Mental Health Wild Game Feed

I've got a couple of posts backed up - synthetic marijuana bill, driver's license time for non-residents, election booklet for primaries - but I'm trying to make them less tedious, so I'll slip in this easy one.

There is a lot of food offered to legislators and staffers in and around the Capitol each year.  Tuesday afternoon several mental health related organizations - the Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, Alaska Mental Health Board, Statewide Suicide Prevention Council (and maybe others) - had a wild game feed.  The food and cooking were provided by board members of these organizations.

These are justified by all as a chance to talk less formally about important issues.  And the food does tend to attract people.  And people do talk.  I've gotten to meet and/or just talk to folks in a more casual setting.  Legislators are right there and not rushing off to a committee hearing.

Legislators and staffers and the people who want to influence them (they would say educate and that's also true) do get to connect more as human beings than as players in political theater.

The video has Kate Burkhart (Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse) briefly describes this event and Kris Duncan (Alaska Housing Finance Corporation) talks about what AHFC does and what they want from the legislators. 

The Mobile Billboard Business - Lots of License Plate Bills

[I need to run, so I'm going to post this now and try to do more proofing later. Sorry.]

There are six license plate bills that I can find on BASIS.

l-r Sens. Geissel, Meyer, Wielechowski, Paskvan, Staffer Karla Hart testifying

Right now, as I understand this, people can get vanity license plates in Alaska and there are special organizational license plates.  Whenever constituents call their representative to ask for a special license plate - such as the bills today heard in the Senate State Affairs Committee for Choose Life, Breast Cancer Awareness, and the National Rifle Association - the legislator has to write a bill and it has to go through all the hoops of the legislative process.  And legislators being legislators, politics plays a role.  So Sen. Bill Wielechowski has offered SB (Senate Bill) 93 to take this process out of the legislature and let the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) handle these administratively.

Key issues raised:

1. Should the State license plates be made into mobile billboards for various not-for-profit organizations?
   
2. How will the DMV decide to allow a particular organization to have a license plate? 
   
   Another issue that I had, but that I didn't hear raised is:
    
3. Whether the state should be in the business of helping fund raising for not-for-profit organizations?  

Should the State be in the mobile billboard business?
From what I heard in the committee meeting, while Sen. Paskwan asked if the state should get into the "mobile billboard business."  it didn't seem that anyone really cared, or if they did, whether they take the political heat they would get from organizations that already have such plates.  Sen. Paskwan asked and then the subject was dropped as they went on to other things.   The answer is the state is and will be.


How will the DMV decide to allow or not allow plates?
This was the focus of most of the discussion.  Whitney Brewster, the head of DMV, spoke by phone and described the process they would follow.  Now they have standards for vanity plates that allows them deny plates that are

• vulgar, 
• indecent, or 
• have a sexual connotation,  
• patently offensive to a racial, ethnic, or religious group

Pennsylvania was identified as a state that has the DMV administer the specialized organizational license plates and Brewster and Wielechowski staffer Karla Hart reported that Pennsylvania does not report any serious problems.  There are also legal cases that have identified precedents to follow.  You can click here to see all the Pennsylvania organizations that have specialized plates.

Most of the people calling in to testify were in favor of either the NRA plates or the Choose Life plates.  Jeffrey Mittman, Executive Director of the ACLU, called in to say their main concern was that the process has to be viewpoint neutral. 

Should the state be raising funds for non-profits?
The state gives money to non-profits all the time in grants and contracts to do business the state wants done.  The State has something no one else has - license plates.  In the case of vanity plates, individuals agree to pay a premium, which goes to the state, to get their own personal license plate.  But this is different.  Here, non-profits can raise money using the state's special monopoly on plates.  There may even be a sense to some that the state endorses the organizations since they are on the plates. Russ Amerling, National Publicity Coordinator, Choose Life License Plates, testified by phone that his organization nationally had raised over $13 million through license plates. Obviously, the more supporters in an organization, the more money they can raise. So, essentially, the state is aiding larger organizations more than smaller ones.

How the money gets distributed
Neil Moss, head of the Scholastic Clays Target Program, who testified by phone that he had initiated the idea of the NRA plate, said his organization would use the money for youth gun safety education.  He even said it wouldn't be limited to SCTP.  SCTP would allocate monies to organizations around the state that do these types of youth safety programs.  But there was no discussion of how this money would be audited.  Instead, the organizations would collect the money from people, then send a portion of it to the state.  What they then did with the money afterward was never discussed.

