Bitter Milk

There's been a book on the table where I'm staying called Bitter Milk.  I've been trying to imagine what it might mean.  Think about it.  What is bitter milk?  Why would it be the title of a book on women and teaching?   Pause a bit and think about it.  I know.  Today we just want the answers.  So most of you are going to rush ahead to see without stopping to think about it.  But such brain exercises are important to keep our grey muscle agile.  But the instant gratification google offers us is making us forgot to take those pauses and let our brains do the thinking.  So look at the clock on your computer screen - better yet if you have a timer set it for 30 seconds - then shut your eyes and think about bitter milk for half a minute.  Yes, you do have 30 seconds to spare.  That's all I ask. 

OK.  That was kind of nice, to close your eyes and think for 30 seconds, wasn't it?  Here's what the author says in the preface:

In Sri Lanka, young women sometimes experience psychotic responses to adolescence as they struggle with the ambivalence provoked by the separation from their families.  In Medusa's Hair the anthropologist Gananath Obeyeskere tells us that these periods of distress are called "dark night of the soul" experiences.  He describes a ritual tonic that the afflicted girls drink to release them from their trouble.  It is called bitter milk and is a mixture of milk and crushed margosa leaves, the same bitter potion that mothers apply to their nipples when they wish to wean their babies.

 I can imagine author Grumet sipping bitter milk and swishing it gently in her mouth as she tastes and feels its meaning:

Bitter milk, fluid of contradictions, love and rejection, sustenance and abstinence, nurturance and denial.

She then goes on to say that these are the contradictions of teaching and her book explores these contradictions as she tries to understand what teaching means to women.  

Best Jobs For Abusers - Is the Stanford Prison Experiment Relevant?

While reading the emails sent to Rep. Sharon Cissna (I've posted some excerpts here)   I read a number of reports from people - both men and women - about the invasiveness of the 'pat-downs' they've endured.  Many of these people are older women who have had mastectomies, but also men and women who are amputees and/or have metal replacements for hips and other parts of their bodies.  They are people like my nearly 90 year old mother who are not likely to be terrorists suspects, but because of surgical procedures and TSA's screening protocol, are now likely to have their groins and chests touched by TSA agents.  (My mom, like many of the email writers, won't fly because of this.)

There were lots of lists of "best jobs for _____."  Here are some examples:

• Best Jobs for Moms
• Top  Jobs for Disabled Individuals.  
• 25 best jobs for introverts      

Link to See Complete Cartoon

Why not a list of best jobs for abusers?  People who want to use their power over others - to humiliate them, whether sexually or otherwise, or even just to take advantage of their vulnerability.

I'm not sure whether the priesthood in the Catholic church is a good job option for abusers any longer, plus it takes a lot of preparation to get those jobs.

Prison guards and nursing home jobs also give opportunities for abusers to take advantage of vulnerable people.

And TSA now must be seen as one of the best options.  In the others, the abuser tendencies are not sanctioned and are grounds for dismissal and criminal prosecution if discovered.  But at TSA, they are official policy.  And for the exhibitionist abuser there's a bonus to abusing people openly in a public place. 

Sarcasm Alert:  I learned teaching that not everyone gets sarcasm.  I remember one class where the students kept telling a classmate, "He's being sarcastic.  He doesn't really mean it."  I mention it here because while it might appear I'm taking this lightly, I'm not.  This is serious stuff.  And while I'm confident that most TSA workers are upstanding employees who are only trying to do their difficult jobs well, there are TSA workers who enjoy touching people's "junk" and otherwise humiliating them.

But why are the normal TSA workers willing to rub their hands in the groins and on the breasts of elderly women and men who clearly are not terrorists?    I suspect that for the normally non-abuser TSA employee,  the  Stanford Prison Experiment is relevant here.

In that controversial experiment, Dr. Philip Zimbardo set up a mock prison using Stanford students who had been chosen because of their emotional and psychological stability. They were divided into prisoners and guards. They very quickly got into their roles and the guards were soon abusing the prisoners so that six days into the two week experiment it had to be called off. Dr. Zimbardo explains what happened - with footage of the experiment - in the YouTube video I found posted by mr1001nights.





