POP. 1208 - Small Town Texas Around 1917 As Described In 1964

 

I'd have never read this book if it hadn't been one of the book club choices.  Chosen by a member who is also an author.  As I read the book, I did think about why an author would pick this book. And at the book club meeting, he said he read it because it was on a list of books given to him by another author.  The 25 books that most influenced him as a writer.  And he also acknowledged some hesitation about recommending it to our group.  It was a test, of sorts, of us.  

It begins like this:

"Well, sir, I should have been sitting pretty, just about as pretty as a man could sit.  Here I was, the high sheriff of Potts County, and I was drawing almost two thousand dollars a year - not to mention what I could pick up on the side.  On top of that, I had free living quarters on the second floor of the courthouse, just as nice a place as a man could ask for, and it even had a bathroom so that I didn't have to bathe in a washtub or tramp outside to a privy, like most folks in town did. I guess you could say that Kingdom Come was really here as far as I was concerned.  I had it made, and it looked like I could go on having it made --being high sheriff of Potts County --as long as I minded my own business and didn't arrest no one unless I just couldn't get out of it and they didn't amount to nothin'.

And yet I was worried. I had so many troubles that I was worried plumb sick."

That really is a good way to start this book.  It foretells lots of the troubles without giving nothin' away.  Whoops.  It's catching.   

So what's wrong with this book?  Well, it's narrated by the main character, a very small town Sheriff, who is more than flawed.  It's all from his point of view and it's all in his colorful language.  The most difficult parts for me were the vivid descriptions of the town's black population.  

Why did that bother me?  Yes, of course, the N-word liberally spit out in some parts of the book.  And the disgustingly racist attitudes and situations portrayed.  But it was published in 1964 (and so written before the Civil Rights Act passed) and those were different times.  White folks still were the only editors of public speech back then.  And it describes a time almost 50 years earlier.  We shouldn't censor history because we don't like the words and situations that existed then.  We should learn from them and not in cleaned up versions.  And, if I recall correctly, Leonard Pitts' The Last Thing You Surrender - a 2019 novel by a black author - uses the N-word - and includes a very troubling lynching.  

But I'm not using that word in this post.  Mostly because I'm thinking of one particular friend who would probably be disturbed -rather than offended - seeing me spell it out.  

And I think that's what disturbed me about reading this book for the book club.  I didn't ask the man who recommended the book this question:  "If we had an African-American in our group, would you have recommended the book?"  The fact that the book club is all white men over 50 means that we can read a book like this without any of us personally feeling demeaned by the language and situations.  None of our families were the subject of this particular kind of inhumanity.  And the fact that the things done in the book to blacks was done by whites, adds to the awkwardness.  Women weren't treated well either.  Actually, no one was treated well in this story

Yet, I find that I can pretty much tell you the whole story, though not in quite the same colorful language as the high sheriff of Potts County.  

And the subject matter of this book seems to come from personal experience.  From Wikipedia:

"Thompson's father was sheriff of Caddo County, Oklahoma. He ran for the state legislature in 1906, but was defeated. Soon after he left the sheriff's office under a cloud due to rumors of embezzlement. The Thompson family moved to Texas."

Also from Wikipedia:

 Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because "The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the foregoing: He let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."^[2]

There's no doubt that Thompson was using the sheriff to shine light on everything that was wrong about small town life in Oklahoma and Texas.  

Talking about his (the sheriff's) father:

"But that's the way my daddy was -- like those people.  They buy some book by a fella that don't know a god-dang thing more than they do (or he wouldn't be having to write books).  And that's supposed to set 'em straight about everything.  Or they buy themselves a bottle of pills.  Or they say the whole trouble is with other folks, and the only thing to do is get rid of 'em.  Or they claim we got to war with another country.  Or . . .  or God knows what all."

Seems those folks are still with us today.  Lots of them.  These are the folks who went to lynchings.  These are the folks who stormed the Capitol on January 6.  And the folks who rather take advice from Tucker Carlson that Dr. Fauci.  

I guess there was a lot in this book.  I think I knew it when I was reading it.  I just didn't like any of the people in the book.  Yes, there was probably something decent in them all, but the Sheriff was focused on the other parts.  If you asked me if would recommend the book, I'd answer using the sheriff's favorite phrase: "I wouldn't say that I would, but then I wouldn't say that I wouldn't."

Alaska Redistricting Board Meeting: Fight Over 800 People, Airing Of Board Grievances, And Other Board Actions

[First let me note that the Board voted to approve their proposed maps today and tomorrow's (Friday Sept 10) meeting was cancelled]

This post is going to look at some of the dynamics of the Board displayed.  I can't cover everything in this post.  These are some things I thought important today.  There's lots more and since the Board isn't meeting again until next Friday I can  probably get the most important things up during the week.

Playing Ping Pong With 800 Voters

Redistricting is a very partisan activity.  The ability to redo the maps to favor one party or another underlies this activity.  Three of the Board members were appointed by Republican politicians, one by a Democratic politician, and one by the Supreme Court Chief Justice.  

Up until today the fight over what the Alaska legislature is going to look like was below the surface.  The previous board that did the 2010 Redistricting was appointed by four Republicans and the Alaska Supreme Court Chief Justice.  There was almost no bickering in public meetings.  (There was some at the end but among Republicans and it was minor.)  The Supreme Court Chief Justice's appointee essentially looked after Native issues and as long as they were taken care of, she was fine with everything else.  And since that Board needed to get preclearance from the Department of Justice to assure Alaska Native power was not being diminished, the Board took care of that first.  Any partisan actions decisions could be made without conflict - such as putting half of Bettye Davis' district into Eagle River, which ended up costing both a minority Senate seat and a Democratic Senate seat.  

This time we have a bit more division and the Democratic appointed member is a lot more protective.  In terms of backgrounds, the seemingly most partisan member, really I think ideological is a better descriptor, but it translates to partisan on the Board, would appear to be Bethany Marcum who is the Executive Director of the Alaska Policy Forum whose values listed on their website are far right, libertarian ones, and the organizations goals are to promote the passing of laws that embrace those values.  It would make sense that her role on the Board would be to  help get that done by skewing the seats toward Republicans.  

