Alaska Blogs Overview and Blogspot new Blog List Widget

[The explanation is on top. For the list of blogs, slide on down to the lower part of the post.]

When I first started blogging I wanted to post about Alaska blogs. I thought I could make a directory of blogs. But as I searched out Alaska blogs, the lists got longer and longer. I found a couple of Alaska Blog sites which got me into the hundreds. When Blogspot Profiles allowed you to see all the people at the same location, say Alaska, I got about 7000 blogs. Today it says 9200 blogs! You can see the hard to navigate list here. Anchorage with nearly half the population of Alaska only has 2500

And that's just blogspot blogs.

It appears that there were various kinds of Alaska blogs:

• Personal blogs of people who happen to live in Alaska.
• Daily diaries of what they did
• More thoughtful essays stemming from what they did or read or heard or know.
• My Alaska Adventure blogs. People who are in Alaska temporarily and are letting the world know about how they are surviving in the far north. Teachers, doctors, travelers. etc. We forget that we are exotic to the rest of the world.
  
• Sports blogs - Bicycle blogs, Ski blogs, Running blogs - tend to focus on training schedules, equipment, races.
• Mommy blogs - This is definitely NOT a put down title. It just means that these blogs are written by women whose profession for now is raising kid(s) and that is one of the topics they write about.
  
• Professional blogs - talking about the law, teaching, medicine, etc.
• Photo blogs - lots of pictures.
• Activist blogs - keeping track of what's happening in a town, neighborhood, community.
• Artist blogs - focus on the art they are working on
• Political blogs - keeping track of what's happening in politics in general or in a particular party
• Special issue blogs - these focus on a particular area of interest, anything from a specific disease to a type of music, to gardening
  

This is just a sampling of some categories that presented themselves as I looked at blogs. Many blogs blend two or more of these categories. And there are lots of other categories I'm sure.

And on June 5, Blogspot added the ability to have an RSS or other feed right in one's blog list which I turned on yesterday. That put the pressure on me to get this post out. But the blog list feature takes up a lot more room. So I think I'll put up the ones I check most frequently and then have a link to this post, which I'll update as blogs peter out and as I discover new ones.

Fairbanks Pedestrian suggested I set up criteria for my blog roll when I despaired about how to deal with who to put on my blog roll.

My criteria are:
1. Do I read it regularly?
2. How often is it updated?
3. Is the information unique and with some larger public purpose?
4. Is it well written?
5. Does it make me think?
6. Is it from the heart?
7. How many people know about this blog?

Actually, the criteria are an afterthought. No one can keep up with even a tiny fraction of blogs. What I have here on my list are the Alaska blogs that I find myself checking on - some daily, some every now and then. There are others that are in my radar - mudflat, for instance - but I haven't been to it enough to be able to write about it.

I also figured that I would put a link to a post that tells a little bit about each of the blogs I have linked on the front page, plus other blogs. After long deliberation it seemed that organizing by location was the simplest.


Anchorage

Celtic Diva This is primo political site in Anchorage. Linda, the Diva, is the official Alaska blogger for the Democratic National Convention. She's thinks before she writes. Regular, prolific blogger.

Radical Catholic Mom I stumbled on this one and kept coming back. She's a devoted, converted Catholic who doesn't take anything for granted. Interesting peek into a world I normally would know little about. I'd put this in the Mommy Blog category, but it shows you not to assume such blogs are only about the kids. Lots of thinking going on here.

極寒日記（Life with CCKids） This is a blog by a woman who was born and raised in Japan and lives in Anchorage with her local boy husband and two kids. I don't go here too often because it's all in Japanese. But from what I can tell, it's a pretty popular blog in Japan. I got to this blog because her husband was a student of mine.

Own the sidewalk A personal blog by a twenty-something (I think) woman who has a boyfriend, but would abandon him if Mark Begich were available.

Mt. View Forum This is an activist blog, by someone who keeps people alerted to the goings on in Mt. View, a less affluent neighborhood in Anchorage.

Bent Alaska This blog focuses on what's happening in Anchorage's [Alaska's] gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender. and queer communities and allied news.

