Peter's Sushi - After and Before

The fire was August 12. I posted some pictures August 15 and here are two views of then and yesterday. The Fire Department says the reports are not complete yet, but the debris is totally gone.

Bear Tooth - Texas 4000 - Cleo and the Shadowlands

Before the movie - Cleo 5 to 7 - a group of young men and women from Austin, Texas passed around a mic, and told us why they had joined the Texas 4000 bike trip from Austin to Anchorage.

It's a fund raiser for the American Cancer Society and each rider, we were told, raised at least $4000 in pledges, which comes to $160,000 for all 40 of them.


This is all a good thing, but as they spoke about why they had joined this bike ride, I couldn't help but whisper sarcastic comments into J's ear before suppressing my contrarian thoughts.

Then there was a preview for the movie Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter Thomposon which glorified his cuttingly blunt, political reporting. "He was not afraid to express himself in sometimes shocking ways" says Jimmy Carter. "He captured certain truths about human perversity" says Tim Crouse,the author of Boys on the Bus.

Cleo From 5 to 7 turned out to be a black and white (except for the opening scene) 1962 French film about a beautiful hypochondriac from 5 to 7pm awaiting word from her doctor on her cancer diagnosis.. This is NOT a film I would have picked for a cancer fighting fundraiser.

So, I thought about my blog and Hunter Thompson - a man I have little admiration for as a person, but I can't help but acknowledge that sometimes the severely dysfunctional are the ones who can see hypocrisy and truth much more clearly than others, and I do admire the ability to see and write truths.

Then we watched Shadowlands, a much richer film than Cleo, that portrays a CS Lewis who also can't say what's on his mind for most of the movie. And that's when I decided I couldn't NOT say what I was thinking.

So, here are my blasphemous thoughts on the bikers. As the mic passed from hand to hand, people basically said, in various levels of articulation, that they were inspired to join this long ride because of [fill in family member, friend] who [survived, is fighting, lost to] cancer. And thinking about their personal cancer victims kept them pedaling 4000 miles.

I know they've been on the road for a couple of months, this is the end of the trip, and they've been paraded out in front of crowds to recite this mantra hundreds of times. But I wanted just one person to sound real, just one person to say something like:

I did this because I wanted to come to Alaska.
I did this because otherwise I would have had to work for the summer.
I did this because I'm crazy and this seemed like a really crazy thing to do.

I wanted someone to be real, to not robotically fill the stereotypical role of do-gooder who modestly says I did it all for the Gipper. These are flesh and blood young men and women in their early 20s or so who've pedaled 4000 miles. I'm sure they had some rousing times, interesting adventures, but in tonight's performance all passion was bleached out.

I can just hear some of you gasping - how can he say something nasty about these kids who gave up their summer to raise money to fight cancer?

I know these kids did a good thing, I'm sure they inspired people - and yes I too have people close to me who are cancer survivors and victims and I know that malignant neoplasms are the leading cause of death in Alaska [I posted the stats just this week] and raising money to find ways to fight it are important.

I also know that fighting cancer costs lots of money and funding it through bike rides rather than through a national commitment to spend more, carefully monitored money on cancer research than on killing and maiming people in the Middle East is really a giant joke. According to the National Cancer Institute the US spent about
$1.4 billion on cancer research in 2007. According to Wikipedia we spend about $12 billion per month or about
$144 billion per year on the Iraq war.

I propose to Congress that they appropriate $1.4 billion for the Iraq war next year and suggest to President Bush that he can organize bike rides and bake sales to fund the rest of the expenses next year after he's out of the White House.

If you think that sounds preposterous, why don't you think funding cancer research through bike rides is a joke too?

It's also true that by passively playing our roles as consumers, like these kids played their roles as dedicated fundraisers in the theater tonight, of chemical products that have polluted our air, water, land, and bodies, we have contributed, in part, to the high levels of cancer in the world today.

I don't deny that riding bikes to Alaska is work, but these kids didn't 'give up' their summer, they had a great adventure they'll never forget. I also understand it is one way, maybe the best way, that this group of college students and alum, could make their contribution. And I'm sure the ride gave them lots of time to think. I hope they had the information available to think about how cancer is caused, how the dismantling of regulatory agencies and the exporting of manufacturing to countries with minimal environmental protections all play a role in our high cancer rates. I don't want to diminish the value of their contributions. If forty riders raised $4000 each, that comes to $160,000. And I'm a strong believer in the idea that many small contributions add up to real money.

