Two front page stories in the Anchorage Daily News Friday got me to thinking. First this one about finding stolen goods from a MySpace picture.
Picture of stolen cross may be on MySpace
Man who tried to pawn goods stolen from church posted photo with crosses
By MEGAN HOLLAND
Anchorage Daily News
Published: February 2, 2007
Last Modified: February 2, 2007 at 09:40 AM
The Rev. Bob Young of Holy Spirit Episcopal Church in Eagle River didn't expect to see his processional cross again after it was stolen from his church in the middle of the night more than two weeks ago.
Then he was directed to a MySpace.com Web page, where a bare-chested teenager posed with a handgun among drifting marijuana bongs. In his other hand, the youth held a cross that Father Bob instantly recognized. When the priest looked closer, he saw the boy also was wearing a cross necklace he wore while leading Sunday mass. [Click here for the rest of the story go to]
Then this story about the branding of Anchorage with a new logo.
'Big Wild Life' marketing brand gets cool reception
FIRST REACTION: It's a shock for some, a positive step forward for others.
By KYLE HOPKINS
Anchorage Daily News
Published: February 2, 2007
Last Modified: February 2, 2007 at 09:47 AM
Stoked. Puzzled. Mouthy.
That's the range of reactions this week to Anchorage's new marketing brand: "Big Wild Life."
On the Internet and over the airwaves, residents critiqued and questioned the slogan as soon as it was unveiled Wednesday.
"Instead of spending money on a new, really bad slogan, why not make use of the award winning 'Wild About Anchorage' slogan of years past?" wrote one visitor to a heated dissection of the brand on the Daily News Web site. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
Others defended the brand, saying the marketing campaign has barely started and it'll get more popular as it sinks in. {for more click here.
People complain about how kids package themselves on MySpace, how they wear strange clothes, tattoos, and pierce parts of their bodies. But if cities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to 'brand' themselves, to package their image to 'sell' themselves, then why shouldn't the kids think it is perfectly all right to brand themselves?
Of course the branding zealots, like my Jehovah Witness visitor yesterday, believe so wholeheartedly in their mission, that they don't even question it. Or did they know they were selling Anchorage snake oil and they're sniggering at the idea that they got $200,000 for putting three words together "Big Wild Life"? And, of course, the people who spent the money have to believe in the product they got. But at least the posts to the website seem to indicate that most of the public wasn't taken in.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Friday, February 02, 2007
Why I Live Here Series
Walking to the office on a sunny warm (mid 40s) February 2.
.......... Dinner with friends at the Tofu House Korean Restaurant.
Pamyua at Bear Tooth
Late night Thursday dancing. Not our normal routine, but I'd won the tickets last week, and I first saw Pamyua ten or more years at the Native Students Services - where they performed. Then they were two brothers, Stephen and Philip Blanchett, Yupik-African/Americans who were singing traditional Yupik songs with an African-American something. Now they are four plus folks, including a singer from Greenland and they've won the Record of the Year at the 2003 Native American Music Awards and performed at the Grammy Awards. Tonight they played for the home crowd.
This was just a teaser. You can see more video linked at their website.
Even though we were carded as we came in, we were clearly in the oldest 1% of this crowd and it was nice we had Sunny and Lisa there as our link to the mostly 20s and 30s crowd. I got a couple of pictures and video before everyone moved down to the dance area. It was a mellow group, lots of single women and single men. I like the Anchorage scene - no pretention, no one terribly preoccupied with how they looked, just having a good time. The dance floor filled up quickly and the four of us were also up and moving to the music.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Back Rooms of the Museum
The Anchorage Museum of History and Art had a reception for Museum members last night and we got to visit the back rooms to see the archives and parts of the collection that aren't on display because there isn't enough room for everything. Of course it was also a fund raiser to help pay for the new additions to the museum, but museum director Pat Wolf did a good job of mentioning that in passing. Definitely low pressure. She let the museum and the dedicated employees make the pitch just by showing us what they do and what the museum has. In the archives they have about 400,000 photos, in various collections. Some collections, like the ones in the pictures, are well labelled. Others not.
Photos are kept in their collections and the organizing system of the collectors is preserved, though this can make it more difficult finding things. Volunteers help out. They said it takes about an hour to do all the work necessary to catalogue each print. That's a lot of volunteers. The Whale Hunt Story is an album done, if I recall this right, by a woman who worked some time in Nome and Wales around 1910. After she left, she made little albums with her pictures and descriptions and sent them to friends. The museum has two copies of this story, but each album is a little different. Archives were on the second floor. For the second part, we went down to the basement.
Walter Van Horn, Director of Collections, showed us around and talked about humidity, preservation, dust, hard water, as well as the wide variety of things people donate. He also showed us the pictures that for now are in storage, including this John Webber drawing. 
Webber was an artist with Captain Cook's third voyage from 1776 to 1780. This is the original. Earlier, in the archives we had seen a book that was published in the late 1700s of Captain Cook's voyage that had a print of this.
Bilingual and Multicultural Education Conference
Healing Racism in Anchorage, a group I belong to, was invited to present to the Alaska Bilingual and Multicultural Education Conference held in Anchorage this week. Yesterday we did. Shirley Mae Springer Staten and Norwood Eggling did the keynote address. Shirley Mae emphasized the importance of stories in getting these kinds of issues out and talked about discovering she was different on a bus trip to the South as a young girl. "When we share our stories, we open the window on compassion, we open the window on foregiveness, we open the window on love."
Norwood talked about being part of an organization that has Racism in the name. How people are disturbed by the word. Americans don't want to believe that racism exists in the country or in themselves. He also talked about the difference race made by comparing himself - an adopted white boy who spent his preschool years in Japan with Japanese women raising him while his parents worked - and his older sister, who was also adopted, but was Japanese. When the family returned to the US, not that long after WWII, he was easily accepted into the new life, while his Asian sister never did adjust to school.
