The Case That HD 5 Was Gerrymandered - Part 1

I'm dividing this into sections so it's easier to find the parts you want or need to read.

Introduction
 
This is the first of two posts on HD 5 in Fairbanks.  The title reflects the implied case that the plaintiffs are making against the Board.  The Plaintiffs argue that HD 5 has compactness problems.  They also want a different pairing of House District 5 to make a better Senate seat - one that would make more likely the election of a second Democratic Senator in the Fairbanks area.  They don't use the word gerrymandering, but, as I mention below, the constitutional standards tend to stand as proxies for the harder to prove gerrymandering.

In Part 1 here, I want to give background.  In Part 2 we'll look at maps and details of HD 5 and the related Senate districts.  Other districts in Matsu and Kenai and rural Alaska are challenged by the plaintiffs, but just looking at this one in close detail will be more than enough to understand what's going on and what's at stake.  And, I hope, help people be able to react to the eventual court decision with facts as well as partisan fervor. 

Purpose of the Post

To make this accessible to people not following this day-to-day.
This isn't that hard to understand, it's just that there are so many details, that keeping it all straight is difficult.  Plus, a lot of stuff is subjective and requires someone who has enough grasp on the facts and the standards to come to an informed conclusion.  For example both sides will talk about compactness and then one side will say moving these people from this district to another will cause a ripple effect.  The other side says, no, they can be put into another district easily.  It takes someone who has watched the map making to have a better sense of which claim is more accurate.

As someone who has been to nearly every Board meeting held in Anchorage and at most of the others via the phone or online, I know that this is complex and that there is more to this than can be presented in the facts.  In this post I'm going to present what the parties have said and also give you my sense of which side is more persuasive.  But I have no special powers and other people who were there a lot might come to different conclusions.

Scope of this Post

I'm focusing on Fairbanks HD 5.  I think I understand this a little better than the other points being challenged - Matsu and Kenai and some rural districts.  Looking at HD 5 will inevitably get us into neighboring districts - mainly 3 and 4 - and into Senate Seats B and C.  I'm hoping, though, that if people get into the details of HD 5, they can get a grasp of the competing standards, and why this is all so difficult to prove one way or the other.  But at least, when the judge's opinion comes down, you'll be able to follow it.  

Background - How We Got Here

1. The Redistricting Board submitted its latest redistricting plan July 14, 2013
2. The Riley plaintiffs - George Riley from Ester and Ron Dearborn from Goldstream, two liberal leaning communities near Fairbanks - challenged the plan.  They also challenged the original plans as well, challenges that ended with the Alaska Supreme Court
1. invalidating the first plan
2. requiring some changes to accept the second plan as an interim plan that was used in the 2012 elections, because there wasn't enough time for a complete new plan, and
3. determining the interim plan was unconstitutional and that the Board needed to make another plan for the 2014 election
3. The Board objected to the plaintiffs challenges
4. More briefs were filed with more details of the complaints.
5. The Board filed briefs to dismiss the complaints
6. The Alaska Democratic Party filed complaints.
7. North Star Fairbanks Borough filed an amicus brief.
8. The judge - Michael McConahy - can make summary judgments on some or all of these motions.  That means he can just decide who is right or wrong and issue an order.  Or he can say he needs more information and allow the two sides to make further arguments in court. My guess is that he may make a few summary judgments and then identify the points he needs to hear more on in court.  That court date is set for Dec. 9 - 16 in Fairbanks. 

You can see all these briefs at the Board's website.  In this post my focus will be on House District 5 to give you a sense of what the court has to decide.  But looking at 5 will mean also looking at the districts around it.  But there's lots there.  Here are the ones I'd start with:

Corrected Copy of Riley Plaintiff's Memorandum in Support of Motion for Summary*
Doc 296 - ARB's Response Part 1
Doct 296  ARB's Response Part 2
Doc 296  ARB's Response Part 3

*I can't find this one on the Board's list.  It was sent to me and I think it's a consolidation of previous motions.  It's long, but there aren't that many words on each page. 