Alaska Pride This is not another gay site. I list the site with a caution. I check in on this site because there is a lot of good, reasonably balanced - more so than many progressive blogs - posts on many local news topics, including candidates for elections. But any blog that has lots of links to white supremacist and anti-semitic (he calls the White Nationalists) sites has to be approached with caution. Many folks need to visit these places to remember that racism and other forms of virulent hate are alive and well in Alaska and the US. Of course non-white Alaskans don't have to visit these sites to know that racism is still with us.

Anchorage Divorce Blog This is a fairly new blog by a local divorce attorney. Each weekly post explains what to expect when you visit a divorce attorney and how the process works. She's a good attorney and this could be a valuable source of information as the weeks go by and more and more information becomes available. (Radical Catholic Mom doesn't need to read this blog.)


Matsu Valley

Stress Management I don't recall how I found this blog. The description says she lives "North of Chicago," but there kept being references that fit well with Anchorage. When I asked about the contradiction, the answer was, "Well, Alaska is north of Chicago." A mother with nine kids, a car that doesn't always work, who is going to school. Always colorful.

Progressive Alaska Phil Munger's first blog was USA v. Vic Kohring. When the trial ended he started Progressive Alaska, to be a site uniting what he identifies as progressive bloggers. Phil's lived in Alaska a long time, done a lot of interesting things - radio, harbor master, music professor, gadfly. [Note, he prefers the Hebrew term "mekhapes pagam," ] Basically a lefty political blog, that strays off into other areas that come up.

Dennis Zaki Blog I met Dennis -as I met Phil - at the political corruption trials last year. Dennis runs AlaskaReport.com and independent news website that gets lots of hits. He covers local events and has a group of bloggers who post on his site. He just started this blog. Look for consistently great photographs of everything. The header photo changes just about daily.

Cabin Fever in Alaska by Artist Judy Vars An artist blog with pictures of her work and others' and accounts of events in the South central Alaska art world.

Fairbanks
My Fairbanks Life Theresa is a writer who lives in Fairbanks with her husband and son. She write exquisite prose. I read it to be inspired by the language she uses. She sees the uncommon in the common. How about, "Before the sun can find a cloud to powder its nose behind,..." That made me reconsider clouds completely. And the sun. Longish, seemingly wandering essays, in which the various loose threads all get pulled together before the end.

Fiery Blazing Handbasket A real Alaska blog. Outhouses, wood piles, the stereotypical Alaska life style that Outsiders want to hear about - at least those who don't think we live in igloos. But that lifestyle out in the boonies, basic as some of the daily tasks are, comes with an insight and intelligence the New York crowd doesn't expect to find in a cabin in the wilderness.

Fairbanks Pedestrian Another very literate and thoughtful Fairbanks blog that specializes in public spaces, community, and how to create infrastructure that supports a more humane way to live.


Alaskans off the road system
(well, you can take a ferry to Seldovia and Kodiak)

Freshwrestler's Reprieve Irregular posts about what's happening in Seldovia from the perspective of a relative new comer. Thoughtful observations

Grassroots Science This blog had a unique and important role - trying to pass on information that would improve health in the YK Delta (Yukon-Kuskokwim). The posts have lagged lately, so go visit and spur her on to do more.

Kodiak Konfidential The mythical Ishmael writes a salty, irreverent blog about the goings on in Kodiak and beyond. Ish is a definite Palin fan, but I don't think it has to do with politics.


Alaskans Living Outside

Alaskan Abroad Dillon doesn't seem to be able to stay in o ne place long. He's currently a DC political reporter for The Oil Daily, but he's worked for China Daily, the Prague Post, and the Fairbanks DailyNews-Miner, to mention a few. When he isn't listing Outside new references to Alaska politics or about oil, he writes about his dog, rugby, and The Czech Republic. Nice photos too.

The Barnyard Devil I started reading this blog when Matt was based in Girdwood where he was with the fire department. He's also a screen writer, and now is in North Carolina where his partner (wife?) is working. He writes long, interesting essays, that are well worth reading. There were great stories about his life in LA working in the the film and theater worlds. Not sure how long we can count him as an Alaskan, but I'll keep him here for now.