Another issue is that some organizations take their cut and others don't.  The National Rifle Association people will get, if I understood it right, about $20 per license plate.  But the money for the Breast Cancer Awareness would go to the state.  I would note that the Breast Cancer Awareness was being pushed by Rep. Holmes, who is in the minority and less likely to get it through the Republican dominated House, so she was able to get Republican Sen. Linda Menard to add it to her NRA bill.  But when asked where the money should go, Menard said that the Breast Cancer folks hadn't asked to keep the money, so it should go to the general fund.  I wonder if the question had even come up in the prior discussions.  Why didn't Menard suggest it go to the Breast Cancer group?  I don't know.

A plate for a Planned Parenthood related group, if I understood this right, got added to the Choose Life bill (SB 16) before today's hearing.  


Related Bills
In addition to the organizations mentioned in the committee today, there's a bill for the Lao Vets to have their own license plate.  They didn't take a vote today and I'm guessing that Wielechowski is hoping that SB 93 will be passed and all this will be delegated to the DMV so that the legislature doesn't have to deal with it any more. 

There are also two bills on driver's licenses - one to limit the validity of licenses for non-residents to the length of the person's permission to stay in the US.  That will be heard in the House Finance Committee this afternoon. 

HB 3 REQUIREMENTS FOR DRIVER'S LICENSE
"An Act relating to issuance of driver's licenses."

And there's this one.  I don't really know any more about this than what it says:

HB 149 DRIVER'S LICENSING; MEDICAL CONDITIONS
"An Act relating to drivers' licenses and to immunity for persons who report persons
who have a medical or other condition that may impair the ability to operate a motor
vehicle."


Below are my notes for the discussion of SB 2 and SB 16:

 
LICENSE PLATES: NATIONAL RIFLE ASSN.

Linda Menard - would create two new optional license plates for additional fee.  NRA commemorative license plate and Breast Cancer Awareness.  NRA will cost $50 fee and then $30 extra fee above regular fees.  Breast Care bill $50 extra.

Extra fee goes to skeet shooting - money will be appropriated directly to those programs.

Brewster:
Wielechowski: Can you talk about how your dept. administers these sort of bills
Brewster: Specialty license plates that are fund raisers - we account for those funds separately for legislature. Dealing with plates in excess of our costs. It costs us about $10 per set plus shipping charges, so anything above that is reported to finance and those funds go into the general fund.

Neil Moss: Live in Wasilla - state director for Scholastic Clay Target Program - my idea to get this on board. Alaska has more NRA members per capita than any other state, I'm involved with youth shooting sports. Always in search of money. Firearm safety literature. Always scrounging around to pay for something. This bill is a great fund raiser - successful in Tennesee - I don't have exact numbers and have spoken with the director there and they're happy with program. ASCTP is a 501 - it's not all for the clay target program, it would be available to any youth shooting project in the state of Alaska through our board of directors. I'm aware of all the state programs,ASCTP is primarily a shotgun program. About firearm safety and and I started this.

BW= For sponsor = Breast Cancer Awareness plates - where would you like the excess funds to go.
Menard: They haven't specified this so they can just go to the general fund.


Senate Bill 16: Senator Meyer
*+ SB 16 SPECIAL REQUEST LICENSE PLATES: TELECONFERENCED
Choose Life/Pro-Family Pro-Choice
Bills Previously Heard/Scheduled

Michele Seideman - inclusion of pro-family pro-choice license plate, establishes where those funds will go for these plates.

Meyer: Comments to original bill. Allow AK drivers to purchase a specialty license plate "Choose Life". We have a lot of license plate bills and so think your bill is probably the answer to this. This is not a fund raiser - an additional $30. 26 other states have these license plates and brought to us by our constituents. I personally like the idea. My family adopted a child. I see this as a pro-adotption message. Also strong pro-life message. And also the suicide prevention people like it. So it can mean whatever people wish. Not intended as a license plate.

Brewster: [No Questions]

Jeff Mittman: ED of ACLU for the state of Alaska, we've raised issues in other bills. These raise significant speech issues. The previous bill SB 96 addresses those, but there are still some. Process has to be viewpoint neutral.

Russ Emerling: Natl Publicity Coordinator for Choose Life License plate. 26 plates approved in US. 24 on the road, 2 in pre selling stage. It is a fund raiser in the other states. $13.? million raised to support adoption. I didn't know there would be no fundraisers. Intended to support life and get unwed pregnant mothers to choose life and choose adoption.

