John Weddleton Is Running For Assembly

I got an invitation to a campaign kickoff party for John Weddleton.  I'd first met John when he was hosting meetings in support of Title 21 - the planning section of the Anchorage Municipal Code.  I'd been invited, as a blogger, by people who supported the changes to Title 21 and were fighting last minute changes to revise the ordinance.  Mayor Sullivan had hired Dan Coffey in a no-bid contract to work (mostly) with developers who wanted changes to the plan which had gone through years of public meetings.

The meetings were at John's store - Bosco's.  I knew about Bosco's because my son had spent a fair amount of time and money their as a kid.  It's a comic book and gaming store and my son was serious about Dungeons and Dragons then.

I'd been impressed back then, with John's knowledge of Title 21 and his passion for public involvement and transparency.  I also learned that he'd gotten a lot of his knowledge from being a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission.  I also learned that the big motorcycle parked in front of the store was his too.

Last night John started off by talking about how when he first moved to Anchorage, he'd gone to a community council meeting and was impressed by how easy it was to get involved in his community.  There were assembly members at this meeting, he said, and you could talk to them like they were real people.  I remember, when I first came here as well, my own amazement at how accessible government and politicians are here in Anchorage.

He also pulled out some typical Anchorage public notice signs and pointed out that there was no information on the signs except a case number and a phone number.  If anyone wants to know what the project is, they have to call the number, and then they don't get told too much about the project.  And if you go to the Muni website, it's hard to find things.  He thought it should be easier for folks to know what the case was about. 

I decided that before posting this, I should check out the Muni website and see how easy or difficult it is to get case information.

I knew this was in the Community and Development Department, so I had a bit of a head start.  From there I found a link on the side to Boards and Commissions.  That got me to another page which had a list of meetings:

Platting Board - 11/4/2015	November 04, 2015 - 06:30 PM	Agenda
Planning and Zoning Commission - 11/9/2015	November 09, 2015 - 06:30 PM	Agenda
Assembly - Regular - 11/10/2015	November 10, 2015 - 05:00 PM	Agenda

 If you click on the Agenda link for Planning and Zoning Commission, you get an agenda.  I clicked on the very first item and got this:








Not very helpful. 

But other items on the agenda had links to pdf files of the cases.  So you can find a number of them, but it takes a certain amount of perseverance.  I'm sure there are simpler ways for people to find these things, but it also means that someone has to post and monitor the site to keep it current.  When I asked John about this afterward, he did say staff is posting some of this and it should get better.  But his point was that when people see the Public Notice signs, there's nothing to indicate what is being proposed and whether they should be interested or not, whether they should make the effort to find out. 


I'm always a bit uncomfortable about blogging local candidates.   It's important, but it seems I should try to cover all the candidates for an office.  That isn't easy when there are a number of races and lots of things vying for my attention.  Last year I got invitations from three of the mayoral candidates and went to all the functions and wrote about them.  The others I was able to catch at a candidate forum. 

In this south Anchorage assembly district I'm not even sure of how many candidates there are.

The ADN says: 

Joe Riggs, a conservative candidate who owns Alaska Healthcare Strategies, a medical equipment and consulting business, is also running.

The ADN more recently says that photographer David Jensen  joined the race.

After Cloudy, Snowy Days, Sun's Out

As I pulled into the Costco parking lot, the clouds parted, and the skinny trees' shadows blossomed on the wall.

And off beyond the parking lot, the mountains reappeared with fresh snow.

My Name Is Red

Chapter one starts with a murder.  In fact the title of the chapter - like all the chapters - is the name of the narrator: I AM A CORPSE.  The whole book revolves around finding out the narrator of the second chapter: I WILL BE CALLED A MURDERER.

That may be what holds the story together, but it's not really what the book is about.  So unimportant is the identity of the murderer that at our book club, two of the people said they couldn't remember who the murderer was.  MY NAME IS BLACK is probably the most frequent chapter title.  And BLACK is assigned the task of finding out who the murderer is.  They suspect one of three illustrators who were working secretly on a book for the sultan along with CORPSE.  So we hear from each of them as well as I WILL BE CALLED A MURDERER, assuming all along that one of them is the murderer. 

BLACK is assigned to interview the three artists and asks the master how will he be able to tell which is the murderer.  The master tells him to ask three questions, which will give you a glimpse of topics in the book, though at this point you don't have any idea where this will lead.

The three questions:

1.  "Has he come to believe, under the sway of recent custom as well as the influence of the Chinese and the European Franks, that he ought to have an individual painting technique, his own style?  As an illustrator does he want to have a manner, an aspect distinct from others, and does he attempt to prove this by signing his name somewhere in his work like the Frankish masters?  To determine precisely these things, I'd first ask him a question about 'style' and signature.'"

Then?

