Alaska Legislature Runs State Finances Like Poor People Run Theirs

I want this to be a short, to-the-point post, but I have a feeling it's going to wander a bit, because life isn't as simple as we'd like to believe it is.  [Not too long.  Just be patient.]

What Do Poor And Rich Mean?

I'm talking economically rich or poor - not spiritually, emotionally, culturally, or one of the many other ways people can be rich or poor.

Poor, in my head, means that you are in danger of not being able to cover your necessities - food, shelter, health - because you live on the edge.   While homeless folks probably come to mind first, this also includes people working at minimum wage jobs where food gets scarce toward the end of the pay period.  And while we think of this being month to month, for some it's a slightly longer time frame - maybe year to year. 

Rich has more levels.  

Basic:  A family could be self-supporting, without cash -  hunting, gathering, possibly some farming, and self-sufficient enough to build their own homes and make their own clothes.  Alaska Natives lived like this for thousands of years.  They were poor, only in the sense that a bad year could threaten their survival.

Similarly, It could be a working family that has a sustainable source of income - a job with a steady salary and even better, a defined-benefit retirement plan.  There are dangers.  One could get sick and be unable to work, or the company could go out of business, or be bought out by another company that liquidates the pension fund. 

Strong:  A family that has not only a steady income, but a nest egg that can keep them going if the steady income is threatened.

Really Rich:  A family that has so much wealth, that there is almost no conceivable way that their money will ever run out.

You'll notice here that security is a relative term.  No one is totally secure.  Disasters come in many expected and unexpected forms.  Natural and human-made disasters can threaten the richest families. But the really rich can use their money to influence the social, economic, and political systems so that their security is protected, not just by their family, but by the governmental system.

The key is access to the political power of the society. In the past, royal families simply owned the country and the governmental structure including the army.  Today, large multinational corporations are able to do this better than most others.


Why Are Rich People Rich?

They are rich, not because they have a steady income, but because they've invested enough of the excess income, so that it provides a steady stream of money to meet all their reasonable (and in extreme cases, unreasonable) future needs.   They have resources, they store their excess wealth.  They can sell when prices are high and buy when they are low.  The society protects their interests.  In capitalistic societies, they have financial investments that earn and grow.

OK, here's where this is all leading.

The state of Alaska has managed to set up some funds for the future.  That's what the Permanent Fund was all about.  Recognizing that today's Alaskan's shouldn't be the only beneficiaries of the unsustainable oil resource.  The Permanent Fund was supposed to capture that wealth and sustain Alaskans in the future.  But it's become, in too many people's minds, a quick, easy October cash infusion.  And other budget reserve funds were also attempts at protecting the wealth for future generations.

But we're spending and saving like poor folks.

Alaska Headlines Sunday March 22 and Monday March 23

"State sells $4B in stocks:  Cash may be needed as budget reserve is emptied to cover deficit"  [Note:  the online headlines are different from the paper versions] 

Alaska lawmakers look to once-forbidden sources for money

Those forbidden sources are the funds that some in previous legislatures managed to stash away for rainy days.  But rich people, and when Alaska discovered oil it won the lottery and became a rich state, make those funds sustainable.  They don't drain them, because that means they will stop being rich.

Groups of people will always have a hard time managing finances.   Collective management is tough.   Different folks have different ideas of what to spend their money on and how to manage it.  Even families have those kinds of problems.  And there are always the sharks and vultures that sense wealth and coming running to find a way to get their share. 

But let's not let the Republicans in this state pull the wool over people's eyes.  It was legislatures with Democratic majorities and/or with Republicans whom today's Republicans would call Democrats and socialists, who created the Permanent Fund, and many other rainy day funds.

But it's been a totally Republican controlled state government that has had the highest state budgets, ever, and by a large margin.  And it's Republicans who are running the state like poor folks.  People who won the lottery but didn't stop thinking like poor folks and quit their jobs (abolished the income tax) and then spent all the money.  Some was spent on important stuff - like schools and health care, but a lot was spent on boondoggles and luxuries.  Rural Alaska still has honey buckets after all these years, but we've got the Dena'ina Center and the newly refurbished Legislative Office in Anchorage.  And there were Democrats who took part in some of the frivolous spending as well (the train station at the airport), but Republicans have held sway for much longer.