Background - Redistricting and Gerrymandering

 These two words go together.  Redistricting is about redrawing the lines of the political districts (in Alaska's case since we only have one member of the US House, redistricting is only about the state house and senate).  How one draws the lines can have enormous impact on which party gets more members elected.  Gerrymandering is the term used to describe shaping districts to favor one party over the other.

It takes Wikipedia's entry on Redistricting only 253 words to start talking about gerrymandering.  At All About Redistricting's page What Is Redistricting? gerrymander is the 207th word.   My point is that most people who know anything about redistricting expect the party in power to take advantage of their power.  The only real question is can they make their maps so that they favor their side BUT also stay legal?

Both parties will claim, publicly, their innocence and exclaim the other party's guilt.  "We have done nothing but correct the gross abuse of the other party in the last redistricting."

ProPublica's Redistricting, A Devil's Dictionary identifies several of the typical gerrymandering ploys:

• Cracking: This technique splits a community into multiple districts to ensure it doesn't have significant sway with a candidate. . .
• Packing: When faced with too many unfriendly voters, it can also be a winning strategy to limit the damage by drawing them all into one district. The benefit for you is there are fewer of the voters you don't want in all the surrounding districts. When race is involved, redistricting pros call it bleaching.  . . .
• Hijacking: If there's an incumbent you don't like, you can make their re-election difficult by putting them in a district with another incumbent to contend with. . .
• Kidnapping: Most politicians have geographic political bases; places they came up in politics where they have supporters, political allies, donors and name recognition. But what if their home address ends up in a different district than their base? That can make re-election tough. . .

The ProPublica link gives more explanations and examples with maps.


This is like poker.  People keep as straight a face as they can while they make all sorts of claims.


The current partisan redistricting facts in Alaska are these: 

1.  The Alaska Supreme Court declared the process the Board went through last time to be unconstitutional.  The Board will tell you, and not incorrectly, that the Court found the process, not the product, unconstitutional.  But since the process was unconstitutional, the Court didn't look at each district's constitutionality.

2.  The Board has four Republicans and one Democrat.  The Democrat, Marie Greene, is the CEO of NANA Corporation, an Alaska Native Regional Corporation.  The Board  claims that all their decisions were unanimous and since they had a Democrat, it shows there was no partisanship.  I agree that almost all the decisions have been unanimous.  But my sense was that Marie Greene's main concern was to make sure that Alaska Natives were treated fairly.  She did not raise issues about other Democratic party concerns. 

3. The state Senate,  before redistricting, had a 10-10 split between Democrats and Republicans, with a bi-partisan coalition running the Senate.  After the 2012 election, which used the interim redistricting plan, the Senate had a 13-7 Republican majority.  Two Democratic Senators were redistricted into the same district in Fairbanks. (Note the ploy of Hijacking above.) Alaska's only Black legislator was given a far more conservative district than before (Cracking), and a Republican and Democratic Senator were put in the same district in Southeast Alaska.  There had to be a pairing of two incumbent Senators in SE, because of population decline. It could have been two Democrats, two Republicans, or one of each. 

4.  While the Chair of the Board declared, at the first Board meeting, that he had no instructions from the Governor (who appointed him) and had not even met with the Governor, the Chair of the Republican Party, Randy Ruedrich, was an active observer throughout the whole process.  The Executor Director of the Board had recently worked for Ruedrich as the Republican Victory Director in 2010.  I like the (now former) Executive Director and he was always fair and open with me.  And there is nothing illegal about these arrangements, but the Republican Party was able to share its opinions about the districts more easily than was the Democratic Party.