2.  Then, I'd want to learn how this illustrator felt about volumes changing hands, being unbound, and our pictures being used in other books and in other eras after the shahs and sultans who'd commissioned them have died.   .   .  Thus I'd ask a question about 'time' - an illustrator's time and Allah's time.

3.  The third would be 'blindness'!"  said the great master Head Illuminator Osman, who then fell silent as if this required no explication.
"What is it about 'blindness'?"  I said with embarrassment.
"Blindness is silence.  If you combine what I've just now said, the first and second questions, 'blindness' will emerge.  It's the farthest one can go in illustrating;  it is seeing what appears out of Allah's own blackness."

There's also a love story, though not a very satisfying one.   I, SHEKURE is the beautiful woman that a number of the characters are in love with.


My Name Is Red played games with my mind.  Ideas I'd never encountered exploded from the pages.  One of the masters went to Venice and saw many portraits in the "Frankish" style.  Portraits so realistic that if you saw the painting, you would be able to recognize the subject if you saw him on the street.  Well, of course, what's the big deal?  The big deal is that this was amazing to him.  That Allah's ban on idols, made such portraiture forbidden.  I had to go look at miniatures to see what the people looked like.  And yes, there are faces, but no, they really aren't that detailed.

There is also a group of religious fundamentalists who are being stirred up against the artists for trying to have a style.

And blindness?  Well, the work of a miniaturist is so exacting, that many go blind eventually.  Yet, some see this as the perfect situation for an artist because he is painting only what Allah sees at that point.  And they are such skilled artists that they can paint blind.

Lots to ponder here.  But also lots of detail and repetition, which is consistent with miniatures of that era and the return to themes illustrated over and over again.  

By the way, author Pamuk won a Nobel Prize in Literature. 

What's A Blogger To Do? Too Much To Write About - LIO Scandal, Forced Arbitration, Trump's Good Old Days, Hockey

Me:  Even with the gain of an hour overnight as we set our clocks back,  there's not enough time!
Jiminy Cricket:  Of course there is Steve, you just have to prioritize.
Me:  Actually, the number of things we could do has increased so fast that humans will soon be obsolete, we just can't keep up.  It used to be we maybe had two newspapers to read, now every newspaper in the world is available online.  Not to mention every home video anyone has ever made.
Jiminy Cricket:  You going to complain all morning or write?
Me:  OK, OK.  So, my first glimpse of November 2015 was an inspiring one as I looked out the window at what should have been 9:24am, but because of the time change was only 8:24am.  And if you look closely you can see the snow that we got Friday still lingering.


So, what's stacking up in the blog pile?  Anchorage International Film Festival (AIFF) posts on documentaries, shorts, animation, and maybe even Alaska films in competition.  I try to get some of those groups done before the festival begins and this year I have the features in competition up already.  I don't have to think too hard on these, just go looking for info on the films.  And the AIFF 2015 page is started already.  That's up on top and I'll be updating general festival strategy stuff from last year and information on the films for this year.

I've got more to do on the Chuitna decision which the resource development community is upset about and has appealed.  There are some significant democratic principle issues at stake there that should be explored.  But it's complicated and people have lots of other things to distract them (back up to complaints about too little time above.)

I want to post more on my new, evolving relationship with my sourdough starter.

I'm working on something on rules - what they do for us, but how to keep from becoming trapped by them.   There are some books I want to say something about, some movies, how Netflix and other online movie sites are changing things, more on the conflicts between police and African-Americans  . . .  But serious posts require some time and thought and if I take on a subject, I want to look at it differently than others, not just reprint what others write.

Then there are all the potential posts that show up everyday, not part of the queue, but begging to be written.  Today's Section A of the Alaska Dispatch News (ADN)  (it was the second time this week we had to call to say it wasn't delivered) was full of such stories.  I'll just try to do a short take on a couple of them.

1.  Jim Gottstein's lawsuit against the Legislative Information Office remodeling contract.  It's so easy for legislators to get away with stuff.  Lisa Demer wrote along detailed story on all the irregularities in the contract two years ago in the ADN.   But this needed someone with legal standing and money and perseverance to step up and sue.  Today's article reveals some private emails that show Rep. Hawker worked with the politically generous developer to get around legislative attorneys' opinions that a no-bid contract was illegal.  Legislators often work with constituents to find ways to get around obstacles to get things done.  But when it's for a no bid contract for a state building that's going to raise the legislature's  rent enormously, it's suspicious.  And Hawker's an accountant, so he can't plead ignorant (ignorance is not a get out jail free card for anyone, but he had special expertise and clearly should have known better.)

2.  Corporations slipping arbitration language into contracts.  This is a New York Times article that was on the front page of the ADN.  It's got several themes I've got an interest in:

• The power of large corporations to force rules on their customers, rules that always favor the corporation.  In particular it is looking at rules that require arbitration to resolve disputes.   The offending language is:

". . .the company 'may elect to resolve any claim by individual arbitration.'