And now, instead of seriously looking for a job (in state terms that means finding revenue sources like taxes) to pay for things, our legislature is raiding the piggy banks.  I say piggy banks because that's where the poor, if they save at all, save their money.  And that's how our legislature is responding to the crisis.  They're going to stop paying basic bills and raid the piggy banks they can find.  OK, some of the stashed away money is left over money on projects that we probably shouldn't spend on, but some are endowments to help sustain important programs. 

I hope readers realize that I do not mean to disparage the poor - at least those who are poor because of structural societal systems that keep them from having a good education and good health care and jobs that pay a decent wage.  Poor people have fewer choices - even if they manage to secure a decent wage, their education hasn't prepared them for all the sharks waiting to take their money - bar owners, gambling establishments, sellers of fancy consumer products at "Amazing deals" and promises of painless credit, "Worried about your credit?  DON'T BE!  Let our credit experts help you now." [From ADN Saturday, p C-8]

A number of our legislators have moved up from being poor.  They still think like the poor.  And they're still dazzled by their corporate sponsors and do as they're told, while thinking they have power and independence. 

And the people of Alaska are watching our wealth drained by their ignorance and greed. 

It Always Looks Different: Turnagain Arm

Thirty eight years later, Turnagain Arm still is awesome (in the original sense of the word.)

Driving south from Anchorage is never just a drive.  It's a beautiful adventure.

So, let's start with the typical post card picture of Turnagain Arm and then will look at some variations that I took today.  None of these were altered except for some cropping.

Now, let's look just at the wet stuff.  Every time you look, it's different.

And  back to another typical post card view.

Delta Buying Alaska? Really Bad News

Rumors. 

It's not just because Alaska Airlines has the name of my state on it (even if it is headquartered in Seattle.)

It's not just because Alaska has been relatively good as US airlines go.  (even if it has taken advantage of its monopoly in the rest of the state.)

It's not just because we travel a lot to visit my mom and have learned how to best use Alaska to travel. 

It's not just because Delta screwed us over in the very worst way once - canceling our trip to Thailand at the very last minute without telling us.  Our travel agent (yeah it was that long ago) checked and found it out and after lots of trouble was able to rebook us on Korean (the flight we were originally booked on with Delta tickets).  And then on the way back, they again changed our tickets, flying my wife out of Thailand two days after her connecting flight out of Seoul (yes that makes it hard to make a connection) and wouldn't let us fly the Seoul - Anchorage Korean flight, but forced us to go Seoul - San Francisco - Salt Lake City - Anchorage  adding over 24 hours to our trip home. 

It's because when there's no anti-trust enforcement, all the good smaller companies get bought up by the less good bigger ones and then there's just a few big companies, there's no competition.  Even if they don't collude, they just copy each other and adjust prices up, add all kinds of extra fees, and generally screw over their customers.   There's nothing good that could come out of this for consumers. 

No, no, no. 

Ideology Is A Bitch

 It allows you to answer all questions with slogans.  It allows you to ignore facts.  It lets you get away without serious analysis and it lets you do horrendous harm to civilization without guilt.

In ideological capitalism, government is bad.  Taxes are bad.  Deficits are bad.  Corporations are good.

Those are part of the mantra of the far wrong.

With these phrases guiding Republicans in Washington and Juneau,  programs that took years to nurture and grow, and which provide benefits not only to the immediate recipients, but to society (and ironically that budget deficit) are being whacked.

The wrecking crews cannot distinguish between the flowers and weeds.  The projects that tend survive are the projects favored by corporate interests. 

There is a commonality between the Republican use of ideology to destroy everything they can that smacks of 'government' and other evils in their interpretation of capitalism,  and the ISIS use of ideology to destroy everything that smacks of idolatry or other evils in their interpretation of the Qur'an.  

So, in the far wrong budget, the military and war and destruction (Lockheed Martin,  Northrup Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and many others) get increased funding.  Programs that grow, nurture, and protect the most vulnerable humans (Headstart, foodstamps, health programs) get dismantled or destroyed. (see NY Times for example.) 