5.  The Board member who did most of the mapping of Fairbanks, Jim Holm, is a former Fairbanks legislator who was defeated by current Democratic representative Scott Kawasaki.  His original maps of Fairbanks turned out to have what was called by the Democrats "the Kawaski finger."  The house of S. Kawasaki was 'kidnapped' into another district by a small protrusion.  It turns out that the house belonged to Sonia, Scott's sister, but you can't convince the Democrats that it wasn't an attempt to put Scott into a totally different district.  The Board's attorney recently pointed out to me that the Court found, in the previous trial, the arguments of gerrymandering unpersuasive.  And I agree that the evidence presented probably wasn't enough to prove anything.  But being the one who does the maps where you lost your last election smells a bit like conflict of interest to me.

As a blogger, I'm more than conscious that raising these points will likely cause Republicans to declare my obvious bias.  But these are things I observed or heard about and to not mention them would also be bias. If readers are going to get a sense of what was happening I need to include them.  These points, by themselves prove nothing, but they do give the context for judging the outcome.   I also heard Democrats who said they would take the same liberties if they had been in power. 

I should also note that the Board’s rules, drafted by the Board’s attorney, Michael White,  say that gerrymandering is illegal, White has also said on a number of occasions, that no redistricting plan in modern times has been overturned because of political gerrymandering.   

The point is, unless a Board member says explicitly that they have gerrymandered, it’s hard to tell what was going on inside their heads. 

That’s why the process of redistricting is so controversial.  The Courts now use the more objective criteria of compactness, contiguity, etc.  as a proxy for gerrymandering.  They don’t call it gerrymandering, but if a district looks strange enough, it can be ruled not compact and thus unconstitutional.  No need to use the G word. 

So, the assumption by many, if not most, is that the Republicans are going to do their best to take advantage of their  4-1 majority on the Board to nudge the districts here and there to favor Republican candidates. 

And the Board members are going to deny this, because if they acknowledge gerrymandering, they would then have their plan thrown out.  So even if a Board were completely unbiased, there would be suspicion of gerrymandering.


And In The Board's Defense

I would also note that the Board meetings were all very accessible for anyone, like me, who had the time and was in Anchorage.  And most meetings, after the first few months, were accessible online or by phone. Most of the Board members and all of the staff were always willing to answer questions in detail during breaks and after meetings.   The Board had a difficult task before them balancing different criteria to map a huge state with a sparse population.    Strangely large districts are inevitable.  Compared to what's happened in some states, this Board has been transparent and did not get greedy.  I think some of the new districts also reflect the split within the Republican Party between the traditional leadership and the new Tea Party activists.  The court's decision is not going to be a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination.  

The question the Court will have to address is whether the issues that the plaintiffs raise are violations of the Alaska constitution, or whether the anomalies they allege are simply the by-products of balancing many factors to map a huge state with a sparse and scattered population. 

Part 2 will look at the maps and the details of HD 5 and neighboring house and Senate districts to help folks understand what is happening and why.  

[UPDATE Nov. 15, 2013:  Part 2 is now up here.]


 

The Inventor of the Japanese Zero Presented Exquisitely In The Wind Rises

Kenneth Turan at the LA Times gushed about the Wind Rises last week.  He billed it as Japanese director/animator Hayao Miyazaki's final film.  We were dazzled by one of his previous films, Spirited Away, so we waited for the weekend crowds to die down a bit and saw it tonight.

It's spectacularly beautiful, a visual massage, about a young boy, Jiro Horikoshi, who dreams of flight and building beautiful flying machines.  We watch him grow to fulfill that dream as the designer of the Japanese Zero, the plane that attacked Pearl Harbor.  A basic theme is the conflict between achieving such beauty and how that beauty is used.

I loved the movie because of its beauty.  I realized, though, driving home, that the characters had no real depth.  Although Italian aircraft designer Gianni Caproni talks with Jiro, in dream sequences that come and go throughout the film, about war and the killing use of these beautiful machines, the on-screen Jiro remains the child-like designing genius throughout the movie, as you can see in the image of him below when he's an adult designing planes for the Japanese military.   The characters all remain, literally, cartoon characters with no complexity at all.        