Jim Minnery: Rep the Alaska Family Council representing 1000s Alaskans across the state. 1000s of people whose lives have been affected by adoption.

Mike Paulson: Chair of Choose Life Alaska, here to answer questions.

Kelly Foreman: Also with Choose Life Alaska - discussion on this for two years and we came on in February to get sponsors, worked with DMV to design the plates. We encourage. We see that there is another license plate added. We asked so they would need to go through the same process we did for design.

Bob Head: Juneau resident 35 years. Dir. of American Family Association of Alaska - I've had the privilege to raise an adopted son, he's gone on to be research science and would be a mind that would be wasted. My wife and I have been chaplains who worked at half-way house and with ???

Sid Hydersdorf: Juneau resident. I support SB 16 that would allow the Choose Life license plate. Some critics may exist - result of our abortion culture. I think this is good public policy. I hope the committee will support the idea of affirmation and celebration of life, promote a culture of life.

Karen Robinson: Representing Alaska's Women Lobby and Planned Parenthood. We support the committee substitute. Thank the offices for their assistance. I'm still not clear that it would raise dollars, would support agencies that help with adoption. I'd suggest the Children's Trust which already has a Kid's License plate and get money from that.

Gorgeous Juneau Dressed in Snow and Blue Sky

There was a good amount of snow on the ground when I arrived Friday night.  It snowed Saturday.  Sunday morning was beautiful.  By Sunday night it was snowing again.  And this was Monday morning.  By Juneau standards, this is a fair amount of snow I'm told.  It was in the mid 30s during the day. 

And the Presidents' Day war protesters in front of the Capitol when I got there were also enjoying the sunshine. 

 

House Minority Leader Beth Kerttula is in the black boots.

Cissna Ferries To Juneau and Other News from the Capitol

Some notes while walking through the Capitol Building today.



Rep. Cissna Says No to Airport Pat Down

Traveling and staying with friends, I haven't heard any news for a couple of days, so when I was in Sharon Cissna's office and meeting her new staff person Marie, she was a little amused that a blogger didn't realize he was in the eye of the storm. That's where I learned that Rep. Cissna is a national news item for refusing to be patted down by TSA. Marie was answering phone calls from news outlets and having to say, "Sorry, I can't tell you any more than you know, because I don't know." Readers of this blog know that I find TSA's strategy to be serious lacking.

While Marie was not answering questions, Time magazine was saying that Cissna was going to take the Alaska ferry to Juneau.  I heard from others as I walked the halls that  Rep. Cissna is on an Alaska ferry and should arrive in Juneau Wednesday.  Time got this response from TSA:

. . . the TSA issued a general statement that they are "sensitive to the concerns of passengers who were not satisfied with their screening experience." Whatever Cissna's reason for declining to fly, we can only imagine it was worthy enough of enduring the 1,000 mile + journey to Juneau by sea.

I'm in Juneau, so people reading this listening to the radio and watching TV probably know more about this than I do.


Coastal Zone Management

Gov. Sean Parnell has allowed the CZM regulations put in place by Gov. Murkowski,  to continue for another six years.   I'm told, that local governments were pretty much cut out of any say over what happens on their coasts and the state has all the authority.  But in response to a question asked at a State Chamber of Commerce luncheon, apparently backtracked on this.   (Sorry I'm vague here, this is my first day, and I'll have a firmer grasp of things as days go by.  I'm trying to give a sense of things I heard as I talked to folks.  House Bill 106 as I understand it, is an attempt to make the renewal much shorter.

"An Act extending the termination date of the Alaska coastal management program and relating to the extension; relating to the review of activities of the Alaska coastal management program; providing for an effective date by amending the effective date of sec. 22, ch. 31, SLA 2005; and providing for an effective date." 

Or Senate Bill 56

"An Act extending by one year the date the Alaska coastal management program will be subject to termination under the statute establishing a procedure for evaluation of agency programs and activities; providing for an effective date by delaying the effective date of the repeal of the program; and providing for an effective date." 

These bills are not easy to understand.  I need to get more information.  


Jay Ramras,  former legislator, is making money in Fairbanks and Southern California and has taken up gardening.


North Slope Facilities Access - Rep. Gutenberg is sponsoring a bill to give companies not already on the Slope access to facilities.  OK, that isn't completely clear, but I'm trying to give you a sense of being here and getting lots of information very fast and trying to put things into context.  What I understood was that the current companies are making it difficult for companies that don't have facilities necessary for getting oil and gas to market. HB 138, from what I see, adds certain oil and gas facilities, whether publicly or privately owned, to the list of public utilities regulated by the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.  The specific activities added to the statute in this bill would be:

(H) furnishing, to the public for compensation, the service
12 of
13 (i) oil, gas, and water separation;
14 (ii) gas dehydration, compression, and reinjection;
15 (iii) natural gas liquid production; or
16 (iv) water treatment and reinjection;

Restricting Drivers' Licenses for Non-residents to the length of their US visas.