Nicole Borromeo is  the Executive Vice-President & General Counsel of the Alaska Federation of Natives.  This organization's values and mission are to support the interests of Alaska Natives.  It doesn't the same explicit partisan goals as the Alaska Policy Forum, but often they align with more Democratic values and support Democratic candidates.  But they were also instrumental in getting Sen. Lisa Murkowski reelected in 2010.  They've maintained good relations with all the Alaskan Congressional delegation who have been, for the most part Republicans.  

800 People

Today there was what I'd call a long ping pong match where the ball went back and forth between Borromeo and Marcum.  It actually began yesterday when Marcum argued strongly for valuing compactness over deviation when mapping districts.  (Compactness being about keeping the districts as compact as possible and giving them as smooth and straight boundaries as possible. Marcum seemed to be playing whack-a-mole with any protrusions from straight lines.  I wrote about compactness with illustrations in yesterday's post.)  Borromeo would hit the ball back over the net swatting it hard with an anti-deviation paddle. (Deviation referring to how much - in people and in percent - a district deviates from the ideal district size which is 18,335.  That number is the result of dividing the 2020 official Census population of Alaska by 40, which is the number of seats in the state house.)  Borromeo was making the point that the Matsu districts as a whole were under populated - they had fewer than the 18,335 people.  In the end the Board deviated from a guideline they had adopted, to keep all the boroughs whole if possible.  Some are too small to be stand alone districts, but as much as possible they didn't want to divide boroughs.  But then they decided to move 800 people from south Knik (in the Anchorage borough) into Matsu borough.  

Today, the ping pong game was about those 800 people.  Borromeo argued strenuously against them being pulled from Anchorage and that this violated the goal of keeping boroughs whole.  Marcum argued strongly to move them into Matsu.  

There was far more time and passion devoted to this debate than, on the surface, it seemed to deserve.  There was clearly something more going on.  I talked to people who attended the meeting - there are people working on alternative maps there paying close attention.  One theory that seems possible is this:  

By moving 800 people out of north Anchorage, you cause a need for more people in those districts.  You end up with a ripple effect and you have to move people up the district north until you get to the more urban areas of Anchorage.  Then you can pull out 800 out of the east Anchorage Muldoon area that Senator Bill Weilochoski represents, either putting him in a district with a lot more conservative voters, or pairing his district with an Eagle River district.  The last Board did this with Senator Bettye Davis last time - moving one of her house districts to Eagle River and got her voted out of the Senate.  My quick look at the maps tonight made it hard to tell exactly what they'd done with Weilochoski's district.  Partly it's hard because there's a green district that seems to be partly in the Anchorage map and partly in the Eagle River map.  I can't verify this theory, but I'm putting out there because so far it's the best explanation I can find for the battle over the 800 people.  And it echoes what happened in the last round.  But also look at the maps of Anchorage to see what happened there.  Marcum was arguing that people had been telling her that they wanted Anchorage to be more horizontal than vertical.  That seems to have happened.  And I'm guessing the result is to have Democratic legislator in the north and midtown being put in districts where incumbents would be running against each other.  There may be the same affect in the south of Anchorage where there are Republican incumbents.  

Early on the Board chose not to have political party or incumbent information in the data they had to make maps.  The point was to avoid doing just such things.  I was reminded of this when, at the end of the meeting today, Board  executive director  Peter Torkelson, speaking to third parties submitting alternative plans, reminded them not to have any partisan information in their maps.   But I also know that both the Democratic and Republican advisors to Board members have that information.  In the previous Redistricting Randy Ruedrich who coordinated a third party called AFFER (Alaskans for Fair and Equitable Redistricting) had most of this data in his head and wasn't shy about sharing it with Board members during breaks and after meetings.  On the other side Tom Begich, now state Senator Begich, also had that information and he worked with various groups making alternative plans.  I'd note that Sen. Begich called in to give  public testimony and shared maps with the Board today.  

Clearing the Air in Public

Another critical event happened today just before lunch.  Board member Borromeo asked the chair, John Binkley,  to take time to raise an issue that she'd asked him to let her discuss yesterday, I think, in Executive Session.  But since he said he didn't think it met the requirements for Executive Session that they should do it in public session.  So she wanted to do it them.  And he agreed.  Basically it was a list of complaints about how the Chair was running the meetings.  Some people got kept to a short 3 minute time limit for public testimony and others, like Sen Begich that morning, were given a lot more time to present his maps.  It's best, I think for me to just post my notes here.  As always, I was typing as fast as I could, but that's not fast enough to get it verbatim or even to capture it all.  But you can get a sense of this unusual public airing of grievances by a public body.  I'd note that I was impressed by a) the respectful way it was presented  b) the respectful way the Chair acknowledged that he was guilty of some of the charges and would work hard to correct them and c) that they did this in full public view so that the world could evaluate.  There was nothing hidden under the rug. (Well probably there are lots of other things we don't know.)  

r-l  Chair Binkley, Member Borromeo,
Exec Director Torkelson at 11:05am during break

So here are my notes from today.  The video and transcript might be up soon.  This happened just before the lunch break.

"Nicole:  Thank the Board for hard work.  We talked yesterday about a discussion that I thought should be on Executive Session.  You said to do it on the record.  

When we first met, both our names were put out for chair.  But different perspective.  I think Board Chair presides over the sessions, but all members are equal.  Don’t mean to be critical.  Don Young says bring solutions.  I’m bringing solutions.  When it comes to public testimony there were allowances.  When Bethany wanted Eric to talk about Valdez and when I wanted something, there was no time to do it.  When Sen. Begich testifies, there was no time limit, but when AFFR wanted to testify, they were limited to 3 minutes.

In executive session.  Yesterday we ate up a lot of time on procedural issues which might not be private.  I wanted to discuss.. ..  It was yesterday that Bethany and I worked on separate things and brought back to board.  I’d like to see more consistency.  I respect the role of the chair and not asking for changes.

Concerned about email that perhaps the Board should set broad policy and let the staff work on it - like where should we put Valdez.  As expert as they are - and I think they are - they aren’t Board members.  The clicking [on the mapping software] draws lines that we have to defend as board members.  People say, don't waste of time.  If that’s the case, we don’t need to work as a Board.  Working together we have expertise about where the lines would be drawn.