Screen Shot From LA Times Video Review
  Click to See Video

Maybe that's what he appeared to be to the people who knew him, for when his bosses find out he's engaged, they can't stop laughing as they exclaim, "He's human after all."  

Miyazaki tells his story in his own rich (a term that seems too poor for this film) visuals and I feel guilt raising questions about character.  Some might even argue that it was there in the imagery and I just missed it.  I think my wish for more nuanced characters stems from a point in the movie when I forgot I was watching an animated film because the story was so real.  And afterward when I examined that thought, the simplicity of the characters seemed to detract.

But definitely go see this film.  It's more than amazing.

11/12/13

Humans like patterns.
Some people like to extract extra meaning into coincidental patterns.
I think it's of note that today is the 12th day of the 11th month of 2013.  But I don't think it means anything.
Especially since people in other parts of the world note the day first and then the month, which would make today 12/11/13.
And in cultures that use the lunar calendar it's totally different.  In each of those cultures it's totally different.

So enjoy the accidental pattern, but I don't think it means much more than a nice shadow on the wall.

Eating Ethiopian On Fairfax

After the eye doctor today, we went via Fairfax on the way to the LA County Museum.

I asked someone if they still had the Ethiopian restaurants on Fairfax.  They do.  I'm not sure about the economics of having so many in one block, but if you want Ethiopian food in LA, try Fairfax between Whitworth and Olympic.

Power Profiling: Trusting People Who Wear the Right Clothes, Have The Right Titles, Sound Certain

We hear a lot about racial profiling, where innocent people are harassed because they "look" like they are trouble.

Perhaps an even bigger problem is what I would call POWER PROFILING where we trust people who dress right,  have positions of authority, and act like people in power.  Some of these people use their facade of respectability to hide their misuse of power and outright crimes.  Most people tend to trust them because they have the aura of respectability.

An important avenue of study would cover:

1. Distinguishing between those who legitimately use their authority from those who abuse it.
2. Learning what's special about the people (politicians, activists, victims, journalists) who are able and willing to see through the facade and challenge the abusers and how to distinguish them from people who falsely challenge those in power
3. Learning more about those who refuse to accept the truth and/or even cover it up - those in power above the corrupt ones and those who watch from the side.  

Here are some examples of people in power who successfully hid their wrong doings because people didn't challenge them or didn't believe the challengers.  These have been sitting in a draft post for a while and are from 2010, but new ones pop up every day.

Belgian  Bishop Abused own nephew.

Behind an aggressive investigation of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Belgium that drew condemnation from the pope himself lies a stark family tragedy: the molestation, for years, of a youth by his uncle, the bishop of Bruges; the prelate’s abrupt resignation when a friend of the nephew finally threatened to make the abuse public; and now the grass-roots fury of almost 500 people complaining of abuse by priests. 

Diabetes drug maker hid evidence that their profitable drug was dangerous:

"In the fall of 1999, the drug giant SmithKline Beecham secretly began a study to find out if its diabetes medicine, Avandia, was safer for the heart than a competing pill, Actos, made by Takeda.

Avandia’s success was crucial to SmithKline, whose labs were otherwise all but barren of new products. But the study’s results, completed that same year, were disastrous. Not only was Avandia no better than Actos, but the study also provided clear signs that it was riskier to the heart.
But instead of publishing the results, the company spent the next 11 years trying to cover them up, according to documents recently obtained by The New York Times. The company did not post the results on its Web site or submit them to federal drug regulators, as is required in most cases by law.
“This was done for the U.S. business, way under the radar,” Dr. Martin I. Freed, a SmithKline executive, wrote in an e-mail message dated March 29, 2001, about the study results that was obtained by The Times. “Per Sr. Mgmt request, these data should not see the light of day to anyone outside of GSK,” the corporate successor to SmithKline."