Those nine words are at the center of a far-reaching power play orchestrated by American corporations, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

By inserting individual arbitration clauses into a soaring number of consumer and employment contracts, companies like American Express devised a way to circumvent the courts and bar people from joining together in class-action lawsuits, realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices.

Over the last few years, it has become increasingly difficult to apply for a credit card, use a cellphone, get cable or Internet service, or shop online without agreeing to private arbitration. The same applies to getting a job, renting a car or placing a relative in a nursing home."

[Added later:  I should also add that attorneys have lots of incentives to fight for their ability to file class action lawsuits.  And that my sense is many of those suits only bring in money for attorneys because either the individuals don't understand all the paperwork needed to make a claim, or they do understand and decide that for the small amount they might possibly get, it's not worth all the work.]

• The impossibility of consumers actually reading all the contracts they have to agree to these days.  For a particularly egregious example, see my post on the iTunes update agreement back in 2013.
• Among many disturbing aspects of this issue, is how this change was carried out and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' role in this.

" . . .the move to block class actions was engineered by a Wall Street-led coalition of credit card companies and retailers, according to interviews with coalition members and court records. Strategizing from law offices on Park Avenue and in Washington, members of the group came up with a plan to insulate themselves from the costly lawsuits. Their work culminated in two Supreme Court rulings, in 2011 and 2013, that enshrined the use of class-action bans in contracts. The decisions drew little attention outside legal circles, even though they upended decades of jurisprudence put in place to protect consumers and employees.

One of the players behind the scenes, The Times found, was John G. Roberts Jr., who as a private lawyer representing Discover Bank unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to hear a case involving class-action bans. By the time the Supreme Court handed down its favorable decisions, he was the chief justice."

 The problem for me isn't that a group of people come together to change the law.  That happens all the time for things like civil rights, environmental protection, and other important causes.  But the Constitutional narrative of James Madison was that competing powers would mean that laws would be just because people would challenge misuses of power.  And that's what seems to be happening in the LIO case mentioned above.  However, given the huge inequality in the distribution of wealth in the United States today, the ability to challenge large corporations becomes harder and harder.  The ability of corporations to draft legislation for the legislators they've funded, to change the laws in their own favor, grows increasingly hard to challenge. 


3.  A Washington Post article reprinted on page A-7 of the ADN explaining that supporters see Trump as the candidate who can restore America's greatness.   Trying to understand the motivations of Trump and other candidates is something I always want to do.  I think it is often more complicated than is normally reported.  Unfortunately, the reporter's tone is a bit flip (not to the snark level).  But he does point out that 'when America was last great' varies from person to person, and how Trump is going to restore this lost quality isn't clear.  But let's look at a couple of the examples of the good old days.

• ". . . the last time America was great was when Ronald Reagan was president, when people played by the rules."   

Let's see, the 1980's included the savings and loan scandal, Iran Contra,  Reagan's Chief of Staff was convicted of lying to Congress and more. Jimmy Swaggart and Jimmy Baker scandals, and in sports Pete Rose was betting on his games and Ben Johnson got his Olympic Gold metal with steroids. 

• ". . . it was in the ’70s, Holly Martin says, when you could depend on Americans to work hard."   

When the US had the largest number of union members who still had some power to negotiate with their employers?  When the pay ratio between the CEO and the lowest paid employees was about 20-1 compared to today's 350 - 1? [Clearly related to inequality of wealth mentioned in the class action suit article.]  And jobs were easy to get because so many men were fighting in a controversial war in Vietnam and women were supposed to stay home and raise the kids?

• " . . .to find true American greatness, Steve Trivett contends, you need to go back to before the Vietnam War, “when you could still own a home and have a good job even if you didn’t have a college education.”

You mean just before the Civil Rights Act when whites didn't have to compete with blacks for jobs?  And redlining meant blacks couldn't get loans to buy houses?  

• “The last time we had good jobs and respect for the military and law enforcement was, oh, probably during Eisenhower.” 

When income tax rates in the US were at their all time highest, the largest percentage of US workers were unionized, and when Southern police and courts looked the other way when blacks were lynched?  That was right after WW II and before Vietnam tore the country apart.  

All this selective memory echoes the theme of the play I just saw Other Desert Cities.  We all remember things differently.  And none of those decades were calm and peaceful. They all had strong conflicts. 

4.  Local hockey player squeezes in grandmother's and great aunt's funerals in Saskatchewan before leading his team to victory back in Anchorage.  Here's a kid whose family obligations came before his team obligations.  It involved three plane changes each way (and a hefty bill, I'm sure).  On the lucky side, instead of the normal Fri-Sat games, it's a Sat-Sun series.  A good story and my condolences and congratulations.

Other Desert Cities

We squeezed in a stop at Cyrano's Thursday night to see Other Desert Cities.   We didn't really know what we were going to see except that it had won acclaim Outside. 