But if they had spent half the time they spent riding, becoming experts on cancer - the science, the economics, and the politics, and not just the personal drama - I think they would be a lot more powerful advocates of change than they are now, and this summer would not fade into a memory of a great adventure in which they raised enough to pay the annual average salary of two pharmaceutical drug reps.

Hunter and Jack (CS), was this post ok?

Renewing Old Ties

Thursday, CY and WF dropped by from the airport on their way to Homer. CY was a professor in my program when I taught a year in Hong Kong 1989-90. He was very excited to hear that an Alaskan was coming because he is a serious fisherman who comes regularly to fish here. We hadn't seen them for quite a long time and though the visit was short it was nice to reconnect and catch up and hear about other faculty in the program.






Friday night after seeing "La Casa de Babys" at the museum - yes those red things in yesterday's post are in front of the museum as several people guessed - we stopped at Barnes and Noble. First I bumped into Darren and then Terry. Terry is a year younger than my son and lived across the street for a while. We hadn't seen him since his parents' 30th (I think) wedding anniversary a few years ago. It was great to see him again and his wife who preferred not having her picture taken. Terry was fine, but the picture is blurred, so above is the picture of them they agreed to.





This afternoon we went to an open house at some friends' place because their daughter and grandson are in town. I've known K for a long time and there were so many people to talk to K and I really only had a few minutes to talk. I'm hoping we'll get another chance before she goes back to LA.





And finally, surpassing even how long it's been since I'd seen Doug, is Harriet. She, her husband, and brother and sister-in-law are here for their Alaska adventure. Harriet was in my Peace Corps group - Thailand 19 - and I haven't seen her since then. She told me to pick a restaurant. How could I not pick the Thai Kitchen to renew old (I won't succumb to that tired pun) ties?


For those of you who thought this was about how to bring your old neckties back to life, I found this video that answers the question of a young man who's facing two years as a missionary in Honduras and says that the rules are that the ties must be conservative, "but nothing says they can't be awesome." The beginning of this video from threadhead shows how to renew those old ties.

How to Re-Fashion an Old Tie

Correction

A reliable source has told me that ADN reporters are to leave corrections to their editors, and the editors did make the correction today on David Shurtleff's position at the Berkowitz campaign. I was also told that the ADN takes their corrections seriously. The correction was already in the works before I posted yesterday.


But as I mentioned in the earlier post, there are still questions about how corrections are handled - intentionally and unintentionally - for the online stories, which, for most of us, will be the story of record when we've recycled our newspapers.

The online story says:

...Berkowitz spokesman David Shurtleff said in an e-mail...

This is the corrected version, but there's no hint that there was an incorrect version. The best blogs will go back and do it this way:

...Berkowitz campaign manager [spokesman] David Shurtleff said in an e-mail...[[MPB made an excellent suggestion to also include the date of the correction]] [[August 18, 2008]]

to show the original and the corrected version.

So Where's this?

Nobody identified where I snapped the muskoxen picture.

Here's a really easy one. Where is this?

Jack Dalton and Raven's Radio Hour - Starts Sunday August 17

I got this message forwarded to me today. Jack Dalton is a terrific actor/story teller. He has a great natural presence and is a truly nice guy besides. I'm going to try to catch at least one of the performances:

Sundays through Wednesdays, August 17 to September 16, at 7pm. (more specifics below)

I saw two different performances of My Heart Runs in Two Directions at Once
and they were both good, but not exactly alike.

And you can eat real Alaska Native food! Something you can't do easily in Anchorage if you don't have family or good friends who invite you to have real stuff.

Here's the email:


Dear Friends! Exciting news!
Starting this Sunday, August 17, at 7pm, an Alaska Native theatre company at
the Alaska Native Heritage Center truly becomes a public event. The
ANHC proudly presents "Raven's Radio Hour: 90 minutes of fun, fun, fun, fun
. . . a two hours show," a gleeful romp through the Alaska Native world in
the style of a 40s variety radio show. Starring Raven, played by Alaska
Native storyteller Jack Dalton, and featuring the Alaska Native Heritage
Players: Christina Gagnon, Ethan Petticrew and Allison Warden.

