Two and a Half Weeks Past Solstice

I took these while I was clearing some of the old snow from the driveway today. I did play with the background of this bit.

Kaleidoscopic Radio Dreaming

Before I ever got up this morning, before I was even really awake, NPR had already fed my morning dreamscape by poking a number of dormant brain cells.    Laura Veirs  talked about Carol Kaye the rocking 60's bassist I 'met' last year in the movie "The Wrecking Crew" that played in the 2008 Anchorage International Film Festival.  Plus Veirs, who has studied Chinese, mirrored my experience of learning and losing many characters.  Damn, they must be in there somewhere. Her music was soft and soothing, but it was when she said,"Wow, there are a lot of songs in this guitar" that I slid somewhat into consciousness.  My MacBook has a lot of stories in it and I need to set them free.  And my pillow claimed me once again.  But then there was Elizabeth Gilbert talking about "Eat, Pray, Love" and her new book "Committed" and how she and her Brazilian lover had committed to live together forever, but not to marry.  Both had had bad divorces.  But then the INS stepped in and marriage became the only practical solution if they wanted to live together and be in the US at all.  My 39th wedding anniversary is coming up this month and we've managed to stay together by never stopping too long,  moving on to next another stage of love. As things become routine, comfortable, and even stale, we start that scary task of pushing into unexplored and risky interpersonal territory, until we get to the exhilarating other side and new understandings of ourselves and how we are together.  We've been edging towards another such crossing and Gilbert's words about marriage poked those cells where I've been working on what I need to do.  I drifted back into sleep with scattered brain cells glowing in shades of peach which somehow I need to convey to J.  My dreams wandered on until I was in a classroom hearing anthropologist Paula Holmes-Eber lecturing marines about how when they blow up a bridge in an Afghan village, it means the farmers on the other side can no longer bring their vegetables to market and no longer earn a living and a whole tribe becomes impoverished.  And the parts of my brain that handle the differences between short term and long term impacts of what we do lit up before I dozed off only to become hazily aware of a discussion of committing Facebook suicide.   That pulled me into consciousness abruptly as I heard (not necessarily what they said) about wiping out friends and shutting down accounts and their being blocked by Facebook.  Fortunately, Facebook is a minor distraction in my life as I've never quite taken enough time to figure out how to make it work for me.  It's there, I see my wall when I get an email message saying someone has contacted me, and I even updated my profile the other day, but while Facebook suicide seemed extreme, I was reassured. 

And so I now face another day, my brain bombarded with ideas and directions and I have to focus on those I can actively pursue and let go of the others until another time when they are ripe and I am ready to take them on.

CS, in answer to your question about how do I manage to find new ideas to write about everyday, perhaps this is a partial answer.  A lifetime of ideas is buried in the grey matter and each day asteroids strike parts of my brain, reigniting dormant thoughts, only a few of which ever get captured.  Of course, this is true of everyone.  You just have to make room in the rush of life's demands to pay attention.

More Steps on the Way to Juneau

I'm still trying to figure out the right way to blog about this upcoming Juneau gig without bringing heat onto my boss.  He's seen the other posts that have touched on this and thought they were fine, so let's proceed.

Yesterday I went into the office to meet with Rep. G about the idea of setting up a Legislative Fellowship program and more hiccups because of my unusual status.  The regs have four clear categories of legislative folks:  legislators, staff, interns, and volunteers.  It turns out that volunteers tends to mean people who come in and work for a few hours, either someone who knows the representative or to get the experience of working in a legislative office.  There's a high school program, for example, where students do some work for a few hours a week.

My category is volunteer.  But I'm actually going to be more like a regular staff person.  Staff get keys to the office and id's for the computer system and email accounts.  Volunteers do not.  So there was some discussion about how to get me the staff access while I'm a volunteer, and also whether I need it all.  Probably getting into the building and office shouldn't be a serious problem since there ought to be others there when I need access.  But since they want me to be in the loop on things, having an email account and access to the internal system seems necessary.

Rep. G's vision for me is something like a scholar in residence and he'd like to see a program like that in the legislature.  Early on in my career I had a NASPAA Fellowship (NASPAA is the National Association of Schools of Public Administration and Affairs).  That program was set up for young public administration faculty to have work experience in federal agencies and I spent one year at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in DC working as a program and policy analyst.  I got to work with people like the director of the National Weather Service and a key job I had that year was to study the impacts of applying user fees to  NOAA services and products.   And during the budget process, I got to play the role of OMB (Office of Management and Budget) and question the department heads on their proposed budgets in mock hearings before they really went before OMB.  The Fellows from different agencies meet regularly to share experiences. It was a great program that gave me lots of valuable experience and insights that helped me a lot when I went back to teaching at the end of the Fellowship.