It turned out to be a perfect play for the theme of this blog - it's all about knowing, our memories, their limits, and how our own emotions color our mind's records of our own experiences.  It's about keeping secrets and the damage that does. 

The cast of five was fantastic - to me, they were all the characters and not actors playing the characters.  And all the characters were rich blends of strengths and weaknesses.  And you should stay right to the end. 

If you're paying attention, you'll have noticed that the titles of the post and the book in the picture are different.  The book is what the character Brooke presents her family (in manuscript form) over the Christmas holidays in Palm Springs.  Not the novel they thought she was writing, but a memoir that includes them all.  She wants their blessings.  

The play is Other Desert Cities. I'm not really sure I'm excited about the title or understand why it was chosen to label this play.  Yes, I caught the mention in the play, but I still don't think it's a great title for this story. 

It's at Cyrano's for those of you in or near Anchorage, this weekend and the next two and definitely worth going to see. 

Shmira - Sitting With Crysta

I got an email Tuesday afternoon that a good friend had died.  A good friend, to me, is someone you have an ongoing mutual affection for and with whom you can talk openly about things big or small.  When you see each other, no matter how much time has passed since you were last together, you pick up the conversation as though you'd just been away an hour or two.  Crysta was such a friend.

The email also asked if volunteers were available "to perform the mitzvah shmira."  I've been Jewish, more or less, all my life but I didn't know what shmira was, so I consulted Rabbi Google, who introduced me to Elizabeth Savage at Tablet who'd written about her shmira experience earlier this year:

"Shmira, which literally means guarding, is one of the prescribed Jewish rituals surrounding death. The group in charge of these customs is called the Chevra Kedisha (literally “holy group/community”), which attends to the preparation and protection of the body between death and burial—a time when it’s believed the soul hovers in a sort of liminal space. Someone must clean and dress the body, and someone must sit shmira at all times."

The Chevra Kedisha website offers a little more:  

The Concept of Shmira

Many of the traditions and laws that pertain to the care and preparation of the Jewish dead are founded on two basic principles:

1. The body as the container of the soul is to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect.
2. Although at death the soul departs the body, it still remains present near the body and is fully aware of all that transpires in its vicinity.
Thus the Shmira serves two purposes:
1. To guard the body from becoming prey for rodents and insects.
2. To give respect to the remains and consolation to the soul by not leaving the body

unattended like something useless and no longer worthy.

As I said, Crysta was a good friend, and we still had some things to tell each other and this seemed like a good opportunity.  So I emailed back we were available except Wednesday evening.  I guess I hadn't thought it through completely.  The email with the Shmira schedule had us down for Wednesday morning from 4:30am to 6:30am.  It took a few minutes for me to realize it was already Tuesday night and that meant we were expected in less than 10 hours.  I told J she didn't really have to come with me at that hour, but she insisted. 

Actually, I do like it when I manage to get up and out really early in the morning when no one else is out and about.  We knocked on the back door at the funeral home and the people before us let us in and even offered to leave some chocolate for us.  I'd already learned that I wouldn't be literally sitting with the body, but rather in the same building.  But there was no one else there but us and whatever bodies were there with Crysta. 

I can't imagine Crysta not being around.  She can die, yes, hard as that might be on those of us left behind, but I know she'll always be around.  That strong English accent despite her 50 some years in the US, always gave her a veneer of class and authority that hid, until you got to know her better, the very warm and funny woman she was.  We chatted a bit and I read her from the The River of Smoke.  Everything now is taking place in Canton and the Pearl River down to Hong Kong and I knew that Crysta would enjoy it.  Crysta and Ray had asked, way back when I was going to teach a graduate class on Chinese Civil Service Reform that included a trip to Hong Kong and Beijing, if they could come along.  It would help with the cost of the travel for the students so no one had a problem.  And despite being 30 years older or more than all of the students, Crysta and Ray never wore out, so none of the students could complain that I was pushing them too hard.  And their calm demeanor and travel experience made them great chaperons for the students, most of whom had never been out of the US.  And it raised our friendship to a whole new level. 

So I read and I could hear Crysta asking questions or correcting me, always with an impish smile in her voice.  And as I thought about our special relationship, I was reminded of Lydia Selkregg's funeral when one person after another stood up and talked about their special relationship with Lydia.  What, I thought at the time, everyone had a special relationship!?  It took a while to realize that didn't diminish the relationship I had had with her.  I know that's also the case with Crysta.  It's good to know that you can love lots and lots of people without diminishing any of those relationships.  I remember wondering when J was pregnant with our second child:  I love my son so much; how can there be enough love for yet another child.  And after M was born, I learned that love is infinite. 

Thanks, Crysta for being in my life.  Your departure would be much more difficult if you hadn't lived life so well that seeds of your goodness are planted in so many people's hearts. 

"When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes."