John:  Let me apologize if inconsistent.  I strive to be consensual  and sorry when I wasn’t.  My job is to chair, but we are all equl.  I serve at your pleasure.  Appreciate being able to serve but if Board wants to make change, that’s fine.  Not sure of all the details of your concern.  Agree with you 100% we are all equal???   And on e-mail you mentioned.  Happy to talk to you one on one to see how I can improve.  Important that we all have ownership of this.  But have to use the public's time well as well as ours.  Appreciate the constructive nature of your comments.

Nicole:  It's culturally jarring to have this conversation.  Don’t want to change the chair.  When I was in the Board's office and saw staff talking to staff and you, that it should have been a meeting.  My request going forward, whenever Matt [the Board's attorney] is going to talk to the Staff. . .  Melanie today said she wants all the emails from the districts.  Appearance that there are small group discussions going on should be avoided.

John:  I agree with all you say.  At the meeting we’d been doing things and slipped in.  I do think as uncomfortable as this is, I think it’s important not to hide behind executive session.  Only should have ES when legally required.

Nicole:  I agree.  Should be public.  This doesn’t end Friday.  We’ll get there.  As chair of my corporation board, I know the challenges.  I think unilateral actions taken.  Willing to speak with you.  Firm believer we can have open discussion and we all depart as friends.

Melanie:  couple of things, since I’m not there.[She had called in]  Reiterate yesterday, that Board and staff conversations that are deliberative be on the record.  No discussions that are about mapping at lunch breaks.  Yesterday I came back and there were conversations I wasn’t privy to.  When I was questioning Socio-economic issues, Board member said culture was not an issue to review.  Analysis pointed to website.  Want board to look at that.  We have Voting Rights Act to consider.  There are cultural issues, including predominantly Native communities.  Want public to be aware and it’s on the website.  And no side conversations.

John:  Thank you Melanie.  We talked about that this morning.  If more than two members present we cannot talk about anything related to this.  And appreciate your help with this.  Thanks for pointing that out now.  Peter is scrolling through some of these definitions  All these are available on the website.  

Peter:  We put a short blurb on all these terms with links to source material.  

John:  He put a lot of work into the website [I think he's referring to this page] and I think it’s phenomenal and I hope public finds it informative and easy to navigate.  OK, break.  Say 1pm?  OK"

This is getting kind of long and there are other issues to raise.  As I said above, there are no more meetings until Friday September 17, so I have some time to catch up in the next week.  

Went To My First Indoor Meeting - At The Redistricting Board

I'm slowly moving out into a more normal life.  Wednesday I met with the Alaska Redistricting Board Executive  Director, Peter Torkelson, and the Deputy Director, TJ Presley. 

 Here's some of what we talked about.

1.  This is a waiting period.  The total number of Alaskans as of the 2020 census has come in.  While the actual number is constantly changing, this is the number that will be used:   733,391.  That means each district needs to be as close to 18,335 people as possible.

18,335 comes from dividing 733,391 by 40, the number of Alaska House seats. There are 20 Senate seats, each made up of two House seats. So Senate districts will be just about 36,670.  

But the detailed numbers for each census tract are NOT yet available.  Last time (2011) they came March 15.  But because of the pandemic and other counting issues, it's taking longer this time.  So the staff has some time as they await the data which is due maybe mid-August to beginning of September.   

2.  What they're doing while waiting for the Census numbers to come in?   jjj

The two have been giving presentations to city councils around the state recently.  Generally it's Peter or TJ. If a Board member is in the area they might drop by.  They've been to Ketchikan, Kodiak, Barrow, Bethel, Soldotna and Valdez, and to Homer and Seward by zoom.  A couple of places said they weren't interested in a presentation.  Below is a copy of the slides they've been using.  Remember that when they give the presentation they can talk and explain what this all means.  But much of it is probably self explanatory.  If you have question,  contact the redistricting board staff.

Redistricting Introduction 6-16-21 by Steve on Scribd

An Anchorage presentation is set for June 25 - whoops, guess I missed it.  But I think the Botanical Garden was a better choice anyway today.  The Juneau presentation is set for August 9.  

They've also been keeping up on redistricting news and technology and trying to make sure this round of redistricting goes as smoothly as possible.  

3.  Mapping Software Training - Monday - Wednesday June 28, 29, 30 at the LIO (Legislative Information Office).  The public is invited to attend and watch.  There won't be opportunities to use the software.  There's nothing more boring than watching other people get software instruction when you don't have access to a computer with that software.  However, the board is looking for other software that the public can use to make their own maps.  They believe that if people can work with the actual data to make their own maps, they will have a better idea of the difficulties of trying to get 40 districts with 18,335 people that meet the other constitutional requirements of compactness, contiguity, and socio-economic integrity. (These are terms from the Alaska State Constitution.) There's more detail on this in a post from the previous redistricting board here.  That post looks at Federal and State requirements.  Scroll down for the State requirements.  

Where:

  -  Anchorage Legislative Information Office

  -  1500 W Benson Blvd, Anchorage, AK 99503

  -  Denali Conference Room, 1st floor

When:

  -  Monday, June 28 from 10am - Noon and 1:30 - 3:30pm (approximate)

  -  Tuesday, June 29 from 9:30am - Noon and 1:30 - 3:30pm (approximate)

  -  Wednesday, June 30 from 9:30am - Noon and 1:30 - 3:30pm (approximate)

There's more information on my Redistricting Board tab on top, or click here.  It includes phone numbers to call in and I think you can watch it remotely - that's why it's in the LIO.

4. Testing the fairness of the maps the Board makes.

We also talked about the Voting Rights Act consultant the Board chose.  It seems that Michigan will use him too and the Republicans there are steamed.  But given Michigan Republicans - remember they did a practice takeover of their capitol well before January 6 - that's probably a good sign.  I mentioned that the VRA consultant is less important now that Alaska isn't required to get preclearance before deciding on their maps.  But Peter and TJ disagreed, echoing one of the consultant candidates (they said), that Section 2 of the VRA still applies and requires that minority districts not be diminished.  

We also talked about the impact of Ranked Choice Voting - since one of the VRA applicants mentioned they had someone who could analyze that.  But there seems to be conflicting opinion on how that will affect minority voting.  

They also mentioned that the Board isn't going to have political parties in the data so that they can't be accused of using it to manipulate the districts, though we all agreed that Alaska is small enough that lots of people have a sense of neighborhoods that are particularly partisan.  