Later in my career I had a Fulbright Fellowship in Hong Kong.  But that was a more traditional teaching position at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  But it did lead to more  research and connections in China. But it had some of same characteristics of getting to know a new institution and working with the other Fulbright Fellows in Hong Kong that year.

The general idea about such fellowships is to get professionals and/or scholars to work in a legislative or governmental setting where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship.  It's usually on a limited time basis - one session, one school year, one year - and then they go back to their primary employer.


So, I've been looking at different programs that embody the ideas that Rep. G has in mind.  What I've found so far is this: 

• There are a number of Legislative Fellows programs in different
  states, California, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Oregon, to name a few.  But
  these are really what I'd call internship programs because they are for
  undergraduate and graduate students.  Alaska already has this sort of program, it's called the Legislative Internship Program.  
• The White House Fellowship program selects about a dozen
  professionals a year from a wide array of professions to work in the
  White House or in Federal agencies.  They basically work for their
  agency for the year with special meetings of the Fellows as a whole.
  This was the model I was looking at - though, perhaps it might make
  sense to have something just for the legislative session.
  
  
• There are a number of Congressional Fellowship programs - for
  Americans and for citizens of select countries around the world to come
  to the US and work in the Federal and even in some state legislatures.
  (It might be useful to see if Alaska can snag one of these..)  Many of
  these programs seem to be organized by other agencies that do the work
  of selecting the Fellows - Fulbright, Professional Associations (ie.
  engineers, pharmacists, etc.)
  
  
• There are similar Fellowship programs that place fellows in Federal
  Agencies. 
  
  
• There are scholar in residence programs as well.  The NY City library
  has one, but most seem to be at Universities. 
  

So now we are trying to pack stuff. Some things are easier than going to Thailand. We can have our mail forwarded for example. There's a caravan of legislative folks driving down to catch the ferry at Haines and someone in the office said I could give him a suitcase to take along. We have a housesitter set up to move in. But I know there will be a million last minute items. But what happens happens and worrying isn't going to help much. Everything seems to work out one way or another.

Ignite

I met Dean Franklin when I took a picture of his (I assumed) wife and daughter at the Peking Opera presentation by the Confucius Institute last November.  He told me about Ignite - a program he's working on that gets community people talking about things they're passionate about.  I was interested, but as it turned out, it's happening the day after we leave for Juneau.  But he emailed me some information about it and I can certainly encourage you to go and send me your report so I can post it.  (Luckily, I didn't delete my junk file tonight, cause that's where the email was. )  It's another free Anchorage event that promises to be worth more than a lot of stuff you have to pay for.  


The next Ignite Anchorage conference will be held at the
Snow Goose Theater one week from tonight, on Thursday, January 14th at 7pm.

We've got some great speakers lined up to give some fascinating presentations:

• Nils Andreassen "Vibrant Democracy"
• Cindy Baldwin "How Toastmasters Can Help YOU Be a Better Communicator and Leader"
• Marian Call "The Art and Science of Songwriting"
• Cindy Franklin "The Best Job You’ll Ever Have"
• Sarah Hurst "Transforming Alaska History into a Play and Graphic
  Novel"
• Karen Keller "Off the Shelf"
• Karl LeRay "What the @!#%$! Do Those Motorcycle Hand Signals
  Mean?"
• Bob Nicoll "There is Power in the Clarity of Your
  Articulation"
• Aliza Sherman "I Survived Winter in Tok, Alaska"

We are also holding a food and fund drive for Food Bank of Alaska at this event. We are asking all attendees to bring a donation of food or a monetary donation to help Food Bank of Alaska restock their warehouse for the new year. Food Bank of Alaska is typically running low on food and funds in January due to their generous contributions to our fellow
Alaskans over the holidays. If you are bringing a donation of food, please see Food Bank of Alaska's shopping list to find out what they need. If you plan to make a monetary donation, please bring a check made out to "Food Bank of Alaska".


If you haven't already done so, register to attend now (click that big red button just below). It's free, it will be fun and you'll be supporting a good cause.

Interesting People and Events at UAA

I had a meeting at UAA Wednesday and the walk over in the new snow was wonderful.

These palm bending tree trunks looked a lot more 

mysterious in a night picture not long ago.

And Nikki Giovanni will be speaking on campus January 21, 2009.  We'll be in Juneau by then so I'll miss this, but you've got a warning now to put this on your calendar.  And if you don't know who she is, go to the library and check out one of her books and start reading before she gets here.