Toni Pounds, Mari Ogimachi, and I had a smaller session after the keynote. We had a good mix of people - Whites, Alaska Native, Asian, American born and not. Mari was the moderator. We had an exercise which focused people on how they learn about things that affect how they judge people. They rated a number of characteristics from 1 (extremely negative) to 5 (extremely positive). We talked about the things they rated as 1 and then those they rated as 5. Some 1's were: being late, fingernails dirty, missing tooth, carries a bible. As we talked, people explained why they thought this was bad and where these beliefs came from. One Russian woman thought about teachers having students hold out their hands to check the fingernails. 
Another woman thought about her religious family always judging her and was thus not happy about the bible, while someone else had imagined a small pocket bible just peeking out of a pocket and saw this as a good thing. Talking about these issues which are fairly easy to talk about publicly, even though they pushed some people's emotional buttons, was a comfortable lead in for Toni to talk about the cycle of oppression. How people absorb beliefs that are reinforced by society and the cycle continues.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Alaska Jewish Museum & Community Center Land Exchange
We got a notice in the mail about an "Informational Meeting" about a proposed land swap 'related to the development of the Alaska Jewish Museum and Community Center." It was at Rogers Park Elementary School library. We got there a little late and it was fairly crowded - maybe 35 people or so.
(If you click on the picture you can get a larger version.)
Basically, the group owns a one acre parcel on 36th Avenue (the grey line on the bottom of the map). 36th is a four lane road that goes through two residential neighborhoods and carries a lot of traffic to the University of Alaska Anchorage. There are no commercial properties until you get further east or west. There's a church across the street from the property. There is a wetland area designated Jaobson park next to the site, and another park, David Green Park across 36th, which has a playground. A couple houses face 36th in the last block or so before the university. So as you drive this stretch you mostly green from fenced back yards, park, or wetlands. (Well now you see mostly white.)
The currently owned parcel is the orange rectangle at the bottom left of the map. Right now there is only a mikva on that lot, and it was built about 8 years ago. A mikva, a ceremonial bathhouse. According to www.chabad.org:
"... the most important and general usage of mikvah is for purification by the menstruant woman.
For the menstruant woman, immersion in a mikvah is part of a larger framework best known as Taharat Hamishpachah (Family Purity). As with every area of Jewish practice, Family Purity involves a set of detailed laws; namely, the "when," "what," and "how" of observance. Studying with a woman who is experienced in this field is the time-honored way of gaining familiarity and comfort with the practice. In cities or communities with large Jewish populations, there may be classes one can join. The majority of women, however, come by this knowledge through a more personal one-on-one encounter. While books are a poor substitute for a knowledgeable teacher, select titles can be used as a guide to this ritual or for quick reference (see suggested book list in appendix to this essay). What follows is only a brief overview of these laws. It is not, and was not intended to be, a substitute for proper study of this subject.
Family purity is a system predicated on the woman's monthly cycle. From the onset of menstruation and for seven days after its end, until the woman immerses in the mikvah, husband and wife may not engage in sexual relations. To avoid violation of this law, the couple should curtail their indulgence in actions they find arousing, putting a check on direct physical contact and refraining from physical manifestations of affection. The technical term for a woman in this state is Niddah (literal meaning: to be separated).
Exactly a week from when the woman has established the cessation of her flow, she visits the mikvah. Immersion takes place after nightfall of the seventh day and is preceded by a requisite cleansing. The immersion is valid only when the waters of the mikvah envelop each and every part of the body and, indeed, each hair. To this end, the woman bathes, shampoos, combs her hair, and removes from her body anything that might impede her total immersion."
It was also interesting to read on that website that:
"Today it is not just a Jewish metropolis that can boast a mikvah. In remote, even exotic, locations- Anchorage, Alaska, and Bogota, Colombia; Yerres, France, and Ladispoli, Italy; Agadir, Morocco, and Asuncion in Paraguay; Lima, Peru, and Cape Town, South Africa; Bangkok, Thailand, and Zarzis, Tunisia; and almost every city in the C.I.S. (former Soviet Union) -- there are kosher and comfortable mikvahs and rabbis and rebbetzins willing and able to assist any woman in their use."
At the meeting there was some disagreement about what was said when the mikvah was built. One man said that it was only going to be a mikva, and no they were not planning to build anything else. Rabbi Greenberg, standing in this picture, said they had always planned to build a synagogue there, but at the time they didn't have enough money to do that as well. But now they have decided to also have a Jewish Museum attached as well. They have enough room for the synagogue and the museum on the one acre. According to John Nabors, the project manager, the buildings can take up to 30% of the property and thus the synagogue and attached museum meet that requirement. The problem comes in because "the city requires parking..." for about 70 cars. So they would like the parcel in yellow next to the orange box for parking. That is part of the designated Class A wetlands (Otis Lake drains into this area) owned by the city. Lot 14 - the backwards L shaped Yellow in the upper right quadrant of the map - is owned by people involved with the synagogue and they want to swap that land for the parcel next to the proposed building.
T
There was a lot of discussion about drainage. An engineer, an architect, and a landscape architect all spoke. A woman from the Anchorage Waterways Council was also there and answered questions, such as, "It appears to me that the parcel they want to trade which is practically unbuildable because of the water is much less valuable than the parcel with frontage on 36." She said, (I'm paraphrasing) "You are absolutely right from a real estate perspective. The land on 36th is much more valuable. But from an ecologically standpoint, Lot 14 is far more valuable. The 36th lot has been filled in by the City when they widened 36th to four lanes. The City essentially destroyed that part of the wetland."
There was discussion about neighborhood basements being flooded. There were promises made that the footpaths from the neighborhoods through the wetland to 36th would be preserved for the public use. And that the parking lot would be open to the public to visit Jacobson Park and that the synagogue group would donate $100,000 to make improved access to the park. And all of this is in writing in the brochures announcing the meeting.