In BP’s Record, a History of Boldness and Costly Blunders

Time and again, BP has insisted that it has learned how to balance risk and safety, efficiency and profit. Yet the evidence suggests that fundamental change has been elusive.
Revisiting Texas City in 2009, inspectors from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found more than 700 safety violations and proposed a record fine of $87.4 million — topping the earlier record set by BP in the 2005 accident. Most of the penalties, the agency said, were because BP had failed to live up to the previous settlement fully.
In March of this year, OSHA found 62 violations at BP’s Ohio refinery, proposing $3 million more in penalties.
“Senior management told us they are very serious about safety, but we observed that they haven’t translated their words into safe working procedures and practices, and they have difficulty applying the lessons learned from refinery to refinery or even from within refineries,” said Mr. Michaels, the OSHA administrator.
BP is contesting OSHA’s allegations, saying it has made substantial improvements at both facilities.
Accidents have also continued to plague BP’s pipelines in Alaska. Most recently, on May 25, a power failure led to a leak that overwhelmed a storage tank and spilled about 200,000 gallons of oil — the third-largest spill on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

Philosophers call the study of how we determine the truth epistemology and the questions I raise fall in that category.  But there's no need to wait for people in power to do this study.  You can look around you.

• What stories have you not believed that turned out to be true?  
• Or believed and turned out to be false?   
• To what extent, in hind sight, did you believe or doubt because of how it aligned with what you wanted to believe or doubt?
• Who are the people around you who question those in authority?  
• Do they tend to be right or wrong in the long run?  
• What distinguishes those who are generally right from those who are generally wrong?
• Do the ones who have been generally wrong know they were wrong?  
• Were there signs in people who have betrayed your trust that will tip you off sooner in the future?

 

 

Healing The Heel

I've noted here now and then that I'm having problems with my right heel.  It's swollen up on occasion and I stopped running about eight weeks ago and decided it was time to go to the doctor.  He sent me to a podiatrist.  (The referral system through Providence didn't work well at all.  It took three weeks and three follow up calls on my part just to get an appointment and I'm not sure I actually got to one of the four doctors that my doctor said he would recommend.)

The doctor said it was my tendon and that the minimalist shoes don't help.  Like the NYTimes article I posted about recently, he said that landing on the balls of your feet put more pressure on the tendons than other shoes

Image from Marathon Rookie

  He offered a whole array of possible actions.  I chose physical therapy.  This time I was able to get an appointment quickly - the day before we left for LA.

She set up a program of exercises that will strengthen the


The physical therapist gave me a set of exercises to strengthen the muscles in my calf to take pressure off of the tendon.

There are a lot of things to do.

I think I understand these exercises - and there are a few more - but I need to check one more time on how often I have to do them.  I know at least twice a day, but four lengths of the room (that only makes sense if you are in that room, which I was when she showed me what to do, but feet would also be helpful) four times for the heal raise and then there are three more where I have to walk on my heel - straight, on the outside of my heel, and on the inside of my heel.

There's also a protocol for getting back into running.  Starting with walking for 40 minutes for two days, then alternately walking for 4.5 minutes and jogging 30 seconds.  Then each day shorten the walking parts a bit and adding to the jogging.  All the while doing the exercises.  She said I could do the exercises during the walking parts.

This is the second time I've gone to a physical therapist.  The first time was when I dislocated a finger.  I was very impressed with her knowledge and my finger is almost completely normal.  It's not quite as straight as the other fingers, but barely noticeable.

And this time, her knowledge of the how the muscles interacted and what motions I needed to do to work particular muscles was eye-opening.

I think everyone should probably go to a physical therapist every now and then to make sure we aren't slipping into patterns that are causing damage. 

TSA Fast Lane, Arctic Prof Calls For Arctic Oil Moratorium; 34 Years In Prison On False Testimony - Back In LA

We're back to be with my mom in LA.  We were on the pre-screened list at the airport yesterday so we didn't have to take off our shoes, show our plastic bags, or take off our shoes.  The ADN had an article on this program last December.

