"When the police knocked the door down they found a mountain of mail in the hall andHenry Summers was inside, dead.He had been dead for three years, undiscovered, because all of his bills were paid by direct debit."
The journalist goes on to tell the story of who this man had been.
I'm sticking this in quickly because this show plays again tonight and tomorrow and I enjoyed it
greatly and want people to know about it before it ends Sunday.
It takes place in 1904 - or as, I think, Einstein pointed out in the play, in the first decade of the 20th Century - in a Paris bar. It's a night when both Einstein and Picasso show up and talk about how each will change the world. For having two such illustrious figures, the play is pretty lightweight. But this Steve Martin authored play was fun, sexy, and a little thought-provoking.
And, it was very well done. From the stage design to the costumes to the acting, it was a delight and I recommend it to anyone who at least knows who Picasso, Einstein, and Matisse are. The actors were terrific - and the young Einstein and young Picasso - don't look anything like they do on the cover of the program. Though casting for the young Einstein was genius. You know who he is immediately.
A funny, affectionate look at these two characters. Truly enjoyable theater.
I took this before the performance began. As you can see it's very intimate. We got there just before 8 and there weren't two seats available together. I sat close enough to the stage that sometimes I felt part of the play. No more than a couple of feet from the actors if they were at the bar.
I'd suggest going online at getting your tickets in advance. And getting there by 7:30 tonight, if you can go. Tomorrow it starts at 5, so give yourself time to get a seat.
It's in the UAA Art and Theater building - in the Harper Studio, not the main stage. It's all well marked in the building.
I went out to get the newspaper this morning. I looked around, but it wasn't there. Then I remembered. There is no longer a Saturday edition of the Alaska Dispatch News.
Probably, lots of people reading this blog gave up paper editions long ago. While other people, judging by letters to the editor, are miffed that they are paying for a subscription that now skips Saturday.
Every print newpaper is struggling to find a way to make itself profitable. The ADN has the best short term model - it's owned by a billionaire. But that's not a sustainable model, and the readers are at the mercy of the owner's political and social tastes.
As a local blogger for the last ten years, I've seen the improvements in the ADN. When I covered the legislature in 2010, the ADN rotated reporters to Juneau every three weeks or so and my coverage of the legislature really had no competition in Anchorage. When I covered the Alaska Redistricting Board, 95% of the time, I was the only media there. When I called the ADN editor and asked why they weren't covering the redistricting board, he said, "Because Seth is in Juneau." Seth was their one reporter for state news.
Fortunately, the ADN now has a lot more reporters covering state and local affairs. And they've recently added a weekly Arctic section. We're lucky to have all that extra content, even it is now squeezed into six days instead of seven.
If only Facebook and Twitter each shut down one day a week. I suspect everyone's lives would greatly improve.
Breakup in Anchorage is when the temperatures start getting into the 40s or more and the snow and ice that are left thaw into puddles and small lakes. Breakups in recent years have tended to mild and quick, unlike 20 years ago and more when there were deep puddles everywhere.
This year we had a cold, sunny March with lots of snow sublimating. Then a foot of snow at the end of March. Now it's hitting high 40˚s F during the day and all that snow means lots of homeless water.
This isn't too big a puddle, but the picture shows the snow that's left still.
Here's the driveway of a church parking lot. We had to walk in the street to get around this puddle. We used to wear 'breakup boots' this time of year, but we've had such mild breakups that I didn't even think about it when we went for this walk a couple evenings ago.
Here's a driveway that hasn't completely thawed yet.
And here's a stretch of sidewalk/biketrail that's on the south side of the street, so it doesn't get much sun and it's still partly frozen.
I finally decided I could wait to get my bike out no longer, even if I did get wet.
Here's a parking lot lake. (The car was out of the deepest part by the time I got the camera out.)
I went through the Helen Louise McDowell Sanctuary where breakup is still in the future, though the snow was soft and deep. If you got off the narrow padded down snow in the middle of the path, your foot would sink a foot. I walked the bike.