Here's a sample (taken from ncat.edu)

Balances  

in life
one is always
balancing
like we juggle our mothers
against our fathers
or one teacher
against another
(only to balance our grade average)
3 grains of salt
to one ounce truth
our sweet black essence
or the funky honkies down the street
and lately I've begun wondering
if you re trying to tell me something
we used to talk all night
and do things alone together
and i've begun
(as a reaction to a feeling)
to balance
the pleasure of loneliness
against the pain
of loving you 

I also visited with Fannie, with whom I worked in the past.  She had a great picture up on the wall.  

Her niece, Nicole, from Napakiak, was Miss Indian World 2008-2009.




Fannie also had a picture of her nephew as her screen saver.  He's in Iraq and due back in April.   




While I was in the College of Business and Public Policy I had a chance to meet the Interim Associate Dean, Dr. Claudia Clark.  We chatted a bit and then it got interesting when I learned she was also a filmmaker.  An award winning filmmaker.  She won an award for best production last year for twelve 1 minute shorts on the International Polar Year Educational Outreach and is up for another award this year for her historical biography of Alaska's Bob Bartlett.  It's called Mr. Alaska: Bob Bartlett goes to Washington.  In the video she talks a bit about it.  

 



And at the film website, I couldn't help but steal this picture of Bob Bartlett.  Regular readers will surely know why I like it. 










I also learned that Freakonomics author Stephen Dubner will be in Anchorage at the end of January to talk at the Anchorage Economic Development Council (AEDC) and that he'll spend a day with UAA students. 

Lt. Gov. and I Agree on Body Scanners

I was pleased to see that the Lt. Gov. of Alaska and I are in complete agreement on body scans for most passengers as an approach to security at airports.  I suspect on most other issues we aren't nearly so closely aligned.  Craig Campbell presents the position much more clearly and persuasively than I did in the previous post.   Some quotes from his piece in today's Anchorage Daily News:

While serving as Alaska's commissioner of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, which oversees state Homeland Security, I questioned the use of full body scanners at airport security checkpoints. I quickly determined their use was an excessive and unnecessary invasion of personal privacy. . .

 Full body scanners create graphic images of our bodies that, as the ACLU pointed out, are "pictures of virtually naked bodies that reveal not only sexual organs but also intimate medical details such as colostomy bags and mastectomy scars." Full body scanners amount to a visual strip search by depicting a naked electronic image viewed by a federal agent.

We are told that the images will be immediately deleted from the system after the passenger exits security. Really, we already know that e-mails are not eliminated when deleted from computers and that these images can be reconstituted. . .

 We can achieve safety without infringing on personal liberties. Abdulmutallab's explosives would have been detected if existing security procedures, already in place, had been fully utilized. We don't need knee-jerk reactions that deprive Americans of yet another civil liberty in the name of security to ensure air travel is safe.

I hope the Anonynous commenter in the previous post reads this whole piece by a man who oversaw Homeland Security in Alaska. 

Creating Child Porn to Stop Terrorists?

At what point do we say, "Enough is enough"?   For some reason, we are willing to let 40,000 people a year die in traffic accidents in the US and others to die because they don't have adequate health insurance, but we're willing to give up more and more of our dignity every year to make sure no one dies from a terrorist attack on an airplane.

The terrorists don't have to take any planes down, they just have to think up new ways to mess with the security equipment and we all have to go through another hoop at the airport.  This new one is pretty invasive.

This picture comes from the Guardian which carried an article about the full body scanners in the UK, where they've been delayed because they would breach child pornography laws.  

Here are some excerpts from the story which you can get in full at the link.

The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned. . .

They also face demands from civil liberties groups for safeguards to ensure that images from the £80,000 scanners, including those of celebrities, do not end up on the internet. The Department for Transport confirmed that the "child porn" problem was among the "legal and operational issues" now under discussion in Whitehall after Gordon Brown's announcement on Sunday that he wanted to see their "gradual" introduction at British airports.

A 12-month trial at Manchester airport of scanners which reveal naked images of passengers including their genitalia and breast enlargements, only went ahead last month after under-18s were exempted. . .

And what sort of rays pass through our bodies?  Do we know they don't cause cancer or some other harm?  When I was a kid we had fluoroscope machines in the shoe stores so we could see our feet inside our shoes.  Until someone realized this was not healthy for kids.   Will this be the same?  Scan now, check on health dangers later? 

What if airline passengers were ready to turn around from security and say no?   Just flying less doesn't seem to work.  Can we figure out ways that get people to join in a mass boycott of airport security, ways that overcome all the pressures to just suck it up and let them do it to you - the cost of the ticket, the inconvenience of making huge changes in one's plans, the threat from the TSA for doing anything to question them, etc.   

