now if there was an enforcement officer in this park most of the time, I could better accept the sign.  But when you put up threatening signs that don't have much in the way of teeth, it erodes people's obedience.  

In this situation, "Please keep your dog on a leash" would probably be more effective.  

So, are my instincts here correct?  Or is this just my opinion and not backed up with evidence?  I do ask myself these questions when I blog.  And so I tried to find someone who had studied this and had more concrete evidence. 

The National Canine Research Center does address the issue, sort of.

"Effective Policies clearly describe the standards of Responsible Pet Ownership practices expected by the community from all dog owners. They also outline behaviors that the community will not tolerate from dog owners.

Which Policies are Effective?

Laws that govern responsible pet ownership, including: licensing, vaccination, and leash / confinement laws are effective.

For example: Calgary, Alberta enacted a Responsible Pet Ownership By-law in 2006 that focused on community-wide support for basic responsible pet ownership behaviors, including humane care (providing proper diet, veterinary care, socialization and training), humane custody (licensing and permanent ID), and humane control (following leash laws and now allowing a pet to become a threat or a nuisance). Through defined goals, support, public education, and incentives, Calgary achieved an unparalleled level of compliance, as well as record lows in total reported dog bites through 2012."

Education and getting voluntary cooperation rather than threats of "strict enforcement" is the focus.

Dornbossigns thinks educational signs are better too. 

"While fines can certainly deter people from leaving dog poop behind, they might not always be the answer. As we’ve seen in Chicago, community involvement may be an even better solution as it calls on people’s sense of duty and responsibility to keep their areas safe and clean. Signs are an excellent way to communicate this message and serve as a gentle reminder to clean up after your pets."

They seem to prize humor over threats.  But this comes from a company that makes and sells signs, so it needs more research.  But if it's a successful company, it would try to sell the most effective signs, and these are in line what the National Canine Research Center recommends.  

 

People Who Want To Be Themselves VS People Who Are Hiding As "Normal"

This was not at all on my agenda for today.  But then I saw  this Guardian article:

". . . Kids like Seph bring into sharp focus what it means to be male, female or something else. There is still widespread belief that minors with gender dysphoria – the clinical term for the distress caused by a mismatch between a person’s sense of their gender and their birth-assigned sex – should not be encouraged to transition. At least eight states have proposed bills that would criminalize doctors who prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to trans adolescents.

On one side of the debate are people who think Seph’s gender dysphoria will fade by adulthood. On the other are the vast majority of mental health professionals who study gender dysphoria insisting that affirming a child in whatever way they express their gender is beneficial to their mental health. . . ."

Here's my proposal on this topic, a different way to think about those opposing transgender rights.  Well, it's not really that different from what lots of people have already said.  

On the one side we have transgender human beings.  People whose physical signs of gender are either ambiguous or are in conflict with their mental sense of themselves.  (And probably a number of other variations of a theme.)  Their desire to dress, walk, adorn themselves, and the activities they want to participate in, with the people they want to be with, all that and more, doesn't match society's norms of how they should do those things.  

On the other side we have 'normal' people who find transgender human beings wanting to be themselves, a horrible, terrible thing.  Why?  The constitution says nothing about how people should dress and act.  It does say people have the right to pursue happiness.  Why interfere with another's pursuit of happiness?

We do have limits on pursuit of happiness - mainly when those pursuits do harm to other people.  But what harm do transgender folks living their lives honestly do to others?

I'd offer two interrelated reasons:

1.  It violates their world view.  People may like to change their cars or their clothing, but they don't want to change their fundamental views of the world.  Changing cars still confirms driving.  Changing clothes still confirms wearing clothes.  But changing genders violates people's fundamental binary belief system - male/female, good/bad, black/white, true/false.  A bright student of mine who was also raised Fundamentalist, told the class that he opposed homosexuality because it was wrong in the eyes of his church.  When challenged by other classmates, he finally said:  "The word of God is infallible.  It's a whole package.  If it's wrong about homosexuals, then the whole package falls apart."  

If transgender people are allowed to be themselves openly and society is more accepting of them, then their own world view is challenged.  Worse, their children get to see challenges to that world view.  