AIFF 2015: Features In Competition From Turkey, UK, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and Iran

"In competition" means these films were selected by the screeners to be eligible for awards at the festival.  "Features" are 'stories' that are full length. While there are always other features which different folks like better than those in competition, it's a good bet these are among the best features at the festival.  This year's picks are all from outside the US.

The point of this post isn't to tell you what each of the features in competition are about, but rather to just give you a glimpse of something about the film I found interesting.

I don't have the times and locations yet.  I'll add them later and I might make other changes as things come to my attention.  

Here's the whole list and below I look at each one. 

Film (all are in competition)	Director	Country	Length
And The Circus Leaves Town	Mete Sozer	Turkey	99 min
Creditors	Ben Cura	United Kingdom	81 min
Jasmine	Dax Phelan	Hong Kong	80 min
Magic Utopia	Shoji Toyama, Shuichi Tan	Japan	88 min
Orphans & Kingdoms	Paolo Rotondo	New Zealand	74 min
The Descendants	Yaser Talebi	Islamic Republic of Iran	80 min

And The Circus Leaves Town  
Mete Sozer 
Turkey √
99 min
l

And the Circus Leaves Town is the story of a village caught in between life and death. This is the story of the moment when the paths of the village which wants to forget its past and the “Stranger” who wants to grasp his past converge. The “Stranger” gets off the train with an old, wooden, red suitcase. His destination is a village where only a handful of people are left, where the young have left and the babies cease to be born, where each moment repeats a previous moment. The arrival of the “Stranger” is met with curiosity first, and suspicion later. The dark, covered memories of a bloodied wedding night are revived. Is the “Stranger” someone from the past, or a brand new hope... (From the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts iFKA)

Won for International Feature Film at the 5th Underground Film Festival in Cork City, Ireland this past August.


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Creditors
Ben Cura   
United Kingdom √
81 min


Much of what I know about Ben Cura comes from a recent in-depth interview with Film Courage.    Cura wrote the screen play,  directed the film and acts in it.   But it also has some strong, established actors, like Christian McKay, Simon Callow, and Andrea Deck.

"At times disturbingly funny and cruelly bleak, "Creditors" deals with the most private aspects of human relationships. From questioning our concepts of marriage and fidelity, to trying to establish the role of the modern woman in a world still trapping her within the confines of old fashioned canons, the film's story stirs, moves and sometimes even angrily rebuts our very own personal definitions of each."

The interview covers a wide range of topics from Cura's background (his father is a major opera singer which meant as a child Cura traveled the world); adapting the film from August Strindberg's 1888 play; the challenges of being a first time director and of black and white;  budgeting, and more.

 The film's world premiere is October 31, 2015 in New York's Nordic International Film Festival.  Then, it appears, to Anchorage.  Those who seriously want to prepare for the festival can read the original Strindberg play here.  




---------------------------------------------------------------------

Jasmine  
Dax Phelan  
Hong Kong √ 
80 min

UPDATE Dec. 10:  Just opened an email from Dax Phelan who said the second review quoted here was of an unfinished version of the film.  So take it with a grain of salt.

TwitchFilm liked it:

"Dax Phelan, veteran screenwriter and producer based in Los Angeles got the Hong Kong bug on a writing research trip to the city in 2005. By his own tongue-in-cheek admission, it had become somewhat tedious being handsomely paid for writing screenplays that rarely if ever get made. Citing inspiration by such auteurs as Lodge Kerrigan (The Killing TV series, Keane) and the Dardenne brothers (Two Days, One Night) Phelan sensed that Hong Kong could be fertile ground for a psychological thriller that would be his directorial debut. He penned Jasmine based on a story that he had co-written with Jason Tobin. . .

For the first time ever, Hong Kong plays a characterful, if inhospitable backdrop to an english language film with artistic sensibilities, a restrained, rhythmical build, and a chilling and thought-provoking climax. It explores themes of loneliness amongst the masses, fear of postponed regret, and most poignantly our ability to invest everything in our own flawed narratives."

Screen Daily wasn't as kind:

"Writer-director Dax Phelan uses the trope of the unreliable narrator to mixed effect in Jasmine, a classically-executed slow-moving descent into paranoia set on the streets of Hong Kong. Working from an idea by Phelan and Tobin, Jasmine’s script is too thinly fleshed-out to be fully successful, and the production tends to drag through its final frames. This moody noir will find a slim audience locally, and works best as a calling card for its director and lead actor, who are clearly capable."

Guess we'll have to see for ourselves who's right.   As of Oct 26, Anchorage isn't mentioned on either the director's Twitter or Facebook pages. 



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From Keiko Shiga's Tumblr page

Magic Utopia
Shoji Toyama 
Japan √
88 min


Finding out about this film isn't easy.  There this from

"A young girl who lost her mother suddenly begins to float in midair when she meets a man trapped in a past of painful memories. At the same time, an old man receives a message on his answering machine from his long dead daughter."