So, this was a meeting put on by the people who want to build. It was not a community council meeting, nor a city run meeting. John Nabors said at the very beginning of the meeting that they have not applied for any permits and so the city really has no official position on this. But they have spent a lot of time talking to people at the City from the mayor to people in the various departments that will be involved in permitting.
The apparent purpose of the meeting was engage the community in dialogue and win their support prior to an Assembly meeting on Feb 13 at which time the Assembly will vote on putting the land swap on the ballot for April 3. If that is passed, then there needs to be Corps of Engineer Approval for building on the wetlands, and various other approvals. The land swap will be contingent on all the other "dominoes falling into place."
We left the meeting after about 2 hours so I'm not sure what else was discussed. Nobody, by that time, had raised the question that had been brought up during the legislative session about the $850,000 that was appropriated by the Alaska Legislature last spring for the Alaska Jewish Historical Museum and Community Center. Some people had been concerned about the state giving money for religious purposes. It was argued that the museum would cover the history of the Jewish people in Alaska, not be a center to celebrate religious practices, though most Jewish Community Centers do have various religious ceremonies and activities in them. The fact that the synagogue and the museum will essentially be one large building would seem to bring that question up again. Is someone going to audit how the money is spent to be sure that the state isn't funding the practice of a religion? If you look at the list of other projects funded by the legislature you'll see some other museums. I just took the A's a little past Alaska Jewish Museum on the list. Is the Alaska Native Heritage Center different from a synagogue? They cover the history and traditions of the various Alaska Native peoples. They even have various dancing and other traditional native spiritual activities. Is that different?
MUNICIPALITY OF ANCHORAGE - 2006 STATE LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM RESULTS
Grant RequestedProject Name Grant Approved
Other Anchorage Organizations
African American Historical Society - Resources, Equipment & Supplies $30,000
Airport Heights Community Council - Community Patrol Supplies $10,000
Alaska Air Show Association - Arctic Thunder Air Show $61,000
Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum: Building Demolition, Facility Improvements, and construction $750,000
Alaska Energy Authority - Study of Operating the Electrical Intertie Grid $800,000
Alaska Jewish Historical Museum and Community Center $850,000
Alaska Judicial Observers, Recruit/Screen/Train $30,000
Alaska Native Heritage Center Expansion $250,000
Alaska State Troopers Museum - Archive Program $200,000
Overall, the meeting was very civil. John Nabors wanted badly to have an organized, rational, linear presentation from the beginning to the end. The sort of thing that gives one a good overview of the whole project, and is often fairly boring to listen to. Various members of the audience asked questions that took things in other areas, but were more interesing to listen to. The times I've met Rabbi Greenberg, he has greatly impressed me by his wisdom, knowledge, and decency. For a Lubavitch rabbi, he has made various adaptations to accommodate for the realities of Alaska life. He has had relatively good relations with the Reform synagogue in town, and a number of Jews attend both synagogues. Some congregants drive to services, not something normally done at orthodox synagogues. He studied in Jewish Schools where they do not explore the American constitution, so I wonder about his understanding of the subtleties of the separation of church and state. Bit given his scholarly mind, I'm sure he has explored the issue.
It will be interesting to see how this evolves. Given the rampant development in Anchorage, the fact that wetlands are being filled in right and left, I suspect that this project will proceed as scheduled and that this organization will make sincere efforts to be good neighbors.
(If you click on the picture you can get a larger version.)Basically, the group owns a one acre parcel on 36th Avenue (the grey line on the bottom of the map). 36th is a four lane road that goes through two residential neighborhoods and carries a lot of traffic to the University of Alaska Anchorage. There are no commercial properties until you get further east or west. There's a church across the street from the property. There is a wetland area designated Jaobson park next to the site, and another park, David Green Park across 36th, which has a playground. A couple houses face 36th in the last block or so before the university. So as you drive this stretch you mostly green from fenced back yards, park, or wetlands. (Well now you see mostly white.)
The currently owned parcel is the orange rectangle at the bottom left of the map. Right now there is only a mikva on that lot, and it was built about 8 years ago. A mikva, a ceremonial bathhouse. According to www.chabad.org:
"... the most important and general usage of mikvah is for purification by the menstruant woman.
For the menstruant woman, immersion in a mikvah is part of a larger framework best known as Taharat Hamishpachah (Family Purity). As with every area of Jewish practice, Family Purity involves a set of detailed laws; namely, the "when," "what," and "how" of observance. Studying with a woman who is experienced in this field is the time-honored way of gaining familiarity and comfort with the practice. In cities or communities with large Jewish populations, there may be classes one can join. The majority of women, however, come by this knowledge through a more personal one-on-one encounter. While books are a poor substitute for a knowledgeable teacher, select titles can be used as a guide to this ritual or for quick reference (see suggested book list in appendix to this essay). What follows is only a brief overview of these laws. It is not, and was not intended to be, a substitute for proper study of this subject.
Family purity is a system predicated on the woman's monthly cycle. From the onset of menstruation and for seven days after its end, until the woman immerses in the mikvah, husband and wife may not engage in sexual relations. To avoid violation of this law, the couple should curtail their indulgence in actions they find arousing, putting a check on direct physical contact and refraining from physical manifestations of affection. The technical term for a woman in this state is Niddah (literal meaning: to be separated).
Exactly a week from when the woman has established the cessation of her flow, she visits the mikvah. Immersion takes place after nightfall of the seventh day and is preceded by a requisite cleansing. The immersion is valid only when the waters of the mikvah envelop each and every part of the body and, indeed, each hair. To this end, the woman bathes, shampoos, combs her hair, and removes from her body anything that might impede her total immersion."
