Galloping Toward Equinox

As you can see, we're gaining Five and a half minutes of daylight each day. But what is misleading is the 8 hours of daylight. That is really the time between sunrise and sunset. But twilight gets longer and longer as you go north. The picture was taken at 6:36pm on February 7, looking West. Sunset that day was officially at 5:24, so there was still some light in the western sky over an hour later. I remember being in Hawaii with the kids. We were watching the sunset, and I had to point out, that it would be dark in 10 or 15 minutes because that's what happens when you are further south.

DATE Sunrise Sunset Daylight Daylight gained
Feb 5, 2007 9:10 AM 5:18 PM 8h 08m 08s + 5m 26s
Feb 6, 2007 9:07 AM 5:21 PM 8h 13m 36s + 5m 28s
Feb 7, 2007 9:05 AM 5:24 PM 8h 19m 06s + 5m 29s
Feb 8, 2007 9:02 AM 5:26 PM 8h 24m 38s + 5m 31s
Feb 9, 2007 8:59 AM 5:29 PM 8h 30m 11s + 5m 33s
Feb 10, 2007 8:56 AM 5:32 PM 8h 35m 45s + 5m 33s

Of course, if it is cloudy, that long twilight is severely curtailed. Today it won't last nearly so long. Here are a couple of pictures of downtown Anchorage I took dropping something off for a friend who works on the 12th floor.




That's the new Convention Center going up. Boy, this is about as grim a picture of Anchorage as you can get. Not even a trace of the Chugach Mountains in the background.






And on the left you can see northwest out over the Inlet. That's where one the infamous bridges wants to be. Not exaxtly a bridge to nowhere.

Nicholas and the Last King of Scotland

I was disappointed.

This is the evil version of The King and I. Foreigner in King's service tells his story. Except in this movie, Nicholas sees the good in his evil king, while Anna saw the flaws in her nobe king. And Nicholas and the King don't sing to each other. s.

What we saw of the King was a man switching back and forth from charming to evil. We have no clue why. We don't know much more about the reasons for Amin's rise to power, the relationships between Africa and the Colonial West.

I'm not sure that all the praise for Forrest Whitaker is warranted. It seemed to me to be great mimickry more than great acting. While we saw the charm and the horror of Amin, we don't really know who he is. Perhaps this is something a psychiatrist would have to tell us, something beyond an actor.

Why do we need the foreigner to tell the story? At least in Hotel Rwanda we saw the horror from the eyes of other, more noble African. But in other Africa films I've mentioned - Blood Diamonds, Constant Gardner and Babel whites were the entre into Africa. Perhaps this was less problematic because these whites were an integral part of the story and because the movies showed us the bigger picture of how the West was involved in Africa's problems. Or maybe I was lulled. In this case, the white foreigner is totally unnecessary to the main show - Idi Amin. He seems to be there because someone thinks that Western audiences can't relate to Africa without a white guide. (I realize that this is how Giles Foden, the author of the novel this is based on, wrote it. And as someone who spent years in Africa with his parents, that is how he would see things.) But we should see more movies about Africa where whites play a less prominent role.

Tim Young Memorial

My daughter was in town for the weekend to attend the memorial for Tim Young, one of her teachers at Steller Secondary School here in Anchorage. I went with her. I knew him, but not well. The principal of the school read a poem he'd written about Tim, about how he was wise and foolish, pushing the edge, unreasonable and remarkable, etc. It ended, "I hired him, I fired him, I
admired him." Andrea, in the video, read a message that Chris had sent.




Various former students said that they are living lives today, because of what Tim taught them about life. Several said that when they talk to friends Outside (of Alaska) about Tim and what they learned in class, the reaction is, "You learned about that in high school?!" Monica said, when I talk to people they sometimes say, "How do you know all those different things?" and she realized that she learned them in Tim's classes. From labor organizing to Hindu philosophy. She said she was surprised when she visited Carenegie Mellon University to find out how much money Carnegie had donated. "Tim only told us how he exploited his workers and how ruthless a capitalist he was. But he also said, that I'm telling you things you won't hear other places. You can fill in the other details yourselves." Charles, a close friend since high school, talked about Tim's illness and a little about his life and death in India.

For more click here or here.

If Branding is Good for Cities, Why Not for Kids?

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.

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.

Jehovah's Witness

Jim was at the door about 10am this morning to share the good word with me.

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.

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.

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.