I'd note there has been a lot of criticism about the ethics of this experiment which is addressed in the Stanford Prison Experiment link.

I would guess the same dynamics work out with TSA workers. They get into their roles and learn to believe that passengers should obey them and that groping them is very appropriate behavior and if passengers resist, they probably deserve punishment. The TSA workers have an added incentive - their paychecks and perks, which they would lose if they protested their orders.

So, even if all the TSA employees were psychologically and emotionally well adjusted when they began their jobs, if the Stanford Prison Experiment lessons are valid here, they would fall into abusive roles.

The Milgram experiment had a similar result - where people off the street are found to give greater and greater electric shocks (or so they think) to learners who miss the questions. Unlike in the Stanford experiment, Milgram's 'learners' were actors who were not actually being shocked. But Milgram's experiment demonstrated how normal people would stray way beyond the bounds of appropriate behavior if told to do so by an authority. YouTube has footage of the Milgram experiments too.

I think the TSA workers have similarly strayed way beyond acceptable behavior in their intrusive pat-downs of people who have absolutely nothing to link them to terrorism except that their artificial hips set off the metal detector or their mastectomies looked strange in the scanner.

Cold Wind, Overlapping Roles, University Boosters Caucus, Blogging

I saw on BASIS that the new UAA Chancellor Tom Case was going to be in Juneau today.

(S)UNIVERSITY BOOSTERS CAUCUS OTHER COMMITTEE *
Feb 28 Monday 4:00 PM CAPITOL 106
Special Legislative Briefing:
Welcoming Chancellor Brian Rogers of UAF,
Outgoing Chancellor Fran Ulmer and Incoming
Chancellor Tom Case of UAA, and Chancellor
John Pugh of UAS
Final Update from Chancellor Ulmer and
Celebration of her Career in Public Service

Being a blogger sometimes puts me in conflict with other roles I have.  With my children, it's clear.  They are mentioned only when necessary, not by name, briefly, and if more than that, with their permission.   But I've been blogging about the UAA chancellor search that picked Tom Case.  As a former faculty member at UAA who served under then Dean Tom Case, I was in a potentially awkward position.  I didn't hesitate to identify my relationship with Case and the fact that my experience suggested his integrity was not something I questioned.  But I hadn't talked to him since last March (or April)  and I did feel the need to talk to him about all this.



So, I took off into the piercing downtown Juneau wind - it got colder and windier since I posted the video of Saturday's wind.  But whatever loose snow there was to make that Saturday video convincing has been blown away.  Sunday we were going to walk the seven or eight blocks to the Nickelodeon to the see the Academy Award nominated animated shorts, and the wind was so strong, we turned back and drove.  It wasn't as bad today, but it still is a factor to calculate as you take each step.   



I did get to see Tom Case and we did get to spend some 'quality time' together and affirm our respect for each other and I got to identify my concerns - which he indicated he'd already read.  I don't think there is much to blog about here.  I did say I was talking to him in various capacities.  More it was a private checking-in between two people who haven't talked for a while and making sure we were both still ok with things.  I know he learned a lot as dean and I know that he was already more sensitive to academic culture than President Gamble has so far proven to be.  He also assured me that President Gamble has learned a lot in the last month. 

For *Photo Details See Below

The Booster Caucus is basically Senators and Representatives who support the University - mainly from the three main campus sites of Fairbanks, Juneau, and Anchorage.  Today's main activity was to honor outgoing UAA Chancellor Fran Ulmer.  Ulmer's career has included being city council member and mayor of Juneau, state legislator from Juneau, Lt. Gov., head of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at UAA, and Chancellor of UAA.  But that's just a list.  She is one extremely smart, efficient, and personable person who has impressed me since I first met her.  If only the world had seen Fran Ulmer as a representative of Alaska instead of a certain former Governor, they would have seen a one of the many extremely talented women leaders whose hard work in support of Alaska has helped make us as good as we are.

You don't have to take my word for this. You can see Ulmer for yourself wearing yet another hat - member of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling - when she spoke in the Capitol today at lunch.  