House Bill 3 is sponsored by State Affairs Chair Rep. Bob Lynn and a bunch of others:

REPRESENTATIVE(s) LYNN, HAWKER, CHENAULT, JOHNSON, GATTO, Millett, Thompson, Fairclough, Keller, P.Wilson, Olson, Pruitt, Dick, Saddler, T.Wilson, Doogan 

Does having Doogan as a co-sponsor make this a bi-partisan bill?  Maybe now that Eric Cordero  has become a Republican, he can have some influence on his new party's views on this.    Here's the the whole bill:

HOUSE BILL NO. 3
01 "An Act relating to issuance of driver's licenses."
02 BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA:
03 * Section 1. AS 28.15.101 is amended by adding a new subsection to read:
04 (d) Under regulations adopted by the department, the department may issue to
05 a person a driver's license with a duration of less than five years if the person is
06 authorized to stay in the United States for less than five years or the period of
07 authorized stay is indefinite. The department shall issue the license for the period of
08 the authorized stay. If the period of authorized stay is indefinite, the department may
09 not issue the license with a validity of greater than one year.

I notice that although Rep. Millet is a co-sponsor, Rep. Johansen voted NR ("no recommendation") rather than DP ("do pass") when it was heard in the House State Affairs committee.


Divesting Investments in Iran, the Sequel 

Rep. Gatto has reintroduced his bill to Divest State Holdings in companies doing business in Iran, though I was told a major supporter of the bill last year, David Gottstein, has changed his stance on this as a strategy given changes in the international situation.
[Update Feb. 22: I ran into David Gottstein on the stairwell in the Capitol today and asked him about this.  My informant wasn't well informed.  He said that he still supports the divestment, but that his focus is on gas pipeline and so he thought there wasn't enough time in the 90 day session to get the divestment bill through.]  The summary of HB 2:

"An Act relating to certain investments of the Alaska permanent fund, the state's retirement systems, the State of Alaska Supplemental Annuity Plan, and the deferred compensation program for state employees in certain companies that do business in Iran, and restricting those investments; and providing for an effective date."

You can read all of HB 2 here.  You can see my account of the debate in the State Affairs Committee where Gatto was a member and where the bill failed last year.  A problem that Republicans had with the bill was that it would require the state to stop doing business with major oil related companies that are doing things in Alaska. 


That should give you enough to chew on. 

If anyone is asking, yes, I'm back in Juneau - as Harpboy so precisely commented in my previous post Where's This?  And back in the Capitol.  But only for a few weeks this year.  Some good friends have offered me a place to sleep - and since I'm not an employee of the legislature, or even a volunteer, I can accept their offer - and I'll blog the Legislature while I'm here.  But I want them to continue to be good friends so I can't mooch off them for too long. 

It's a spectacularly beautiful today in Juneau.  More fresh snow and a brilliantly blue sky. (I didn't bring my card reader with me to the Capitol so I can't post pictures, but I will.)   I can tell how much I learned last year as I walked over to what are now familiar digs. So I walked around and visited different offices to let people know I was here and find out what people think is important this year. So, this is just a very superficial first take.

Conversation With a Brigittine Monk

This past Wednesday, I got to visit a Brigittine Monastery, the Priory of Our Lady of Consolation in Amity, Oregon. I really didn't know what to expect, but drove out through the brown February rural landscape. There were patches of blue after the mostly rainy Tuesday.








The monastery is back off the main roads and secondary roads amidst farm lands.













The parking lot was empty and it was quiet as  I walked the short path to the priory church.

 I sat in the empty church and read what I thought was the Monastery newsletter - The Rosary Light & Life - which had a long story by Father Reginald Martin about going to Lourdes.  As I look at it now, that turns out to be from the Rosary Center in Portland.  But the Monastery's newsletter is online.


Then I walked over to the main entrance and rang the doorbell and entered into a small shop where the chocolate made at the Monastery is sold.

It was there that I met Brother Francis, who's been a Brigittine monk for 32 years.  I told him I'd heard the monastery was here, but didn't know what I'd find, but I did know they had chocolate.