TSA spokeswoman Lorie Dankers, up from Seattle for the occasion, said there are two ways for travelers to join the program. Five U.S. airlines are authorized by TSA to invite selected frequent flyers into PreCheck. Or a person can apply through one of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Trusted Traveler programs like Global Entry.
All five of the select airlines serve Anchorage: Alaska, Delta, American, United and U.S. Airways. Bobbie Egan, spokeswoman for Alaska Airlines, said a batch of invitations went out over the weekend by email. If you didn't get one, it won't do any good to call up the airline to complain, she said.
"We don't set the criteria -- the TSA sets the criteria for who's invited to participate," Egan said. "It's a TSA program solely."

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/12/04/2713439/tsa-opens-fast-lane-for-prescreened.html#storylink=cpy

I'm not sure what 'invite' means in this case.  No one told us until we got to the security line and they scanned our boarding pass and told us to go in that lane.  And it's the first time it happened.  Is there a little racial profiling mixed up in this?  Older white male and female?  I'm sure that didn't do any harm.  Or maybe NSA has told TSA that we haven't talked to any terrorists lately.  Who knows?

The LA Times has an interview today with Professor Sergei Medvedev, an Arctic specialist who is calling for an oil moratorium in the Arctic and who Putin called "a moron." [I'm sure Putin used a Russian word.  It would be interesting to know how it translates substantively and emotionally into English.]

"Political science professor Sergei Medvedev, a longtime lover and explorer of the Arctic, drew the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin when he recently called for international protection of the icy northern region in the face of economic development plans.
Last month, Putin called Medvedev, who teaches at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, "a moron."
The incident prompted a nationwide discussion of the Arctic and coincided with the arrest of 30 Greenpeace activists protesting a Russian oil drilling project in the region.
Medvedev, 46, who anchors popular television shows and studied and worked for 15 years in the West, spoke to The Times last month at the Architecture Museum in downtown Moscow."

LA Times story about man in prison for 34 years, convicted on eye witness testimony.  The witnesses sister has now testified that she told police back then that her sister was lying.  Finally it comes out and judge agrees he was falsely convicted.

Prosecutors had argued that about 12:30 p.m. on April 6, 1979, Register shot Jack Sasson five times in the carport of his West Los Angeles home. Sasson, 78, died three weeks later.
At trial, the physical evidence against Register was scant, court papers said. None of the seven fingerprints found on Sasson's car matched Register's. Police never recovered the murder weapon.
They did seize a pair of pinstriped pants from Register's closet, which had a speck of blood smaller than a pencil eraser. But it was of little value — the blood type, O, matched Sasson and Register.
Instead, the prosecution relied on eyewitness testimony, notably that of Brenda Anderson. Then 19, Anderson said she was at home when she heard gunfire, looked out the window and saw an African American man sprinting from the Sassons' carport, court papers said. She identified him as Register, though Register's girlfriend testified that he was with her at the time of the shooting.
Register was convicted and sentenced to 27 years to life in prison. Each time he appeared before the parole board, he refused to admit guilt.
"It appears that the only reason that I have been consistently denied parole is because I have maintained my innocence," he once told the board, court papers said.
Register might have remained behind bars, his attorneys said, if not for a stroke of luck. In late 2011, another of Brenda Anderson's sisters, Sheila Vanderkam, found a website that locates convicted felons. "I typed in the name Kash Register out of curiosity," she said in a declaration, "and learned, to my horror, that Mr. Register was still in prison."

Another example of police and prosecutors apparently more interested in convicting somebody than convicting the right person.

I biked down to Venice Beach just before sunset.  

[Feedburner notes: This one seems to have taken about seven hours to be seen on blogrolls. I posted it at 7:28pm and the first hits from blogrolls came at 4:30am the next day.]

