Milk

We just got back from seeing Milk, the movie.

I'm not quite sure what to say. I found it incredibly powerful. I think everyone should go see the movie. It has everything a good movie needs - sex, violence, villains, heroes, and powerful acting. I'm trying to imagine someone who feels that homosexuality is evil going to see that movie. I can't imagine that at least a tiny crack wouldn't appear in his or her world view. Maybe my imagination just isn't strong enough.

But while the movie is ostensibly about the battle for gay rights, for me it's about the battle for human rights and justice. (Milk, at one point in the movie gets angry at the other politicians who want to avoid mentioning gays in the fight against an anti-gay rights amendment. They think it is politically safer to talk about civil rights. So I want to be clear, this IS a movie about gay rights. But is also about all human rights.) Any human being who has red blood flowing through her veins has to be touched by this movie on some level. I couldn't help but be affected by a man standing up in the face of overwhelming odds, and simply refusing to accept injustice. Not being timid, not being politic, but standing up and speaking his truth the world.

It causes me to think about my style here. I don't write in declaratory sentences. I try to imagine how someone who disagrees with me thinks about the issue. I try to figure out what someone would have to believe - what facts, what values - that lead him to a conclusion different from mine. Sometimes my gut just wants me to declare "That's bullshit." But then I erase it and start trying to examine the ideas more closely. And sometimes, in my own understated way, I do say, "That's bullshit." But it's pretty rare.

During the Vietnam war protests, I came to see that there is a role for different approaches. The way-out-there radicals who invaded draft boards and poured blood on the draft records pushed the debate into territory it had never been. They were often intemperate, obnoxious, and self-righteous, but they created a lot more room on the debate floor. Others, who would have seemed extreme had the more aggressive protesters not existed, then began to seem reasonable in comparison.

Milk, as portrayed in this film, seemed to be able to do both. He managed to push the debate into new territory, yet he managed to be reasonable and understanding.

I've tended to think that each of us should do what we do best. It is hard for me to stand up and declare truth when I can see lots of different perspectives. On many issues I know which one I think is 'right' but understanding why others think something else is right, seems to be the opening to find non-violent solutions. But Milk also reminds me that we can sometimes use logic and reason as a way simply to be safe, to not take the necessary risks. He shows that if we speak from our hearts, others will hear us, others who are afraid to take that step. He died because he stood up, but if he hadn't stood up, he wouldn't have lived either. He moved civil rights in the US a long way forward.

So this film, for me, raises questions about how I want to live the rest of my life. Milk reminds me how much someone can accomplish when they focus. As I've compared my approach to those of some other bloggers, I've concluded that I tend to have a general goal of pushing people to see things they haven't seen before; that my subject is how we know things, how we come to conclusions - about how things work, about what's right and wrong. Many other bloggers tend to focus on specific issues and attempt to change minds on those issues. I do that to some extent, but my larger focus is getting people to change how they take in and digest information, so that on all the issues they will face in the future, they will be a little more open to seeing things from different perspectives, to questioning the how's, the why's of what they see. I think that's the right path for me, but Milk causes me to consider working harder at it.

Yesterday I had lunch with Rick Benjamin. I first met Rick when I was working with the Anchorage Municipal Board of Ethics as a volunteer consultant when they were revising the Municipal Code of Ethics. Rick was the pastor at an Evangelical Christian church. Yet he didn't behave the way I thought someone like that should behave. He listened to what others said. He was modest, made jokes, and used logic and reason. I don't recall any references to God or any piousness on his part. He was a regular guy. I saw him, maybe once a month, for two or three years at meetings.

Some time after the Ordinance finally passed - and it was a long road - I invited Rick to come over for lunch. I said I wanted to ask him questions about Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism. We had an engrossing discussion out on the deck over sandwiches. He answered all of my questions thoughtfully and candidly and many of his answers were not what I expected. He wasn't doctrinaire, he acknowledged inconsistencies.