It was also interesting to read on that website that:
"Today it is not just a Jewish metropolis that can boast a mikvah. In remote, even exotic, locations- Anchorage, Alaska, and Bogota, Colombia; Yerres, France, and Ladispoli, Italy; Agadir, Morocco, and Asuncion in Paraguay; Lima, Peru, and Cape Town, South Africa; Bangkok, Thailand, and Zarzis, Tunisia; and almost every city in the C.I.S. (former Soviet Union) -- there are kosher and comfortable mikvahs and rabbis and rebbetzins willing and able to assist any woman in their use."
At the meeting there was some disagreement about what was said when the mikvah was built. One man said that it was only going to be a mikva, and no they were not planning to build anything else. Rabbi Greenberg, standing in this picture, said they had always planned to build a synagogue there, but at the time they didn't have enough money to do that as well. But now they have decided to also have a Jewish Museum attached as well. They have enough room for the synagogue and the museum on the one acre. According to John Nabors, the project manager, the buildings can take up to 30% of the property and thus the synagogue and attached museum meet that requirement. The problem comes in because "the city requires parking..." for about 70 cars. So they would like the parcel in yellow next to the orange box for parking. That is part of the designated Class A wetlands (Otis Lake drains into this area) owned by the city. Lot 14 - the backwards L shaped Yellow in the upper right quadrant of the map - is owned by people involved with the synagogue and they want to swap that land for the parcel next to the proposed building. T
There was a lot of discussion about drainage. An engineer, an architect, and a landscape architect all spoke. A woman from the Anchorage Waterways Council was also there and answered questions, such as, "It appears to me that the parcel they want to trade which is practically unbuildable because of the water is much less valuable than the parcel with frontage on 36." She said, (I'm paraphrasing) "You are absolutely right from a real estate perspective. The land on 36th is much more valuable. But from an ecologically standpoint, Lot 14 is far more valuable. The 36th lot has been filled in by the City when they widened 36th to four lanes. The City essentially destroyed that part of the wetland." There was discussion about neighborhood basements being flooded. There were promises made that the footpaths from the neighborhoods through the wetland to 36th would be preserved for the public use. And that the parking lot would be open to the public to visit Jacobson Park and that the synagogue group would donate $100,000 to make improved access to the park. And all of this is in writing in the brochures announcing the meeting.
So, this was a meeting put on by the people who want to build. It was not a community council meeting, nor a city run meeting. John Nabors said at the very beginning of the meeting that they have not applied for any permits and so the city really has no official position on this. But they have spent a lot of time talking to people at the City from the mayor to people in the various departments that will be involved in permitting.
The apparent purpose of the meeting was engage the community in dialogue and win their support prior to an Assembly meeting on Feb 13 at which time the Assembly will vote on putting the land swap on the ballot for April 3. If that is passed, then there needs to be Corps of Engineer Approval for building on the wetlands, and various other approvals. The land swap will be contingent on all the other "dominoes falling into place."
We left the meeting after about 2 hours so I'm not sure what else was discussed. Nobody, by that time, had raised the question that had been brought up during the legislative session about the $850,000 that was appropriated by the Alaska Legislature last spring for the Alaska Jewish Historical Museum and Community Center. Some people had been concerned about the state giving money for religious purposes. It was argued that the museum would cover the history of the Jewish people in Alaska, not be a center to celebrate religious practices, though most Jewish Community Centers do have various religious ceremonies and activities in them. The fact that the synagogue and the museum will essentially be one large building would seem to bring that question up again. Is someone going to audit how the money is spent to be sure that the state isn't funding the practice of a religion? If you look at the list of other projects funded by the legislature you'll see some other museums. I just took the A's a little past Alaska Jewish Museum on the list. Is the Alaska Native Heritage Center different from a synagogue? They cover the history and traditions of the various Alaska Native peoples. They even have various dancing and other traditional native spiritual activities. Is that different?
MUNICIPALITY OF ANCHORAGE - 2006 STATE LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM RESULTS
Grant RequestedProject Name Grant Approved
Other Anchorage Organizations
African American Historical Society - Resources, Equipment & Supplies $30,000
Airport Heights Community Council - Community Patrol Supplies $10,000
Alaska Air Show Association - Arctic Thunder Air Show $61,000
Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum: Building Demolition, Facility Improvements, and construction $750,000
Alaska Energy Authority - Study of Operating the Electrical Intertie Grid $800,000
Alaska Jewish Historical Museum and Community Center $850,000
Alaska Judicial Observers, Recruit/Screen/Train $30,000
Alaska Native Heritage Center Expansion $250,000
Alaska State Troopers Museum - Archive Program $200,000
Overall, the meeting was very civil. John Nabors wanted badly to have an organized, rational, linear presentation from the beginning to the end. The sort of thing that gives one a good overview of the whole project, and is often fairly boring to listen to. Various members of the audience asked questions that took things in other areas, but were more interesing to listen to. The times I've met Rabbi Greenberg, he has greatly impressed me by his wisdom, knowledge, and decency. For a Lubavitch rabbi, he has made various adaptations to accommodate for the realities of Alaska life. He has had relatively good relations with the Reform synagogue in town, and a number of Jews attend both synagogues. Some congregants drive to services, not something normally done at orthodox synagogues. He studied in Jewish Schools where they do not explore the American constitution, so I wonder about his understanding of the subtleties of the separation of church and state. Bit given his scholarly mind, I'm sure he has explored the issue.
It will be interesting to see how this evolves. Given the rampant development in Anchorage, the fact that wetlands are being filled in right and left, I suspect that this project will proceed as scheduled and that this organization will make sincere efforts to be good neighbors.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Intimate Partner Violence Prevention
So what is intimate partner violence? That was one of the topics discussed in small groups at an all day meeting I went to yesterday. The other tricky question is what is the difference between prevention and intervention? I've been over this territory this year as part of another group of some of the same people who were there yesterday.