Just like ISIS terrorists who demolish ancient statues that took skill and time to build and, because of their survival for millennia, give us clues to understanding our human cultural origins, the Republicans are attempting to destroy social programs that have taken sweat and ingenuity and dedication to build.  Destruction is easy.  If you've spent time with a two-year old, you know they can knock things down far more easily than they can build things up. They also repeat the word 'no' over and over again.

In Alaska, today's ADN has a front page article about Rep. Lynn Gattis' amendment to scrap WWAMI* - the program Alaska uses, in lieu of a medical school, to grow Alaskan doctors.  The program is a cooperative program with other northwestern states to share medical school investments.  The article says that 14% of Alaska doctors are products of the WWAMI program.  Considering how small the program is, that's quite a bit.  If we consider the costs of just recruiting doctors to rural Alaska, WWAMI is a major investment in lower future costs.  Unlike the ISIS ideologists who condemn the statues they destroy, Gattis at least acknowledges WWAMI and other programs being cut as "great programs. .  .  We just can't afford them."   A variation of the mantra. 

The Institute for Social And Economic Research (ISER) has been predicting the decline in oil revenue for 30 years.  Technology changes and the increase in oil prices have delayed the inevitable to some extent.  And the legislature has at times heeded that warning, and set up rainy day funds.   The Alaska state budget has tripled since 2000, most significantly in latter years when the Republicans have had their greatest power in Juneau.   They funded all sorts of capital projects for the benefit of their contractor supporters - the Knik Arm Bridge, renewed studies for a Susitna dam, a road from Juneau to a mine that Sen. MacKinnon's husband has significant (in terms of money if not percentage) interests in, a loopy program to save orphaned moose.   In my own neighborhood a road has been given $20 million in last minute maneuvering in Juneau - a road that all the community councils in the area have strongly opposed.

While some legislators are raising the politically sensitive issues of increasing revenues (sales taxes, income taxes, marijuana taxes, and dipping into the Permanent Fund), most are either ideologically opposed to such measures or too timid to be leaders.  Instead they will destroy programs like WWAMI.  Dr. Tom Nighswander is quoted in the ADN article,

" . . .  it took years to build the program's capacity to keep students in Alaska for the first two years. He said he fears that if the program disappears, it would not be able to bring back all of the clinical faculty it currently prizes.
“If you dismantle the program, you can’t restart it again,” he said. "

Ideology is a bitch.  It allows you to answer all questions with slogans.  It allows you to ignore facts.  It lets you get away without serious analysis and it lets you do horrendous harm to civilization without guilt

NOTE:  This is more of an opinion piece than I normally do, but sometimes stuff gets so thick, you have to stand up and call it out.  I realize that the ISIS metaphor will attract criticism, but I'm focused on one aspect of ISIS - their ability to use ideology to justify everything they do.  You can kill directly, immediately, using violence and personally drawing blood and you can kill in the long term by destroying institutions that nurture humans, maintain health, and save lives. 

*Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho

Tanaina Update: No Return To Old Sports Center Spot, But University Vows To Help

There was a Tanaina task force meeting Monday afternoon, though the time and place was different from what was decided at Friday afternoon's meeting. 

The basic topic was:  How did the chancellor's cabinet respond to the options the task force presented earlier that day? 

The key points I heard were:

1.  The space Tanaina has been in since it opened in the late 1970s is not an option for interim use.  This had been a key question since the task force had gotten conflicting messages from task force members who are also university administrators. 

2.  The chancellor's cabinet strongly endorsed the idea of Tanaina and offered unspecified support - possibly physical space, possibly financial, definitely moral.

Other things were discussed, but those were the two key issues. 


The task force is looking at three time frames:

Short term - For when they have to move out of the sports center on campus because there is contracted construction scheduled.  That should take the summer and possibly to October or so.  For the summer, Tanaina has an agreement with St. Mary's. 