Also, they've agreed, as I understood it, not to have a policy of protecting incumbents.  

5.  Location of Alaska Redistricting Board Office

 The Board's Office is in the University Mall, Room 141.  This is the far south hallway.  The DMV is on the east end.  Didn't know there was a DMV there?  Neither did I.  It's where the UAA offices used to be.  Which were where the University theaters used to be.  

The office space is sort of open concept.  The previous Board  had offices in the Sunshine Mall.  I think they were smaller, but better configured.  Maybe that even had some walls moved around.  I don't know.  

Here's looking down the hall to the DMV.  You get in through the South entrance to the mall.  

Netflix Recs: Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz And Two Short Films

 Tip 1:  Prosecuting Evil:  The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz   

I'm doing this one first because it leaves Netflix on May 31 - so you need to watch it now if you want to see it there.  As portrayed in the film, Ben Ferencz is a truly remarkable person. (The link goes to his website which has a wealth of information.)   Born in Romania in 1920, he immigrated to the US before he was one.  A teacher alerted his mother that he was gifted - "We didn't know what gifted meant.  No one had ever given us gifts." - she encouraged him to go to college.  From City College of New York to Harvard law school where he was a research assistant for a professor who had written one of the only books on war crimes.  He was with the US army when they liberated some concentration camps and when he returned the US was called to DC - he assumes the professor had recommended him - to work on prosecuting Nazi war criminals.  

He ended up as the lead prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials (at 27!) and went on from there to be a pioneer in human rights law including a long battle to establish the International Criminal Court to prosecute leaders who commit human rights violations.  

While there is, necessarily, some disturbing Holocaust footage, I got inspiration from a man who took on impossible tasks and saw them through.  Who never gave up on his quest to make the world a better, more peaceful place.  A true role model.  

He was still alive in 2018 when the film was made and apparently - looking at his website - is still alive today.  In the film he was still working hard on peace issues at 98.  

It leaves Netflix May 31 - That's Monday.  But it's also available through Prime (though I don't like to encourage people to support Amazon.)

A key relevant issue for me in this film was his arguments that Nazi war criminals should NOT be just forgotten and that they should be prosecuted, not as retribution, but as a warning to future leaders, to let them know these things will not go unpunished.  

That is a key reason why the January 6 investigation needs to be undertaken.  To not investigate and prosecute at the highest levels, is to encourage another insurrection.  Republican legislators in a number of states are already setting up ways to overrule election officials and make themselves in charge of deciding who has won the election.  Germans did not take the Nazi threat seriously until it was too late.  We are in early 1930s Germany territory right now in the United States.  

I'd like my junior senator - Dan Sullivan - to see this movie.  He doesn't seem to understand the values I hold.  The cultural background and values that Ferencz represents - highly valuing peace and justice and fighting injustice (no I don't think that that is redundant) - mirror the cultural background and values I grew up with.  Valuing peace and fighting AGAINST war, is not un-American and it's very much part of being a human being.  I just wish I was one percent as effective as he is.  I'll work on it.  

That's why this is such an important film.

Tip 2:  If you search "short films" Netflix will give you a page of short films, maybe 5 minutes to an hour.  (Some are longer because they are collections of short films.)  This is a great option if you don't have time for a long movie or don't want to get hooked into a series at the moment.

The first one we picked was Two Distant Strangers.  It said "Academy Award Winner" so we figured it was worth watching.  It's part of their "Black Lives Matter Collection."  Basically it's a Ground Hog day type movie where the black protagonist keeps running into the same cop who mistreats him in different ways and his attempts to avoid and/or improve the interaction.  

The second one was The Trader, because it was short and was a Georgian movie.  Not Georgia - the state of Staci Abrams, but Georgia in Central Asia.  How many films have you seen from Georgia?  Probably none.  

The film follows a man with a truck who goes from village to village selling trinkets and cheap household goods and used clothing.  He'll take money, but mostly he's trading for potatoes which he takes to Tblisi and sells to traders in the market.

What always strikes me about films from places that are foreign to me (though by now it shouldn't anymore) is how much people are alike.  The architecture, the landscape, the dress, the language may be different, but humans are really all the same.  Particularly poignant here were a couple of scenes with little kids.  The Trader uses bubbles to attract kids and then tells them to bring their parents to buy them things.  

The actions and smiles of  little kids chasing the soap bubbles was no different all all from little kids in well off households in the US.  Another, older kids was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up and his facial expressions and body language was no different from an embarrassed 12 year old anywhere in the world.  

Overall, I recommend escaping from the Netflix recommendations and searching by countries to find a lot of interesting films that help us see how much the human condition is the same everywhere.  Get over your aversion to subtitles.  Just do it.  There are excellent films and series  from India, Korea, Turkey, Scandinavia, the Spanish speaking world.  

An Obsession With Motorcycle Gangs

The LA Times has an article today on Bo Bushnell, who became obsessed with collecting the memorabilia of outlaw motorcycle gangs.  He spent years finding and getting to know members and former members.  Many of the original members are now in their 70s or dead.  The article mentions at the end that Bushnell has a new obsession - street gangs.  

"It’s not that he’s obsessed with gangs any more than he was with motorcycle clubs.

“'The gangs and the clubs, they’re just the backdrop,' he said. 'It’s the people, and the personal stories, that fascinate me. I have always been interested in outsiders and outlaws, and these are the ultimate outlaws.'”

And I think that is something we need to always be doing all the time - look closer at the stereotypes we have of people and groups we only know through the media.  Yes, motorcycle clubs and street gangs have done terrible things.  But why?  Who are the people who were attracted to those organizations?  What do they have in common?  Are there things we can do as a society to minimize the number of people who get involved in organized violence against others?  I'm not sure Bushnell's interviews and documents answer those questions, but it's worth reading the article.  

"The real value of the collection is its capacity to correct the monstrous image of outlaw bikers and give them their true place in history, said Paul d’Orleans, motorcycle historian and curator of the influential bike culture website the Vintagent.

“These few hundred club members had an enormous impact on our culture at large by their mere existence, and they also created a unique and peculiarly American folk-art movement with their custom motorcycles,” D’Orleans said. Like it or not, he added, 'That movement evolved into a billion-dollar worldwide custom motorcycle industry'.”