2.  It violates their personal view. 

 Let me tell you about another student.  He looked good, dressed well, spoke well.  But his papers didn't work.  I don't remember exactly what was wrong, just that I marked them up a lot, pointing our lack of supporting details and that what he was saying didn't sound authentic.  Things like that.  

He made an appointment to see me.  He told me he'd had a difficult childhood - again, I don't remember the details.  But he said he carefully watched the 'successful' people and remade himself in their likeness - the way he dressed, the way he walked, the way he talked.  Everything.  Until he passed for 'normal' and 'successful.'  My comments on his paper were, he said, pulling all that apart, exposing the boy he was running away from.  And after talking to his therapist, he was dropping the class.  He wasn't ready to face that or to have someone else (me) see that.  I told him I was sorry, but that I trusted his and his therapist's judgment.  

I think there are a lot of people living like that in the world.  They are disguised as 'successful' people - that is people who look and act like society's norms would have us look and act.  We have so many people hidden behind facades.  

For some of them, maybe many, people who defy society's norms because they are too oppressive are threatening.  They threaten their world view and they challenge their personal view.  That was true of gay people.  It was true of women who wanted to be more than a housewife.  Of African-Americans who wanted to be treated the same way white people are treated.  

Some closeted gays have been outed for being more anti-guy than the norm.  People have said they did this to hide their own internal struggles with their sexuality.  

But people can be hiding from lots of sources poor self-images - abusive childhoods where they were never good enough for their parents.  Or they grew up in poverty whose tendrils still pull down their self image. Or they weren't thin enough, tall enough, pretty enough, smart enough, articulate enough, or 'enough' in any of the countless ways our society tells us we have to be.  

"According to the latest annual statistics from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, nearly $16.7 billion was spent on cosmetic procedures in the U.S. in 2020. (From Baylor College of Medicine)"

A July 2019 Business Insider article reports 

"The beauty industry is growing faster than ever before. Today it's valued at an estimated $532 billion and counting," 

Another 2019 Business Insider article  says:

"The U.S. weight loss market is now worth a record $72 billion, but the number of dieters has fallen, due to the growth of the size acceptance and body positivity movement."

We could add the money spent at gyms and in therapy and any other kinds of businesses that make money off of people's poor self-image, businesses aimed at making people 'normal.'  

That's not to say there aren't legitimate reasons any of these activities.  But a certain percentage of people who pursue these things would just be better off in a society more tolerant of differences.

And for those who can't make themselves look successful, there's alcohol and drugs to dull or even to escape reality for a while.  

REMI reports that people in the US spent $253.8 Billion on alcohol in 2018. But it's important to remember that about one-third of adults don't drink at all, and many drink relatively little..  Others very moderately.  I'm having trouble finding numbers that divide total expenditures on alcohol among different types of drinkers.  But there is:

"In 2019, 25.8 percent of people ages 18 and older (29.7 percent of men in this age group and 22.2 percent of women in this age group4) reported that they engaged in binge drinking in the past month,4 and 6.3 percent (8.3 percent of men in this age group and 4.5 percent of women in this age group5) reported that they engaged in heavy alcohol use in the past month.5"

And then there's the amount paid for illegal drugs - about $146 billion in 2016.

Basically, there are lots of signs that Americans are not happy.  I would suggest that many, if not most, are living lives, in Thoreau's words, of quiet desperation*.  Seeking to survive not just the physical world, but the social and political world.  

I'd suggest that those most desperate to 'fit' are those who are most inclined to attack those who are true to themselves.  Honest, open people threaten them.  They also make them conscious of the fake lives they are living.  I can't prove this, but I throw it out as something to consider and study.  

We should all be striving for a society where all people have not only 'the right' to pursue happiness, but the actual opportunity to do so.  

And, of course, there are the scavengers of the GOP who are always looking for fears to exploit in the next election.  

After I did the first draft, we went to the Bainbridge Art Museum and I saw these two words juxtaposed in one of the exhibits and it seemed meant for this post.  

*Iddo Landau takes exception to the broadness of Thoreau's comment, but does acknowledge, too, a number of points I make in this post.

Springing On Bainbridge

Saw my first crocus yesterday.  

