Ah. . . Breakup

That time of year when sun and snow conspire to put Anchorage underwater. 

Wild End To Generally Quiet Day At The Polling Place

I'll write tomorrow after I get a good night's sleep, but the end of the day proved a lot more hectic than I expected with a huge mob of election workers jammed up at City Hall trying to turn in the ballots, voting machines, and other odds and ends.

But here's a glimpse of the election workers waiting to get their materials checked in.  This was about 9:30pm.  Polls closed at 8.  We finally got out about 10:45pm.






I watched this function last November as a poll watcher at the State and Federal election.  They had a lot more space and had runners going out to the cars as they pulled up who carried the equipment into the room.  I also know that new Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones has worked hard to make sure this election didn't suffer the problems that happened last year.  And people were out offering help - someone gave us a cart to put everything on - and someone else was offering candy and another had bottles of water.  Given the long line, in the end we got through in about an hour and were handled very efficiently and courteously by the people inside.  And as we were leaving someone was offering vegies on a tray. 

 Doing this as a poll worker gave me a whole different look at what goes on.  After getting the ballot materials turned in, I was just too tired to go over to election central and I have no idea what the results of the election were.  I'll read the paper when i get up tomorrow.  

It's 10 am and 34 People Have Voted So Far

There are 890 people listed on the register in this precinct.  Some have gotten absentee ballots and some may have voted early.  


Most of the stuff was set up last night.  We were here at 6:15am (physically here, not necessarily mentally) and had to set up of the ballot box.  We walked through the instructions starting with opening it up and checking to see it was empty in all three chambers.  One chamber is for ballots that don't work right in the main slot and in case the power goes off.  Then there's an extra one if the main chamber gets full.  You have to open the top and put the ballots into that second chamber so there is room in the main chamber. 






Then you have to slide the Accu-Vote machine into place, plug it in, then turn it on.  Next we took the cover off of the compartment that has the tape. 










  The tape automatically starts and the window is supposed to have the precinct number and have a zero.  Then it lists a bunch of zeroes - I'm assuming one for each item on the ballot. 

Then each of the poll-workers signs the tape and it gets rolled up and the cover to this compartment is locked on.  There was a little metal bar with a metal security band locked on.   The tail of the security band kept getting caught in the cover as we tried to lock that on.  Eventually we got it right. 

We all had to take an oath to uphold the laws of the US, the State of Alaska, and the Municipality of Anchorage.

We had an early voter who was here before 7am who waited until it was time to start.  Then there was a steady flow.  By 8am we had had 11 voters, one of whom was a questioned ballot. (Someone who was from another precinct.)







We had a brief scare as someone asked about the Assembly race and why that wasn’t on the ballot.  He was right.  There were just two school board races.  No Assembly race.  But we figured out that the Assembly member from this district wasn't up for reelection.  But the voter said that his wife had voted early at Loussac Library and had an Assembly race on her ballot. 

This raised a question for me - if someone votes a questioned ballot in another polling place, could they vote for a candidate that isn’t on their own ballot in their home precinct?

We checked with , reported the situation the man told us about with the election office and checked on what happens to questioned ballots with races the voter isn't eligible to vote for.  They said that questioned ballots are hand checked for precincts and if they get a ballot with races they can’t vote for, those are voided. 

We’ve got strawberries, grapes, and muffins that the other workers brought in to munch on - and for people who voted. 

This Year I'm An Election Worker - Come Vote Today

I've been a poll watcher and last year I spent a fair amount of time following up Anchorage's screwed up election.  This year I decided to see things from the inside - I'm working as a poll worker. 

I picked up a copy of the elections handbook and read it carefully. 

There's a list of all the things you're supposed to have - though there are other things listed in the Manual - like an election binder - that isn't on this list.

There are about five troubleshooting pages.

I met with the chair of the precinct and another poll worker Monday night to set things up.  We'll see how it goes.  I'm not expecting a high turnout for this non-mayoral election, though the Assembly races will make a significant long term difference.  We could increase the mayor's majority or we could get a more liberal majority. 

So, be sure to vote. 

Why I Live Here - Cross Country Skiing Campbell Airstrip

 

 What a beautiful day.  A meeting on the east side of town was an excuse to put the skis in the car and be out in the woods for an hour.  Things were great on the main trail where the tracks were good.