Alaska Redistricting Board - The Five Board Members [Updated]

The five Alaska Redistricting Board members are chosen by the Governor (2),  Senate President (1), House Chair (1), and the Chief Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court (1).

Since the meetings have been available by audio only so far, I haven't had a chance to see or talk to individual Board members.  So I'm giving you some brief overviews of the Board members based on information  available online.  

[UPDATED July 24, 2021:  The Board has put up their own bios on the Redistricting website this week. Also, the pictures here are ones I found online.  My post on the board training on mapping software has my photos of board members, attorneys, and some staff members.  ]

From KTOO:

"Gov. Mike Dunleavy appointed two members of the powerful board that will draw new boundaries for legislative districts.

"Bethany Marcum of Anchorage and E. Budd Simpson of Juneau are the first of five new members to be named to the board. Marcum was an aide to Dunleavy when he was a state senator. She is the executive director of the Alaska Policy Forum, a conservative think tank. Simpson is a lawyer who has served as outside counsel to the Sealaska Corporation."

From APF website

Bethany Marcum, Anchorage

From the Alaska Policy Forum:

Bethany Marcum is the Chief Executive Officer at Alaska Policy Forum. In this role, she directs the policy priorities and strategic initiatives of the organization. By educating the public and elected officials on Alaskan issues, Bethany works to maximize individual opportunities and freedom for all Alaskans. When she's not at work, Bethany spends her time going on hunting trips all over the country and around the world."

From a State Policy Network interview with Bethany Marcum. 

"In this interview, we chat with Alaska Policy Forum‘s executive director, Bethany Marcum. Prior to joining the Forum, Bethany worked for the Alaska state legislature. Her involvement with the Forum started as a donor and occasional volunteer, then as a part-time writer, and eventually she joined the organization as a full-time team member.

Here are her insights on advancing freedom in America’s “last frontier”:

SPN: How did you first get involved in the freedom movement?

Bethany: I was about as non-political and non-informed as a person can be for most of my life. Exasperation about the 2008 bailouts brought me into the Tea Party movement and from there I gradually found my way to the policy world after seeing that rallies could not accomplish the change I wished to see.

SPN: Was there a moment or a role model that inspired you to choose work that’s dedicated to the cause of freedom and human flourishing?

Bethany: While there was a long delay before I took action, I can remember a moment around 1986. I was a small-town Midwest country girl who was in “the big city” of Boston for a few months, and I found a copy of Reason magazine on the subway.  As I thumbed through it, I thought, “Wow, there are actually people out there who think like I do. Sure didn’t know that!” And that was the end of that for over 20 years. Flash forward to my wake-up in the Tea Party movement in 2009 when I saw a copy of Reason magazine at an event. My first thought: “Holy moly, those people are still at it. And now I’m one of them!”

As a way to get a sense of her values, here the mission and principles of APF,  the organization she heads:

"MISSION

Our mission is to empower and educate Alaskans and policymakers by promoting policies that grow freedom for all.

SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF SOUND PUBLIC POLICY

• Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.
• What belongs to you, you tend to take care of; what belongs to no one or everyone tends to fall into disrepair.
• Sound policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people.
• If you encourage something, you will get more of it; if you discourage something, you will get less of it.
• Nobody spends someone else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
• Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and a government that’s big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.
• Liberty makes all the difference in the world.

Budd Simpson, Juneau

From the Simpson, Tillinghast, Sheehan & Araujo, P.C Law Firm website:

E. Budd Simpson devotes a large portion of his practice to serving as the principal outside legal counsel to Sealaska Corporation (one of the twelve Alaska Native regional corporations formed under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act), which has been a client of his since 1978. Mr. Simpson's practice includes the timber, banking, resource development, real estate, subsurface, risk management, personnel, state securities regulations, and litigation activities of the corporation.

He is also General Counsel for The Juneau Empire, the region's largest daily newspaper, and its parent company, Morris Communications Corporation, which has media holdings throughout the state and the Lower 48.

Martindale-Hubbell awarded Mr. Simpson its highest rating, AV. He is a member of the Alaska Bar Disciplinary Board and chairs the Alaska Bar Fee Arbitration Panel in the First Judicial District. He is a former President and served on the Executive Board of the Southeast Alaska Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America from 1985 to 2005. He served as a member of the Alaska State Physical Therapy Board for six years, and was a director of the Port of Juneau, Docks and Harbors Board, from 1996 to 2008, including two terms as Chair."

John Binkley, Fairbanks - Chair of the Alaska Redistricting Board. 

Image from Wikipedia

From Wikipedia:

"John Emerson "Johne" Binkley (born February 4, 1953 in Fairbanks, Alaska)[1] is a riverboat pilot, businessman and Republican politician from the U.S. state of Alaska. Binkley served for one term apiece in the Alaska House of Representatives and the Alaska Senate during the mid and late 1980s, but is perhaps better known for his candidacy for governor of Alaska in the 2006 primary election. In that election, he finished far behind Sarah Palin (who would go on to win the governorship), but also far ahead of one-term incumbent governor Frank Murkowski, by then deeply unpopular amongst Alaskans.

In 2017, the Anchorage Daily News was acquired by Binkley Co., a group run by John's son, Ryan Binkley. [2]

Binkley was elected chair of the non-partisan Alaska Redistricting Board in 2020, following his appointment to the five-member board by Senate President Cathy Giessel."

  Nicole Borromeo, Anchorage

Image from Census site

  "Alaska Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham,    has named Alaska
Federation of Natives attorney Nicole Borromeo to the board in charge of redrawing the state’s House and Senate districts after the 2020 census."   (From ADN)

From the Census Bureau website:

"Nicole Borromeo serves the Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the Alaska Federation of Natives, the oldest and largest Native organization in Alaska. In addition to providing executive level leadership, Ms. Borromeo advises AFN’s Board and President on a wide array of Alaska Native legislative and litigation matters, including civil and voting rights.

Prior to joining AFN, Ms. Borromeo held positions with the reputable law firms of Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker, LLP; Patton Boggs, LLP; and Sonosky, Chambers, Sasche, Miller & Munson, LLP.

Her legal work has included researching policies, regulations, and laws related to federally recognized tribes, analyzing matters impacting Alaska Native corporations, and representing tribes and tribal consortia in a wide variety of areas, including governmental affairs, business transactions, and infrastructure development.