So when the Ex-Gay Conference was held at his church this fall (he was no longer the lead pastor if I have my fact straight,) I really wanted to talk to Rick and ask him what the hell was going on. But it was busy times, I was traveling, Sarah Palin was grabbing all of our attention, and I never made my call. But about a month or so ago, Rick called me to invite me to do an ethics presentation at his class at Wayland Baptist University. So I said I'd like to talk to him about the ex-gay conference too. He said, 'sure, let's have lunch.' And yesterday we did. We talked about lots of things. It was an honest discussion between the two of us, and I went as a friend, not as a blogger. But towards the end of lunch, my blogger identity began to wake up, and I asked if I could blog some of the discussion. He said, "Sure."

But while we were talking I hadn't been in record mode and so I suggested we meet again and he agreed. I'm hoping we can do this before I leave for Thailand. I decided not to raise it in yesterday's post, but after seeing Milk, I think it is important to raise. For many, the Rick Benjamins of the world are the enemy. If there are other Rick Benjamins in the Evangelical movement, I think that the differences between Progressives and Evangelicals may not be nearly as great as we've allowed ourselves to believe. Many in their movement have bought the stereotypes of Progressives and many Progressives have bought the stereotypes of the Evangelicals. That meant, in a lot of cases, both sides wrote each other off, and let the media reinforce their horned visions of each other. Obama's campaign didn't make that mistake. And a number of Evangelicals began to wonder whether the Bush administration had used and abused them.

The human heart is a remarkable and complicated organ. Ultimately, combined with the brain, it can do wonders. I strongly believe that most hate is self-hate re-directed at others. (In the movie, for example, Milk believes that Dan White is a very closeted gay.) If we can get more people to raise kids who feel good about themselves, we can greatly limit the amount of hate in the world.

First Annual 30 Second (More or Less) Film Festival - Part 4

Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 had three videos each from Mariano Gonzales' Art 257 class at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The last one here is totally different from all the others, edgier. It's a little too long perhaps, but this student was working her own vision. The first one is also a very different approach from the others.

First Annual 30 Second (More or Less) Film Festival - Part 3

Part 1 and Part 2 had three videos each from Mariano Gonzales' Art 257 class at the University of Alaska Anchorage. These are art students (except for me) and only the last project of the semester was a video/animation project. This first one is one of my favorites. But they all have something of interest. And they're all short.

Ski Pics Fun With Photoshop

I went cross country skiing today after lunch. What a treat to go off into the woods and just glide along through the exquisite snowy wonderland. There were a few other skiers out, like these two with their dog. I even saw a guy on the smaller trail on his mountain bike. The trail was firm enough that he was just leaving a slight track, so that's ok.

But most of the time it was just me and trees and the snow and here, the water.



And everyone looked so healthy with bright rosy cheeks. At first my finger tips got cold, but eventually my hands were nice and warm.



And toward the end, I got onto the bridge near the parking lot and looked down at the mostly frozen Campbell Creek.



The bridge does seem like a bit of overkill just to allow skiers, hikers, and bikers to cross the creek.


This also seems like a good opportunity to show what kinds of manipulation someone can do with Photoshop. The Computer Art and Design class (Art 257) I took at UAA this past semester had us using Photoshop a lot. One form of manipulation is changing the content of the picture - cutting out people you don't want in, adding others in, cleaning up the junk, etc. Obama's First Day in the Oval Office that I posted early is an example of extreme doctoring, though I left the style of most of the added pictures as they were so it would be clear that different people from different times were added into one picture. Though I did colorize Frederick Douglass and Jackie Robinson, and played with the color of some of the others. Journalistically, this is - or was - a big no-no.


Original undoctored picture

But what about the kind of manipulation I do below? I'm just using the built in filters in Photoshop and applying them to the same image. Well, it isn't quite that simple because for most of the filters you can move levers that make the effects more or less distinct. Is it ethical to doctor pictures this way? Make the sky more blue? The contrast better? I suspect that war is already lost. I even do it here - but those tend to be more pictures that don't have a political impact rather than 'news' pictures, and the differences is usually so minor it doesn't seem worth it to add a disclosure. But everything is political in that it affects how we see reality and thus how we act on what we see. So if my pictures prettify my subjects that affects how viewers perceive those subjects. And some of these obviously are not natural photos. So, take a look. Here's the original big, and then the variations of the same picture using different Photoshop filters.