 But when I got onto one of the smaller trails, the tracks were sketchy, and the middle of the trail was hard and slippery.  But I did manage to stay upright. 

Fortunately, salmon season is still a ways off.

And over the bridge and back into the world of cars and roads. 

Young's Wetback Comment In Contexts

As most of you must know by now, the other day my Congressman, Don Young,  got a lot of press coverage over these words he uttered in Ketchikan:

"I used to own -- my father had a ranch. We used to hire 50 to 60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes. You know it takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It's all done by machine."[Anchorage Daily News]

There's a lot of coverage and I thought I'd try to put it into context.  Like everyone, Don Young plays a lot of roles.  Whether his remark matters depends on what role he's playing.  He said it in the role of Alaskan Congressman, in Ketchikan.  We can try to understand what it meant to him looking at his roles as the son of a California farmer who used migrant labor to pick tomatoes and his role as an old man.  ('Old' is at least five years older than I am.)  He got crap over this in his role as one of the senior Republican members of Congress at a time when Republicans are trying to court Latinos.  So, will this be enough for Alaskans to elect a new member of Congress in 2014?  Let's play this out.

First, for those who have never actually heard someone use this term, a little history from the Urban Dictionary:

"Wetback is a derogatory term used to describe Mexicans who have immigrated illegally to the United States by swimming or wading across the Rio Grande--the river that separates the U.S. from Mexico. U.S. Border Patrol began using the word in 1944 to refer to illegal Mexican immigrants who were easily identifiable by their wet clothing. In 1954, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service made the word "wetback" official by naming the mission to remove illegal immigrants from the United States, Operation Wetback . In response to the increase of immigrants during the early 1950s, the agency developed the program to force immigrants (particularly Mexicans) back to their home countries. Approximately one million Mexican Americans were deported in one year. Today the term "wetback" is often used to express animosity towards Central American or Latin American immigrants--legal and illegal--who do not speak English. Meanwhile, in an attempt to reclaim the word, some Mexican-Americans call themselves Los Mojados, meaning "the wet ones."

SON OF A CALIFORNIA FARMER

We learn from Young's wetback comment a bit about his upbringing and his station in life.  He came from a family, however humble it might have been, that was at least privileged enough that it could hire migrant workers.  And it could call them an insulting name with impunity.  However well his family might have treated individual workers, his basic attitude, based on his use of the term 'wetbacks' was one of superiority and power.

Just as dehumanizing racial slurs make it easier for soldiers to kill the enemy ('gooks' weren't really human), they also allow farmers to rationalize the terrible working and living conditions that migrant workers experience.  "It's ok, they don't know any better, they're just 'wetbacks.'  This is an improvement from what they have back at home."

Most kids accept these things they learn from their parents.  Others grow to recognize the injustice.  Don Young apparently never did.  Does this make Don Young a racist?  Using the term racist is also not a good idea because it transforms a racist act into an identity of a person.  For this reason it tends to make people defensive.  He clearly used an offensive and racist term.  It's racist because it judges people based on their skin color AND it's a term that the society officially (it was the name of a federal program) used to help keep migrant workers "in their place."

I don't think that Don Young would treat someone badly simply because he has darker skin than Young has.  He was, after all, married to an Alaskan Native woman for many years.  But Don Young's superiority complex comes out in bullying people who disagree with him.   While he can be charming when he has to be, he can also be nasty.  You can see an example of his bullying when Dr. Doug Brinkley testified in Congress.  Brinkley was one person who was able to stand up to Young. 

DON YOUNG:  REPUBLICAN U.S. CONGRESSMAN


To understand why this particular remark has generated so much attention, we have to understand that in their post-election self-examination, Republicans discovered that the fastest growing group in the US doesn't much like Republicans.  Don Young isn't an exception.  From Bloomberg:

"With 71 percent of Hispanic voters casting their ballots for President Barack Obama in November, the Republican Party is hungry for inroads with an electorate who, according to surveys, find little identification with the party — just 22 percent of Hispanics identify themselves as Republican."

 The Republicans lost two US Senate seats, in part if not wholly, because the Republican candidates made outrageous comments about women.  Now, here comes Don Young doing the same about Hispanics.    As Julia O'Malley pointed out in the Anchorage Daily News this morning, Alaskan politicians used to be able to say things like this in small Alaskan communities, but with technological advances,  politicians are now potentially ALWAYS on a national stage.