He said, unfortunately, that was what most people knew about it.

I said that I was more interested in learning about what life was like here.  But no, to his question, I wasn't interested into looking into the possibility of entering the monastery.

We talked for about 20 minutes.  First he told me some of the basics of the order - things I'd read online already.

The Order of The Most Holy Savior, popularly known as Brigittine, was founded in the year 1370 by St. Birgitta of Sweden to give praise and honor to God. Elements which characterize the Brigittine Order include a deep love of Christ, especially in remembrance of His sufferings, the fullness of liturgical worship, a respect for learning and authentic devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the holy Mother of God, all incorporated into a simple monastic life style.

The Brigittine Order exists at present with thirteen monasteries of contemplative nuns and a congregation of contemplative -apostolic sisters whose mother-house is located in Rome, in the actual former dwelling of St. Birgitta.

The Brigittine Monks existed from the fourteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, when they were dispersed, largely due to the European wars. (In 1970, a Brigittine Monk, Richard Reynolds, martyr, was declared a saint.)

. . . In March of 1976 Brother Benedict Kirby founded a new branch of the Brigittine Monks. This monastery has the canonical status of a Priory "Sui Iuris."

Then he told me their schedule, which is also online. 

4:45 am Rising

5:05 am Office of Readings, Lauds

6:00 am Solitude

7:45 am Mid-morning Prayer

8:00 am Conventual Mass

8:45 am Conference/Work

12:00 nn Mid-day Prayer

1:oo pm Solitude

3:00 pm Mid-afternoon Prayer

3:30 pm Work

6:00 Evening Prayer

6:30 pm Collation

7:00 pm Recreation

8:00 pm Rosary, Night Prayer

 They basically live, work, and stay at the monastery which is about ten acres - plus they have an agreement with local farmers to be able to walk around on the farms neighboring the monastery.  They have a day off every year when all the monks go on an outing.  They've been to the coast, to Mt. Hood, Crater Lake, and I think Brother Francis said they'd been to Portland.  They can leave the monastery for doctor and dentist visits. 

I was interested in how they kept contact with the world.  The prior of the monastery gets email, a major way they get requests for prayers, which the prior passes on to the other monks.  Prayers can't tell God to do anything, they have to be conditioned - God willing.

They don't watch television (I didn't ask about radio), they have magazine subscriptions, and his favorites were the Smithsonian and National Geographic.  They also get a number of Catholic journals.

Silence was not a part of this order, if I remember correctly, though it is part of some meditations

Originally, the monastery was just south of San Francisco, but they knew it was a temporary location and was too noisy right next to a busy street.  They eventually found this spot in rural Oregon, well off the main road and some minor road until you get to the dirt road Monastery Lane.


New Advent tells us about St. Bridget of Sweden:

The most celebrated saint of the Northern kingdoms, born about 1303; died 23 July, 1373.

. . . Her father was one of the wealthiest landholders of the country, and, like her mother, distinguished by deep piety. St. Ingrid, whose death had occurred about twenty years before Bridget's birth, was a near relative of the family. Birger's daughter received a careful religious training, and from her seventh year showed signs of extraordinary religious impressions and illuminations . . .

In 1316, at the age of thirteen, she was united in marriage to Ulf Gudmarsson, who was then eighteen. She acquired great influence over her noble and pious husband, and the happy marriage was blessed with eight children, among them St. Catherine of Sweden. The saintly life and the great charity of Bridget soon made her name known far and wide. She was acquainted with several learned and pious theologians, among them Nicolaus Hermanni, later Bishop of Linköping, Matthias, canon of Linköping, her confessor, Peter, Prior of Alvastrâ, and Peter Magister, her confessor after Matthias. She was later at the court of King Magnus Eriksson, over whom she gradually acquired great influence.

 Her husband died in 1349.

Bridget now devoted herself entirely to practices of religion and asceticism, and to religious undertakings. The visions which she believed herself to have had from her early childhood now became more frequent and definite. She believed that Christ Himself appeared to her, and she wrote down the revelations she then received, which were in great repute during the Middle Ages. They were translated into Latin by Matthias Magister and Prior Peter.

St. Bridget now founded a new religious congregation, the Brigittines, or Order of St. Saviour, whose chief monastery, at Vadstena, was richly endowed by King Magnus and his queen (1346). To obtain confirmation for her institute, and at the same time to seek a larger sphere of activity for her mission, which was the moral uplifting of the period, she journeyed to Rome in 1349, and remained there until her death, except while absent on pilgrimages, among them one to the Holy Land in 1373.