AIFF2013: Documentaries In Competition - From Freeze Drying Your Pet and Harlem Blues, to Selling Kidneys and Antarctica

First the films are selected from all those submitted.  Then a certain number from each category is  selected to be 'in competition'' meaning these are the finalists eligible for an award in the category.  The documentary category has, if I counted right, 32 selected films (18 under 30 minutes and 14 over 30 minutes)  and 11 are 'in competition.'   Of these, three are under 30 minutes and the other eight above.

Films come from:  

• New Zealand/Antarctica
• Afghanistan/USA
• USA
• France
• Canada

• China/USA
• Mozambique
• United Kingdom/USA 
• Sweden
• Thailand (it's listed as USA, but the filmmaker is a Thai living in the US)

This is a fairly long list, so I'm going to list the documentaries in competition here with minimal information about each film and in reverse alphabetical order. (The A's shouldn't always be at the top of the list.)

The documentaries was one of the best categories last year with lots of outstanding films that weren't in competition.  So look beyond this list when you are looking for docs at the festival.  The audience favorite last year wasn't in competition. 

1)  The Words I Love

From images I got from the filmmaker

Thanachart Siripatrachai

USA

17m

"I come from Thailand. I am a bookish person and always carry a book with me. In my first year in New York City, I did not know that there was a dictionary on my cellphone. When I found a word I did not know, I would ask a stranger sitting next to me to explain the meaning. I was fascinated by our conversations. Later, I started to record their voices and put them together in this documentary to explore the issue of language."  From Glovebox.

Here's a link to a blog post of Benz' (Thanachart's nickname) project to wake people up from their eyes- glued-to-their-smartphones in the Bangkok subway, by shouting random words and then taking a picture of the people looking up at him.

And here's a link to his website which has some of his photos.



2)  The Guide

Jessica Yu

Mozambique

40m.

From the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation:

"The Guide  is a coming-of-age tale set against the restoration of a war-torn national park in Mozambique. Raised near Gorongosa National Park, young Tonga Torcida dreams of becoming a tour guide. But when he meets famed biologist E.O. Wilson, his new view of the world around him—and his future—places him at a crossroads. Should Tonga become a guide, or take on a bigger role in trying to keep the park alive?"

3)  Tales from Organ Trade
Ric Esther Bienstock
Canada 
82m
http://www.talesfromtheorgantrade.com/index.html

This film shows us the people who sell their organs because they need the cash and the people who buy them because they want to live and explores the ethics of the whole situation.






4)  McConkey
Murray Wais, Rob Bruce, Scott Gaffney, David Zieff, and Steve Winter
USA
109m

I'm guessing this one will have long lines at the Bear Tooth.  It's the kind of movie that draws a big audience in Anchorage.  Ski daredevils and one in particular.   Get your tickets in advance for this one if you want to get in.  Let's hope they schedule it a couple of times. 

“McConkey” is a heartfelt examination of the legacy one athlete left to the progression of his sports, and the path he paved to conquer his dreams. Shane McConkey is revered as a pioneer of freeskiing and ski-BASE jumping, and through his talent and ability to use his trademark irreverent humor, he inspired countless lives. In a new film from Red Bull Media House in association with Matchstick Productions, “McConkey” celebrates the life of one of the world’s ultimate innovators.

 
5) Lion Ark

Tim Phillips

United Kingdom/USA

97m

From the film's website:

Lion Ark is a vivid behind the scenes account of probably the most ambitious animal rescue ever undertaken, the finale of which sees 25 lions rescued from illegal traveling circuses across Bolivia being flown to safety in the USA.
A shocking undercover investigation leads to a ban on animal circuses in Bolivia. But the circuses defy the law. The team behind the investigation return, track down the illegal circuses and save every animal. We follow the confrontations, heartache and risks the team face, before an emotional finale sees 25 lions airlifted 5,000 miles to freedom in Colorado.

6) I, Slomo

Joshua Izenberg
USA

17 min

Neurologist drops out of rat race to slow motion roller blade.