It has to be planned so people can get their refunds (buying first class tickets maybe?), where enough people do it to get attention, where airlines are affected by the loss of already paid passenger revenue, and where people have the time to deal with the likely hassle.   It's time to force the powers that be to consider reasonableness as well as safety in designing security.

Maybe here in Alaska where privacy is protected by our State Constitution we can argue that TSA is forcing us to give up our State Constitutional rights to privacy if we want to exercise our Federal Constitutional rights to interstate travel. 

You know the frog in the pot of water story?  Well, bubbles are starting to appear as I write.

Mt View Forum - Interviews Patrick Flynn

The Mt. View Forum blog demonstrates today how blogs make important contributions to our local information sources.  His interview with Assemblyperson Patrick Flynn covers a number of important issues:  the budget, property taxes, public-private partnerships, land use planning, and utilities.  All, of course, in the context of Anchorage today.  It's definitely worth ten minutes of your time, if nothing else, get a sense of Flynn, to get an intelligent view of Municipal issues, and to see the Mt. View Forum blog. 

Tea Beats Swords - Red Cliff and The Tea Master

J wanted to see Red Cliff because she studies tai chi and there was supposed to be some good sword moves.  I was more skeptical.  I'd seen the previews and it looked like an artsy war flick that would require a trip to the blood bank afterward.  I was right.  A friend afterward said,  "but it had an anti war message."   I'm not sure saying "Today there are no victors" after almost two and a half hours (total 147 min) of blood, via arrows, lances, and a whole array of pointy weapons I couldn't name, plus lots of fire, typhoid victims floated into the enemy camp as a weapon, to name a few, qualifies it as an anti-war movie.  The desensitization to all those severed and burning body parts, the normalization of human destruction is a visual message far more powerful that those few words.  And the Red Cliff website touts this dubious reviewer comment:

"The spectacular battle scenes are the engorged heart of the delirious adventure..."

This sort of Chinese historical epic plays on several channels every night on Beijing television, so it's not particularly new for me, though the story is good and the film is well made. I just don't need to spend what time I have left in this world watching people killing each other.  And I just don't think this is an effective way to end warfare.

But there was one scene that reminded me of one of the films at the Anchorage International Film Festival that I particularly liked, but in the rush of movies, never got to mention - The Tea Master.  It was one of my favorites.  A short, well-made film with a great story. It turns out the filmmakers were able to concentrate on other aspects of the production because they already had a good story:

The Tea Master is Aaron Au’s rendition of a Japanese fable titled “The Samurai and the Tea Master”. The story has been told for hundreds of years and there are numerous versions.

The Tea Master's story is told at hubpages:

A humble chado, or tea ceremony master was challenged to a duel by an unscrupulous ronin who was confident of winning with ease. The chado knew he was no match for the master-less samurai but could not refuse without losing honour, so he prepared to die.

He therefore went to see his neighbour a Kenjutsu (sword) master, to ask how he should best prepare to die with honour. “ How honourable your intent neighbour” he says. “but before we talk of such things we must drink some tea together”

The chado set about the task of preparing the tea in his usual manner. He was clearly relishing this, probably the last, time he would be able to perform his life long art. As he became absorbed in the ceremony the sword master was greatly impressed by the serenity that this supposedly doomed man was demonstrating. (You can read the rest of the story at hubpages. Picture from The Tea Master web page.)

The tea ceremony is an important part of Japanese and Chinese culture and has a powerful effect on people who can appreciate its art.

In Red Cliff, a tea ceremony also plays an important role in distracting the power hungry prime minister/general Cao Cao just long enough for the wind and the war to change direction.  

Perhaps in the next fifty or 100 years,  enough research will be completed that we will better understand why some people have such a strong need to control others and to destroy those who get in their way.  My suspicions are that the secret lies partly in genetics but that genetic disposition doesn't need to show itself if children get the love and support they all need to become whole people.  I'm guessing that when the Rush Limbaugh story comes out on film, we will learn about an abused fat kid who spent his formative years fantasizing his revenge on all the hip people of the world who ridiculed him as a kid.  Too bad he didn't learn the tea ceremony.

Evidential Language

My son sent me this linguistic tidbit from Barking Up The Wrong Tree:

Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)”, while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)”. English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know.

Since most of my posts are way too long, I'll just let you ponder the significance of this on your own. (Tuyuca is spoken, it says, in the eastern Amazon. Ethnologue says there are about 815 speakers in Columbia and Brazil.)