It was an interesting and peaceful morning.   (I could take pictures, but not of the monks, who wear grey robes.)

Where's This?

I once thought I'd have regular "Where's This?" posts letting readers identify the location of the picture.  But so far I've only had two, and it's been a long time. 

This seems like a good time for another "Where's This?" post, because you last saw this blog's anti-hero on the light rail headed for SEATAC without a clue where he was going next.  So where did he end up?   The picture is Saturday afternoon.

I know there are folks out there who can be a lot more precise than just the name of the city. 

Fare Enforcement

I took the newish Seattle light rail from downtown to the airport Friday.  It was my first time on this new way to get to the airport.  M complained about it because it used to take 30 minutes to get to the airport from UW on the express bus and now it takes 90 minutes because that bus has been replaced by the light rail which meanders out there.  From downtown it took 40 minutes. 

I asked the man I sat next to what he thought about it.  His complaint was that everyone rides for free because they never have people checking tickets.  It's like the Berlin subway in that you buy a ticket but you don't have to go through any gate.  They enforce it by having people randomly board a train and check tickets.  He thought they were going to go out of business because so many people didn't pay. 

As he was saying this we stopped at a station and these guys got on.

My seat mate was pleased.  It seemed that most people had tickets, but they did take one person off the train.

Are Color Distinctions Natural or Culturally Created? More on Language and How We See the World

I recently wrote briefly (it was during my 1200 word limit period) about Guy Deutscher's book Through the Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different in Other Languages In it, he's taking on the dominant linguistic paradigm (and Noam Chomsky) which argues that humans are genetically wired for language, all languages come from the same basic blueprint, and thus language does not affect how people think. Deutscher thinks it does. 

The first part of the book  was really interesting - it's about colors and whether they are 'natural' or 'culturally dependent.'  So I'm going to get into this a bit more deeply than I do with most books.  But remember, I'm just hitting the highlights, there are a lot more details that fill in the gaps in the book.

[I'd note this is also a great topic to put into your mental notes about how people know what they know - a basic theme of this blog.]

The first major foray into this battle for Deutscher is a discussion of color, or more accurately, a history of what scholars have observed about how humans perceive color. It's fascinating.  Deutscher tells us this is important in the debate between the nativists - language is genetic - and the culturalists - language impacts how we see the world - because people think of color as an obvious natural phenomenon. Natural phenomenon - like cats and dogs and birds (and color) should have matching words across languages while abstract concepts could be expected to differ more.   Thus every culture should have words for red, green, blue, yellow, etc.  If they didn't, then that would give ammunition to the culturalists.  (By the way, he does say that the concepts of cats and dogs and birds do have labels across languages that translate pretty easily.)

He starts in 1858 with future British Prime Minister William Gladstone who wrote a three volume treatise on Homer's Oddessy and Iliad. A chapter in the third volume looks at color in Homer's works. Gladstone's conclusion is: there isn't much and what there is, is peculiar.  The sea is wine-colored.  So are oxen.  Honey is green.  The sky is black.  Blue is never used, and despite Homer's rich descriptions about many aspects of nature, color is almost absent.  Gladstone hypothesized that humans 3000 years earlier weren't advanced enough to perceive as many colors modern folks.

Nine years later, a German philologist, Lazarus Geiger, intrigued by Gladstone's observations on Homer and color, examined other ancient texts and found the same general lack of color, and where it was the colors were strange.

I'd note that as I read this, I kept coming up with plausible explanations such as maybe Homer was color blind, only to have Deutscher explain away my point.  The idea of color blindness wasn't generally known in 1858 and since the lack of colors showed up in other texts, then everyone would have been color blind, which is pretty much what Gladstone was saying.

But the concept of color blindness was being discovered then and a German doctor, Hugo Magnus, went to Sweden to study a train wreck - despite the stop signal, the engineer went right through.  The engineer was dead, but Magnus got permission to test 266 engineers and station masters and found 13 to be colorblind. Deutscher writes:

The practical dangers of color blindness in an age of a rapidly expanding rail network thus became acutely apparent, catapulting color vision to a status of high public priority.  .  . The climate could not have been more favorable for a book which implied that latter-day color blindness was a vestige of a condition that had been universal in ancient times.  And this was exactly the theory proposed in Hugo Magnus's 1877 treatise on the evolution of the color sense. 

Then people began to realize that there were still people living in 'pre-modern' cultures and they should see what words they have for color.  This became a big deal and surveys were sent out to test as many 'primitive' languages as possible.  The results found similarly restricted language vocabularies.

