Darrell Dennis - Tales of an Urban Indian

Gramma Susie was broad humor with a bite.  In the Gramma Susie costume, Sharon Shorty could play the classic role of the king's fool and say things that normally wouldn't be tolerated.

Darrell Dennis' humor was there to cover the pain.  First the universal pains of growing up and becoming a man.  Second, the additional pain of growing up as a member of an outsider group - in this case as a North American Indian.  Darrell's a charming, good looking man whose very presence on stage is in sharp contrast to the gritty story he tells of alcohol, sex, and drugs.  The stories he tells are powerful and his performance magnifies their power.  And the humor makes it possible to stay and listen. 

I'm really glad friends got us out to see these two pieces at the Alaska Native Heritage Center Saturday night.  I've already posted about Shorty.  Now I offer you a short video to give you a sense of Darrell's performance.  And yes, I did get his permission to post this too, though I did say it would be maybe 30 seconds, and it came out to 2 minutes. 

Raven Clan's Gramma Susie Makes For Non-Stop Laughter

Gramma Susie with 'grandson' Caleb

I wanted to put some catchy line in the title, but it was the performance of Sharon Shorty as Gramma Susie, not just the words, that had the audience laughing so hard last night at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

Her act was part of an eight day "alerNative Theatre Festival."

There was a second, one actor play - Tales of an Urban Indian - by Darrell Dennis which tapped into an edgier humor to bring underlying issues in Gramma Susie right up to the surface.  I'll put up video of Darrell Dennis in the next post.   In this post, I offer you some video from Gramma Susie.

Sharon Shorty after performance

As I edited the video, I laughed over and over again each time I saw the clips. It's not so much the jokes, but how she tells them. True genius. And she's been winning awards for her performances even though they don't quite fit into most standard categories.

"Sharon Shorty has been voted one of the TOP 10 YUKONERS to meet (Up Here Magazine, 1999) and is from the Tlingit, Northern Tutchone and Norwegian People. Sharon is from the Raven Clan and was raised with the storytelling tradition of her southern Yukon community." 

Sharon is also an award winning actor (Aurora Award, 1997) and Storyteller (Aurora Award, 1998). She has received the Ross Charles Award (1999), the CTV Fellowship (1999) and The Yukon Filmmaker's Fund Award (1999). And more importantly, Sharon is an award-winning Bannock-Maker! (New Yukon Indian Days, 2003)  She was also recently named "Best Comedian" and "Best way to dress as an Elder"." 

She also performed at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.  Find out more at her website.

I edited the video a bit out of order so you could hear her dead-on raven call first (and last.)  She's from the raven clan and when she introduces herself, she gives her lineage in English and Tlingit.  There's a hint of the humor already, but it really starts after honoring her heritage.  If you can use a smile, just watch the video. All of it.

  


By the way, I asked Sharon after the performance if I could post the video and she generously consented.  And also said to credit 'grandson' Caleb who plays the drum in one clip.  (He gave permission too.)

Clear Roof Snow Easily With Snow Chute

[UPDATE Sat 3:53 pm: I couldn't remember my student's last name when I posted this.  But I got an email from a reader who looked up the patent and asked if Leroy Groat was the man with the patent.  Yes he is.  And I've now left a message with his daughter's business and hope to find out soon if the snow chute is still available to buy.  Or if you know how to get hold of Leroy, email me .]


A long time ago I was paired as a mentor for a student at the University.  I've lost touch with her over the years, but I thought about her today as I went looking in the garage for my Snow Chute.  This is a patented device her dad had invented.  It's so obvious and simple and easy to use.  So I bought one.  I haven't used it for a long time, but this year with all the snow, and stories of roofs having trouble in Cordova, I decided it might be a good idea to get some snow off the roof.  So today I decided to find it and experiment with the lower roof over our 'greenhouse.'

The device is a rectangle with a long plastic tail attached.  You put the metal as close to the end of the roof as you can and then pull it up the roof.  It neatly slices the snow and sends it down the plastic tail and off the roof.  I know that's hard to imagine from that description, so I took my camera out with me and made a video.

The video shows how easy this is because I had to do it one handed to use the video.  With two hands it's nothing at all to do.  Brilliant in it's simplicity and effectiveness. 

Does this mean those people were right about Palin too?

The Alaska Dispatch is reporting that the Director of the Alaska Division of Wildlife Conservation  was arrested on 12 counts of illegal hunting today. 