If I've made any factual errors in my descriptions please let me know so I can correct them. One thing that I've noticed is that with few exceptions, most of the bloggers I've listed are white. I know there are Alaskan bloggers of other shades and I'd like to see some of their blogs.

McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt's April Speech in Anchorage Part 1

Gary Pruitt, the CEO of McClatchy, which owns the Anchorage Daily News, gave a speech (there's an audio of the speech at the lin) to Commonwealth North in Anchorage in late April 2008. It started off promising to be a stock speech full of pithy quotes, but then he began to cover a lot of interesting ground. I would guess he spent time putting this speech together and that he's given variations of it more than once. It’s got a lot of things worth discussing. I’ve been mulling it over trying to figure out the best way to do this. Many of the points he raises are worthy of long separate posts of their own. So I'm not going to try to squeeze it all into one post.

Why does this matter?

• The media are a vital part of maintaining a democracy. And as the corporatization of everything takes place, we need to be watchful about what this means. But what happens when this happens to the media itself? The institution that is supposed to do this watching and report to the public? Well, Pruitt gives us some hints hidden in amongst his other points.
  
  
• It also affects how people in Anchorage and in Alaska are going to get news about what is happening in the state. My belief is that an organization dedicated to covering the important news (and we an argue about who defines what is the important news) and pays people to gather and sometimes even investigate “the news” is vital to maintaining an informed citizenry, which is vital to real democracy. Can, will television or radio or the internet be able to take over that function if the newspaper disappears?
  

Overview of this post and follow up posts on this speech
So, in this post I’m going to give you an overview of the talk and the first section - history. Then in other posts I’m going to follow up on different threads.

The speech's five key parts (not necessarily in the order he gives the speech):

1. The history of newspapers in general and McClatchy in particular
2. Models or stories of how things are in the newspaper world
   By this I mean, he talks about the way he thinks things are going and can go. He outlines how “McClatchy” plans (since McClatchy is an organization and not a sentient being, it can’t really think or plan, so this really means how Pruitt plans) to respond to the world it faces. From this we can deduce other possible ways of thinking about the future of newspapers and media, and by extension, democracy.
3. McClatchy and ADN data
   Here he gives us the outcomes, in quantitative terms, of the McClatchy plan. Numbers of readers, dollars, etc.
   
4. Philosophy and values
   This is hard to separate from models, but I’d distinguish the two this way: the Models are attempts to describe and interpret what’s happening in Pruitt’s world. Philosophy is telling us what Pruitt values and how he thinks things should be.
5. Anecdotes and Miscellaneous odds and ends
   Stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into the other categories or overlaps over some or all of them.
   

(I would point out that Pruitt didn't label the parts of his speech this way and that any five people could come up with their own set of key parts. These are my take on the speech, but don't assume that I've captured it perfectly.)

I’ll try to post at least one point per day in the next five days. Then I’ll try to explore some of the paths he leads us by, but doesn’t wander down.

Here’s the easy one, History.

McClatchy was founded in 1857 and has survived while many competitors came and went. People prophesied the demise of the newspaper when other new technologies arose, such as radio and television. And many newspapers did go under.

By 1960 most local markets were down to one newspaper. Anchorage was an exception. There was an exciting, but costly battle between the Daily News and the Times. Once newspapers had a monopoly in their area, they were quite profitable.

Then the internet arrived. It quickly began taking the profitable classifieds - housing, cars, employment.

But, as radio and tv stations proliferated and their markets became increasingly fragmented, the local daily newspapers died out until there was only one newspaper in each local market. While the newspaper competes with many local television and radio stations and many websites, it tends to be the only daily newspaper in town.

Only when there was one newspapers in a market, did they become quite profitable. Quasi-monopoly. That’s when they started to go public (change from private ownership to selling public shares.) Pruitt said we can meet our journalistic obligations and Wall St. demands.

Now in a transformational stage. Many individual newspapers have, and others will, go under, But the newspaper industry will survive. McClatchy will survive. ADN will survive. By the old measures - current revenues - we don't look good. But by the new metrics - we look good. The transition to having both a print and internet presence is not easy.



By tomorrow I’ll try to get the models, but that really isn’t an easy one.

Meanwhile you can listen to the whole speech here. With questions, it's an hour.