No one could any longer just brush off their [Gladstone and Geiger's] findings as the overreaction of overly literal philologists, and no one could dismiss the peculiarities in the color descriptions of ancient texts as merely instances of poetic license.  For the deficiencies that Gladstone and Geiger had uncovered were replicated exactly in living languages from all over the world.

In 1898, W.H.R. Rivers went on an anthropological expedition to the islands in the Torres Straits between Australia and New Guinea to study a group of people who'd only been exposed to outside Western culture in the previous 30 years.  He found their color words to be very similar to what was found in Homer and other ancient writings - black and white, reddish, green which included blues, and just different ways of using color labels - including black sky.  But when he gave his subjects color tabs, they were able to pair up matching colors.  So, the conclusion was that while they could see and distinguish all the colors, how they described colors in their language was very different from how modern European languages described colors.  It was the language that was different, not their physical ability to see the colors. 

This was a 'big win' for the culturalists.  It 'proved' that language and culture affected how people see the world.

Until 1969 when Berlin and Kay  published a color guide - Basic Color Terms -  based on studies of 20 language groups.  Their study showed that all very similarly classified the same basic colors as did European languages - black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, purple, orange, and brown.  The ball was now back with the nativists.  Language doesn't affect how you see the world.

Except, 20 language groups aren't very many.  As linguists began to test other language groups, things proved to be less neat, and a number of languages proved to have different ways to categorize the color spectrum.  There was also discussion about the order in which different colors gain names in different cultures.  Black and white followed by red seems to be a basic pattern, but then the others aren't as predictable.   This has left enough ambiguity for both sides of the nativist - culturalist battles to feel justified.  (I'm skipping a lot in the 90 so pages he covers this in.)

Deutscher ends this section by saying both sides have points and summarizes the state of affairs  as Freedom Within Constraints.

In light of all the evidence, it seems to me that the balance of power between culture and nature can be characterized most aptly by a simple maxim:  culture enjoys freedom within constraints.  Culture has a considerable degree of freedom in dissecting the [color] spectrum, but still within loose constraints laid down by nature.  While the precise anatomical basis of these constraints is still far from understood, it is clear that nature hardly lays down inviolable laws for how the color space must be divided. (90-91)

He also tips his hat to William Gladstone before going on to other topics (he suggests we're going to hear about space and spatial relations, kinship, and grammar) in the culturist-nativist wars. Here's a passage that showcases the kind of stylistic playfulness that makes this book so much fun to read:

A lot of water has flowed down the Scamander since a great Homericist who occasionally dabbled in prime ministry, set off on an odyssey across the wine-dark sea in pursuit of mankind's sense of color.  The expedition that he launched in 1858 has since circled the globe several times over, been swept hither and thither by powerful ideological currents, and got sucked into the most tempestuous scientific controversies of the day.  But how much real progress has actually been made?

After another paragraph that chronicles modern scholars' lack of mention, even knowledge of, Gladstone's contribution he goes on:

And yet Gladstone's account of Homer's "crude conceptions of colour derived from the elements" was so sharp and farsighted that much of what he wrote a century and a half ago can hardly be bettered today, not just as an analysis of Homeric Greek but also as a description of the situation in many contemporary societies:  "Colours were for Homer  not facts but images:  his words describing them are figurative words, borrowed from natural objects.  There was no fixed terminology of colour;  and it lay with the genius of each true poet to choose a vocabulary for himself." 

I expect this isn't the last post on this book.

Meanwhile - The experience of you watching your memories becomes a memory itself.

I was introduced to an amazing book titled Meanwhile by Jayson Shiga.

 Quotes are from ComicBookResources.











"Meanwhile" begins with our young hero Jimmy choosing whether to buy a chocolate or vanilla ice cream cone; choosing vanilla sends Jimmy home after an enjoyable but uneventful afternoon, while picking chocolate sends him on myriad science-fiction adventures.














   The lines lead you to other parts of the book - like a very elaborate Choose Your Own Adventures book.  But it's complicated enough to require this instruction page that warns you:

Most [adventures] will end in doom and disaster.  Only one path will lead you to happiness and success

"I wanted to start the book off with the type of choice that we make every day," Shiga told CBR. "Once the reader is familiar with how choices in the book are made, I try and graduate to weirder choices like whether to kill every human on the planet or to travel back in time and punch yourself in the face."