Spending lots of gramp time with my newly turned 9 year old.  She's such a mix of mature and thoughtful and silly and mischievous.  Listening to her mom and grandpa talking about their students, she explains that sometimes kids in her class don't answer the teacher's question because they don't clearly understand the question - even though they know the answer.  I so wish people would realize kids know so much more than adults think they do and would talk to them with respect and listen.  They will surprise you.  After all, when adults ignore their ideas, they discuss them (and the adults) with their friends.  Just like adults do.  

She also hid my wallet in a drawer yesterday and it took forever to find it when I had to pay the plumber today.  

First I had them both with the words on top.  But that didn't seem right.  Then I flipped the bottom on so you can better see this was one piece of sidewalk art in Bainbridge Island's 1% for the arts program. Words are by Margi Berger.  Artist is Carolyn Law with Benson Shaw.  

The library had a display of books for Black History Month.  

Our disgraced former president has encouraged all those damaged souls with who must put others down to feel good about themselves - whether highly educated or not - to voice their hatreds and condemn those who are fighting for an opportunity to live their lives without fear of being harassed because of the color of their skin.  That so many people are so angry and so willing to do his bidding is a sign of how sick our system is.  The accumulation of money covers so many sins - from T himself to the oil companies that continue to fight against meaningful action to slow down climate change, to the Sacklers, and so many others.  We see people rot in prison because they smoked a joint, but so may of those with money buy get out of jail free passes with fancy lawyers.  

These are people who don't want truth about the US to be read by their children.  Or yours.  

Hatred is a burden not only for the oppressed, but also the oppressor.  It's a disease of the heart, in the sense of dis-ease.  How many of T's rabid supporters were abused - physically and/or psychically as children?  Were abandoned physically or mentally by a parent?  That leaves big scars and anger that searches for a target.  Yet others so badly treated find love somewhere else and heal.  

Read some good books.

And look at the moon and sky - an experience that links you to humans (and non humans) going back to before history.  

 

Making Sense of Today's Redistricting Board Trial Testimony [UPDATED Formatting]

 [UPDATE Sat. Jan 29, 2022 - The numbering got messed up horribly in the original posting and I'm fixing that now.  Blogger is tricky with outlines and if you break them accidentally anywhere it screws them all up.  Peter should be #3 overall, not #5 of the new narratives. So I've also bolded the headings of each discrete point.]

I jotted down notes today about things I thought I should write about.  I do have 14 1/2 pages of single spaced typed notes, but you really don't want that, I'm sure.  So let me talk about what struck me as meaningful  from today's testimony.  