Watercolor filter
















Posteredges filter

















Plasticwrap filter















Cutout filter









Playing with the Hue, Saturation, and Light




























Solarize filter

First Annual 30 Second (More or Less) Film Festival - Part 2

I posted a few videos from Mariano Gonzales' Art 257 class - Computer Art and Design - last week. This was not a film or video class per se, but the last assignment was to use Painter or Photoshop animation to make a video that was more or less 30 seconds. Some did theirs totally animated, others, like me, did a combination. Some just used regular video. You can see the first ones I posted at the link above. Here are three more.

Close to Solstice - Late Sunrise at Thai Temple

I went over to Wat Alaska to meet Jim MacKenzie, the director of Leadership Anchorage, to introduce him to the monks this morning, to help set up a the Leadership Anchorage session there as part of their learning about the different communities in Anchorage. Phramaja (a title for monks) Boonnet was there, but Phramaja Lertsak was in India. With Phramaja Lertsak gone, I learned that Phramaja Boonet's English was much better than I realized. (You can see pictures of the Wat (Buddhist temple) at the Wat Alaska link.)

Phramaja Boonnet is in the picture in the library by the window. I was hoping to get the rising sun in that picture, but that wasn't going to happen without getting the room black, so I took another picture out the window.




Solstice is, according to Archeoastronomy, at 3:04 am on Sunday, December 21 [in Anchorage] this year. You can see we're close because here's the sun just over the horizon at 10:30am on Dec. 18.

After a while, when you're blogging, you realize time is passing because it is solstice again. But I did a post last year on calculating when solstice is, so I don't have to do that again. But since it is such an important date for Alaskans - the amount of light increases after solstice, and given the picture, you can understand why that matters. And as I posted two years ago, the number of minutes we gain per day is definitely noticeable. That solstice post shows how many minutes we gain after solstice. It starts out slow then moves into a gallop. It also has pictures of the earth and the sun to help show how the soltice and equinox work.

Given that we only have five hours from sunrise to sunset now and that J has been home for the last few days with some sort of a chest cold, I decided that on the way home I would stop at the nearby Evalyn's Flowers on Benson to bring some midwinter cheer home.
Like most men, I don't quite understand how flowers work, I just know that they do. And if my wife is happy, I'm happy.

We've got our reservations for our flight to Chiang Mai - January 12 - and house sitters lined up to move in. I'll be going back to the same NGO (Non-Governmental Organization - we'd call it a non-profit) through the American Jewish World Service that I volunteered with earlier this year. Only this time, when I get there, they'll already know me and I'll know them, and my Thai is not as rusty as it was when arrived last February. We've already talked about the job description and I think I can start actually doing something much sooner than last time.

So we have lots to do to get the house in order, to get packed, to finish up projects, etc.

What Makes ConocoPhillips Employee Volunteers So Atypical?

Note: This post wanders, as do many of my posts. It's not because I'm being lazy, though I could spend several more days revising and rewriting this. But blogging isn't academic research. On the other hand, I don't think I should be blogging just off the top of my head without thinking. I'm hoping - but not holding my breath - that my readers may see something that causes them to think a little differently than they did before. But when I write I also learn new things and see things a little differently. So I'm trying to avoid instant posts that reflect nothing but my own biases. The intent here is to look at things and try out new interpretations, not to vent.

That said, this is written in a larger context about the role of large oil companies in the world that I have written about previously. While on the surface, oil companies project an image of responsible corporate citizens, they are rich, powerful players on the world stage who are well dressed and polite when possible, but also in their pursuit of oil are willing to make deals with leaders of countries like Burma and the Congo, leaders who brutally mistreat their populations. In Alaska, all this goes on much more genteelly, but goes on never the less. Some background to my thoughts on all this can be found in the following posts: Economic Hitman and Responding to Trip1050. Trip1050 works for an oil company and commented on my posts on the AGIA forums. He asks why I mistrust oil companies. So, if you are offended by my skepticism about oil companies, read why I feel that way before commenting.

These posts often wander, because I don't think things can be compartmentalized into neat little soundbites. Well, yes, they can. But those are not accurate reflections of the world. They are attempts to neaten the world into pieces we can understand, but aren't usually accurate. So, when I write, I try to capture how my mind wandered into various areas, I try to capture at least a taste of the messiness of reality, and allow the reader to see that nothing is black and white. While I strive to understand why things happen, understanding why someone does something, doesn't mean excusing it. But understanding why may help devise better ways to prevent others from repeating those things. Ultimately, I'm hoping that I and my readers can step back a bit from whatever the topic is, so they can see it in the bigger view, the view we don't get when we are right in the middle of it.