[June 24: There is now a Part 2 and a Part 3 will be up soon. Or you can click on the Gary Pruitt label in the lower right column.]

Blooming: Iris, Phlox, Wild Rose, Wild Geranium, Lilac, Lily of the Valley, Mountain Ash, and More

Reason to blog #213*: Keep track of the cycle of time. At first, as I was taking pictures today, I thought, I can't put these up, I did this last year. Then I realized that's ok. It's good to remember that this happened last year, and the year before, and to think about how you've made the world better in between. It was a bit of a shock to discover that some of these flowers I posted exactly one year ago today.


Our first iris just opened today, and not quite fully either.






These plants really look like they should be inside all winter, that they can't possibly survive an Alaskan winter, yet they do quite well. I wrote a Haiku about this and the next flower.


Like birds in our yard
words in my brain come and go
beyond my control.






I couldn't remember the name of this flower last year either.













The pale lavender wild geraniums are pretty common. The white ones are a little harder to find.






Our mountain ash tree provides berries for the bohemian wax wings (be my guests) and bark for the moose (grrrrrr!) in the winter and flowers for me and the bees in the summer.
For a while each summer we have a carpet of pink phlox. If you look closely you can see there are actually two different kind. There are only a few with the red markings. You can see them in the lower right hand corner of the background picture above.

While all our neighbors have spectacular lilacs, we've never been successful until we got one little bunch of flowers last year. I was pleased to see it come back again this year.





Oh yes, I can't forget the spittle bug. My second post, July 9, 2006, was about spittle bugs. Before I had a digital camera. And then again last year on June 23, 2007 I got pictures. They are later this year and not nearly as big or wide spread. Also the aphid larvae were much earlier last year. I'm sparing you the picture of them today.

The Emanual Brothers with Charlie Rose

Phil at Progressive Alaska has criticized Ethan Berkowitz for taking money from Rahm Emanual's PAC, saying things like:

As I've written about here before, the PAC "reads like a "who's who" list of supporters of war with Iran, defenders of the worst aspects of our health care industry, opponents of net neutrality, and enablers of the financial deregulation that allows hedge fund managers to be taxed very little, and who helped engineer the sub-prime mortgage industry meltdown.

This Charlie Rose's June 16, 2008 interview with Rahm and his two brothers doesn't get into the issue of the PAC. Rose says he wants to talk about health care and the Emanual family. Except for a bit at the end, it's not about health care, just the family. Obviously Rose knows these people and isn't probing or challenging on anything close to the issues Phil is concerned with, but the video does give us some background on Rahm and his family. And I found it a lively and interesting show.

Early Dental Appointment

I knew, when I went to bed this morning (it was about 2am) that I had an appointment to get my teeth cleaned today, but all my calendar said was "Dentist." No time. I checked the voice mail, because they usually call the day before. I considered calling to tell them I didn't know what time the appointment was, but I bet on my knowing my sleeping habits and that I would have made it for the afternoon.

So when the phone woke me at 9:08am, I knew it was the dentist's office. I got dressed and grabbed the bike and was there at 9:20. Dianne, my great hygienist, was enjoying the chance to give me a bad time. Well, she always gives me a bad time, but now she had me good. (Note from the picture of the bike racks, Providence Hospital is ready to add another bike rack in the main building garage.)

Me: "I knew I had an appointment, but didn't know when. No one called like usual."
Dianne: "The calls are a courtesy, patients should be responsible. Next thing you know, the patients will expect us to pick them up.(There's always just enough smile in her voice I know she isn't serious.)

This is why I insist on having Dianne. Not only is she a great hygienist, she's honest and funny. I'd been teasing her about it being cheaper to fly to Thailand and get my teeth done than getting it done here. But, given how unprepared I was for today's appointment, I didn't have my pictures with me. So here they are now.

300 Baht is about $10. 500 Baht is about $15. (@32 Baht/$ - so we did rough rounding). So 5000 Baht would be about $150.

South Pacific 50 Years After Film First Came Out

We biked over to the Bear Tooth Monday night for their 50th anniversary of the movie South Pacific. (The picture is getting ready to ride home at about 11:15 pm after the movie. It had an intermission about two hours into the movie.) Not long ago I posted about Out North's production of Hair "forty years later." It's hard to imagine that only ten years separate Hair and South Pacific. Actually a few more, because it was opened on Broadway on April 7, 1949 according to Wikipedia. I grew up listening to Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, but I'd never seen the movie South Pacific.