DON YOUNG:  ALASKAN CONGRESSMAN

Don Young's 'wetback' statement is no surprise to Alaskans.  He's been saying outrageous things forever.  Reporters have made their careers off his malapropisms.  I've voted against Don Young every two years since 1978, but in this Red State, he keeps getting reelected.

People expect him to say such things here.  A certain percent of the population don't understand what the fuss is about.  Others don't care as long as he brings the pork back from DC, a skill he touts when he campaigns.

Will this remark matter in Alaska?  He's probably better for Alaska - and the country - than some of the ideologues in the Alaska Republican party who might challenge him in the primaries.  But the Republican faithful won't be all that upset with his comment itself, except that it might alienate Hispanic voters.  At this point, I've stopped holding my breath that a Democrat will beat him. 

DON YOUNG:  OLD MAN

As people get older, we all know that body parts slow down, their brains aren't as sharp.  They use terms that are no longer acceptable.  We should forgive them.  At least that's opinion of  Hector Luis Alamo Jr at Being Latino: 

"An old man saying “we used to have 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes” is like old white person saying “I was raised by a colored woman.” Sure, it makes you wince. But such uses usually get a pass — as they should — because we understand that older people come from a different place and time.

Young was born in California in 1933, six years before Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath. (In a later book, Steinbeck quaintly described field work as “the wet-back business.”)

And “wetback” has several different connotations. If used toward someone like me, who’s a second-generation American living in the third largest city, then it’s clearly offensive.

But the way in which Young used the word was perhaps its most accurate. When and where Young was raised, “wetback” was used to describe how many immigrants came to work in the fields (by wading across the Rio Grande) and the nature of their work and work ethic (the pools of sweat on their backs).

And it’s better than 'illegal.'”

The contrarian  nature of this argument appeals to me.  He's old.  It's a term from his childhood.  Give him some slack.  But as I wrote above, there was never anything innocuous about this phrase.  It clearly designated both a racial and economic barrier that separated the hiring class from the hired class.  The young Don Young could expect his youthful transgressions to be forgiven in ways the children working on his father's farm couldn't.

The rest of Alamo's piece raises another irony in all this.  Young is probably a lot more sympathetic and practical when it comes to immigration reform than most other Republicans. 

But perhaps most important, Don Young the old man lives in the same body as Don Young the Alaskan Republican US Congressman.  They are the same person.  If Don Young were simply a 79 year old Alaskan, none of us would have heard about this.  But he's one of the most senior Republican Congressmen, and that Don Young should not be forgiven this most recent trespass.  

Listen to his first apology: 

"During a sit down interview with Ketchikan Public Radio this week, I used a term that was commonly used during my days growing up on a farm in Central California," Young said in the statement. "I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays and I meant no disrespect."

It's all about him.  First he says the term was ok to use when he was growing up. "I know this term is not used the same way nowadays."  That tells me he doesn't understand what the term meant then or why it's still offensive today.  It may have been common among his crowd, but it was always offensive.   "I meant no disrespect."  It doesn't matter what he meant.  What matters is that he understands that it is a racial slur that is highly offensive to many of his constituents.  If he understood that, such words wouldn't slip out of his mouth.

And others, including the Republican House Majority leader,  didn't accept that as an apology.  So he issued a second one.

"I apologize for the insensitive term I used during an interview in Ketchikan, Alaska," the statement said. "There was no malice in my heart or intent to offend; it was a poor choice of words. That word, and the negative attitudes that come with it, should be left in the 20th century, and I'm sorry that this has shifted our focus away from comprehensive immigration reform."

A basic point about racism is that unlike simple prejudice, it is backed up by the society's institutional structures.  It doesn't matter whether there was malice in his heart or whether he intended to offend.  It matters that he uttered the slur without thinking, that it was embedded in his brain, and fell easily off his tongue.  And that it represents the power, backed by law and law enforcement officers, of white farmers who could gave orders to brown migrant workers.  Power that continues today as the employers of undocumented workers get no punishment while their employees have their lives totally disrupted.  Our laws and how they are enforced continue to make that power imbalance real.  It's not simply one person's prejudice, it's prejudice supported by the law, by financial institutions, by the media, and by politicians who, until recently, could say things like this with impunity.