A former predator control officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rossi is a longtime friend of Chuck and Sally Heath, Palin's parents. After Palin took office in 2007, Sally lobbied her daughter to have Rossi named commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The commissioner oversees all wildlife and fisheries management in the state. Sally Heath, in an email to Palin, noted that almost everyone would object to Rossi as unqualified, but added those "are the very same people who said the same thing about you."

So, does this mean those same people were right about Palin too?

Rossi did not get the commissioner's job, but a special job -- assistant commissioner for abundance management -- was created for him within state government. .  .

. . . His qualifications have repeatedly been called into question. He lacks a college degree and his prime professional association with wildlife has involved killing rats and foxes in the Aleutian Islands.

 You can read the whole article at the Dispatch.  

Redistricting Court Challenge: Bickford Filling In Many Details

Taylor Bickford has been testifying. I'm conflicted about how to report this. There's barely any time during the breaks to review my notes or say much at all. Basically, he's answering some of the issues raised by the plaintiff's yesterday, like why he and Mr. White said that Lisa Handley's numbers were wrong - because they'd sent her the third party plans without converting them to Native VAP* - and a few other things. He's coming across as he did throughout the process. Open, knowledgeable, and sincere. It's also somewhat strange to have Mr. White be the attorney here. Yes, he's the attorney for the Board, but because of that he was a key player and really should be a witness. It's emphasized here as Taylor keeps saying "You did this" and "You did that" to Mr. White when they are discussing what happened.

They are going into detail about why they couldn't use different plans and issues. I think this puts some things to rest in a broad sense. But it still doesn't deal with some of the micro changes to the Fairbanks districts that really weren't impacted that minutely by the Native districts. And while they emphasize how they needed to do SE and the Native districts first and then focus on the urban areas, they aren't mentioning how little time they had on the urban areas, so that members really didn't have a detailed understanding of how incumbents were impacted. Nor did the public. As Holm said earlier today, something like, "We did this on the last day." They come back on in three minutes.

If you want to listen in to get a flavor you can call

Conference Number: 866-231-8327 (Limited to the first 150 participants) 

Conference Code: 9074529311# 

It will continue to 4:30pm today and start again tomorrow at 8:30am.

*VAP is voting age population. And the third party plans had sent in data with total native population which would be higher than the VAP. So it would misrepresent the number of native voters in a district until converted to VAP.

Still More Snow

Last night I had the top half of the driveway clear down to the pavement and the rest just needed some scraping of the hard packed down snow.  Today there were nearly seven more inches.  Well it depended where in the driveway I measured.  The picture is up top near the house.  I managed to get the driveway clear during the court's lunch break.  Not much time left.  Our neighbor cleared the sidewalk from their driveway to ours. 




The garbage trucked inched along between the parked cars and the garbage cans. 

Let's hope there isn't a fire.  The fire trucks will also have a problem.  There just isn't anywhere to park any more because the berms are so wide.  I at least have kept my van's parking space cleared out.


I'll try and get some video up soon of our neighbor with his snow blower.  But it's time for the court again.

Redistricting Court Challenge: On Critical Points, Holm Doesn't Know, Can't Remember, Or Resents the Implication

Board Member Jim Holm, from Fairbanks, where the court challenges to the Redistricting Board's Proclamation plan are centered, was the witness this morning so far.  There's a short break now, but whenever plaintiff's attorney Walleri got onto the issues of why incumbents were paired, or whether he knew where people lived, or whether the two Democratic Senators could have been paired if he hadn't stuck an unpopulated area into one district, his answers were repeatedly, I don't remember, I don't know, and a couple of times, I resent the implication.  I have to go through my notes, but it does seem to me there were some inconsistencies or things he didn't know that he had to have known.  Such as the fact that Sen Stedman is in the Senate bi-partisan coalition.  First he just said he didn't know.  Only after some more prompting did he know.  There were other issues like that - had he spoken to people outside the process about redistricting.  No he hadn't.  The Walleri gave a list of Republicans that there was documentation he'd spoken to and he said he had talked to them. 

This part of the testimony does need more scrutiny.  And it's a real contrast to the questioning of Leonard Lawson the other day.  While the Board's attorney White is pretty aggressive, Lawson answered all the question without hesitation and without getting upset.  On the other hand, the plaintiff's attorney, Walleri is very low key and polite, yet Holm took offense and regularly couldn't remember things or didn't know. 