I was worried it was going to look terribly dated (and the quality of the film - especially when they did special lighting effects - was pretty awful. ) But it was mostly musicals, songs I could sing along with. We have the Broadway album with Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza. Mitzi Gaynor and Rossano Brazzi played the main roles in the movie.

And the underlying theme was interracial marriage - listen to the short clip of "You've got to be taught (to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made, and people whose skin is a different shade, you've got to be carefully taught...) There was even one black man among the mostly bare chested sailors dancing and singing on the beach. This was 1949, pretty amazing. Before Brown v. Board of Education and all civil rights movement in the 1960s. (Spike Lee recently criticized Clint Eastwood for not having any black soldiers in his 2006 film Letters from Iwo Jima. And life has many strange connections. It was in a talk at Cannes where he was discussing his new film about the Buffalo Soldiers whom I just learned about Sunday from a real Buffalo Soldier at the Juneteenth Celebration.)

I don't know how these songs would strike young listeners who'd never heard them before, but since the first Broadway revival just won seven Tony's it must be connecting with somebody. I would note that Oscar Hammerstein, who did the music for this and many other great broadway shows, was like an uncle to Stephen Sondheim who created Sweeny Todd and many other musicals.




The Broadway South Pacific website has some beautiful (great internet quality) videos of the cast in the recording studio. Definitely worth a check.

[I keep mentioning the bikes because if a couple of 60 somethings can ride bikes around town, maybe the rest of you will think about it too. We just ask before we leave, "Can we do this by bike?" and if we aren't running really late or don't need to carry something too big or too heavy and it's not raining, we usually say "Yes."]

David Shurtleff Making a Change

I hear that David Shurtleff is moving from the Alaska Public Radio Network to the [whoops, just got told I have the wrong Be..]Begich Berkowitz campaign. I can hear people saying right now - see I told you the media was liberal. Of course, one reporter doesn't make the media liberal. As if there were no Dan Fagans or Rick Rydells. But it isn't the on air staff that decides the slant of the news. Ultimately it's the owners and they are, by definition, business people. But, it's true APRN is not for profit, but they still have to make their budget.

In any case, David knows how to separate his personal biases from the facts of a story.
He was one of the journalists who was so helpful to me when I started blogging the trials last year. He would share information and notes, just did things to make me feel welcome. The rest of the journalists did the same. Just recently at the Democratic convention, he emailed me his recordings of the speeches of Diane Benson and Ethan Berkowitz so I could post them from the convention. He would be taking bits out for his broadcast, but otherwise didn't need the whole speeches and he thought they should be available right away.

I do have to say that I was constantly amazed at how he could walk out of the courtroom and somehow pull together the key points into a clear, concise, fluid report - no pauses, or filler uhs. Don't know how he does it. I'm going to miss hearing him on the air.

Anchorage Daily News Photo Policy Appears to Be One-Way

[Note: As I was writing this it came to my attention that McClatchy has announced a 10% employee reduction. (McClatchy owns the Anchorage Daily News.) I was already working on a post on a speech McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt gave in Anchorage in April, but it's not quite ready.]

On May 21, Phil Munger posted on Progressive Alaska this comment to a post from the Anchorage Daily News.

Hi Mr. Munger-
My name is Katherine Gill and I work at the Daily News. It was brought to my attention that you posted a photo of Bill Roth's on your blog. We have a copyright fee of $100 to post photos on a website. Please contact me at kgill@adn.com if you would like to proceed with paying the fee, or please remove the photo from your website.

Thank you,
Katherine Gill

Phil went on to mention that Theresa at My Fairbanks Life had gotten a similar order from the ADN about a photo she'd used. Phil did some huffing and puffing about free speech, and a bunch of us told Phil to calm down, that the ADN had copyrights and he had to respect that.

So it is very curious to find that the ADN doesn't seem to respect other people's copyrights. The Alaska Ear published this story in yesterday's paper.


This is also on the ADN Website.