OK, so here's the post:




The Anchorage Daily News has been carrying large ads from ConocoPhillips touting their employees who volunteer in the community.

"Not Your Typical Volunteer" the ads proclaim.

When help is needed, ConocoPhillips employees don't just get their feet wet - they dive in. That's not your typical volunteering and Peter Brakora isn't a typical volunteer.

So, non-ConocoPhillips employees don't dive in? I've seen volunteers at a lot of non-profits who give of their hearts to help out. At Covenant House, for example, I've seen Mentors (people working full time and with families) come to monthly mentor meetings, plus they meet with the young adults they are mentoring a couple times a month, plus phone calls. This isn't just getting their feet wet, this IS diving all the way in.

So yesterday I called ConocoPhillips to find out what makes their employees so much better than other employees. (Wait, you're saying, it says "not typical" it doesn't say "better". OK, so not typical means, what? Different? Different how? The only clue is that "they don't just get their feet wet, they dive in." To me that is saying they do more, they get more involved, they're better. Come on, why would they spend tens of thousands of dollars (they've posted a number of these ads over the last month) to say their employees are just different? They wouldn't. They are saying their employees are better.) First I asked to be connected to the Human Resources Department assuming they would be running employee volunteer programs. That got me to a recording that told me to apply on line. So I called back. The receptionist wasn't sure who to send me to, but settled on Sandy Tusano, who didn't know, but was very nice and tried to forward me to Sheri Jones, who wasn't in, so Sandy sent me to Gina Luckey, where I left a message. (I'm not sure about my spelling of Sheri Jones. When I tried to Google her, I did find a Sherry Jones who once worked with Bill Moyers on an exposé on chemical companies. But this is a common name and I doubt it's the same person.)

In the meantime I went to the ConocoPhillips site to see if I could come up with answers about what makes them special (not typical.)

Headquartered in Houston, Texas, the company has approximately 33,600 employees worldwide [from Conoco-Phillips Website]

In 2006, the company matched nearly 3,500 employee gifts for a combined total of $6.1 million.[from Conoco-Phillips Website]

So, I started calculating. This would mean that just over 10% of all ConocoPhillips employees participated in this program. Those who participated gave an average of $1743. ($6,100,000/3500 = $1743) What does that mean? Is it a lot? A little? It depends, in part, on how much ConocoPhillips employees get paid. Checking the internet, there are various sites giving us a peek into CP salaries. Payscale.com has salaries that presumably CP employees posted. Theirs is a small sample, and not necessarily all people who posted salaries were actually CP employees or posted their correct salaries. I would guess that people checking out salaries are those earning less than average, but that's just a guess. We also don't know if this is a representative set of salaries or if it skews high or low. But I think this at least gets us in the ballpark. (This is an example of my rambling, because I'm not just giving you a number, but I'm telling you how I got it, and why I'm using it, and raising questions so you can evaluate its validity on your own.)

[You can double click the images to enlarge them.]

I'm also going to assume that people tend to stay at CP if they can, so I'm going to take the 10-19 year median salary of $87,973. A person earning $87,973 contributing $1,743 is contributing just under 2% of her salary. (The regs allow them to contribute up to $6000.)[Or so I thought when I read the website yesterday. This turns out to be related to volunteer time. More on that later.]

Or we can put this into context another way. Here's a list of the top eight executive salaries at CP Worldwide (filed 4/2/2008): (Again, double click to enlarge the chart.)

These eight employees out of a total of about 33,000 employees of CP earned $109,440,405. That's $109 million. (That's eight people making the same amount of money as 1,224 employees making the guestimated 10-19 year employee median of $87,973.)

The $6.1 in matching contributions that CP makes for ALL its worldwide employees is equal to 5.5% of the income of the top eight employees of ConocoPhillips!

But I really wanted to hear from ConocoPhillips about what makes their employees such atypical volunteers. So I called Gina Luckey again. She said she'd sent the message over to her supervisor Natalie Lowman, Director of Media, so I called her and left a message. (The CP website lists her as Director of Communications.) She called back not long ago.