 And this from what seems to be the film's website:

1. 思い出せない秘密
2. 抑えられない衝動
3. 真実しかない孤独

ひとりの少女の体が宙に浮いたことによって動き出す
３人の男女の《マジックユートピア》へと向かう魂の物語。

 But this picture on their website suggests this could be good. 

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Image from Orphansandkingdoms website gallery

Orphans & Kingdoms
Paolo Rotondo 
New Zealand √
74 min



From an interview with Director Paolo Rotondo in the New Zealand site Flicks:

How did you discover the three young leads?

They all auditioned. Calae who plays Kenae was the only kid who could really stand up to an adult actor in the audition and hold his own. Hanelle (Tibs) had auditioned for me when I was helping to cast a US TV film, she was so strong I wanted her for Orphans. Jesse auditioned and proceeded to teach me about the real world of the characters I was exploring, he didn’t need a script – he knew the story.

Director bio from a story generator workshop he ran:

I am a passionate and accomplished Artist who has worked in New Zealand’s Film, Theatre and Television industries for twenty years. My need to tell stories began as an Actor and inspired me to develop my skills as a Playwright and consequently Filmmaker. I offer a depth of experience in Film and Theatre, ranging from acting, to producing, to writing and directing.
The short films I have written have won awards and garnered international acclaim. This year I will be releasing my first full-length feature film ‘Orphans & Kingdoms’ which I wrote and directed, funded by The New Zealand Film Commission.
As a Playwright my works have been published and have toured nationally and internationally to universal critical and audience acclaim. “In 2014 my Play “Strange Resting Places” was invited in the New Zealand showcase at Edinburgh Festival.

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The Descendants

Yaser Talebi 
Islamic Republic of Iran √
80 min



From the Youtube description:

"Jacob's family worries about Farrokh, the son of the family. Farrokh left Iran to continue his studies but he has not been in touch with them for a long time. Jacob travels to Sweden to look for his son..."

Summary Of The 10 Chuitna Decision Appeals, Plus The Actual Docs, And What's Next?

First, A Brief Overview Of What's Transpired And What's Coming Next 

PacRim is "a Delaware Corporation owned by Dick Bass and William Herbert Hunt"developing a 300 million ton coal mine across the inlet from Anchorage on Alaska Mental Health Trust  (AMHT) land..  Chuitna  Citizens Coalition (CCC)  had applied for three water reservations (actually instream flow reservations or IFRs) to protect the water and salmon from the future coal mine.  They were granted one for the Lower Reach of Middle Creek which is outside the proposed mine area.  The other two requested water reservations  - Upper Reach and Middle Reach - are in the proposed mine area and those applications were denied.  [Note: The PacRim website says nothing about who owns the company, so I had to get that information from the CCC website.]

CCC was given one of the three IFR's they applied for.  PacRim and other development and mining groups who opposed all the IFR's had 20 days to appeal the decision.  The deadline was the day before yesterday - Monday, October 26.

A total of ten appeals were submitted to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Commissioner Mark Meyrs Monday,  opposing the decision by DNR's Water Division head to grant one (of three) applications for water reservations on the  Middle Creek (also known as Creek 2003). The commissioner's office emailed me copies yesterday.


I also spoke to David Schade, the head of the Water Division, and the person who made the Oct. 6 decision.  He told me the decision was unique in that the decision will grant a community group a certificate for a reservation of water, something the various resource development organizations strongly protested at the October 6, 2015 hearing.  And it's an argument that is echoed in nearly all their appeal letters.   He also told me that  the DNR Commissioner has at least three options:

1. Uphold the decision;
2. Remand it back to the water division in whole or in part; and
3. Change the decision

There's no specific time limit for the decision and it might take awhile.   Schade also said having so many objectors was unique.

So, while this decision gets appealed, PacRim, presumably will continue the work of getting all the various permits from the different state and federal agencies.  Schade said PacRim had applied for 44 water rights and these were 'substantially complete' but additional information will be required before the Water Section will review them and, at the same time, a Chuitna River Reservation of Water application which was filed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.  Before then, there will be other permit decisions coming in from the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Environmental Conservation, the Mining Section of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Mining, Land and Water, and from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.  After these permitting processes are substantially complete, then the water right applications can be adjudicated.

So, I asked, since the two CCC applications were denied because there was not enough information, will they be able to reapply when the competing PacRim applications are complete?
No, he said.  Those are done.  But DNR is required to protect the public interest including all other competing water rights and impacts on the watershed.   CCC will be able to oppose the PacRim applications just as PacRim and others opposed CCC's applications.

Synopsis Of The Arguments Against The Decision And The Full Letters

I've tried to briefly summarize the key arguments each group or person that appealed the water reservation decision.  Some were easier to do than others.  In any case,  each synopsis is followed by the group's appeal letter, so you can check the details yourself.