And there's more! It's also a dinner theatre, well, perhaps "cafe" or "deli"
theatre is a better description. Truly entertaining light fare and Native
favorites, like caribou stew, salmon spread with Sailorboy Pilotbread, and a
variety of desserts, including Marge's World Famous Agutaq.
Showtimes are Sundays through Wednesdays, August 17 to September 16, at 7pm.
Tickets are $20 per person. Seating is cabaret-style and limited, so
advanced reservations required. The show is about 120 minutes with a
15-minute intermission, and not recommended for childen under the age of
16.
Please share with all your friends, relatives and colleagues! And I look
forward to seeing as many of you there as possible.
Thank you again for all of your support.
Jack.

Raven Feathers & the Wind
storytelling, writing, teaching and spirituality
2207 Spenard Road, Ste 102, Anchorage, Alaska 99503
phone 907-227-4428, fax 907-272-0757
booking and schedule info 907-227-4428
info@ravenfeathers.com
www.ravenfeathers.com

Kyle and Sean - Blogging style slipping into their reporting?

I was a little surprised reading Kyle Hopkins and Sean Cockerham's front page piece on Governor Palin yesterday. It was all very properly newsy until we got to the last paragraph of the page which began:

If you've been asleep all week, here's the recap:

Both these reporters work hard and the ADN has them working both as straight news guys on the print version and bloggers online. And I'm sure it's hard to keep those two roles straight. But what about the editor? Or have they decided that chatty is ok on the front page?

And Sean, after reading your article on Ashley Reed, I just called David Shurtleff to congratulate him on his promotion to campaign manager, but he assured me that Joe Hardenbrook still has that job, and that he (David) is still the press guy.

I just got the links to these stories - the Palin story and the Reed story - and I see that in the latter, Shurtleff is now listed as campaign spokesman. So how does it work now? No more corrections? You just go in and change the story? How's that going to affect the newspaper as a source of history if people can just go in and change the story whenever? Hard copy documents may not be as easy to access, but at least the stories don't change while they are on the shelf.

I want you all to understand that this is just a friendly observation. Unlike some of my blogging compatriots, I recognize that the ADN's financial uncertainties are putting a strain on everyone there. I appreciate that they put up a lot of good sources and give links to court documents saving me the trouble of having to look them up myself. These are good guys doing good work under difficult circumstances. But the issue about changing the record IS an important issue.

On this blog, I've set up a rule for myself that if I'm making minor spelling and typo corrections, or cleaning up the language of a sentence without affecting the content, I don't leave tracks that I've made changes. But if I'm making substantive corrections - like correct identification of someone's job title - I strikeout the old language and put the new language in with [brackets]. That let's my readers know that I've gone in and made changes. The ADN has a corrections box, but although they fixed this online, it didn't show up in the corrections in today's paper.

Good Grief - " Federal attorneys have been manipulated into a partisan political attack on Stevens."

As I've read the stories each day back and forth about Ted Stevens, I've consoled myself that, given the Justice Department has been Republican controlled for almost eight years, that no one can say this is a partisan attack on Ted Stevens.

What is a partisan attack?

Partisan originally comes through the French from the Italian and referred to a member of an army, who was fighting for a cause. As the term has evolved in the United States and been attached to the word "political" it has been connected to the idea of a person who believes strongly in his political party and makes decisions, not based on law or reason, but on what will help the party. The old spoils system of the late 1800's and early 1900's was highly partisan as people were given government jobs if their party won office.

So, in the US we have come to distinguish politics - the generic exercise of power ideally for the public good - from partisan politics - where power is used purely to support one's party. Municipal elections in Anchorage are supposed to be non-partisan. Candidates are not nominated by parties and their party affiliations are not on the ballot, even though assembly members generally are members of parties.

Imagine the loud screams and accusations if there were a Democrat in the White House and the Justice Department was going after Stevens. We would hear no end of attacks on the miscreants in the Justice Department and the White House who were using their sacred power for partisan political ends.

But this is a Republican administration that has been in charge of the Justice Department investigating Republicans, so at least this is one thing I needn't worry about.

But if I thought no one would say this was a partisan political attack on Stevens, I was wrong.

Imagine my chagrin when I read Jim Crawford's Compass piece in today's [by the time I post this it will be yesterday's] Anchorage Daily News.

Federal attorneys have been manipulated into a partisan political attack on Stevens.

There's empty space there as I shake my head in disbelief and I try to find something to say more original than "Give me a break!" This is the Justice Department that has just, finally, after a few years of allegations, discovered that career employees (not political appointees) were routinely hired or not because of political affiliation. (That is partisan politics, Jim.) This is a Republican administration and, if you didn't notice, Ted Stevens is running as a Republican.