Mid term - Once the short term is done, the question will be where to house Tanaina until a long-term solution can be realized.  There are some options here, but the one that the task force seemed to prefer - getting back to their old space - was shut down by the chancellor's cabinet which said they are committed to part of student services moving in there.  Staying longer at St. Mary's is a possibility, but there are things that would need to be worked out.  The board of Tanaina has to look at the impacts of moving on enrollment, costs, and income, to determine the overall feasibility.  But there was a possibility that the university might find ways to assist if necessary.  My notes say:  "UAA is vested in your success for the short term, mid term, or long term."

Long term -  This period has the most uncertainties at this point.  Dennis McMillian, the head of Foraker is a part of this task force because of his experience with non-profit development and fund raising.  He voiced cautious optimism about the long term and the task force had a number of serious options that they discussed, but at this point they're vague and there were concerns expressed about the sensitivity of publicly mentioning specifics at this point.

The sense I got from the meeting was one of mixed disappointment and optimism.  Disappointment because the old location has been shut off as a medium term possibility.  Optimism because, as reported by the task force reps who presented the options to the whole task force, the chancellor's cabinet expressed strong support for Tanaina and a continuing relationship with the university and that they were adamant about not closing Tanaina.   What wasn't clear was the nature of that relationship and support.  The possibilities of a physical space on campus or financial support or faculty expertise were brought up at the meeting, but nothing concrete was specified.  It was suggested that during this time of fiscal stress, the administration would have to deal with the immediate problems of the budget cuts on campus before they could commit to anything in the longer term with Tanaina.  But, the implication I heard, was that it would be there. 

It was mentioned that the Tanaina situation has made the issue of child care/development centers a statewide university topic.  Other issues were raised about improving the infrastructure for child care in Anchorage in general, because fewer people seemed to be willing to take on the responsibility of small, home-based child care, so the demand for more institutionalized child care was growing.  There was talk of changing the structure of the Tanaina board, which tends to have high turnover as board members' kids leave Tanaina in two or three years, which hurts institutional memory.  Plus the parent board members, already have very busy lives because of their young children.  And for parents new to Anchorage, with no family nearby, it's even more hectic. 

It was a meeting with mixed messages.  Cutting the ties with the old space seems certain, and facing uncertain change is difficult.  Especially with things that so hugely affect family life as child care.  But Tanaina is ripe for a larger space.  It's just that the path there didn't have to be so disruptive and unplanned. 

No new meeting of the task force was scheduled.  They're waiting until after a Friday meeting with the Tanaina board. 

"Facing Human Vulnerability in a Dangerous World"

I'd love to do an in depth post on this, probably starting with something about how human behavior and moral dilemmas and the debates about what is the right ethical path has been hotly and insightfully debated for over 2000 years.   Professor Aaron Stalnaker is going to be here tomorrow (Wednesday March 18) to talk about what ancient Chinese philosophers said about the same kinds of issues we face today.   I'd like to write about how easy it is for us to think that people living today are so much smarter than those who lived in the distant past.  But that there were people living then who whose abilities to think through complex human issues were as powerful as anyone alive today. 

But I've got lots of other things to do and this talk is tomorrow evening, so I'll just send this on for people who might wish to gain some perspective on our current ethical debates. 

Here's the official announcement: 

Confucius Institute invites you and your family to join our next academic Lecture, to be held in the UAA/APU Consortium Library, Lewis E. Haines Meeting Room, Room 307, on Wednesday, March 18, from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m.

 

“Facing Human Vulnerability in a Dangerous World: 

Two Chinese Responses.”

 

This lecture will address Mengzi’s (and perhaps Xunzi’s) defense of ritual as an appropriate response to human desires and aspirations, given our nature and the nature of the world as a whole; and then turn to Zhuangzi’s criticism of received ritual forms, in favor of a more radical acceptance of unstoppable change.  

Our speaker Dr. Aaron Stalnaker is a distinguished scholar and philosopher. He is an associate professor of Religious Studies, Philosophy, and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. He is a core faculty member in the Department of Religious Studies, serves as the Dean of Graduate Studies, and has made tremendous contribution to the Department of Religious Studies in building its strong academics. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Stanford, and obtained his PhD from Brown. He is an expert in ethics and philosophy of religion, giving serious attention to both Chinese and Western theories and practices.