Clockwige: Judge Matthews, Peter Torkelson,
Tanner Amdur-Clark, Matt Singer

Take aways

1. While I, like others, was worried about political gerrymandering in Eagle River, I  missed the coordinated efforts to put all the Doyon and Ahtna villages into one district.  Well, I didn't totally miss it.  Doyon reps were there at most meetings, including attorney Tanner Amdur-Clark who is now the attorney for the intervenors.  
1. the text messages revealed yesterday and today - a few, I expect we'll be seeing more - reveal communications between Amdur-Clark and Nicole Borromeo over the efforts to get all Doyon and Ahtna villages together.  And another text shows coordination between Borromeo and Marna Sanford, a member of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly, trying to get the Assembly to pass a resolution saying that because they were overpopulated (their five districts were each considerably above the 18,335 ideal district size) to get Chair John Binkley to back off on his strong attachment to the idea that Fairbanks should just absorb the the excess 4000 people over 5 districts to keep Fairbanks intact.  This also relates to the Valdez case, because by putting those 4000 people into D36, it meant that Valdez' 4000 people couldn't be in D36 where they wanted to be.  
2. Are thsee bad things?  Human beings follow two different sets of rules - human, rules of loyalty to family and community and people versus the rule of law - those rules that government sets up for us.  These often come into conflict with each other.  That's why, for example, spouses are not compelled to testify against each other in courts of law and why we have nepotism rules. When I lived in rural Thailand, the loyalty rules took precedence over the legal rules. What I realized in Thailand was that the people in my town depended on each other for many things, including helping each other plant and harvest rice.  Survival over the centuries had depended on community cooperation.  When I got to Alaska I slowly began to realize there were a lot of similarities to that sort of communal culture among Alaska Native peoples.   
3. Doyon was working openly and explaining its objectives in public meetings.  They weren't trying to get more politicians elected from any particular party.  They seem to have been trying to get the electoral districts to match how the people of Ahtna and Doyon see themselves.  
4. There were a lot of assumptions on my part about how the GOP appointed Board members seemed to be getting advice from people outside the public participation process.  Advice that wasn't reflected in the public testimony.  Particularly on how to draw lines in Anchorage and then with the Senate pairings and the allocation of staggered terms.  If there are similar text messages or emails from the Board members, we haven't seen them yet.  And while I missed this behind the scenes communications by Borromeo, it fits in with the testimony of Budd Simpson and others today who said that there was a lot of feedback from the public that wasn't on the record because it came in discussion between two Board members, say while traveling, or in conversations about the maps with the public on the tour around the state with the maps
5. Again, what Doyon was doing was what every other community and local governmental unit was doing - lobbying for what they thought was best for their people.  That's different from lobbying to impact which party dominates in the legislature.  
2. The new narratives.  At the end of the debates over the House districts, there was a lot of concern that Bethany Marcum had changed the Anchorage House districts at the last minute and created a district that put an East Anchorage neighborhood with Eagle River.  There was a great deal of surprise in the end when Budd Simpson voted in favor of the previous map that didn't have that new Muldoon-ER district,  while Marcum and Binkley no.  
1. What had happened? Why had Simpson voted against his team on the Board?  He said later that he'd been convinced by the overwhelming testimony against putting ER and Muldoon together that way.   Though he no longer felt that way when Marcum did the same thing with the Senate pairings.   
2. Today we got a new narrative about Marcum's no vote on the House plan (that passed 3-2)  Marcum’s new explanation for voting against the successful House map was that her vote was a signal to the people of the state that she knew there were issues and not everyone was happy.  She knew it was going to pass anyway, so didn't matter.   
3. Maybe that's true.  Maybe Budd Simpson had said he was going to vote yes on the map.  Or maybe Simpson surprised Binkley and Marcum the way he surprised everyone else.  Or maybe they agreed that he would vote no on the House districts, but then vote yes on a Muldoon-East Anchorage Senate pairings, which he did.  Even though the testimony from Eagle River and from East Anchorage was still overwhelmingly against the pairing.  
4. More likely in my mind, this is the new narrative to explain that first vote. Let's see what comes out in the next few days. 
3. Peter Torkelson and the Deviation Number Mistake - Torkelson has been the Board's Executive Director since December 2020, about the same time I started monitoring the Board.  From my very first contact with Torkelson  he's been very open, receptive to my suggestions for making the website easier for the public, and he's given me information and documents I've asked for.  He was always ready to help out.  He and his staff created a very helpful website and populated it with all sorts of information for the public.  Including getting the videos and audios of Board meetings up within days at most.  He's also gotten all the public testimony up very quickly.  And even though I wrote the other day, reflecting on the third party mapping teams and Stephen Colligan's testimony - and before the outside expert Kimball Brace testified - that next time the Board really needs people with more experience and expertise with GIS and mapping software, I think that Torkelson has a great sense for the tech side and did reasonably well as did the Board.  But I'd echo Chair John Binkley today when he was asked how well he thought the Board's final map was.  He said it was as good as any of the proposed maps. Maybe.  But it wasn't the best possible map that they might have achieved with a team of really skilled technicians.  