THIS IS NOT A PARTISAN POLITICAL ATTACK!!!!!!

And, by the way, who exactly is doing this manipulation of the Federal attorneys? I've seen them in action in three trials now and I can't imagine them being manipulated easily. They do their homework and they're damn good. Was it the Attorney General who manipulated them? Maybe George Bush? Or do Senate Democrats have moles in the Justice Department who have turned these guys to the dark side? Maybe they're being blackmailed by Mark Begich spies who videotaped them hunting bear illegally in Girdwood. Did you leave out the name of the dastardly manipulator(s) so we would have to read your next column to find out?

At least Crawford cut out his nonsense about the Hatch Act which appeared in the Fairbanks Daily News-miner version of this piece:

The Hatch Act forbids federal employees, specifically those from the Department of Justice, from playing campaign politics. The U. S. attorney, FBI and Justice Department are playing campaign politics. Dirty campaign politics. Huey Long, Louisiana-style, hardball, campaign politics. They violate the Hatch Act they are charged to enforce.

Well, not exactly. The original Hatch Act forbade federal employees from taking part in partisan political campaigns. It was passed by Republicans who wanted to stop Franklin D Roosevelt from using federal employees to work on his reelection. Not only can't they work during working hours, but they weren't allowed to be involved in federal elections on their own time either. The Hatch Act was significantly amended in 1993 to allow many federal employees to take part in campaigns. But I haven't seen any Begich signs up yet on the sides of the FBI or Federal Buildings.

The FBI and Justice attorneys' job is to follow up leads on wrong doing and to go after violators regardless of party affiliation. It would be unethical of them to NOT pursue an investigation simply because the subject was an important politician of the same political party as the administration.

The Justice Department - and other federal departments - are never supposed to go after people purely for political reasons. I'm glad that Jim Crawford is such a strong advocate of keeping politics out of normal government functions. I wonder why I didn't see a compass piece from him when it was revealed earlier that political appointees in the Bush administration were firing Attorneys for not going after trumped up charges against Democratic elected officials. Once again, everyone sing the chorus, this is a Republican administration here prosecuting a Republican Senator. That is hardly the normal definition of partisan politics.


The Girdwood House Assessments

Most of the article makes the half point that Sen. Stevens' Girdwood home was assessed at $142,000 in FY 2001 and $271,300 in FY 2003, for a difference of only $123,700 (land value excluded). Therefore, he argues, that the $130,000 Sen. Stevens' paid for the remodeling is equal to the value of the improvement. Case closed.

He starts the article by saying he's been in real estate for 30 some years. Then, surely he knows that when someone does remodeling, the COST - the money it takes to do the work for things like supplies, hourly wages, etc - does not necessarily lead to an equal increase in the value of the home. If you paint your walls magenta using paint hand made from fireweed petals at a cost of $100 per gallon, you probably will not increase the value of the house equal to the cost of the paint. You may well lower the value of your house.

Over the years I've read countless articles in the ADN, such as this one (not from ADN) that talk about what sort of remodel will have the best impact on the value of your house. A good kitchen remodel, if I recall correctly, usually gives the most bang for the buck. I don't recall ever seeing an article suggesting that lifting the ground floor and sliding in a new ground floor under the original was a sure money maker. I suspect it would have been much more cost effective for the Stevens to buy a new house.

The amount of benefit is the cost of the labor and materials put into the house, NOT the increase in the value of the house. Nice try Jim. But I'll hand it to you, the matching figures were probably just too much to resist. (I didn't look these up to check Crawford's claim) But that's not how campaign watchdog agencies count these things. It does make a kind of sense if you forget that the value in this context is the amount Bill Allen is out of pocket, not the potential money you could get for selling the house.

And Crawford cleverly, unfortunately too cleverly for his own good, pays Mark Begich, Stevens' Democratic opponent for the US Senate, a compliment in order to strengthen his own argument here about property assessments:

Assessments, by Alaska statutes, must be at full market value and Mayor Mark Begich has done a good job at making certain that properties are at full value. Municipal tax revenue depends upon it.