They're coming back on so I have to quit.  More details later.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Tedium Squared - But Some Interesting Developments

It was really hard listening and typing today.  There were some interesting points, especially in the afternoon when the plaintiff's attorney cross examined Board Chair Torgerson.  I'm really trying to get up the energy to write about it.  Since I attended most of the public meetings, I understood what they were talking about and I had my own opinions about some of the responses.  But if I'm going to get up early enough tomorrow morning to listen in again, I just can't turn this out fast enough.

So, just to get something out, I'll put up a few of the things that caught my attention.
1.  In the morning session, Torgerson talked about his career path from his time in Anchorage to the military and working for Louisiana Pacific, Union Oil, and getting into the legislature. (This was in the morning session and you won't find it in the notes below.)
2.  His discussion of how he got onto the board - applied through the Boards and Commissions departments process, but also discussions with the heads of the Senate and House in case he didn't get appointed by the governor.  All pretty standard, but we don't usually hear all this background stuff.  We learned that Joe Balash was in on the talks and that Torgerson had beer with Balash around this time.  But he didn't remember if they talked about getting on the board.
3. Hiring the Voting Rights Act (VRA) expert.  I'd heard while blogging about the board, that they'd had trouble getting the VRA expert on board because in the previous redistricting process, the board had the power to hire.  But this time, it had to go through the governor's office and they went by the book.  But plaintiff's attorney Mike Walleri established that the staff attorney was hired in October while the VRA expert didn't come on board until April.  So, the time between when all the board members had been appointed and they began doing things until the put out the Proclamation Plan was 9 months, and the VRA expert wasn't hired for seven of those months.  Walleri asked questioned about when they first requested from the Governor's office that the VRA expert be hired.  Torgerson couldn't remember.  Then Walleri asked if they'd had to go through the Governor's office to hire the staff attorney.  Yes.  But he was on board in October and the VRA expert wasn't on board until April.  Why the big difference?  Torgerson didn't really answer this other than to blame the Governor's office and that the attorney was in-state and the VRA expert was out of state RFP.  This becomes important because the Board worked off the old terminology and presumed benchmarks for native districts for their first draft plan.  These were the standards they had to meet to get pre-clearance from the Department of Justice that they met the VRA standards.  And the third party groups that also were coming up with alternative plans had to work from these standards.  Once the expert got on board and checked the draft plans, she said the terminology and standards were different from last time.
Walleri wanted to know why they hadn't hired the VRA expert early on.  She didn't need the new Census data to review the voting patterns for the last decade and she could have come up with the real target benchmark before the Census data came in.  Then they wouldn't have wasted so much time with the wrong target benchmarks.

This is also an issue because, ultimately, the Board is claiming that none of the private groups that submitted plans met the benchmark standards, so this shows that it was too hard to meet AND meet all the Alaska Constitutional standards.  But if the other groups didn't have the right benchmark information - it turns out the real numbers didn't come out until after all the plans were submitted - there was really no way they could have turned in acceptable plans.  So if that holds, that would blow that argument for the defense.

3.  Torgerson said that none of the 3rd party plans met benchmarks, but Walleri found  places on the record where Handley said they did.  But then the next day the staff attorney and the executive director both said, that actually Handley didn't have the right data and they really didn't meet the benchmarks.  Walleri made a big deal about the fact that except when Handley spoke by phone or in person, all the board contact with her went through "the filters" of attorney White or executive director Bickford.  Torgerson took issue with the word 'filter' but said White and Bickford were the ones who communicated with Handley. 




I observed, last year at the board meetings, a lot of confusion over the terminology - it kept changing - and the number of required districts of each type (also changed several times), but that the Board and staff were trying really hard to pin down the numbers. There were several times during breaks where Mr. White and/or Mr. Bickford discussed at length with me and others the details of the terminology of effective district, majority-minority, influence, etc.  I admit I'm not a political person.  I may be interested in politics, but I'm much too open about what I think, so it is often hard for me to spot people who are the opposite. I take people at their word unless I catch them saying one thing here and something else there.  Or what they are saying just doesn't match other information I have. But I certainly never had the impression that Bickford or White were plotting something on their own to hijack the Board.  That doesn't mean I believed everything the board said, but I felt Bickford and White were pretty straightforward and eager to explain their positions and that they were feeling pressure from the Board at times to do things they weren't excited about.  But it's possible I was fooled.  But I would need more evidence. 