Ms. Borromeo’s volunteer civic engagement includes participation on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Indian Country Energy and Infrastructure Workgroup, to which she was appointed in 2017. Additionally, she is a Founding Board Member of Justice Not Politics Alaska, a nonpartisan organization promoting the independence of Alaska’s judiciary.

Since 2008, Ms. Borromeo has also served as a mentor to girls, young women, and minorities of all ages who are considering legal and judicial careers through the Color of Justice Program.

Ms. Borromeo is a shareholder of Doyon, Limited, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) regional corporation for Interior Alaska, and the Board Chairman for MTNT, Ltd., the ANCSA village corporation representing four Interior Alaska villages."

Melanie Bahnke, Nome

"Alaska Chief Justice Joel Bolger has picked Melanie Bahnke of Nome for the final seat on the board that will redraw Alaska’s election boundaries following the 2020 census. Bahnke is the president and CEO of regional nonprofit Kawerak Inc. and is an Alaska Federation of Natives board member.

Bahnke is an undeclared voter, meaning the board will have two undeclared voters and three Republicans."   [From the ADN]  

From the Alaska Federation of Natives website.   

"Melanie is the President and CEO of Kawerak, Inc. and has been employed by Kawerak since 1999. In 2012 she was promoted to the President position. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Rural Development from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and a Bachelor of Education degree in Elementary Education from the University of Alaska Anchorage. Melanie is a tribal member of the Native Village of Savoonga and speaks St. Lawrence Island Yupik as her first language. She is married to Kevin Bahnke, and they have three children."

 

US Race Policy Was A Model For Hitler's Race Laws

An article on Facing South, looks at a German lawyer who spent a year studying business and American race laws at the University of Arkansas.  The article begins with a Berlin meeting, a beginning of the drafting of the Nuremberg Laws to suppress Jews and others and to protect the purity of German blood.

"At the meeting, several Nazi bureaucrats cited the work of a young lawyer named Heinrich Krieger, newly returned from his year studying abroad in the United States at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville. There, he researched how laws across the U.S. segregated and disenfranchised Native Americans, African Americans, and other non-white groups — a legal model the Nazis looked to as a way to control Jews and other minority groups in Germany. Inspiration for the Nuremberg Laws came directly from Krieger's research into American race laws, including prohibitions on interracial marriages.

'He was in Arkansas in the dead middle of the Jim Crow era,' Yale historian James Q. Whitman, author of "Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law," told Facing South. 'He seems to have taken an interest particularly in American Indian law.'

"Krieger's research cited at the Berlin meeting was a review of the history of American laws related to indigenous people, who had only recently been declared citizens under Calvin Coolidge’s Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. For centuries the law had treated them not only as non-citizens but as subhuman, subjecting them to the 19th century's violent Indian removal policies; the Trail of Tears (part of which ran through Fayetteville); the separation of indigenous children from their families, communities, language, and culture; and forced sterilization. Throughout the debates in Germany that led up to the adoption of the Nuremberg Laws by the Nazis in 1935, Nazi officials relied on Krieger's observations about the American laws that governed its brutal treatment of non-white people."

"In March 1935, after completing his studies in Fayetteville, Krieger published an article in the George Washington Law Review titled "Principles of the Indian Law and the Act of June 18, 1934." In it he observed, "[The] Indian, though being a national of the United States, was not her citizen." Nazi leaders were inspired by America's ability to treat marginalized populations as less than full citizens while still maintaining a positive global reputation, so they used Krieger's studies of American race laws as a template for their own."

There's more food for thought in the whole article. 

Republicans decry 'Critical Race Theory' as 'anti-American.' It's ironic.  On the one hand they are encouraging white nationalist fears of being 'replaced' by non-whites and non-Christians.

On the other hand, they get upset when people point out that US laws were racist, took Native American land, enslaved blacks and then after emancipation created law after law to recreate a form second-class citizenship.  

Some of these white nationalists use nazi materials as their models.  But, as the Facing South article demonstrates, they needn't.  Because the US was, in many ways, Hitler's model for how to take away citizenship from non-Aryans.  

Of course, all this is based on a human created fiction called race.  In the early 20th Century, race still referred, not only to the black and white races, but to Jewish race, Italian race, Irish race, and other non-Northern Europeans.  

Sure, there are physical differences between people with light skin and people with darker skin, just as there are differences between people with red hair and blond hair and brown hair.  Between people who are taller and those who are shorter, thinner and heavier, hairier and smoother, more athletic and more sedentary, more thoughtful and more prone to impulsive action.  

But there is nothing about light skinned people that makes them more or less human than people with darker shades of skin.  The power hungry have always exploited these physical differences to divide people who often have more in common with each other than with those dividing them.  

It's time to identify as part of humanity rather than some artificial construct like race.  

That isn't to say that we should abandon the the wide diversity of cultures and languages for one common one.  Each of those cultures and languages represents a group of people who learned to survive the physical and political conditions of the part of earth in which they lived.  Whether it's dealing with heat or cold, tropical or high elevation agriculture, ocean or desert.  Each culture has, embedded in its language and practices, survival techniques that at some point may be useful to the rest of humanity. Or may already be useful, but by designating some group as less worthy, we've overlooked what they know that could help us.  Destroying this huge repository of knowledge would be like burning libraries.  

Humans are in this together.  When we deprive one group, we make it harder for the people of that group to share their talents with the rest of the world.  When we spend our energy fighting each other, we aren't spending it making the world a better place.  Everyone is worse off.

Right now that contrast couldn't be clearer.  We've removed from office the president who has done the most to exploit those differences and set people against people.  Whose mission it was to destroy cooperative efforts among cultures around the world - like walking out of the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran Nuclear deal.  

And now we have a president who is attempting to get people to build the infrastructure that makes human life easier and safer.  Who is promoting health and education and meaningful work for all people.  Who sees all people as human beings, not as a hierarchy of more and less valuable beings.  

Blooming Hoya And Dripping Icicle - The World Is Better Than Media Portray

 

These hoya flowers are past their prime.  It's a natural part of the cycle of birth and death.   