Basically, we are talking about domestic violence, plus. Domestic violence would be husband-wife or couples living together, and various combinations of exes. The plus would add to this same sex couples and people who are dating, including those who may not be having sexual relations. So this would include kids who are dating. As I understand this, this plus stuff is intended to increase the types of people who are covered. Violence goes from the obvious physical to verbal and psychological. It includes things like stalking and other controlling kinds of behavior. [WARNING: Don't quote me on any of this. I'm still trying to work it all out in my own mind. You can look up "Intimate Partner Violence Prevention" on google and see what everyone says. Or go to the CDC site and see what they say.
Prevention is a term the CDC is pushing hard. Their intent as I understand it, is to put more money and programs into preventing intimate partner violence before it even begins. The basic strategy is to expose people - younger people mostly - to how to have healthy relationships, particularly relationships that have a romantic or sexual aspect.
So the grant money is not allowed to be spent on intervention. Intervention being actions taken to stop already occuring intimate partner violence. The dilemma comes when you try to separate the two. Some things are obvious. The police coming to arrest a batterer is clearly intervention. Working with the battered spouse to help prevent future incidents as well as doing the same with the batterer tends to be seen, by the CDC, as intervention rather than prevention. They have terms like primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention that tries to make these distinctions. I strongly support the focus on prevention. That is why I'm even involved with this project. For every couple that could turn to violence to resolve their differences but who learn how to resolve those differences in other ways, our community saves a lot of future time and money doing intervention. It also saves a lot of time and money for other family members and friends whose lives are interrupted by such violence. But people who are at the forefront of this issue, almost necessarily are involved with intervention. They have to be doing both. Yes, we want to stop future violence, but if there are battered folks right now, they can't be ignored.
In any case, the emphasis on prevention is wise in the long term. And the debates that the distinctions cause are probably good because they make the participants think about all the implications. What about kids who witness violence at home? Is working with them intervention or prevention, for example. But this is almost a chicken and egg debate and after the discussion, with heightened awareness, the people directly involved need to be given some leeway to make common sense decisions about how the intepret this. Since there seems to be pretty good evidence that many batterers were battered or witnessed battering as children, they are the likeliest to become violent later, and thus the group where prevention would have the biggest long term impact.
We didn't spend a lot of time yesterday discussing this. Most of our time was in small groups determining how we are going to develop a statewide plan to prevent intimate partner violence. Different groups took different aspects of the tasks - getting an inventory of already available resources to document what we already know from existing data about the issue; developing the plan itself; setting up an evaluation protocol; dissemination of the plan and the information in it. I was extremely impressed by the competence and commitment of the 20 or so members of the steering committee. They represent expertise at various levels - from people currently working directly with youth and couples to higher level administrators, planners, and researchers. And while we could have more representation, we did have males as well as females, Hispanics and Alaska Natives as well as whites. And rural as well as urban residents. There was no bickering, even over the definitions. Everyone seemed to understand the inherent problems of defining terms, the importance of working on it, and the need to not worry about resolving all the loose ends. I think this has the potential to be a project that makes a difference in the lives of Alaskans.
Basically, we are talking about domestic violence, plus. Domestic violence would be husband-wife or couples living together, and various combinations of exes. The plus would add to this same sex couples and people who are dating, including those who may not be having sexual relations. So this would include kids who are dating. As I understand this, this plus stuff is intended to increase the types of people who are covered. Violence goes from the obvious physical to verbal and psychological. It includes things like stalking and other controlling kinds of behavior. [WARNING: Don't quote me on any of this. I'm still trying to work it all out in my own mind. You can look up "Intimate Partner Violence Prevention" on google and see what everyone says. Or go to the CDC site and see what they say.
Prevention is a term the CDC is pushing hard. Their intent as I understand it, is to put more money and programs into preventing intimate partner violence before it even begins. The basic strategy is to expose people - younger people mostly - to how to have healthy relationships, particularly relationships that have a romantic or sexual aspect.
So the grant money is not allowed to be spent on intervention. Intervention being actions taken to stop already occuring intimate partner violence. The dilemma comes when you try to separate the two. Some things are obvious. The police coming to arrest a batterer is clearly intervention. Working with the battered spouse to help prevent future incidents as well as doing the same with the batterer tends to be seen, by the CDC, as intervention rather than prevention. They have terms like primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention that tries to make these distinctions. I strongly support the focus on prevention. That is why I'm even involved with this project. For every couple that could turn to violence to resolve their differences but who learn how to resolve those differences in other ways, our community saves a lot of future time and money doing intervention. It also saves a lot of time and money for other family members and friends whose lives are interrupted by such violence. But people who are at the forefront of this issue, almost necessarily are involved with intervention. They have to be doing both. Yes, we want to stop future violence, but if there are battered folks right now, they can't be ignored.
In any case, the emphasis on prevention is wise in the long term. And the debates that the distinctions cause are probably good because they make the participants think about all the implications. What about kids who witness violence at home? Is working with them intervention or prevention, for example. But this is almost a chicken and egg debate and after the discussion, with heightened awareness, the people directly involved need to be given some leeway to make common sense decisions about how the intepret this. Since there seems to be pretty good evidence that many batterers were battered or witnessed battering as children, they are the likeliest to become violent later, and thus the group where prevention would have the biggest long term impact.
We didn't spend a lot of time yesterday discussing this. Most of our time was in small groups determining how we are going to develop a statewide plan to prevent intimate partner violence. Different groups took different aspects of the tasks - getting an inventory of already available resources to document what we already know from existing data about the issue; developing the plan itself; setting up an evaluation protocol; dissemination of the plan and the information in it. I was extremely impressed by the competence and commitment of the 20 or so members of the steering committee. They represent expertise at various levels - from people currently working directly with youth and couples to higher level administrators, planners, and researchers. And while we could have more representation, we did have males as well as females, Hispanics and Alaska Natives as well as whites. And rural as well as urban residents. There was no bickering, even over the definitions. Everyone seemed to understand the inherent problems of defining terms, the importance of working on it, and the need to not worry about resolving all the loose ends. I think this has the potential to be a project that makes a difference in the lives of Alaskans.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
American Soldiers Abducted by Group Disguised as Americans
Story of soldiers' slayings revealed slowly
Correspondent's tenacity helped unearth the truth
By RICHARD MAUER
Anchorage Daily News
Published: January 28, 2007
Last Modified: January 28, 2007 at 03:34 AM
BAGHDAD -- I was nearly done eating today when Hussam Ali, our stringer from Karbala, buzzed the gate to our floor and charged into the room.