Oh Jim, you sell real estate. That must have been really hard to write with a straight face. Oh, and there's one, teeny weeny problem here. Crawford cites the assessments for the years 2001 and 2003. Mark Begich didn't take office until April 2003. I don't know for sure if the 2003 assessment comes out in 2003 or 2004, but clearly the 2001 assessment was before Begich and he probably didn't have time yet to affect the 2003 assessment. But if he did make changes, then the increase in the property assessment would have at least partially reflected the more accurate assessment that Crawford implies that the Begich administration implemented, not just the increase in value due to the remodeling.

OK, I assume that Jim Crawford, a former Chair of the Republican Party (in the grand tradition of Rudy Ruedrich?) has promised to publicly support Ted Stevens, but why do something that is so full of holes? Why does the ADN have to publish this sort of nonsense? Let him put it on the Voice of the Times Website, that's what it's there fore.

My regular readers are going to wonder at my tone in this piece. My wife's already in bed and I didn't give her a chance to look through it and make suggestions. I did cut some snark out. . But Crawford's piece is just so far over the line, so inaccurate, so illogical, so transparently a piece of political bluster, that keeping my sarcasm in check has been really hard.

I agree with those who say Stevens has done many fine things for the State of Alaska. And maybe a judge will take that into consideration if this gets to sentencing . But this sort of political hack job makes him look pathetic.

Oh, yes, here are some definitions of partisan I checked while writing this.

From etymonline:

partisan (n.)
1555, "one who takes part with another, zealous supporter," from M.Fr. partisan (15c.), from dial. upper It. partezan (Tuscan partigiano) "member of a faction, partner," from parte "part, party," from L. partem (nom. pars), see part (n.). Sense of "guerilla fighter" is first recorded 1692. The adj. is 1708 for warfare, 1842 for politics

From yourdictionary.com

noun

1. a person who takes the part of or strongly supports one side, party, or person; often, specif., an unreasoning, emotional adherent
2. any of a group of guerrilla fighters; esp., a member of an organized civilian force fighting covertly to drive out occupying enemy troops

Etymology: MFr <>partigiano < parte <>pars, part

adjective

1. of, like, or characteristic of a partisan
2. blindly or unreasonably devoted
3. of or having to do with military partisans

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary only defines the noun partisan:

a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person; especially : one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance




Onpedia's dictionary gives us a definition for the adjective, the way Crawford uses it.

.	partisan - devoted to a cause or party nonpartisan, - free from party affiliation or bias

Brideshead Revisited - New Movie revisits the old book and tv series

Doug, you shouldn't have left so soon. We needed you at dinner after watching this movie to fill in some of the questions we had about class and school in England. I'll get to that later.

The title gives away a lot. We'll be revisiting Brideshead often. And the movie will visually be in and out of the shadows, blacks and whites, reflecting how we see all the characters - partially revealed partially in the dark. Sometimes I think the directors have a good laugh as people read all sorts of things into their films. But I was struck, over and over again by how people walked in and out of shadows; how only one side of a face was lit, the other dark; how the light danced - on cigarette smoke, on the shimmering walls of the canal.

When I took a photo class long ago, I remember that an ideal photo had in it some total white and total black. As you watch the clips, you'll see the cameraman does that in many (most?) scenes. I need to go back and see if that is true throughout. Even outside in sunshine, there's the black band on the white hat, or shadow masking some part of the frame.
Matthew Goode, as Charles, stood out as the student who goes to Oxford in the early 20th Century and quickly falls in with Sebastion, Lord Sebastian, the troubled, very rich young man with a suffocatingly Catholic mother and a father who's escaped her choke hold for a cheerier life in Italy leaving the children in her clutches. All the acting was good (Emma Thompson played the mother). But while Ben Whishaw's Sebastian allowed him to be dramatic in a more flamboyant way, Goode had to work within very narrow confines, his eyes and lips doing much of the acting. Or so I remember it.




My questions that beg for Doug's participation in the discussion had to do with the role he was supposed to play. Despite the fact that his mum had died when he was little, and that his father never looked at him when they spoke, which they barely did, he was incredibly comfortable with who he was. His second day at Oxford, though he wasn't from any of the proper prep schools, sitting in a room with Oxford's very out and camp gay crowd - with there being little hint of his prior gay experience - he appears totally at ease with himself and the situation and responds with complete composure to the taunts he receives.