Racism is complex.  Lots of people believe they have no malice in their hearts so their actions aren't racist.   Healing Racism in Anchorage (HRA) is a group that offers workshops that walk people through the history of racism in the US in a non-accusatory way.  HRA recognizes that we all are affected by the underlying racial imbalance in the US and we all carry harmful stereotypes because they are embedded in our culture. HRA helps people recognize this and let go of it.  [HRA is a group I've been part of for a number of years now.]

North Korean Doctors in Africa And Russian Terrorism - Media Images That Need More Reflection

There was a news item back in February with this headline (from CNN):

"Attackers kill 3 North Korean physicians in Nigeria, official says"

My first reaction:  "What?  What are North Korean doctors doing in Nigeria?"

A Guardian article tells us a little more:

The doctors were living in a quiet neighbourhood of the town because there was not room to house them at the hospital, where they would have had some security protection, [Dr. Mohammed] Mamman  [chairman of the hospital managing board of Yobe state] said.

He told journalists that the three men were from North Korea and had lived in the state since 2005 as part of a medical programme between Yobe and the Pyongyang government.

There are more than a dozen other North Korean doctors posted to the state under the scheme, which also includes engineers, Mamman said. He said all will receive immediate protection from security forces. "It is very unfortunate," he said of the killings.

The media paints an almost universal image of North Korea as the bleak pariah nation where people lead grey, depressing, often hungry, lives.  Yet they have doctors helping Nigerians - they'd been there since 2005!

One person I mentioned this to responded,  "They have doctors?"

All this raises questions in my mind about what else we don't know about North Korea.

Stories like this help remind me to question 'common knowledge' on a regular basis.  I'm not arguing that North Korea is really an earthly paradise,  but I am raising the possibility that it's a lot more complex than the evil portrait we usually get.  Sure, the ruling family seems pretty bizarre, but given some of the people in Congress these days, probably not all that bizarre.  Imagine what the United States might look like if any of these Congress members came to North Korean-like power (list from People For The American Way):

• Meet Renee Ellmers: Cracking down on Monarchy and Mosques
• Meet Tom Marino: Plagued by Corruption Charges
• Meet Tim Walberg: A Birther Goes to Washington
• Meet Vicky Hartzler: Missouri's Anti-Gay Zealot
• Meet Lou Barletta: America's Anti-Immigrant Mayor Heads to Congress
• Meet Tim Griffin: Karl Rove's Man in Congress
• Meet Allen West: Fanatical Opponent of Muslims, Immigrants, Progressives & Obama
• Meet Alan Nunnelee: Mississippi's Newest Member of Congress is on a "Crusade to Save America"
• Meet Raul Labrador: Bryan Fischer's Favorite Tea Partier
• Meet Sandy Adams: Conspiracy-Theorist, Religious Extremist

Imagine what anyone, an Obama for example, might do with unlimited power!


At least Kim Jong Un, has the excuse of having been raised in relatively isolated conditions and taught that he was some sort of God-King.  The legislators, whether in DC or Juneau, don't have that excuse.

Except that his life apparently wasn't that isolated.  The Atlantic Wire reports that he spent several years at an English language school in Switzerland and a couple more at a German language school.  They quote school mates as saying he was infatuated with Michael Jordan, is a good basketball player, an has pairs and pairs of high end Nikes. 

Another chink in the media image of North Korea is the rocket program.  The press and politicians focus on the provocation of their rockets and their nuclear threat.  But if they have such capable weapons, they need to have some pretty competent scientists and engineers too.

And if they buzzed the US mainland from a stealth jet as, apparently, the US did to them the other day, you know we'd have shot it down and/or gone on a bombing raid that would make our drone strikes in Pakistan look like a holiday fireworks display.

And if all the countries our rockets could reach reacted to us the way we react to North Korea . . .  But, of course, it's because we're sane and rational and the North Koreans are crazy, right?  (Go back and look at that list of Congress members.) 

Again, I'm not supporting the North Korean regime in any way, just raising questions about the accuracy of the bleaker than bleak media images we get of the country.  An image which serves our government's belligerence toward North Korea well.  There'd be few protests if Washington found an excuse to take out Pyongyang.