From Bloomscape:

"Hoya plants are some of the easiest indoor houseplants to care for. They are slow-growing vining plants native to tropical and subtropical Asia. They are also known as Wax plants due to their thick and shiny foliage. As Hoyas mature, they produce clusters of sweet-smelling star-shaped flowers."

 They were pretty amazing a week ago.

And even though those blooms are gone, there's a new cluster starting to bud.  

This plant has been growing downstairs in our 'greenhouse' - really a room with lots of south facing windows - for years. It does tend to bloom most years with minimal care on my part.  

Spring is technically here according to the calendar, but we still have plenty of winter on the ground and icicles hanging from our roof.

[While the drop on its way down is kind of neat, I accidentally deleted the drop that was just below the end of the icicle, still suspended by a trail of water.  The whole three foot icicle, after growing for a week or two, came crashing down just after I took this picture.]

[UPDATE March 24, 2021 1:30am:  I found the deleted album on my phone and there was the other picture.  So here it is:                                                                                                          ]

But we are getting significantly more light every day.  At Anchorage's latitude we are gaining almost 6 minutes a day - an hour in 10 days.  That's just the official 'daylight' but we have much longer twilight periods than further south.  

Yesterday I pulled out my bike - the old one with the studded tires - to ride to a routine annual physical not far from our house.  

And here's rider's view on my way home.  I'm still amazed at how well the studded tires worked on the icier parts of the way home.  

This pictures in this post are for Barbara and an Anonymous commenter  in recent days lamenting the sorry state of the world.  Our news media give us a negatively skewed view of things.   

But we also have had a lot of positive things happening.  My sense is that the anger of Republicans that boiled over on January 6 is a reflection that they feel their privilege slipping away.  They, of course, don't think of it as privilege.  They still believe in various mantras that help justify why rich people are rich and poor people are poor.  Mantras that put all the onus on the individual and ignore how social norms and beliefs, economic and legal infrastructure, and the media portrayal of some ideal USA, all combine to advantage white males.  But their anger now reflects that women and people of color have made great strides toward equality.  The election of a black president brought it all home, for many.  White males no longer can assume they get to go to the front of the line.  Now women and minorities have much better access to good education and then good jobs.  Just look at how the number of women doctors and lawyers and members of Congress have increased in recent decades.  The same is true for people of color.  For example.

Our job now is to change the conditions that produce people who understand their place in the world and work to make the world more just for everyone.  No individual has to save the world.  We all just have to take care of our selves and our families and friends.  If we have energy and resources and creativity left over, then we can help others, then we can work for a happier society. 

But when we do work to improve the conditions we live in,  we should working humbly.  Not to prove how good we are.  Not to make others grateful to us.  But in recognition that we've been lucky to have what we have and that in our own gratefulness, we want to share it.  Some of what we have we have earned through our own hard work.  Some because we've been the lucky winners of the birth lottery.

But nature itself is a lottery which affects our happiness.   I've heard that, despite what one might think, more people get down during spring and early summer than other times of the year. I did double check on that and found that indeed, spring and early summer are the worst.  And it's more so further north than closer to the equator.  So I send my hoya flowers and dripping icicle to all.  May you find pockets of peace and hope that you can fill up with good stories, good friends, good food, and good ideas.  

Blogging Fun - Visitors From Around The World Check Out Seven Year Old Post About Mr. Doob

 

Blogger says I have published 6914 posts since 2006.  There are another 594 drafts that never got published.  Statcounter gives stats on the visitors to the blog.  Their count is significantly lower than Google's (who bought Blogger a while ago.)  But Statcounter makes it easy to see details about who is visiting.  I've posted about this before, but it's important for people to realize all the finger prints they leave behind when they visit a website.  (I think you should be able to click on the image and enlarge it to see it larger and focused better, but after recent 'improvements' at Blogger, I can't tell until I publish it. After posting:  Yes, click on it and see it much bigger and clearer.)

In recent weeks I've notice a lot of people visiting a post entitled "The Yeti of Creative Coding - Who is Mr. Doob?"  When I originally published that in August 2013, there wasn't much about Mr. Doob and I scrounged bits and pieces to put the post together.  It was a fun post to write because Mr. Doob was (at that time at least) an elusive programmer who made cool graphics online.  I even found an interview with him that revealed a bit more of his bio.  

So, the other day I collected from my Statcounter data all the visitors they reported who had visited the seven year old Mr. Doob page in the past 24 hours.  (They keep coming and the Dutch example above is from the latest Statcounter pages.  

Riyadh, Ar Riyad, Saudi Arabia

George Town, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

Sibiu, Romania

Pune, Maharashtra, India

Batangas City, Batangas, Philippines

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Rogers, Arkansas, United States

Orem, Utah, United States

Centreville, Virginia, United States

Palm Coast, Florida, United States

Markham, Ontario, Canada

Bloomfield, New Jersey, United States

Bronx, New York, United States

Laveen, Arizona, United States

Villisca, Iowa, United States

Hamilton, Ohio, United States

Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, United States

Ashland, Ohio, United States

Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Medan, Sumatera Utara, Indonesia

Tampere, Western Finland, Finland

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Quezon City, Philippine

This was the order of the visits.  My guess is that you see more international ones when it's early morning (like midnight to 6am)  in the US.  

And if you want to see what's drawing them, below is the link.  A fun break from the other issues we're constantly dealing with.  

https://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2013/08/who-is-mr-doob.html  

Arnold Schwarzeneger Puts January 6 Insurrection Into Context

I invite you to spend seven minutes listening to Arnold Schwarzeneger's analysis of the insurrection we watched the other day.  He steps back and looks at what happened in the context of his own childhood growing up in Austria after World War II and the legacy of the war - his father and all the neighbors' fathers coming home drunk several times a week and beating his kids.  He likens last week to Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) when Hitler incited mobs to go out and destroy all the synagogues and Jewish shops.  Often on November 9 my mother would remind me about Kristallnacht which she witnessed as a 16 year old Jewish girl in Germany.  So his comparison hits home for me.

Schwarzeneger doesn't dwell on details but strongly outlines the danger, what we must do, and a reassuring belief that we will do what is necessary and come out of this stronger.   

It mirrors my sense of things.  Americans have denied having "a single racist bone in my body" as long as I can remember.  Trump has called on those racist bones and people have shed their lie and found the courage to proclaim what they really believe.  Now the widespread legacy of racism in this country is out in the open where it can't be credibly denied.  So we have finally gotten past the first step of healing.  