*Photo Details:  From right to left - Sen. Linda Menard, UAS Chancellor John Pugh, UAA Chancellor Fran Ulmer, UAF Chancellor Brian Rogers, incoming UAA Chancellor Tom Case, Rep. David Guttenberg, and Rep Sharon Cissna

(OK, I had a couple of pictures.  One close and one with more people in it.  The close one wasn't as clearly focused as this one.  So, instead of having two of the same picture, I opted to cut most of the others out so you could see the four chancellors up close.  But, it turned out that Sharon Cissna was on the edge of this.  Since I've done several posts on her this week already, I didn't think I needed her in this one as well.  But cutting her out would have cropped the picture too closely.  Now that I've said all this, I guess I should show you what the original picture looked like before I cropped it.

The extra people on the left (excluding the photographer) are Sen. Joe Thomas and  Rep. Bill Stoltz and on the right side (l-r) Reps. Pete Petersen, Tammie Wilson, Anna Fairclough, and Sen. Johnny Ellis.)

Did TSA Know Sharon Cissna Was A Politician?

Some of the emails sent to Rep. Cissna, who refused to submit to a TSA 'patdown' last week, suggested that as a politician she probably got better treatment than others might have.  So when I had a chance to talk to her Friday, I asked if she had told them that she was a politician.  Her answer was basically 'no.'  She answers more fully in the video.

If Conservatives reject Darwin, how can they embrace Social Darwinism? Thoughts on seeing ASEA at State Capitol

While state employees in Wisconsin are demonstrating in protest of their Governor's move to end collective bargaining, Alaska's unionized employees - mostly represented by the Alaska State Employees Union  - were happily doing what lots of groups of Alaska residents do:  walking the state capitol, talking to legislators about issues, and posing in front of the Capitol building for a picture just as the Key Campaign folks had done the day before.

I don't want to get into the pros and cons of labor unions.  *My short personal sense of unions is at the bottom of the post.

But thinking about unions,  Walker's attack on them in Wisconsin, and their beginnings in the US, brought social Darwinism to mind.  Darwin's Origin of the Species came out in 1859 and Darwin's theory about evolution was debated through the Europe and North America and other parts of the world.

One of the offshoots of Darwinism was something called Social Darwinism.

Social Darwinism was a sociological theory popular in late nineteenth-century Europe and the United States. It merged Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection and Herbert Spencer's sociological theories to justify imperialism, racism, and laissez-faire (i.e. conservative) social and economic policies. Social Darwinists argued that individuals and groups, just like plants and animals, competed with one another for success in life. They used this assertion to justify the status quo by claiming that the individuals or groups of individuals at the top of social, economic, or political hierarchies belonged there, as they had competed against others and had proven themselves best adapted. Any social or political intervention that weakened the existing hierarchy, they argued, would undermine the natural order. [Emphasis added]

Social Darwinism was embraced by the ruling class because it justified their wealth and relieved them of any obligation to help the poor. This was 'scientific' support for the market and competition.

Social Darwinism lost influence during the Great Depression but the term came back in the era of Ronald Reagan.

But given that in 2009 only 4 in 10 Americans professed to believe in Evolution and in some states people are supporting the teaching of Creationism and Intelligent Design in schools, it seems that there is an inconsistency. 

If the hard core Republican base doesn't believe in Darwinism, why are they supporting a party that seems to continue to believe in social Darwinism, continues to favor policies that help the very wealthy and cut supports for the poor?


I can find fault with unions just as easily as anyone.  But those who attack the flaws of unions seem to overlook the equally, perhaps more, problematic faults of business.  Just because the private sector has faults, we don't call for abolishing it, nor should we try to abolish unions.  We should set up safeguards that increase the likelihood that both will do what they do well and not do what they do poorly.



Without unions, individual employees are at the mercy of organizations (I'm not talking Mom and Pop businesses here) with the resources and information that tips every confrontation in favor of the organization against the employee.  Unions provide a base of knowledge for workers - knowledge of the organization's policies, precedents, historical practices, and knowledge of the law and their rights.  Unions give some power to people at the bottom of the heap.  Power to fight abusive bosses, unfair and illegal work and pay practices, power to fight illegal orders and unfair termination.  Without the counterbalance of unions, managers - in public as well as private organizations - have overwhelming power over workers. 