All this was brought to mind again yesterday because I've started reading The Man Without A Face:  The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.   Early into the book there's a discussion of the bomb attacks in 1999 and 2000 in Russia in the run-up to the election that would elect Putin for the first time.  Author Masha Gessen argues that, based on the last bombing (attempt) in which the bombers were seen setting the bomb and that police were able to defuse, that the whole set of attacks was carried out by the successors to the KGB, the FSB (Federal Security Service) and not the Muslims who were blamed widely in the press. 

Gessen portrays everyone, including herself,  convinced that Muslim terrorists, most likely rebels from Chechnya, were the culprits due to the war against them.  It wasn't until later that she realizes that her assumptions were wrong.

So, in this light, I'd ask readers to prepare themselves for other options - just as many  Americans have reassessed their understanding of homosexuality and gay marriage.  After all, North Korea can somehow send doctors off to Africa and has people capable of designing and launching missiles toward the US.  That alone tells us that some North Koreans are getting at least a technical education.  And some have been living abroad for years - and, one would expect, have access to what's happening in the rest of world.

As another book I'm reading, Subliminal:  How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow says,

 "The world we perceive is an artificially constructed environment whose character and properties are as much a result of unconscious mental processing as they are a product of real data.  Nature helps us overcome gaps in information by supplying a brain that smooths over the imperfections, at an unconscious level, before we are even aware of any perception."

And for things we don't know personally - like North Korea or the Russian apartment bombings - what we know comes second- or third- or fourth-hand from the artificially constructed images of the reporters, their sources, and their editors.  

So it's always good to step back and check the crap detector and perhaps get an image that might be a little more in alignment with so called reality. 

Shell Could Learn From This Kulik - Four Russians Make It Around the World In Inflatable Catamaran

While Shell Oil has had a lot of trouble with its oil rig the Kulluk, four Russians on the Kulik expedition have managed to navigate around the world an inflatable craft of their own design.

The Phuket News reports they arrived back in Phuket after five years.

The team, under skipper Anatoly Kulik,59, left Phuket in February 2008. They sailed some 60,000 kilometres, made landfall in 38 countries and spent a total of 13 months at sea.

Kulik himself, a master of boat-borne water sports, a “Distinguished Traveler of Russia” (an award from the Russian Sports Federation), and a member of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS). Responsibilities on the expedition: team leader, ship’s captain and cook;

Evgeny Kovalevsky, 56, twice Russian champion and silver prize-winner in boat-borne water sports, also a Distinguished Travelerand member of the RGS, the crew’s “chief diplomat” (responsible for establishing rapport with local authorities and the community), interpreter, videographer and photographer;

Evgeny Tashkin, another champion in boat-borne water sports, acting as video and camera operator, chronicler of the voyage and in charge of Internet connectivity; and

Stanislav Beryozkin, Russian champion in long-distance sailing, the expedition’s navigator and communications chief. . .

Stanislav Beryozkin, Russian champion in long-distance sailing, the expedition’s navigator and communications chief.
- See more at: http://www.thephuketnews.com/foursome-back-in-phuket-after-record-odyssey-38258.php#sthash.suilP5S1.dpuf

Comfort was never at a premium. Accommodation was in a 12-square-metre tent-like structure erected above the hulls, which also served as a miniature kitchen, and a warehouse for boxes of supplies, drinking water tanks, communication equipment and everything necessary for a long voyage.

Read the whole article here.

The video is short and in Russian, but some things transcend language. 

Northern Lights As We Fly Into Anchorage

I slept the first part of the flight up from Seattle. Then I looked out the window and wondered at the slight glow of a cloud. Could it be lights? As I stared the glow got brighter and greener.

These are not great photos of northern lights. Consider these experiments with my little Canon PowerShot. They look better than this in the camera screen. They're 1600 ISO through the window. I didn't use any telephoto because everything got really grainy that way. But if you look closely, you can see that there were some interesting shapes, basically green. This is about 1:15 am.

Play around with the angle of your screen to get the best view. 

Counter Spy Shop

We're scrambling to get last minute stuff done before we leave tonight and return to Anchorage. (Finally!)  It's been a long, but good trip, helping my mom out and making arrangements so she can continue to live at home as independently as possible.  And the seven weeks with our grand daughter.  But I'm ready to be home.

So I don't have much time.  So I'm offering this photo a shop we passed in Beverly Hills last week.  I just thought it was a little unusual.

I couldn't find much online, but there's a video of one of the employees on a tv show.  Looks a lot tackier than the store front.