1.  Alaska Miners

• Delegation of DNR Regulatory Authority to private group wrong
• “Need” for awarding water reservation not met
• Instream flow reservations as a tool to stop resource development wrong
• Permitting uncertainty

Alaska Miners - Chuitna Water Reservation Appeals by Steve

2. Alaska Mental Health Trust - They own the land and stand to earn substantial revenue from a mine which they can use to support mental health in Alaska.

• The Trust must develop its lands to improve its ability to meet Alaskans’ mental health needs, but its power to do so would be threatened by overly expansive regime of reserved water rights.
• There is no need for a reservation of water rights in Stream 2003
• Granting CCC a reservation of water rights in the Lower Reach of Stream 2003 is contrary to public interest
• If the Commissioner affirms the Division’s decision, he should clarify the scope of the reservation and how it will be administered.
• The Commissioner should deny the reservation requested for the Lower Reach

Alaska Mental Health Trust - Chuitna Water Reservation Appeals

3. PacRim  The mining company that wants to develop the mine.

• “ CCC did not demonstrate that a need existed for a reservation.”
• “DNR used an approach to determine stream flow that lacked transparency, that has no correlation to the level of water necessary to protect fish and fish habitat, and which could require PacRim to maintain stream levels below the mine area that generally do not naturally exist in the Lower Reach of Streem 2003”
• “DNR’s public interest analysis was flawed because it did not evaluate fisheries information for the Lower Reach and failed to address the potential impact of the reservation on upstream users such as the proposed Chuitna Mine”
• “DNR’s decision establishes a troubling precedent that transforms private citizens into regulators of natural resources projects.”

PacRim - Chuitna Water Reservation Appeals by Steve

4. Pacific Seafood Processors Association

• “Water is a public resource and PSPA believes it is in the public’s best interest that reservations be held by public entities that are formally accountable to the public.”
• “the public interest, through the formal public processes, is best served by balancing the trade-offs of public interests such as conservation impacts, economic benefits, and opportunity costs.”

Pacific Seafood Processors Association - Chuitna Water Reservation Appeals by Steve

5. Alaska Oil And Gas Association (AOGA)

• DNR cannot abandon regulatory supremacy
• Applicant fails to meet threshold “Need” Requirement
• Decision represents an invitation for further frustration
• Decision discourages investment in Alaska

AOGA - Chuitna Water Reservation Appeals -

6.  Howard Grey  (Involved in Alaska development, former board member of Alaska Miners)

• “we should consider whether or not the applicant is qualified to administer water resources management duties”
• “we should look at the surrounding ownership to determine if such conveyance will affect the upland owner’s future use and enjoyment of the area or will they be stymied by the proposed segregation?
• “we should consider whether or not the proposed conveyance is in the best interest of the public.”

Howard Grey - Chuitna Water Reservation Appeals

 

7.  Council of Alaska Producers (“trade association for large metal mines and major metal development projects in the state”)

• “It is fundamental that the State should never delegate authority to a private party to manage these resources, because agencies are accountable to the public and elected officials, but private citizens are accountable to no one.”
• “…DNR must find - that a “need” exists for the reservation.  The applicant failed to do this and DNR’s analysis of the “need” relies of unsupported conclusions about hypothetical impacts where no water from Stream 2003 reaches the Chuit River"

Council of Alaska Producers - Chuitna Water Reservation Appeals

 


8.  Resource Development Council

• Creates further uncertainty in Permitting Process
• Undermine existing regulatory process and set dangerous precedent for community and resource development projects
• Jeopardize investment
• Tool for anti-development groups to stop projects
• Delegation of Public Resources to Private Citizens

RDC - Chuitna Water Reservation Appeals

9.   Borrel Consulting Services  ("Heart and soul of the Alaska Mining Industry")

• No need has been demonstrated
• Robust permitting process already exists, and this reservation process undermines that.
• This loose application of the statute and regulations will likely result in future infringements on private and Native-owned private lands.
• Not following proper procedures (not requiring a need) is bad precedent.
• DNR can’t disregard clear requirement to demonstrate a need

Steve Borrel - Regulation, Alaska, Chuitna, PacRim, Coal Mining

10.  Alaska Chamber

• “DNR is abdicating its statutory responsibility, not to the whole of Alaska’s citizens, but to specific individuals, some not even residing in our state.  This is a decision that assaults the very foundation of the State’s regulatory process.  It pulls resource management from the public interest and concentrates that authority in the hands and interests of individuals.
• This striking, precedent-setting reservation is in direct conflict with the department’s published mission to “develop, conserve and maximize the use of Alaska’s natural resources and lawful 
• processes . . .”

Alaska Chamber - Chuitna Water Reservation Appeals by Steve

I'll try to analyze the arguments in a future post.  But I have some calls I'll need to make before I can do that. Meanwhile you can look at past posts on the Chuitna mine project here. [Reposting because of Feedburning problems]

Bahram nodded, 'Democracy is a wonderful thing, Mr Burnham,'

he said wistfully.  'It is a marvellous tamasha* that keeps the common people busy so that men like ourselves can take care of all matters of importance.  I hope one day India will also be able to enjoy these advantages - and China too, of course.'
'Let us raise a glass to that!'