OK, I know the book is famous and I think I saw some episodes when this was a series on tv. Maybe it's all clear in there. But while there were hints here and there that he was trying to fit in, it really isn't until the end that he tells Julia straight out how much he needed being part of Brideshead. Yes, we were told that in scenes along the way, but Goode's calm composure in every situation, seemed too cool. I would have liked to see a bit of self-doubt. The words "I wanted to fit in" weren't accompanied by an edge in his voice, a shadow (not literally, there were plenty of those) on his face. He always knew exactly what to say in dicey situations (well, these were dicey in a very upper class way, like wearing the proper shirt for the occasion, meeting Mother) with no hesitation, with the right inflection, and a hint that this was all rather easy.

Of course, he may have been that rare person who actually had that much comfort at a young age in who he was to carry it off. That would have been what made him so attractive to all around him. And the hint at the end that perhaps he was like Rex, the American, and that all this was simply calculated, was tantalizing, but I didn't see enough of this in his character to give me doubts about his intentions. I'm so naive.

I need to go back and find out which, if any, of the characters the author Evelyn Waugh saw himself as. Doug, fill me in. Or Jay, maybe you have some insights.

Leadership Anchorage Recruiting

This is an unpaid recruiting ad that I'm putting up because I believe in the program and the people running it. Leadership Anchorage is run through the Alaska Humanities Forum. Its aim is to help groom people to take important roles in the community. I've known a number of people who have gone through the program. They mostly are working hard, many with families, even going to school part time - busy people.

But the chance to be in a group of interesting people, examine who you are, what you want to be, and develop strategies to get there makes taking even more time to participate in this program worth it.

Photo from Leadership Anchorage page on the Alaska Humanities Forum website. If you click there, you can read the names of the people in the picture. And a lot more about the program. Besides the people this year, some of the people who have gone through this over the year include:
Janie Leask, First Alaskans Institute
Nils Andreassen, Institute of the North
Liz Posey Urban League of Young Professionals
Bill Wielechowski, Alaska State Senate
Guadalupe Marroquin, Municipality of Anchorage (she works in the Clerk's Office and spared no effort to overcome my fax problems so I could vote in last April's Muni election from Thailand.)
Macon Roberts, Anchorage School Board
Angelina Estrada Burney, State of Alaska


I'll tell you not to be put off by the word Leadership. I have some real heartburn with that word and maybe I'll do a post on it. It doesn't mean you have to be ready to lead your army into battle on horseback. We lead in lots of different ways. Even shy, quiet people can be leaders. If you secretly want to do great things, here's your chance to get a big boost.

Disclosure: Jim MacKenzie, the director of the program, was a student of mine in the public administration program at UAA. (Some of my former students turned out ok.) He's really, really smart and thoughtful. He spent about ten years in Japan and speaks Japanese well enough to have acted as an interpreter for all sorts of business and political exchanges while working for the Anchorage Japanese Consul. (I had trouble communicating to Doug who speaks actual English English.) I promise you that the participants of this program do not work harder than Jim does.

So, if you ever thought that you should be doing more good work than you are now, or that you could use a group of eager peers to help you make Anchorage, Alaska, or the world a better place, go check out the rest of this post and the website.



Leadership Anchorage Now Accepting Applications!

Leadership Anchorage applications for the 2008-2009 class are now
available. As applications are received, interviews will be
scheduled, with the final application deadline being September 8,
2008. [The program year begins with an overnight retreat at the end
of September.

Leadership Anchorage is a nationally recognized, rigorous program for
adults. It is designed to expose the leaders of non-profit,
neighborhood, business, and ethnic organizations to the larger power
brokers of Anchorage and Alaska. After eleven years, more than two
hundred graduates, and recognition as one of the top civic leadership
programs in the country, the program continues to grow and expand its
reach. Program participants over nine months experience a two-day
retreat and nine rigorous, full-day sessions (mostly on Saturdays).
These sessions include speaker presentations from established leaders
in the community, readings in the humanities and on leadership as
well as group dynamic learning exercises designed to facilitate the
development of critical leadership skill sets.

The cornerstones of LA's curriculum are a one-on-one mentorship
program, and a civic service related group project designed to
address an expressed need in the community. The goal: more effective
community leadership with a wider and more diverse network of
connections.

Open to individuals who have already demonstrated a commitment to
their community, have already shown leadership skills, but who would
benefit from intensive leadership training. Anchorage residency is
not required. Diversity is crucial; there is no ceiling on age.

For further information, contact Jim MacKenzie at 272-5324 or
jmackenzie@akhf.org.

2008~2009 Program Links
http://www.akhf.org/programs/leadership/leadership_applications.html