She helped clarify some things. First, ConocoPhillips does NOT match cash contributions, they give grants up to $1500 to organizations that CP employees volunteer with for a certain minimum number of hours. I looked back at the website and it does say grants for volunteering on one page, but the other page that said "... the company matched nearly 3,500 employee gifts for a combined total of $6.1 million" does make it sound like contributions in money rather than time.

As I look back now while writing this, that $1500 figure doesn't gibe with the average I figured based on the CP Worldwide website figure of $6.1 million for 3500 employees, which came to $1743 per employee. That page of the website says

By volunteering their time, employees in the United States enable organizations to receive up to $6,000 in grants per year from ConocoPhillips to defray costs for programs and events, making a positive and important difference in their communities.

Natalie Lowman wasn't exactly sure how much CP gave in such grants in Anchorage, but thought it was around $60,000 for 2008. They could give up to $1500 per employee. When I pointed out that the website said up to $6,000, she said, yes, if there were four employees at one organiztion.

Answers.com says ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc has 900 employees. At $1500 per employee, that would make a total of 40 CP employees volunteering. If they didn't give the full $1500 per employee, say they only gave half of that - $750 - on average, that would be 80 employees out of 900. So we could guestimate that somewhere between 4.5% - 9% of CP Alaska employees volunteered enough to trigger a grant. Or maybe they did volunteer work but didn't apply for a grant. Or more than four people worked for the same non-profit.

I hadn't done that local calculation when I talked to Lowman, but I did mention that worldwide, given the number of employees listed on the website cited above, that it came out to less than 10% of the employees. That's when she cleared up my misconception that CP matched cash contributions. She said that most employees were really busy, like she is, and so they would rather make a monetary contribution than a volunteer contribution. But, she clarified further, the company does NOT match monetary contributions. She also said that most CP employees contribute through United Way. She said if one in ten volunteered, probably six or seven others made monetary contributions.

I also know that CP makes other contributions to the community such as $100,000 to the Museum in 2007. And there was a $3.68 million gift to the University of Alaska also in 2007. But we need to put an * on that. The University of Alaska press release on the gift also says,

The annual gifts stem from a charter agreement between the oil companies and the state regarding the BP merger with ARCO in the late 1990s. Part of the charter agreement identifies public higher education as a top priority for charitable donations.

So, these donations are part of an agreement negotiated so that BP could merge with ARCO in 1999. The Foraker Group Nonprofit Report December 2006 written by the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), University of Alaska Anchorage (pp. 43-44) gives a bit more information on this charter agreement:

In 2006 two of the largest oil companies operating in the state, BP (BP Exploration Alaska, Inc.) and ConocoPhillips contributed a combined total of over $22 million in cash to various Alaska nonprofits, including the University of Alaska, and other organizations such as local governments. Their annual contribution is based upon oil production and price as defined by a Charter Agreement that resulted from the ARCO BP merger in 1999. Some in-kind donations are not included in this total, and some of their donations fund capital expenditures rather than operations.

So a minimum amount of contribution is required by this Charter Agreement that was a condition for the BP-ARCO merger. I called Scott Goldsmith, the author of the ISER report, to find out how to get access to the Charter Agreement.He wasn't sure if he ever actually saw a copy, but said he'd check for it tomorrow. [Update: I also called UAA Advancement and later the UA Foundation called and said they would find the Agreement and email it to me .] On the internet, nearly all references I find about BP or ConocoPhillips contributions to the University have that standard clause in them.

I also asked Lowman how ConocoPhillips encourages their employees to volunteer. She said that there's paid time off for clean up day and that employees on Boards can go to board meetings on company time because the company wants them to be involved in the community. I think she said there was additional paid time off allowed for volunteering, but I'm not sure.

So, where's this all going? I initially took exception to the idea that ConocoPhillips employees are somehow better than the typical volunteer. Lowman, when I raised that point, said that wasn't what was intended at all. They were just trying to salute their employees who volunteer and they support all volunteers from any organization. I believe that was their intent.

But was "Not your typical volunteer" simply to mean that they are different? "They don't just get their feet wet, they dive in" implies, to me anyway, that typical volunteers just get their feet wet, but do not dive in.