Hussam is thin like a runner. His cheekbones look sculpted and his skin is darker than olive. He has a thin mustache. And he was excited like any reporter with a big, big story.
Hussam had been up well past 2 a.m., talking on the phone to bureau chief Leila Fadel about the events of a week ago Saturday in his town. That's when four American soldiers, most likely all from Fort Richardson, were abducted and executed, still handcuffed, following a brazen raid on a provincial government compound.
Army officials finally acknowledged the abductions last night in a press release e-mailed to media 11 p.m. Iraq time. Prior to that, the official story made it sound like the soldiers had died in battle, not murdered in, or just outside, the Chevy Suburbans abandoned by the attackers miles from the compound.
But Hussam began discovering the truth earlier this week, having heard from the police in the neighboring town of Hilla, where the Suburbans -- and the slain Americans -- were found. But the U.S. Army refused to confirm or deny the account until The Associated Press sent a report over its wire last night. . . .
At dusk on Saturday, Jan. 20, Hussam was in his house, a few hundred yards from the compound, when he heard a huge explosion. He raced out the door and headed toward the sound of gunfire. Early-arriving pilgrims in the streets were scattering. Hussam thought a mortar had landed in their midst. Then he saw smoke rising from the compound. Was it a car bomb, he wondered?
With snipers on the roofs, he didn't want to get too close to the walls. He took cover beside a police car abandoned in the middle of the street. He was on the opposite site of the compound from the gate. He could see military vehicles burning inside but not the Suburbans roaring off with their captives.
Women and children were racing out of a small door in the wall to his left. They had been visiting their men in jail. Hussam asked what they had seen, but they wouldn't talk to him.
It grew very dark. The power was cut. The gunfire had stopped. Hussam made his way to the gate. The guards were still jumpy and excited. He asked them who the attackers were.
"Americans! It was the Americans!" they shouted.
As surreal as Iraq can be, that still made no sense to Hussam. But the attackers came up in a half-dozen or more Suburbans, just like Americans travel. They had U.S. documents and wore U.S. uniforms. At least one was very light-skinned and spoke in English. {Get the whole Anchorage Daily News story clicking here.]
Think about what this means. Iraqi insurgents or maybe Al-Qaida, or Iranians got US vehicles, or US looking vehicles, dressed in US uniforms, with US papers, breeze past the checkpoint, attack, and kidnap four American soldiers. One of the reasons I thought our invasion of Iraq was a mistake from the beginning was that I knew we were sending young American troops into a culture they knew nothing about, where people speak a language they don't understand. As a former Peace Corps volunteer who lived as the only American in a small Northern Thai provincial capital for a year (a second volunteer showed up the second year) I understand a little bit about living in a foreign culture. And we had enough intensive Thai language training before we left that I could get by in Thai (emphasis on 'get by') when I arrived. That was good because my Thai was better than the English of most of the people I met. I know how totally ignorant I was - despite our language and cultural training - when I arrived. And the more language and culture I learned, the more I realized how much more there was that I would never comprehend.
So our troops were going to be dependent on Arabic speaking interpreters. But how do you know which interpreters are on 'our' side? So we are in a country, where, for the most part, we are dependent on bi-lingual Iraqis for communication. Yes, I know there are some American soldiers trained in Arabic, just like I was trained in Thai. I could get by, but I certainly didn't understand everything they were saying, or the nuances, or even the irony.
And the war is in their home territory. Where they know when things feel abnormal. Where they have relatives and friends. Where they know the shortcuts between the houses, between the towns. Where they had secret hiding places as kids. US soldiers know none of this.
And many of them speak English. Certainly far more Iraqis speak pretty good English than American troops speak even the most basic Arabic. I know about translators, because a person in my town took English lessons from me because she wanted to deal directly with the foreigners building the road in our area when she negotiated with them to lease the dump trucks she owned. The Thai translator the foreigners had was shaking down all the would-be contractors for kickbacks. In the end, she woke me up one morning at 6am insisting I had to come as her translator because her English wasn't good enough yet. And afterward the foreigners offered me the job as translator, because they knew theirs wasn't conveying everything honestly. (I didn't take the job, I had my classes to teach.) And I know about translators because of a research trip to Beijing with my Hong Kong college students. My students quietly told me what was actually being said as opposed to what the translator had conveyed. This wasn't about bribes, but about Chinese ideas of what is appropriate and inappropriate to say. So that my questions sometimes were rephrased, which explained why the answers made little sense sometimes. Also, because direct translations from one language to another are very difficult to make. The translations are literally accurate, but the words in English don't mean what they mean in the original language.
So already, just the problems of going into a different country, without knowing the culture, without having historical links and personal connections, put us in a real disadvantage. In this newsreport, it is the Iraqi reporter who lives in the neighborhood, was there when the kidnapping took place, and could go around and ask the soldiers and others what happened, who got the story. Not the American journalists trapped in the green zone. [after reading the blog I need to correct this, he isn't in the Green Zone, but he has been, so far, trapped in his hotel.] So even the journalists are relying on the word of Iraqis who may well be accurate reporters of what happened, or could even be plants for the opposition. It takes a while to develop the kind of relationship and cultural sensitivity to know the difference.