He is the author of Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine (Georgetown University Press, 2006), a comparative study of different models of moral and religious personal formation. He recently co-edited Religious Ethics in a Time of Globalism: Shaping a Third Wave of Comparative Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He has lectured at many leading universities, including Harvard Divinity School, Princeton University, University of Michigan, Georgetown University, etc.

And for those who want to do a little homework first, here's an excerpt from a review of Stalnaker's book Overcoming Our Evil:

Having made these points about Stalnaker's interpretation and analysis of Xunzi's theory of self-transformation, let me turn to a lingering concern about the overarching goal of comparative analyses. Stalnaker makes a very strong case for needing forms of spiritual exercises to accomplish self-transformation toward better, moral forms of life. Furthermore, he, like I, wants to be able to retrieve some of these practices for contemporary purposes, to be used to transform lives today. Yet our desire to retrieve these spiritual exercises must confront the problem of whether or not they can be divorced from their conceptual and cultural context and still remain effective practices for self-transformation. Stalnaker believes it may be possible to retrieve some practices once we untangle the complex web of relations between the context and the practices themselves, the kind of work he undertakes in this book. 

 I picked this paragraph because it raises questions about the extent to which the ancient Chinese practices are applicable, as I suggested above.  

Events like this are just one of the many benefits of having a good university in our city. 

Bohemian Waxwings Visit Our Mt. Ash Tree

We hadn't seen the waxwings all winter and our tree and beneath it were full of berries.  They came Sunday.  They're such beautiful birds. 

Tanaina Catch Up - Monday May Tell A Lot

As you may recall from previous posts, or other media coverage, the day care/development center at University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) was notified that it would have to move, soon.

The center has been at the university since about 1979.  It serves children of students, faculty, staff, and community members and there's a waiting list.  The university decided they needed the space to relocate staff from Student Services (about a mile from the main campus) onto campus.  Tanaina was the space they decided to use.  They used various explanations - Tanaina is not a university entity and they've been subsidizing the rent all these years. (Tanaina's current proposals include paying rent for the space, by the way.)  It's a dangerous location with the Zamboni and chlorine for the pool stored nearby.  Space is at a premium on campus.

The reaction to the decision to evict Tanaina was swift and strong - letters to the ADN, a protest march, people addressing the board of regents meeting.  And four regents expressed their concern about closing a day care center.  I suspect this reaction is what motivated the chancellor to set up the task force that is looking into options for Tanaina.

I've got a personal interest in Tanaina as I've posted earlier in a post on the historical context of Tanaina which also raised issues about what closing the day care center does to the campus climate for women.   I won't repeat that here. 

At the February 20 board of regents meeting I learned that the Tanaina task force was meeting that afternoon.  It was an interesting meeting, but I was headed out of town that weekend and didn't get to post about that meeting.  This past Friday (March 13) I went to another meeting. (I missed one in between.)  So let me try to catch up here.

February 20 Meeting - I left somewhat hopeful after this meeting.  The task force includes Tanaina parents (faculty, students, and staff), the university’s associate vice chancellor for Facilities and Campus Services, Chris Turletes,  Vice Chancellor for University Advancement, Megan Olson, and a few others.  Like Foraker head, Dennis McMillian and Debi Baldwin,Director, Division of Child Development, Rural Alaska Community Action Program (RURAL CAP).

My sense at the beginning of that meeting was that the task force was resigned that it had to find some other spot for Tanaina and the eviction was a done deal.  They talked about the short term option, the medium term option, and the long term option.  There were some possible locations off campus for this summer when contracted construction would begin at Tanaina.  But it didn't look like that could be permanent, so there was a need for a mid-term option until Tanaina could possible come up with funding to build a longer term option.  But then one of the task force members asked Turlettes whether Tanaina could come back after the construction and what other options might there be on campus.  His answer surprised me, positively.  Moving back into Tanaina's Sports Center space was possible, though not permanently, and there was some university land where a new center could possibly be built.

I also learned that the current campus location restricted growth and the Tanaina board would like to grow.  Besides being able to serve more families, economies of scale increased because the child/staff ratio could get a little bigger.