Well, I guess we could say they aren't typical because they are actually getting their regular salary for some of their volunteer work, not like typical volunteers who volunteer on their own time. I don't say this to belittle the ConocoPhillips volunteers, who, I'm sure, spend more hours volunteering than they are reimbursed for. But it does make them atypical. There's a bit less sacrifice if you're being paid your regular salary to volunteer.

Perhaps the ads should say that ConocoPhillips is not your typical employer, because they pay their employees to volunteer. But then some other employers match their employees' financial contributions.

I think we also have to address the question of why corporations give to charity in the first place.

Many economists argue that the purpose of corporations is to make a profit, that any extra money should be given to shareholders, not to charity. GMR, a blogger whose profile describes him as a Republican MBA in Finance who works for a private equity firm summarizes what many feel about corporate giving:

There are a few times when I think a corporation should give to charity. The first is if it's not really charity: on the surface, it looks like charity, but so much good will is generated, that it's a win-win...

The second type of charity that I'd support is if a corporation were trying to reverse an earlier wrong. Even without the PR benefit. (For instance, if a record company distributed a CD that advocated cop killing, which is within the first amendment rights, but then someone followed the advice. The corporation may not have acted illegally, but it certainly didn't act responsibly).

Finally, I'd support general charity to whatever organization if the board truly believed that the shareholders wanted to give to these charities.

Linda Sugin argues in a long article that the tax law should be changed so that charitable deductions are considered business expenses:

In fact, there is significant evidence that corporations generally make charitable donations in furtherance of their business--either with respect to their employees, customers, or the communities in which they operate. Most corporate charitable giving can easily fit within the requirements of section 162's deduction for ordinary and necessary business expenses. (p. 8)

Corporations, she says later, shouldn't be making charitable donations that don't help the bottom line. When they do it leads to abuse:

Both the popular press and the academic literature are replete with discussion of corporate philanthropy that does more to achieve the private interests of managers than either the public interest, which is the concern of charitable organizations, or the shareholders' interest, which is the concern of corporate governance. (27) The problem seems primarily to be one related to executive compensation; corporate philanthropy that allows managers to support their favorite causes and enjoy the prestige benefits of that support is simply a managerial perquisite. (28)

The Supreme Court's interpretation of "gift" implies something given out of "detached and disinterested generosity." (45) Obviously, a corporation never does anything with feelings of generosity. (46) (p. 8)

The above quotes are from a business professor.

I think Alaskans reading these ads should keep this carefully in mind. The big oil companies used to pretty much have their way in Alaska. The merger between BP and ARCO caused some Alaskans to fight for a few concessions, including the Charter Agreement requiring a set formula for charitable giving. Then, in the wake of the FBI corruption investigations, the Legislature did not approve the privately negotiated deal between Frank Murkowski and the oil companies.

Governor Palin set up criteria for the gasline that the oil companies didn't like and they boycotted the AGIA RFP. They still have a lot of power and they don't have to agree to release the gas. They could scuttle the agreement with Trans Canada. They are working together on the so-called and trademarked "Denali Plan" as an alternative. Plus, the price of oil went over $4 last summer and now has dropped under $2.50 in Anchorage (but still much higher than in the Lower 48) which has a lot of Alaskans wondering if something fishy isn't going on.

So this is a good time to make Alaskans think that the oil companies care for Alaskans. That their employees are good community members (and I'm sure many are). But it was the Communications (PR) office who fielded my questions, not the Human Resources office which normally would be in charge of employee benefit programs. Part of me can't help but wonder whether "it's not really charity: on the surface, it looks like charity."

But I probably wouldn't have had anything to say about this if it hadn't been for the implication that ConocoPhillips employees somehow make better volunteers. We know that oil companies put out 'feel good' ads to make the locals think the companies are good citizens, but when they do this at the implied expense of other good citizens, I just needed to say something.

Black Members of Congress Update

I called the Congressional Black Caucus today in a (successful) attempt to finalize my chart on Black members of Congress following the November election. I hadn't been able to confirm the reelection of Virgin Island delegate Donna Christian Christensen. She IS returning. I also wasn't able to determine if any new African-Americans had been elected from districts that hadn't had Black representatives. The CBC said there were no new members, except Martha Fudge who replaces Stephanie Tubbs Jones who died. (Other new Black members who had replaced Black members of Congress had done so early enough to be listed as members of the 110th Congress.)