It won't be easy.  The tens of millions of Americans who voted for Trump range from Neo-Nazis to people who simply believe the old Republican ideals of free market and rugged individualism, to those whose jobs have been automated or transferred overseas,  and those with a very literal belief in the Bible.  Their self insecurity has made them susceptible to the professional level propaganda and lies of the Right - from Swiftboating John Kerry, to denial of the dangers of smoking, guns, and climate change.   

Those of us who supported Biden must find the will to punish the worst of the transgressors, and find ways to respectfully find common ground.  Yes, there are many things we have in common - experiences (war, union membership, religious organizations, music of our youth), passions (gardening, dancing, drinking, fishing, cars, sports teams), and family (from dysfunctional families to happy families and for older folks, devotion to and from grandchildren.)  Let's find ways to start with those common bonds and then ease into the more difficult discussions.  Listening and asking questions rather than challenging.

Here's Arnold.  I can't quite remember him so on point and articulate.  

 

". . . one of the many places in Barcelona where the nineteenth century has not yet been served its eviction notice."

After I post the daily Alaska COVID-19 update, I'm not really ready to do a post.  Partly because I don't want to just post something everyone else is talking about and partly because the things that are important take longer to think about.  Partly because I've been trying to read my next book club book

before the library Kindle version evaporates tomorrow.  100 pages a day.  Made it to page 302 last night. Should get to 400 today, the just 88 more pages tomorrow.  I really love the book - Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books).  But I'd much rather have a paper copy than spend more time looking at a computer screen.  

The book is a maze of stories inside stories.  The narrator is ten when the book starts and grows older as the story progresses.  He's searching for more about the life of the author of a book that he, apparently, has the last existing copy of.  His life and the mysterious author's life become intertwined.  Minor characters eventually take center stage for a while.   The main stage is post-War Barcelona.  And the writing is lyrically infused with wisdom.  Tragic love stories abound.  Here are some quotes that Kindle makes easy to copy, find, and share:

“How old is the lad?” inquired Barceló, inspecting me out of the corner of his eye. “Almost eleven,” I announced. Barceló flashed a sly smile. “In other words, ten. Don’t add on any years, you rascal. Life will see to that without your help.”

It's a book lover's book, which is one reason it feels particularly wrong to read this one electronically.

“This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. This place was already ancient when my father brought me here for the first time, many years ago. Perhaps as old as the city itself. Nobody knows for certain how long it has existed, or who created it. I will tell you what my father told me, though. When a library disappears, or a bookshop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader’s hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend. Now they have only us, Daniel. Do you think you’ll be able to keep such a secret?”

Julian Carax is the mysterious author of the book Daniel has bonded with in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.  

"Bring your precious find with you so that I can examine it properly, and I’ll tell you what I know about Julián Carax. Quid pro quo.” “Quid pro what?”

“Latin, young man. There’s no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds. Paraphrasing, it means that you can’t get something for nothing, but since I like you, I’m going to do you a favor.”

Barcelona is one of the main characters of the book.  I've opened a Barcelona map on my computer so I can follow the action from place to place. 

"The Ateneo was—and remains—one of the many places in Barcelona where the nineteenth century has not yet been served its eviction notice."

The author and the main characters are clearly a religious skeptics:

"He begged the Lord to send him a signal, a whisper, a crumb of His presence. God, in His infinite wisdom, and perhaps overwhelmed by the avalanche of requests from so many tormented souls, did not answer."

Life, in this book, does not favor the timid (though the risk takers don't do much better):

“Look, Daniel. Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.”

The police are not seen as people's friends and protectors.  After Fermín is beaten to a bloody pulp:

"'Tell me, Daniel, now that nobody can hear us. Why isn’t it a good idea to report what has happened to the police?' 'Because they already know.' 'You mean…?' I nodded. 'What kind of trouble are you two in, if you don’t mind my asking?'” I sighed.

I'm not sure that's totally clear to readers out of context, you just have to consider why the police would already know.  

This is a book about books, about writing, about solving mysteries, about love, about life, about freedom and the obstacles to being oneself.  

Thanks, Brock, for recommending The Shadow of the Wind.   

 

 

AiFF2020: Toprak and The Woman of the Photographs

 I can't believe there are still five narrative features I haven't seen yet.  Or that I'm writing about two obscure films instead of addressing more significant issues.  But there are plenty of people commenting on US politics and not very many commenting on these two films - one  Turkish and and Japanese.  

Toprak - 

I just looked up Toprak on google.translate.  It means Soil.  You don't have to know that watching the movie (I didn't), but it makes a lot of sense.  

Often times, watching a film based in a culture other than one's own, people need to change their sense of time, their pace.  I suspect, given the success of US films around the world, that speeding things up is easier to adapt to than slowing things down.  

This film slows things down a lot.  It takes place in rural Turkey, where this slower pace is the norm.  It focuses on the remnants of one family - a grandmother, her son, and his nephew - who eke out a living growing and selling pomegranates.  It's a theme we've seen repeatedly in AIFF films - young people leaving rural areas and small towns to pursue a more interesting, if not better, life.  And we know this saga in the US and here in Alaska all too well.  

This movie takes us into how these tensions between carrying on the family traditions and breaking the ties plays out in this (and to a much lesser extent one other) Turkish family.  

Originally, a copy of this film without subtitles was up on the AIFF site.  That was corrected yesterday (Wednesday).  Slow down and take a trip to rural Turkey. Pomegranates would make an appropriate snack for this film.

The Woman of the Photographs

We watched this one after Toprak. The topics of this film are very contemporary and the pace much faster.  It's an odd film - the main character doesn't speak a single word until the last few minutes of the film; a praying mantis has a significant supporting role - that explores the boundaries between the reality of who people are - what their actual faces and bodies look like, the manipulated photographic images on social media, or how other people perceive them.  This is a perfect film festival selection.  

I found The Woman of the Photographs a more watchable film than Toprak, I think because the issues raised in Toprak are well-known.  Toprak merely adds a case study to the stories of people leaving their small town/rural lives to larger cities.  Woman of the Photographs offers interesting material for the current concerns about how social media are changing the nature of reality, how we communicate,  and personal identity.