Rough, very rough, notes warning:
 
Below are my running notes for the afternoon session where most of this was covered.  Again, I had trouble either hearing or keeping up with (or both) for Michael White.  He spoke very rapidly and was usually drifting from the mic.  So don't take these notes as verbatim, but as a rough shot at what was actually said.  I'll put a page break up - but as I checked yesterday, that only works on some browsers and not others.  So if you want the afternoon notes, and you don't see them, look for the read more button.  And again, I'm sorry this is so loose.  Listening most of the day and trying to take notes fried my brain. 

Redistricting Court Challenge: Twitter and Other Coverage

This morning, Alaska Redistricting Board Chair John Torgerson was the witness basically establishing what the Board actually did and how they did it.  I took notes, but had to be away for an hour, so I'll got through my notes and try to summarize highlights.

But first a couple minor points.

1.  The Board is Tweeting about when the court is in session.  You can check at #akredistricting on Twitter.  There's not much news there, but it's useful for people trying to figure out when things are going to start.  It would help if they added who the witnesses were too. [UPDATE 1:23:  I got a new tweet and it says the witness' name and so do some earlier ones.  I was wrong here.  Thanks Taylor.]  Fairbanks News Miner reporter Matt Buxton is also tweeting on this.  So far there isn't much in depth there.

2.  The Anchorage Daily News had an AP article today on the opening arguments Monday.  That was the part we couldn't hear over the phone line because they hadn't figured out yet how to keep the phone in the court room from beeping every time someone got on or off the line. 

It's interesting listening to the witnesses accounts since I attended most of the meetings.  For the most part I don't disagree with most of what's been said, though I have a few quibbles here and there.  I'm trying to think about how it sounds to someone who wasn't there.  Like the judge.  That's one reason I kept a record here on the blog, so that anyone could go back and see what was happening and what was being said on any given day.  Unfortunately, the time spent listening in and tracking the court is making it hard to do specific checking on items.  But I don't think there are any serious errors.  There are, certainly different interpretations.

More later.

Redistricting Court Challenge: Hardenbrook "Looking at Process or Payback?"

The second witness Tuesday was Sen. Joe Thomas' staffer Joe Hardenbrook.  His testimony seemed aimed mostly at showing that Fairbanks districts, Senate districts particularly, were put together in a way that was not socioeconomically integrated, and that this was done for political reasons.  He was a very strong and knowledgeable witness, though I'm not sure how important his testimony is. 

As I understand it, it is already acknowledged by the court that these districts do not meet the Alaska constitutional requirements.  What needs to be demonstrated is that Voting Rights Act compliance could have been achieved without violating the state requirements. 

Another issue raised here (and in testimony Monday) was the issue of political gerrymandering to break the Senate working coalition and give power to the Republicans, particularly to get Governor Parnell's cutting of the taxes to the oil companies.  There was a lot of persuasive discussion of how pairing the two urban Fairbanks districts with the more rural districts hurts the constituents by forcing representatives and Senators to have conflicting constituents.

There was also mention of a conversation Hardenbrook had in a Juneau bar with Board Chair John Torgerson about whether the Board would work.

I asked him,  "Looking at process or looking at payback?"  I can’t remember his exact words, but it was defintely the latter. [from my notes of the testimony, not exactly verbatim

My observations of how the Board created the Fairbanks districts, the board member who took the lead, and other information, some of which is showing up in the testimony about how representatives' and Senators' homes were targeted, causes me to believe that there was very clear intent to mess with the Fairbanks districts so that the coalition would be broken in Juneau.  And probably also as revenge.   But when I talked with Board attorney White after a board meeting last year, he said that since (I think the Voting Rights Act) no challenge based on political gerrymandering had ever been won.  If that's true, that makes for a serious obstacle here.

Wednesday, I think I heard them say that Jim Holm would be the witness.  He's the Fairbanks Board member who took the lead on redoing the Fairbanks districts.  None of the other Board members was from Fairbanks.  One advantage to the court case being in Fairbanks is that the Judge will understand the implications of how the lines were drawn and whether they make sense for Fairbanks or not.  But he has to have legal grounds from invalidating the plan.  There are many different ways to do this.  The Board had the authority to do it.  So unless they didn't perform their duty or there is clear evidence of wrong doing, it won't get changed.  But the burden of proof is on the Board to show that they couldn't meet the Voting Rights Requirements AND the state constitutional requirements.

Below are my running notes from the last witness of the proceeding. (They adjourned early, just before 1pm.)  Usual caveats - these are VERY ROUGH notes, there are gaps, typos, errors, places I couldn't hear well, places I just quit and got something to eat.  But it gives some idea of what went on.  I'll put a break here, if you want the detailed notes - and your browser recognizes the break - you can click where it says Read More.