1. That said, Torkelson was grilled today about not having a degree in computer science or training in GIS before this job.  Steve Jobs and Bill Gates never finished their degrees either.  Not comparing Torkelson to them.  Just saying that people with natural aptitude and drive can achieve a lot.  And Torkelson had a rarer skill - the ability to work well with people and keep his cool under pressure.  He also has a strong public service ethic.  He wanted to make the best maps possible, knowing that ultimately he took direction from the Board. I didn't have as much contact with the Deputy Director TJ Presley, but I only had positive experiences when I did.  And Eric Sandberg, who I knew when he worked with the 2010 Board, is also a dedicated and talented tech.  
2. I also have to note that there was mention the other day, from Outside expert for Valdez, Kimball Brace, that there was a problem with the numbers on the deviation table* that was part of the Final Proclamation Plan.  He explained something about when they changed the numbers of the districts at the end, a bunch of the districts - Calista's attorney Schecter said 28 - had wrong numbers.  Today Schecter followed up on that.  He was very concerned that these numbers were up on the website and were incorrect.  This was at a time when attorneys were gathering data for their lawsuits.  He was particularly concerned that when Torkelson discovered and corrected the numbers that the site didn't say anything about the numbers being corrected.  It would have been hard for someone working with the numbers to realize that they had been changed without such notice.
3. I know how hard Torkelson worked and how dedicated he was to accuracy.  He explained to me at one point how he and (I think) Eric Sandberg had duplicated the Census data separately to make sure they had downloaded it correctly and they really had the true numbers.  (They didn't get a hard copy, they had to download from the internet and then later got the hard copy, which they then checked to be sure the original had downloaded correctly.)  So I'm sure part of Torkelson was mortified at the problem with the deviation table.  The Board's attorney Singer in redirect tried to repair some of the damage.
1. The numbers were correct in the original list on November 5 when there was a lot of clamor for them from local governments and the media.  It was only four days later, when that had died down, that the new district numbers were applied to the districts and the new deviation table made, that something happened to some of the numbers for many of the districts.
2. The numbers for the districts that Schecter's client - Calista - is interested in, were not affected.
4. It's not clear to me how the error was discovered.  Brace (Valdez' hired expert) seem to imply that he had discovered the problem when he testified the other day.  But today it sounded like Torkelson told Valdez attorney Brena in the deposition.  In which case it would seem Torkelson found the error and fixed it, but didn't widely announce it, but he did say he told the Board's attorney and assumed he would notify people if that was necessary.
1. (I would say that on this blog when I change substantive comments, I try to always make that clear.)
4. The East Anchorage plaintiffs have a race based argument that they want to add to the record that is opposed by Board’s counsel, presumably about the affect of the ER pairings.  This is just an alert.  There have been some cryptic comments about this yesterday and today.  The last court documents added to the Most Requested Cases page on their website are dated 1/20/22, so the public (including me) hasn't had access to them, so I don't know what East Anchorage attorney has asked of the judge.  I just know that the Board's attorney is strongly opposed to whatever it is.  
5. ^Bahnke pretty much tells us that SEI (Socio-Economic Integration) is in the eye of the beholder - I think I'll leave this for a post on the weekend.  But it is significant because it's one of the key criteria for whether a district is constitutional and there's been a lot of discussion based on whether key disputed districts meet that requirement.  
6. A lot of communication between the Board and the public was not on the record - Bahnke said that, Simpson said that, Torkelson said that, and we had the text message put on the record yesterday from Amdur-Clark to Borromeo and other emails.  Mostly they said there was just a lot of communication through conversations with the public and between Board members while traveling that ever got recorded.  Partly that's the tension between gathering enough information and documenting it.  For me the test is whether there were communications that were not documented or otherwise publicly acknowledged, that changed the outcome of the maps.  
7. Can you drive to Cordova from to Valdez?  This was a question that was asked of a number of witnesses today (and I think yesterday).  Everyone said no.  But I would point out that the Marine Highway goes from Cordova to Valdez and, yes, you can take your car or truck on the ferry and 'drive' to Valdez and the Richardson Highway. That's why it's called the Marine Highway.  
8. ^4000 pop exchange between Fairbanks and Valdez into 36 - This one I'll save until the weekend too. It's important to understand these cases.
9. ^Reporting and the relationships you develop with your subjects - Another point I want to save for later, but it particularly relates to someone like me reporting on a governmental body over a long period of time - long enough to develop at least a professional relationship and getting to know people as more than just a role on a Board.  It's particularly apt today because of  my comments about Peter Torkelson.  This one can probably wait until after the trial is over.
10. ^Importance of hearing the wishes of Alaska Natives and understanding the cultures relationships, and differences - another biggie that needs to wait

*The deviation table is the list of each district and how much each deviated from the ideal district size of 18335 shown in actual numbers and in percentages.  This would be used to determine if a district was over or under populated and by how much.

^I've marked those topics I'm postponing discussion on with the carat so I can find them easier and remember to expand on them.