You can take the link to previous post to see the chart of the members.

This means that the US House now has one fewer Black member because William Jefferson, who was indicted on bribery charges was not reelected. In his place, the first Vietnamese-American was elected to Congress. And the only Black member of the Senate also leaves, but in a more positive way - Barack Obama resigned from the Senate after being elected President.

The link also has a paragraph from a report that lists the number of members who are women, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American in the 110th Congress. It's the last paragraph of the post.

AIFF - The Real Place takes Cam Christianson back to Sundance

At last year's Anchorage International Film Festival, I wrote about my favorite animated film, Cam Christianson's "I Have Seen the Future."

I Have Seen the Future was a very classy animated tennis game in shades of green and yellow. The camera swept around, the tennis court warped, the main tennis player had an interesting face - not some standard look - and it all worked well with the song by the Canadian singer Chris Demeanor. (Who could forget a name like that?) An original look for the whole film(at least for me) and it all fit together nicely.

It didn't win here in Anchorage, but it went on to get picked for last year's Sundance Film Festival.

I just got an press release email that Cam had a second animated film accepted to Sundance for January 2009.

From the Calgary Herald:

For the second time in as many years, Cam Christiansen will be hobnobbing with North America's filmmaking elite in Utah after his animated short won a coveted spot at the Sundance Film Festival.

Earlier this week, the National Film Board announced Christiansen's The Real Place will show in late January at Robert Redford's celebrated festival, topping off an impressive year of achievements for the 38-year-old filmmaker.

His first film, I Have Seen the Future--which was made with Calgary singer-songwriter Kris Demeanor --played the festival last January, nabbed a top prize at the prestigious Los Angeles Film Festival, was selected by the Toronto Film Festival as one of 2007's Top 10 Canadian shorts and is among 36 films short-listed for a 2008 Academy Award in the best animated short category.

"It's fantastic," says Christiansen.

"It really felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity. But I guess this makes it twice in a lifetime."

The Real Place, which was directed and animated by Christiansen and written by Blake Brooker and uses motion-capture cameras and digital photography, is a beautiful and lyrical five-minute ode to Calgary playwright John Murrell.

Update - Tuesday Dec. 16: Here's a link to The Real Place Facebook page. One quote about the film that seems particularly poignant is from the subject of the film:

For me, your film is about my spirit. No one else -- no one -- has ever captured it so well" - John Murrell

AIFF - Last Movie is Over - Coyote's Brett Spackman

Hoar frost decorated Anchorage today when the fog lifted. The temp was around 10˚F (-12˚C) as we headed for the PAC to see the Alaska Theater of Youth production of Fiddler on the Roof. (He's not on the roof in the picture.) The voices were really impressive. Then we split during the curtain call, but got to the Bear Tooth so late that Only really didn't make much sense to us. Then back home to rest until the 8 pm showing of Coyote. I'll post the after movie Q & A with the filmmaker later.

Coyote doesn't quite have the polish of a Hollywood movie and that's good. But I would never guess that two guys made the movie on "as much money as two guys can raise" with friends helping out and the writers/directors also the leading characters. Very impressive. One of my movie standards that I think should be used more often in judging movies is a ratio between quality and cost. While Brett was circumspect about how much money this film cost - Blockbuster and Walmart will have the DVD's soon, and they are working on outside the US rights now - he suggested it wasn't all that much.

[I took the picture of Brett yesterday at Out North]

And, as he said in the Q&A, the immigration, particularly the illegal immigration question is morally murky and it's more shades of gray than black and white. So the topic was interesting, important, and they took a relatively neutral stand. Well, they were really probably sympathetic to Mexicans trying to get to the US, but they raised a number of caveats. But this was more an adventure/action film than a message film.

And I could see why it got the audience award for best picture.

Here's a video of Brett I got Saturday when we were both at the animation workshop. [As I'm putting this up Viddler seems to be extremely slow loading. Hope it clears up soon.][Switched to YouTube, Viddler is having problems.]



And then the Festival was over. I couldn't be happier. The Festival was great - there were some really good films - but ten days movie going and blogging is enough. Now I just have to catch up with my video clips and thoughts on some of the films.