*My Short View of Unions
The fight between unions and management is about power.  My experience, as an employee and as a reader of history, is that American workers are inherently anti-union.  They believe in the individual over the group.  They only vote for unions when management has been so overbearing and unreasonable that joining a union looks like a better alternative. 

And because, despite our rhetoric, we are only moderately good at democracy (look at how many people don't vote and can't tell you the individual candidates' positions). 

And so unions, which are ostensibly more democratic (officers are selected through elections of the members rather than appointment from the top), are easily taken over by those who like to play power games. 

The people on top of organizations aren't very different.  There will be times when unions have sway and times when they have to make concessions (such the current economic downturn).  A good reading of history suggests that without unions, working conditions would be dismal.  And even employees in non-union organizations have unions to thank for things they take for granted, like 40 hour weeks, vacation and sick pay, and a myriad of other benefits. To get a reminder of US working conditions before unions, read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.  It's short and available free at any public library. 

Costco Changes Fish Policy

Last July I posted this in the post  "Costco Reigns as Biggest Offender" from a Greenpeace report

. . . And while most U.S. supermarkets could stand to improve their sustainable seafood policies, Costco reigns as the biggest offender. Everything at Costco is huge—the same is true of the store's environmental footprint. Of the 22 IUCN Red List species, Costco sells 15: Alaskan pollock, Atlantic cod, Atlantic salmon, Atlantic sea scallops, Chilean sea bass, grouper, monkfish, ocean quahog, orange roughy, red snapper, redfish, South Atlantic albacore tuna, swordfish, tropical shrimp, and yellowfin tuna. The store's fish coolers really serve as a one-stop shop for oceanic destruction. . .

 Greenpeace has a new message up this week:

Costco has agreed to remove over a dozen red list items, pursue better practices in aquaculture and assume more of a leadership role in the ongoing global effort to develop a more sustainable tuna industry.

If you want to know all the specifics (I know I like hearing about all the details), Costco has publicly announced that they’re going to:

-- Eliminate 12 red list species, which will not return unless the company can find an MSC-certified option. This is certainly not perfect—we’d like to see these unsustainable options off the shelves until the populations recover—but it’s a major step forward. The species are:

     - Atlantic cod
     - Atlantic halibut
     - Chilean sea bass
     - Greenland halibut
     - Grouper
     - Monkfish
     - Orange roughy
     - Redfish
     - Shark
     - Skates and rays
     - Swordfish
     - Bluefin tuna

-- Pledge to play more of a leadership role within aquaculture;

-- Partner with World Wildlife Fund to examine their remaining wild-caught species and determine how to best transition to the most sustainable alternative; and

-- Acknowledge the role that the canned tuna industry plays within the global sustainable seafood movement and is in the process of shifting to more sustainable tuna sources in all sectors (fresh, frozen, and canned).

It’s fantastic that Costco's leadership has taken some incredibly important steps forward. Still, this is just the beginning—the company has a long way to go, and just as we monitored the continued progress with the victory around Trader Joe's, we’ll also be keeping an eye on Costco to make sure that they follow through on these policies and continue improving their stewardship towards the oceans.

I'm quoting from Greenpeace, which is touting this as a big victory, because I can't find anything about it on the Costco site.  Here's what I got when I used their search tool:

And the link shows what I got when I just searched for 'fish".

Windy Day in Juneau

Alaska State Rep. Cisnna Gets TSA Stories by Email

Rep. Cissna in her office Friday afternoon

Alaska State Rep. Sharon Cissna's office recorded 92 e-mails for Monday regarding her refusal to be patted down at SEATAC.  There was an equal stack on Tuesday.  Maybe not a great many, but a lot for an Alaskan State Representative.

Rep. Cissna is now back in her office and we discussed the propriety of posting parts of some of the emails.  They were sent to her, she assumes, with the expectation of respect for people's privacy, but they were also sent with the hope that she would find a way to use what they have said to let people know that this is a problem - particularly the issue of people who have had some sort of surgery that now sets them up to be singled out for the 'pat-down.'  So with Rep. Cissna's permission, I have pulled out some representative comments that leave out anything that might identity the writer. 