Video is from the film's Kickstarter page

7)  Himalayan Gold Rush 
Eric Valli 
France 
48m.

"Every spring, in a remote part of Nepal, tens of thousands of men, women and children leave their villages for a dangerous trek to the high Himalaya, sometimes at the cost of their lives, to collect Yarsagumbu - a mysterious transmutation between plant and insect. Used in Chinese medicine, it is worth up to 60,000 USD a kilo – more than gold! " 

8) Harlem Street Singer
Trevor Laurence
USA
77m.


From the Harlem Street Singer website:

"Harlem Street Singer, the first-ever film to tell the little-known story of Reverend Gary Davis, the great ragtime and gospel musician. Tracing his journey from the tobacco warehouses of the rural south to the streets of Harlem, the film is a revealing portrait of an artist who impacted the musical landscape of folk music and endeared himself to musicians such as Pete Seeger, Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen, David Bromberg, Bob Dylan and countless others. In addition to interviews, the storyline features audio recordings from Woody Mann’s guitar lessons with Davis, archival footage, rediscovered photographs, concert and informal musical sequences by the Reverend as well as contemporary artists who have been influenced by him. Harlem Street Singer celebrates the beauty and spirituality of his music as well as the human qualities that made Reverend Davis a much beloved teacher and minister. This is the exciting story of an American musical icon whose legacy continues to live on in today’s music scene."

9)  Grand Rescue

Meredith Lavitt and Jenny Wilson 

USA

48m

There was something about the trailer that suggests a gripping film. And the mountain climbing rescue story should appeal to Alaskans.  And this one had it's premier just a couple of days ago - Nov. 5 - so we'll be among the first to see it. 




From The Grand Rescue website:

"It was August 22nd around 2:00 pm when a young graduate student and his female climbing companion became stranded on a narrow ledge 13,000 feet high. A boulder had broken free and showered the climbers with rock fall leaving Gaylord Campbell with protruding compound fractures. The young national park rangers quickly went to work, relying on innate skill, instinct and trust. History was about to be made...the rescue was the first one on the feared North Face - an unprecedented rescue for its time, due to the climber's severe injuries and unknown terrain."

10)  Furever

Amy FInkel

USA

80m

Learn how to freeze dry your pet.  Actually, it's a look at people who get their pets freeze dried and the people who will do it for them.

11)  Backyard
Deia Schlosberg
USA
28m
 

“Backyard” is a story of seeing broadly and considering the greater good. Told via animations and people's experiences with fracking."  From the Backyard Kickstarter page.

"Welcome to the World of Miracles and Wonders" and Other Spam Comments

There's a lot of spam comments you don't see. They are caught by the Blogspot spam filter. And then there are those that get through, but I move into the spam box as soon as I see them. A while back I decided to save some and share them with you. Spam comments have gotten more sophisticated and, generally, the English has improved.

Mostly they tell me how nice, superb, amazing, or whatever the site is.

Then they want you to check out their site.  Sometimes, but not often, this is really just someone trying to get more hits on their personal site.  Usually it's from an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company trying to get more hits for a commercial client.

I think my favorite among these is "I have an excited synthetic eye with regard to detail. . ."

Then there was the series of comments that give a first hand account of how good this particular Indian escort service was for him.  I even got some of these from China!  Imagine, India is outsourcing to China.  Bizarre.

Enjoy.  These come from Blogspot's list of my spam comments.  They cut out any links in the text, but they leave links in the id.  But I've removed them.  The links still there are to the posts on my blog that they were posted to.  

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November Light

As we gallop from the equinox to the solstice, the sun gets lower on the southern horizon in Anchorage entering our windows horizontally.  Bright light, long shadows.

It's as though the sun painted these flowers 'bright' while it was on them.

There's beauty everywhere, though it's easier to see when the sun is bright and the sky is blue.

[Feedburner note:  this seems to have taken about 10 hours for the ping to reach blogrolls.  Grrrr.  This one isn't time sensitive, but other things are.]