There was talk of working with the Anchorage School District, with Rural Cap, and other organizations in the community.  Things were pretty positive after this meeting.  The task force was going to flesh out the costs and feasibility of the different options.  The short term summer options were off campus, but not too far.  Then, with Turletes words in mind, they might be able to come back to their old space a few years until a bigger, permanent space was built.

March 13 Meeting 

Since it was spring break, the meeting was held off campus and several of the members called in.  The task force had secured space at St. Mary's for the summer.  It wasn't ideal - St. Mary's already has its own day care which, if I remember properly, doesn't meet in the summer. It was economically feasible and pretty close to campus.

But then, after summer, it gets dicier.  They had a table that broke out the costs of each of three different options.  One was to continue at St. Mary's, but that still had a lot of unknowns, including the possible need for a portable building because St. Mary's day care would be opening again.  It wasn't clear they could make the finances break even, but the gap was small.
The second option was to return to the UAA campus sports center space they've been in for all these years.
There was another building that they were looking at that was further off campus and would require a lot of modifications, and the cost was significantly higher than the other two options.

The task force was preparing to report to the chancellor's cabinet Monday (March 16) and felt that they really weren't quite prepared.  They'd done all this work, including other leads that weren't on the option sheet, but timing was tight.

About that point, the vice provost said that her sense of the chancellor's cabinet had already decided to continue with moving student services into Tanaina's space as originally planned, so the second option wasn't likely.  My rough notes say: 

 Megan:  Going back to Wells Fargo [the sports center] is not a possibility.

 After that, discussion moved to adding 'closing down' as an option on the list.  During that discussion someone asked Turletes whether there was a possibility of going back to the sports center location and he seemed to think that possibility was still open, but they shouldn't ask for more than three years, before they moved to a permanent location.

There was a lot of consternation among the committee members as they left to finish their documentation for the Monday meeting with the chancellor's cabinet.

I left with lots of questions.  I'm still perplexed at how out of touch the administration  was when they thought they could just close down the day care center that had been so important to people's lives over the years without any sort of pushback.  They know that sports programs mean a lot to people, but had no sense of the importance of day care in people's lives.   While, apparently, there had been general comments over the years about Tanaina needing to move eventually, the people I talked to on the task force were taken totally by surprise.  They pointed out that the Board of Regents  had recently approved money to renovate Tanaina to bring it up to code. 

On the one hand, the university claims there's a space crunch, and I know in certain departments finding rooms for adjunct faculty to meet with students is getting hard.  On the other hand in the last couple of years a large science building and a health sciences building have opened, an engineering building is nearing completion and another parking garage is going up.  It seems to me that with all that building, finding space for a new child development center could have been found in one of those construction projects if people understood the importance of having such a center on campus.  But while the university itself takes years to get a new building on line, they don't seem to have considered how difficult it would be for a child care center, with an all volunteer board, to find new space and raise funds to build a new center.   They were simply given an eviction notice with a pretty short time line.  It wasn't until they started hearing from the community and the board of regents, that they seem to have started listening. 

I'm aware here that I don't have all the facts.  But I do have the perceptions.  I understand that the university reps think that they gave lots of advance warning over the years.  But Tanaina board members said such comments were vague and they hadn't felt any immediate pressure.  Remodeling, as I mentioned, had just been approved.   They were thinking about the future, but not immediately.  And it's difficult for a volunteer parent board that regularly turns over as their kids move from day care to kindergarten to have the kind of institutional memory needed.  Or the time and energy to do the kind of long term lobbying and support building necessary to keep the administration aware of how important Tanaina is.  It's work the Tanaina parents needed to do.   But as a faculty member, I have to admit my surprise at seeing representatives of different programs speaking to the board of regents last month simply to say, "Here who we are, here's what we do, and why we're important."  I hadn't gone to a board meeting and wasn't aware that this kind of program lobbying was going on. 

In any case, the chancellor's cabinet will have to clarify whether going back on campus to their old space while they develop plans for a bigger, permanent space is still an option.  If it's not, closing Tanaina will become a more likely option.  That said, there are lots of things in play, and no one should throw in the towel until all possibilities are explored.  After all, Out North is rising from its death bed this week. 