Aside from my own overseas experience, the film, Battle of Algiers, about the uprising in Algiers that eventually got the French out and gained Algeria's independence, taught me long ago how difficult it is to fight an urban war in a foreign land against a united people. I was glad to see the film was on the must-see list in Washington, DC a couple of years ago. Apparently the right people didn't see it, or if they did, thought like the French, that they knew better. Given our involvement in Iraq and Afganistan, I think all Americans ought to slip down to their video rental store and check it out. Even if they have to read the subtitles.
But all of those comments are just background for the real importance of this story. First, note that in the story "At least one was very light-skinned and spoke in English." There is an assumption that Americans are 'very light skinned." Or that Iraqis are not. Of course, we know that the US military is made up of soldiers of every shade of skin.
Second, whoever conducted this raid, understood the Americans far better than the Americans understand them. They were able to disguise themselves as Americans. These are people every bit as smart as the smartest Americans over there, but they have the advantage of knowing the home culture and language, as well as knowing enough of the American culture and language to pull pretending to be Americans.
This report suggests that up to now soldiers riding in US looking vehicles and wearing US uniforms and carrying US papers and speaking at least some English, have been assumed to be Americans and they pretty much get waved through the checkpoints. If that is true, and this news story is true, then American soldiers are no longer going to be able to trust American soldiers. Not only will they be fighting the 'enemy,' they now have to be very careful of their own troops, who may actually be the enemy.
And given that many of our troops are brown skinned and have accents, what is going to happen to the morale in our troops? Are American soldiers who look like they could be 'them' and don't speak accent-free American English going to be suspect? I would guess that might have been one of the objectives of the raid - to sow doubt among American soldiers about who is actually American.
After I wrote this, I went back to the Anchorage Daily News website and began reading Rich Mauer's blog. I know Rich and talked to him a couple weeks ago because he'd written such a good piece on the FBI investigation of Alaskan politicians. That's when I learned he was headed for Iraq. Reading his blog reinforces all the stuff I've said above about knowing the language and the culture. So far Rich is locked up in a dark hotel room getting news from Iraqi reporters and news wires. You can read his blog yourself. But reporting is different from running a military campaign. We need lots of eyes and ears. As someone who's just been plucked off the streets of Anchorage (he's got good reporting skills, but his experience in Iraq is not much different from most others in Anchorage) he will see and hear things that are different from what more experienced Iraq hands will see. All is new and different and his eye is more like the average Alaskan's, so perhaps his reporting will connect to them more. His blog reports are certainly interesting. In addition to checking out Rich's blog, you might also want to check out the website and blog of Dahr Jamail, another person from Anchorage who has been covering Iraq as an independent reporter for several years now. When wandering around the streets of Bagdad got too dangerous, he pulled out of Iraq, and is now reporting about the mideast more generally.
Correspondent's tenacity helped unearth the truth
By RICHARD MAUER
Anchorage Daily News
Published: January 28, 2007
Last Modified: January 28, 2007 at 03:34 AM
BAGHDAD -- I was nearly done eating today when Hussam Ali, our stringer from Karbala, buzzed the gate to our floor and charged into the room.
Hussam is thin like a runner. His cheekbones look sculpted and his skin is darker than olive. He has a thin mustache. And he was excited like any reporter with a big, big story.
Hussam had been up well past 2 a.m., talking on the phone to bureau chief Leila Fadel about the events of a week ago Saturday in his town. That's when four American soldiers, most likely all from Fort Richardson, were abducted and executed, still handcuffed, following a brazen raid on a provincial government compound.
Army officials finally acknowledged the abductions last night in a press release e-mailed to media 11 p.m. Iraq time. Prior to that, the official story made it sound like the soldiers had died in battle, not murdered in, or just outside, the Chevy Suburbans abandoned by the attackers miles from the compound.
But Hussam began discovering the truth earlier this week, having heard from the police in the neighboring town of Hilla, where the Suburbans -- and the slain Americans -- were found. But the U.S. Army refused to confirm or deny the account until The Associated Press sent a report over its wire last night. . . .
At dusk on Saturday, Jan. 20, Hussam was in his house, a few hundred yards from the compound, when he heard a huge explosion. He raced out the door and headed toward the sound of gunfire. Early-arriving pilgrims in the streets were scattering. Hussam thought a mortar had landed in their midst. Then he saw smoke rising from the compound. Was it a car bomb, he wondered?
With snipers on the roofs, he didn't want to get too close to the walls. He took cover beside a police car abandoned in the middle of the street. He was on the opposite site of the compound from the gate. He could see military vehicles burning inside but not the Suburbans roaring off with their captives.
Women and children were racing out of a small door in the wall to his left. They had been visiting their men in jail. Hussam asked what they had seen, but they wouldn't talk to him.
It grew very dark. The power was cut. The gunfire had stopped. Hussam made his way to the gate. The guards were still jumpy and excited. He asked them who the attackers were.
"Americans! It was the Americans!" they shouted.
As surreal as Iraq can be, that still made no sense to Hussam. But the attackers came up in a half-dozen or more Suburbans, just like Americans travel. They had U.S. documents and wore U.S. uniforms. At least one was very light-skinned and spoke in English. {Get the whole Anchorage Daily News story clicking here.]
Think about what this means. Iraqi insurgents or maybe Al-Qaida, or Iranians got US vehicles, or US looking vehicles, dressed in US uniforms, with US papers, breeze past the checkpoint, attack, and kidnap four American soldiers. One of the reasons I thought our invasion of Iraq was a mistake from the beginning was that I knew we were sending young American troops into a culture they knew nothing about, where people speak a language they don't understand. As a former Peace Corps volunteer who lived as the only American in a small Northern Thai provincial capital for a year (a second volunteer showed up the second year) I understand a little bit about living in a foreign culture. And we had enough intensive Thai language training before we left that I could get by in Thai (emphasis on 'get by') when I arrived. That was good because my Thai was better than the English of most of the people I met. I know how totally ignorant I was - despite our language and cultural training - when I arrived. And the more language and culture I learned, the more I realized how much more there was that I would never comprehend.