Dennis tells me that he was not asked nor did he give permission for the ADN to use the picture. Furthermore, the ADN has his link wrong - AlaskaReportS.com instead of Alaskareport.com.

Dennis has this posted at the bottom of his blog:

Dennis Zaki Blog - AlaskaReport © 2008 All Rights Reserved.

Now, I understand that people can make mistakes now and then. I mistype often, but Dennis says this is not the first time.

ADN consistantly uses my cartoons yet always manages to foul up the link to my website. And they NEVER put a hotlink up there, unlike to other websites. I've written to them, but it keeps happening... Sean references my site a lot by saying, 'a website'.

So ADN, can you please explain what appears to be a double standard where you feel it's ok for you to use Dennis' copyrighted material, but you don't want other people to use yours? Perhaps there is more to this story that you can share with us.

In the same column, the Ear writes about the Baranof Hotel offering sure reservations and discounted rates in contradiction to what Representatives said in the ADN story about some Representatives sleeping in their offices. Readers of this blog know that I had that story last Monday and on Tuesday I posted the emails the Ear refers to.

I want to make it clear that the Ear got the information independently. When I asked the Baranof manager why he didn't have room for the legislators, he told me about the offer. He hadn't seen the story, but after I brought it to his attention, he called the ADN to fill them in on the other side of the story. They sent him to Sheila Toomey who writes the Ear.

Father's Day, Zen, Juneteenth Part 4

I mentioned Ollen Hunt in the previous post. He fought in Italy in WW II as part of the Buffalo Soldiers. He's been an Anchorage resident since three weeks before the 1964 earthquake.





2wenty (John) is another local boy. He was giving away cd's of his rap album Cold Summer, a title most Alaskans can relate to this year. I believe in free speech. I think there is good rap. At its best, rap expresses the frustrations and/or the hopes of the singers. At its worst, it merely copies the themes of misogyny, alcohol, and drugs, and a macho male power trip. I'm afraid this CD falls into that category. The vicious treatment of women as sex objects in the CD disturbs me greatly.

The contrast between John's very polite and respectful way of talking to me and the meanness of the lyrics is striking. I'd guess this Bartlett High school graduate and athlete is simply doing what he thinks he needs to do to make it in the rap world. What a shame. One could say, "hey, he'll grow out of this." Or "He's not like that in his real life." One could say that, except for the damage these types of lyrics do to women. Since I didn't hear the CD until I got home, (and I suspect he wouldn't have been allowed to play this at the celebration) I couldn't ask John about the lyrics and why he felt the need to rap them.


A toast to serendipity. The next person we talked to was dealing with the victims of sexual assault. Barbara Bachmeier who is in charge of Women Serving Women Veterans, an organization for the victims of the worst rap lyrics is the subject of the next video. But, women were being assaulted long before rap came out, so my intent is NOT to blame all sexual violence on rap. Barbara works to get the military and the VA to take women's sexual assault claims seriously and to provide women in the military with the medical care they need following sexual harassment and assault. You can reach her at

WSWV
PO Box 100723
Anchorage, AK 99508
[added August 9, 2008: http://www.wswv.blogspot.com/]

Father's Day, Zen, Juneteenth Part 3

Things were still a little quiet when we got back to the Parkstrip about 1pm.




But that gave us lots of opportunity to talk to people. This man fought as a Buffalo Soldier in Italy during WW II and he was out here selling his book about this adventures. Check for the video in the next post.







I guess their sign says it all. But no one to talk to yet.









There was a breeze lifting the flag at the Veteran's Memorial flag pole.












So, this is a Juneteenth Celebration. I'm glad the APD have figured out this is a good place to recruit non-white police officers. But maybe it would be nice to have at least one African-American officer along. Now, I wasn't there long, so maybe there were other officers at other times whom I didn't get to see.











Things were still quiet. At this point the only music came from stereos.












































I found the woman working this booth a little later and I'll post a short video in the next post. She's working to help women veterans to get benefits to assist them with sexual assault related problems. Right now, she said, neither the military nor the VA take these issues seriously - "they don't want to hurt the excellent careers of the men accused" - and thus women aren't getting treatment for the resulting physical and mental problems.