Definitely worth checking out at the library or book store.  Meanwhile, here's a link to  Shigabooks

Alaska Native Actor Savanah Wiltfong's Name Missing in Movie Publicity

Dear Lemon Lima (Lima like the bean, not the capital of Peru) first came to the Anchorage International Film Festival in 2007 as a lushly beautiful short film focused on teenagers who were real and interesting.  The color was vivid. The exchanges between the kids was  often the way kids talk to each other when they have serious things to say and there are no adults listening. And mostly the movie was anti-slick.  Hercules' parents seemed a bit arch, but I took it that we were seeing the world through the kids' eyes, so maybe that's how they looked to him.  It was maybe ten minutes and I guessed it was the first glimpse at what promised to be an interesting feature. 

[I've found - at video.nymag.com - what appears to be the short we saw in 2007 and some of the main characters, including Vanessa, are played by different actors. I was close, it's 11 minutes. The color on here isn't as rich]





And it came back to the Festival in 2009 as a feature length film.  And it got an audience award in the feature class that year. 

Suzi Yoonessi, the director, emailed me the other day to say the movie would be released VOD (she thought I was hipper than I am and it took me a while to figure out that means video on demand) on Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision, and Verizon Fios in Alaska on March 4th. It will be released in LA that date too in theaters. Then March 11 in New York. If it does ok in those places, the rest of the world might be able to see it in theaters too.

But as I went to look for more information I found info on the movie, but the Alaska star's name wasn't included.  Savanah Wiltforng - an Alaska Native teen - plays the lead role of and assimilated Yup'ik who gets the Native scholarship to a boarding school in Fairbanks and because she has the scholarship people expect her to be expert in all things Native which she then has to become.

Here's an example from IMDB - where's Savanah's name?  It's not there.

Screen Capture from IMDB - so this is an image, the links won't work except IMDB

Here's the official poster:

Can you find Savanah Wiltfong's name on the poster?  Even though she's the star, you can't find her name among the four names on top.   It is on the poster.  It even says "Starring Savanah Wiltfong."  But you'll have to double click it to be able to read the purple on black small print. (hint, right side)

When I asked by email what happened to the star in the publicity, Suzi Yoonessi, the writer and director (can you find her on the poster?) wrote back, in part:

Savanah is included in the materials that our PR people send out, but it seems the popular teen sites are really focused on Meaghan Jette Martin or Vanessa Marano, since they have larger fan bases. This isn't a bad thing, since kids will make it out to see an indie film because of Meaghan's popularity in more mainstream material.

Maybe my readers are cooler than I am (or teenier) and recognize those other two names.  I get it though.  The point is to hook people to what they know.  I get it.  Let's see if it works. 



The director spoke after the short version in 2007 and surprised me by saying the story takes place at a boarding school in Fairbanks, but because it was so expensive to do it in Fairbanks, she was doing most of it in Washington State.  I posted about that and asked Fairbanks folks to contact her if they could help with housing and other services, but it didn't happen.

It came back to the Anchorage International Film Festival in 2009 as a feature length film.  I liked everything about it, EXCEPT that it purported to be in Fairbanks.  If Fairbanks residents want to see what there town will look like after 50 more years of global climate change, then check out the movie.  You'll be hanging around in your shorts and t-shirts on the grass mid-winter.  But Anchorage audiences voted it, as I said, an Audience Choice Award for what that's worth.

Suzi made this film as an independent.  That means she made every penny stretch as far as it could go - which didn't reach all the way to Fairbanks except for a few location shots as I understand it.  The State Film Board hadn't reopened yet.  Now that there are tax advantages for film makers on location in Alaska, let's hope this is the last 'green December in Fairbanks' movie until the weather has really changed that much. 

On the good side were great acting, interesting characters, and a good story about an assimilated Alaska Native girl discovering her Native roots.   It does use the underdogs in competition theme, but has a sweet - I'm tempted to say quirkiness, but it's only quirky for a movie.  These are real kids who just aren't the cheerleader types that most common in Hollywood type movies.   

And it starred a young woman from Eagle River - Savannah Wiltfong. 

So, Alaskans, check it out.  My first reaction to the Dear Lemon Lima website was it was waay to girlie for me, but it is original and it captures an aspect of the film. 

Here's the trailer.



(Think this is too promotional? Trust me. Like always, no one has paid me to write this. I just think pushing a film by an indendent director - and Indian-American woman if I'm correct - dealing with Alaska Native assimilation and then discovery of her Native culture, starring an Alaskan, with a (unfortunately fake) Fairbanks setting is the right thing to do. I'm just letting people know it's there.)