"Thank you for standing up for your privacy rights and those of other women" - Daughter of a Breast Cancer Victim, Connecticut

"I would like to visit Alaska this year, but at this time I decline to fly. Please do what you can to push back against the TSA, and to beat back this obtrusive and unconstitutional procedure" Colorado

"How can any legislator in any state or any of our US Senators and Congressional members allow this stupidity to continue?" Fairbanks

"With two titanium knee joints, I am a 'victim' every time I fly, which has been four to eight times a month"

"Good for you standing up against the thugs at TSA!" Juneau

"It's not acceptable, it simply defies common human decency." Seattle

"I have two young children who should never be touched as these TSA people touch them!" Juneau

"I regret for you what must surely have been an embarrassing and upsetting incident; not to mention the publication of your personal health matters! But that is what we all face these days." North Carolina

"I was always told that the terrorists only won if they forced us to change the way we live and altered the freedoms Americans enjoy. What goes on today in US airports leads me to believe they won. By the way, I am a retired US Air Force Master Sergeant that was once cleared to work on Air Force One. Yep. I'm a real threat." Washington

"I'm am Oregon conservative and registered nurse who wants to thank you for standing up to TSA. . . However, you may not be aware that the scanning you underwent is dangereous to your health." Oregon

"If more of us refused and chose other forms of transportation, this rubbish would end. Thanks for standing up for your rights and dignity and by doing so, the rights and dignity not only of Alaskans but of all Americans." Arizona

"It's a very sad state of affairs we have reached when TSA has to subject a traveler to a pat down because the nude-o-scope reveals that the passenger had major surgery." New Jersey

"It is utterly obscene that so many elderly, disabled and medically challenged people are disproportionately subjected to repeated enhanced physical searches at the hands of this out of control and wasteful government agency. It is my fervent hope that there are more people like you who are willing to step up and say "enough is enough". Florida

"I am a retired law enforcement officer with both domestic and foreign experience. I find these procedures to be largely a waste of resources and time."

"For many of us who travel frequently this so-called "Security Theater" has finally gone too far. . . This should be a bipartisan issue on which we can agree as Americans that these latest search "procedures" have gone too far, from the X-Ray scanners to the euphemistically and inaccurately named "pat-downs," which in truth are groping and invasive searches to which my wife and I have already been subjeted a total of three times in 2011, including once each at SEATAC."

"Is there ANYTHING myself, friends, family, and colleagues can do to stop this disgusting intrusion into our personal privacy?"

"American women such as myself, and I am 60 years of age, need a spokeswoman to cut off the balls of the TSA and DHS. I'm not asking you to do it single-handedly, but your sisters across the country are going to stand with you if you decide to go viral on all the news media with the truth about the outrageous procedures which made you cancel your flight plans."

"I live in California and am almost embarrased to have my daughters fly in to visit us from Kansas. By simply declining the search you have taken a stand and I for one appreciate it." California

"My wife is now disabled and has had neck surgery. As a result, she has plates and screws in her neck. We are pretty sure that they would want to do an enhanced pat-down screening as a result of her medical situation. So. . .we have decided to not fly anymore. I just can't believe that our country has come to this. It is so degrading, humiliating, and really unnecessary. Bless you and take good care."

"I just made myself space out and pretend I was on another planet while having this woman poke in my crotch from front and back, run circles with her hands around both of my breasts, make me lift my blouse so she could put her hands inside my waistband. . . I traveled through several airports in Europe all through the month of October and not once did I have to endure this humiliating experience."

"[After having a bad experience with TSA, she writes] That next month, I showed up to fly, and stripped down to nothing but my speedo swimsuit at 6 am so they could get a better look. NEVER regretted my decision! I am a survivor of cancer and sexual abuse, and being touched sends me to the deep end."

"You should be ashamed of yourself and the way you represent the State of Alaska."

"I travel with a co-worker with a prosthetic leg, he experiences similar personal invasion and loathes the experience." Georgia

"When I (a chubby grandmother) have been pulled out for extra observation it burns me up. Like you, I have decided not to endure this anymore. If I never fly again, so be it." Kentucky

"My husband has an artificial hip, carries a card stating such, but every time he flies the TSA attendant says "I'm not interested in our card, please step over here for a more thorough search." He has to unbutton his slacks and turn the waist band out and the attendant runs his hands around his waist and down his groin on both sides, and down the insides of his legs. My husband is 71 yrs. old." Washington

"Our family is in [the prosthetic business]. . . Due to HIPPA regulations, we could lose our Medicare accreditation if we were to tell 'anyone' the private medical diagnosis of a client. So why is TSA allowed to "out" passengrs' medical conditions for all the world to hear and know about?"