 This conversation takes place on page 377 of River of Smoke, by Amitav Ghosh.  It takes place in 1839 in the foreign enclave (really the small island ghetto, the only place foreigners are allowed to live in Canton, China).  The occasion is a goodbye party for William Jardine who was returning to England, to lobby the British government to force the Chinese to open to more trade.  The Chinese were trying to shut down the opium trade which had made Jardine, the Indian trader in the book, and Burnham very rich. 

Wikipedia describes this event:

Jardine left Canton on 26 January 1839 for Britain as retirement but in actuality to try to continue Matheson's work. The respect shown by other foreign opium traders to Jardine before his departure can be best illustrated in the following passage from a book by William C. Hunter.

A few days before Mr. Jardine’s departure from Canton, the entire foreign community entertained him at a dinner in the dining room of the East India Company’s Factory. About eighty persons of all nationalities, including India, were present, and they did not separate until several hours after midnight. It was an event frequently referred to afterwards amongst the residents, and to this day there are a few of us who still speak of it.

The farewell dinner to Jardine was held on 22 January 1839 with several members of the Foreign settlement in Canton mostly traders. Among the guests were the Forbes brothers of the prominent Forbes family and Warren Delano, a senior partner in the trading firm Russel & Co. and maternal grandfather of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Qing government was pleased to hear of Jardine's departure, then proceeded to stop the opium trade. Lin Zexu, appointed specifically to suppress the drug trade in Guangzhou, stated, "The Iron-headed Old Rat, the sly and cunning ring-leader of the opium smugglers has left for The Land of Mist, of fear from the Middle Kingdom's wrath." He then ordered the surrender of all opium and the destruction of more than 20,000 cases of opium in Guangzhou. He also ordered the arrest of opium trader Lancelot Dent, the head of Dent and Company (a rival company to Jardine Matheson) since the Chinese were more familiar with Jardine as the trading head and were quite unfamiliar with Matheson. Lin also wrote to Queen Victoria, to submit in obeisance in the presence of the Chinese Emperor.

It's interesting how Ghosh has developed in this reader an affection for the trader Bahran and the men who work for him.  Even though we know that his whole life is defined by smuggling opium into China.  I think the positive side of this, is that as human beings we can connect to the way have to fight to make their way in life and how they can do evil things, yet the path to getting there seems quite reasonable.  If we can have empathy and understanding for such people, surely the differences among American citizens are not insurmountable.

It seems that their view of democracy is shared by quite a few who hover around state capitals and Washington DC.  

* tamasha is defined in an earlier post I did on River of Smoke and the richness of the language

At Least Eight Appeals Received By DNR On Chuitna Water Reservation Decision

I've been planning to do an update on the Chuitna Decision, but I needed to go through it carefully and figure out reasonable questions.  I thought I'd ask David Schade, the head of the Water Division, who signed the decision and then some of the other interested parties. 

But life happens and I only got through to David today.  We haven't had a chance to discuss my questions, but he did tell me that he'd been told there were eight appeals by late this afternoon - people had 20 calendar days to get appeals in, and the decision was on October 6.  He hadn't seen them yet, so he didn't know who submitted them. 

Here are some of the kinds of questions I had:

1.  Was this decision a postponement of the decision or a denial?  It seems to me that at one point the decision says that the Upper and Central fork portions of the Middle River, which are in the proposed mining area, are ripe for decision yet because the the mine's water reservations aren't complete.  That sounds like things are postponed.  But elsewhere it says the reservations have been denied, which sounds final. 

2.    What is the state of PacRim’s water reservation applications?  Different references were made to their applications but it wasn't clear where they were.
- not ready to be submitted because not enough info?
- have they submitted incomplete applications?  What does this mean?
- if submitted, when were they submitted?


3.  The Department finds that it is in the public interest to allow the PacRim permitting review process to be completed, and therefore that it would not be in the public interest to issue a reservation of water on the Main or Middle Reaches of Middle Creek/Stream 2003 at this time.
Is this a logical fallacy?  If one is in the public interest, does that automatically mean the other isn’t?  What this does seem to be saying is that if the reservation is issued, the permitting process would end.  

4.  Can PacRim really close down the Middle Fork above the Lower Reach and divert the water around and back to the Lower Reach and this won't harm the salmon?  Is there a difference between naturally flowing stream water and water that goes through culverts and how does that impact the quality of the water when it gets returned to the natural water way?  And how long would the water be cut off from the Lower Reach while this is being constructed?  Or are those questions people are still waiting on answers for?


There are more questions, but this gives you an idea.  The Oct 6 decision is linked at the earlier post on this.