So our troops were going to be dependent on Arabic speaking interpreters. But how do you know which interpreters are on 'our' side? So we are in a country, where, for the most part, we are dependent on bi-lingual Iraqis for communication. Yes, I know there are some American soldiers trained in Arabic, just like I was trained in Thai. I could get by, but I certainly didn't understand everything they were saying, or the nuances, or even the irony.
And the war is in their home territory. Where they know when things feel abnormal. Where they have relatives and friends. Where they know the shortcuts between the houses, between the towns. Where they had secret hiding places as kids. US soldiers know none of this.
And many of them speak English. Certainly far more Iraqis speak pretty good English than American troops speak even the most basic Arabic. I know about translators, because a person in my town took English lessons from me because she wanted to deal directly with the foreigners building the road in our area when she negotiated with them to lease the dump trucks she owned. The Thai translator the foreigners had was shaking down all the would-be contractors for kickbacks. In the end, she woke me up one morning at 6am insisting I had to come as her translator because her English wasn't good enough yet. And afterward the foreigners offered me the job as translator, because they knew theirs wasn't conveying everything honestly. (I didn't take the job, I had my classes to teach.) And I know about translators because of a research trip to Beijing with my Hong Kong college students. My students quietly told me what was actually being said as opposed to what the translator had conveyed. This wasn't about bribes, but about Chinese ideas of what is appropriate and inappropriate to say. So that my questions sometimes were rephrased, which explained why the answers made little sense sometimes. Also, because direct translations from one language to another are very difficult to make. The translations are literally accurate, but the words in English don't mean what they mean in the original language.
So already, just the problems of going into a different country, without knowing the culture, without having historical links and personal connections, put us in a real disadvantage. In this newsreport, it is the Iraqi reporter who lives in the neighborhood, was there when the kidnapping took place, and could go around and ask the soldiers and others what happened, who got the story. Not the American journalists trapped in the green zone. [after reading the blog I need to correct this, he isn't in the Green Zone, but he has been, so far, trapped in his hotel.] So even the journalists are relying on the word of Iraqis who may well be accurate reporters of what happened, or could even be plants for the opposition. It takes a while to develop the kind of relationship and cultural sensitivity to know the difference.
Aside from my own overseas experience, the film, Battle of Algiers, about the uprising in Algiers that eventually got the French out and gained Algeria's independence, taught me long ago how difficult it is to fight an urban war in a foreign land against a united people. I was glad to see the film was on the must-see list in Washington, DC a couple of years ago. Apparently the right people didn't see it, or if they did, thought like the French, that they knew better. Given our involvement in Iraq and Afganistan, I think all Americans ought to slip down to their video rental store and check it out. Even if they have to read the subtitles.
But all of those comments are just background for the real importance of this story. First, note that in the story "At least one was very light-skinned and spoke in English." There is an assumption that Americans are 'very light skinned." Or that Iraqis are not. Of course, we know that the US military is made up of soldiers of every shade of skin.
Second, whoever conducted this raid, understood the Americans far better than the Americans understand them. They were able to disguise themselves as Americans. These are people every bit as smart as the smartest Americans over there, but they have the advantage of knowing the home culture and language, as well as knowing enough of the American culture and language to pull pretending to be Americans.
This report suggests that up to now soldiers riding in US looking vehicles and wearing US uniforms and carrying US papers and speaking at least some English, have been assumed to be Americans and they pretty much get waved through the checkpoints. If that is true, and this news story is true, then American soldiers are no longer going to be able to trust American soldiers. Not only will they be fighting the 'enemy,' they now have to be very careful of their own troops, who may actually be the enemy.
And given that many of our troops are brown skinned and have accents, what is going to happen to the morale in our troops? Are American soldiers who look like they could be 'them' and don't speak accent-free American English going to be suspect? I would guess that might have been one of the objectives of the raid - to sow doubt among American soldiers about who is actually American.
After I wrote this, I went back to the Anchorage Daily News website and began reading Rich Mauer's blog. I know Rich and talked to him a couple weeks ago because he'd written such a good piece on the FBI investigation of Alaskan politicians. That's when I learned he was headed for Iraq. Reading his blog reinforces all the stuff I've said above about knowing the language and the culture. So far Rich is locked up in a dark hotel room getting news from Iraqi reporters and news wires. You can read his blog yourself. But reporting is different from running a military campaign. We need lots of eyes and ears. As someone who's just been plucked off the streets of Anchorage (he's got good reporting skills, but his experience in Iraq is not much different from most others in Anchorage) he will see and hear things that are different from what more experienced Iraq hands will see. All is new and different and his eye is more like the average Alaskan's, so perhaps his reporting will connect to them more. His blog reports are certainly interesting. In addition to checking out Rich's blog, you might also want to check out the website and blog of Dahr Jamail, another person from Anchorage who has been covering Iraq as an independent reporter for several years now. When wandering around the streets of Bagdad got too dangerous, he pulled out of Iraq, and is now reporting about the mideast more generally.
Bohemian Waxwings and the Mountain Ash Trees
Our living room window faces south, so when the waxwings come to feast on our berries I'm always filming into the light. (The sun is basically on the southern horizon all winter when they come to claim their prizes from the Mountain Ash trees.) And this being the first time I videoed the birds, using my digital camera, I totally forgot about the sound. Luckily, the music on the radio is ok, unfortunately, my wife was talking on the phone. But, for the time being, I'll post it as a way to entice you to find links to better pictures of these beautiful birds. And as a reminder to others who might forget their camera is recording sound as well as video.
These are the second set of tree trimmers maintaining our mountain ash trees.
These are the second set of tree trimmers maintaining our mountain ash trees.
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