"I have a leg amputation . . .I had a female TSA agent literally shove her hand agressively up between my legs. I am not a person who has a big personal space issue, but this went way beyond anything decent. If I had been outside the airport I could have had this woman arrested. I was so shaken that I asked the TSA suprvisor if this was standard procedure. I was given a very abrupt "yes" and sent on my way."

"Thanks for your willingness to stand up against the charade." Virginia

"Since Gov. Parnell is so keen on thumbing his nose at the federal government over the health care law perhaps you could introduce a resolution or bill urging him to do the same over the TSA:s invasive and probably unconstitutional procedures."

"I am a rape survivor and have PTSD and can't imagine what kind of state I might be in when groped by these thugs."

I think the emails speak for themselves.  I would add that I just flew out of Seattle last week.  While I almost always am conscientious about putting all the metal into my jacket pocket and putting and  almost never set off the alarm, this time my cell phone was in my shirt pocket and I didn't realize it until they told me to stand facing the blue wall.

This is obviously not a random sample of Americans, or even of her emails.  There was the one - in here - that clearly found Rep. Cissna at fault.  There was one other that wasn't clear. Here there are 19 positives and one negative.  The actual count was 90 to 1 (maybe 2).

The raw emotion in some of them says very clearly that we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.   TSA  says, we haven't had any domestic terrorists because of our security.  I think it's more like the man in Central Park who scattered torn up newspaper around his bench.  When asked why he did that, he said, "To keep away the elephants."  "But there are no elephants here." the questioner pointed out."  And the man said, "See, it works." 

I'm not saying terrorism doesn't exist, or that the intelligence agencies shouldn't be vigilant, but I suspect that subjecting grandmothers to groping TSA inspectors isn't what is keeping the terrorists away.  And no one has been killed, to my knowledge, by a terrorist in the US since 9/11.  But 40, 000 a year (pushing the total close to 400,000 this year) have died in car crashes.  Many more have been injured and maimed.

House Passes Law to Make Folding State Flag More Complex

Here's the current Alaska Law (ec. 44.09.030.) for Display and retirement of flags.

(a) The official flag of the state shall be displayed with the flag of the United States only from sunrise to sunset, or between the hours designated by proper authority. However, the flag may be displayed after sunset upon special occasions when it is desired to produce a patriotic effect.

(b) The flag of the United States and the flag of the State of Alaska shall be displayed daily, weather permitting, in the following places:

(1) on or near the main administration building of every institution under the authority or control of the state government;

(2) in or near every schoolhouse during school days.

(c) An official flag of the state that is no longer a fitting emblem for display because it is worn, tattered, or otherwise damaged may be respectfully retired by fire.

Short and sweet.

Here's a law sponsored by Rep. Craig Johnson (and co-sponsored by Reps. Hawker and Keller), making it more complex.  About 140 words in the old law, 440 in the new one.

HOUSE BILL NO. 98

01 "An Act relating to display, folding, presentment, and retirement of the state flag."
02 BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA:
03 * Section 1. AS 44.09.030 is amended by adding new subsections to read:
04 (d) When displayed horizontally, the flag shall be positioned with the hoist on
05 the left and the North Star in the upper right corner.
06 (e) When displayed vertically, the flag shall be positioned with the hoist at the
07 top and the North Star in the lower right corner.
08 * Sec. 2. AS 44.09 is amended by adding new sections to read:
09 Sec. 44.09.032. Folding and presenting the state flag. (a) When folding the
10 state flag, the following procedure shall be followed, whenever possible:
11 (1) hold the flag waist-high with another person, so that the flag is
12 parallel to the ground and the hoist is on the left;
13 (2) fold the flag lengthwise, with the open edge up;
14 (3) holding the edges securely, rotate the flag so that five stars are< 15 facing up; 01 (4) fold the flag lengthwise a second time, with the open edge up; 02 (5) holding the edges securely, rotate the flag so that two stars are 03 facing up; 04 (6) fold the flag widthwise, with the North Star facing down and the< 05 hoist on the right; 06 (7) holding the edges securely, fold the flag widthwise a second time, 07 with the North Star facing down and the hoist on the right; 08 (8) fold the flag widthwise a third time, with the North Star facing up. 09 (b) When presenting the folded flag to another person, the folded flag should
10 be turned so that the North Star is nearest the receiver.