Nature's Reminder That Our Winter Isn't Over Yet

Our mild temperatures and all the bare pavement we've been enjoying have lulled a lot of folks into thinking spring was almost here.  I've even been thinking about planting some sweetpeas in the flower box on the deck at the beginning of April.   

But this week the temps have dropped, and this morning it was 2˚F (-16˚C) on our indoor/outdoor thermometer.  And after almost two weeks of sunshine, it's grey, and there was the thinnest possible dusting of snow on the deck.

Blue skies still reigned last night.  Here's the O'Malley trailhead about 6pm with an anemic snow covering. 

And a view of Flat Top from the trail. 











But it is The Ides of March, so while today we take a hit, my computer weather forecast suggests this is just a blip on the way to spring and summer.  (In Anchorage spring tends to happen pretty quick though there are subtle signs to indicate different stages of summer.) 

On closer look, it says our range for today should be 19˚F to 23˚F,  yet it still says we're at 1˚F.  So keep those coats handy just in case. 

"Hold on, Millie Martindale (Raven Bonniwell)! You got some ‘splainin’ to do."

"You’ve just tried to break a date with your husband’s boss’ awful wife Kitty Sunderson (Karen Lange) by pretending you had an appointment with a butcher on U Street – and now Kitty wants to go to the butcher with you! How are you going to get out of that?!!
And not so fast, Bob Martindale (Andrew Keller)! You got some ‘splainin’ to do too. You’re in charge of the State Department program to root out communists on the payroll, and your boss Ted Sunderson (Zach Brewster-Geisz) has just put you in charge of a new program to get rid of all the sexual deviants in the State Department – and you’re one of them yourself!
Although you have a sham marriage to Millie, you actually live in unholy bliss with your neighbor Jim Baxter (Kiernan McGowan), who is legally married to your secretary Norma (Natalie Cutcher) – who is in reality Millie’s lover! How are you going to get out of that?!!"

So begins a 2013 review of Topher Payne's play Perfect Arrangement in the DC Theater Scene.

I knew nothing about the review, but I did know the play was coming to Anchorage, when I stopped by Out North to see about tickets for next Thursday's  (March 19) opening of the play.    The box office wasn't open, but two of the producers (and actors) were inside, the set was ready, and Krista Schwarting and Jay Burns told me about the play. 




In the video they briefly discuss the play - a West Coast premiere.  Maybe you can hear some hints of playwright Topher Payne's Mississippi childhood in this post's title.  The story takes place in the 1950s as homosexuals, following the purge of communists, were being rooted out of the State Department.  We're getting the play here in Anchorage because Krista knows a friend of the Topher Payne.  And  Topher Payne will be here for the opening.

This was happened in the early 1950's - about the same time that Alan Turing (see Imitation Game)  was arrested in England for being a homosexual.   A commenter on the review that opens this post wrote:

"The man sitting next to me said “Young people have no idea … Everyone should see this play.” I totally agree, and only wish these people could also be there: the woman I know who was an Army nurse in Korea and had to stand by, with her lover, and watch her friends being routed out and dishonorably discharged, and the woman who was the best record promoter in Chicago in the 60s who got caught trying to escape from a police raid of a second floor lesbian bar and lost her career. This is a fabulous comedy that touches on their tragedies."

People growing up today have trouble grasping what 'in the closet' meant back then.  And perhaps they can better understand the negative reactions many in the older generations against gays because of what they were taught when they were young.   This trailer for a movie about the time gives a little sense.  (I was way too young at the time to be aware of any of this.)





The Reemergence of Out North

I'm delighted this enchanted piece of real estate at Primrose and Debarr is coming back to life. The building started as some sort of electrical station. When we got to Anchorage in 1977 it was Grandview Garden library, a wonderful funky old library. When Loussac library opened in 1984, Grandview was scheduled to close. The community kept it open a bit longer, but eventually it was shut. But the building was reincarnated as Out North by Jay Brause and Gene Dugan.  And Jay and Gene (and their successors) always brought thought provoking performances - whether from Outside or from Anchorage or around Alaska - to their stage.  Stuff that made you rethink things you thought you knew.  You can read some more of the history here in the description of the Out North now housed at the University's Archives and Special Collections.