11 Sec. 44.09.034. Retirement of the state flag. An official flag of the state that
12 is no longer a fitting emblem for display because it is worn, tattered, or otherwise
13 damaged may be respectfully retired by fire in a ceremony or other dignified manner
14 honoring the flag as a fitting emblem for the state. When practicable, retirement of the
15 state flag should occur in a public ceremony under the direction of uniformed
16 personnel representing a state or federal military service or a patriotic society. If a
17 formal ceremony is not practicable, a private ceremony is acceptable.
18 * Sec. 3. AS 44.09.030(c) is repealed.

It passed the House of Representatives today with no dissenting votes.

Rep. Johnson's website says the law was brought to him by the Dimond High ROTC

As part of Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) curriculum, "Service Learning Project", the cadets of the A. J. Dimond High School JROTC Program realized there were several issues concerning the handling of Alaska's state flag, including statutory ommissions. Based on their research, the following three issues were identified and are recommended for inclusion in statute:

Even though this new bill would triple the words in the flag statute, it's still much shorter than the US Code.

I thought less government, less regulation were important to the party of the sponsors. But at least it's written as a guide, not a mandate. There don't seem to be any penalties for getting it wrong.

But I don't understand why military should be favored over civilians in retiring the flag. It just seems a way to link the flag and patriotism to war. I would hope think that it would be better if people around the world saw our flag as a symbol of peace and prosperity.

Key Campaign Rally for Families with Kids with Serious Health Problems

 When I got back from the Alaska ferry terminal to see Rep. Cissna's homecoming, there was a rally in front of the Capitol. They had a song book and were singing their message with familiar tunes with new lyrics.

I wasn't completely sure who was putting this on or their specific objectives, so I looked on line.  The information is on the Hopealaska website - I think this is the organization that used to be known as Hope Cottages:

Anyone who is concerned about the rights, dignity and dreams of individuals who experience disabilities is encouraged to join in the efforts of our Key Coalition. The Key Campaign will be held in Juneau February 23-24, 2011, with similar advocacy rallies across the face of urban and rural Alaska, taking place on Thursday, February 24.

In addition to joining the rallies, you are asked to contact your legislator personally by sending an email or submitting a Public Opinion Message (POM): Submit POM Online or Download the POM Form.

Their specific objectives are:

The Key Coalition has identified four major priorities to be addressed during this year’s Key Campaign.

Wait List Reduction—Currently the State of Alaska has committed to drawing 50 people from the State Wait List for Community Services each quarter. This initiative encourages the State to increase the draw to 75 people per quarter (from 200 people to 300 people annually).

Periodic Rate Review—Establish a periodic rate review into statute. This statute would address an equitable process to establish rate increases for community services that are in place for institutional services.  All we are asking in community programs is a simple matter of equity—the same ability to predict consistent budgets in a similar process dictated under state law.  This discrepancy between institution and community resulted in a previous period of a four year rate freeze for programs similar to Hope, while nursing homes and hospitals received much needed annual adjustments.

Complex Behavior (HUB)—Support the Hub component (point of entry) of the Alaska Complex Behavior Collaborative, which is an investment in Alaska's workforce and services for individuals with cognitive disabilities and complex behavioral needs.

Autism Insurance— Pass HB79 and SB74 requiring insurance coverage for autism spectrum disorders.  Most insurance policies specifically exclude coverage for treating autism, even when the services are otherwise covered by the health plan. Coverage of medically necessary autism treatment in Alaska will enable many children to access the services they need and live more productive lives. 

 But the real reason this is important comes through in this short video of a mother of a severely brain damaged child.  She and her husband had no one to turn to until Key Campaign organizations helped them out.