Here's the hidden sanctuary still looking very winter.
As I look at this picture I'm realizing that this is the part that has a boardwalk. There was no sign of boardwalk.
Here's a bit of bike trail that was deep enough to make us detour the other evening. But on bike it was fine, I have a back fender, but I still went through it slowly. I also pulled out The Cloudspotter's Guide to check on those cloud above the trees.
"Of all the common clouds, Cirrus must be the most beautiful. Their name comes from the Latin for a lock of hair, for they are the delicate white wisps of ice that appear high in the heavens. . . Cirrus are the highest of the common clouds and are composed entirely of ice crystals, typically forming above 24,000ft in temperate regions of the world."
Since Anchorage is not in a temperate region [yet], I don't know how high these might be.
"I do not know if I have ever been alive. How would I tell? Where in the living creature does life actually lie? No single part of a cell is alive. And life itself is just an aggregate of non-living processes, chemical reactions cascading, birthing complexity. There is no clear border between life and non-life. Once you realize that, so much else unravels."
I've just spent a couple of days unraveling. An outsider meets and insider and they create their own inside by taking from another circle from which they are excluded. And one of the insiders of that group, from another time, comes to claim his due. Time merges one period into another.
"Time is flattened here in the back room"
At times I was lost, hoping that author Hari Kunzru hadn't abandoned me somewhere on the road, as he abandoned characters. (He always came back to get me.)
Cover (by Peter Mendelsund) close up
Kunzru paints words and sounds onto pages shortcutting conventions, but not shortchanging the reader. An ethereal musician says:
"Since I was a child I could always play, always find the thread of what I was feeing and follow it up and down the strings."
I just finished the last lines today.
"The needle vibrates, punctures my face just below my left eye. The tattooist's homemade gun is powered by a motor from an old CD player. The ink is made out of soot. Four tears, one each for Carter, Leonie and their parents. I listen to the buzz of the motor and think of what I learned by listening through the crackle and hiss, into the past: they either add dollars or days and if you don't have dollars, all you have to give is days."
I'll write more. But first I need to let it sink in. I may even reread it before I try to write more. This is just an appetizer. This is no ordinary book. The inside of the dust jacket tells you beautifully about the story and yet it tells you nothing. How this book even arrived at my door is a story in itself. More soon.
Last summer, already campaigning at PrideFest, Christopher Constant told me (off camera, but his poster didn't hide things) that if he won his seat on the Anchorage Assembly (city council), he'd be the first openly gay member.
He won yesterday, but he wasn't exactly right. Because another openly gay candidate, Felix Rivera, in mid-town, won a seat as well. Here's the video I took of Chris last summer. You can see he's not coming onto the Assembly without experience and knowledge about the neighborhoods he will represent.
I took some liberty with the headline. I doubt any Anchorage voters even knew about the Dutch hand-holding protest when they voted. I'm guessing that most people who voted for Christopher Constant or Felix Rivera didn't even knew they were gay. It didn't really come up in the election until the very end when one of Rivera's opponents sent out a last minute attack ad, and even that used coded language rather than say he was gay. And Rivera got 46% of the vote in a four way race. The next highest opponent got 29%.
No, Anchorage elected two gay men, not because they were gay (though perhaps some voted against them for that reason) but because they were the strongest candidates in their races.
So this is a milestone after a lot of bitter history over this issue.
And here's Felix Rivera at the AFACT candidate forum a couple of weeks ago.
Dutch Hand Holding Protest
While there was no direct connection between the Anchorage election, and the Dutch protest, there are a lot of indirect connections. The article says that after the attack on the married couple who were walking home holding hands, the prime minister condemned the attack. But two lawmakers took it a step further.
"Alexander Pechtold, who is the leader of the Democrats 66 (D66) party, arrived hand in hand with his party’s financial specialist, Wouter Koolmees, in support of Vernes-Sewratan and Sewratan-Vernes. “We think it is quite normal in the Netherlands to express who you are,” Pechtold said, according to People."
Then lots of Dutch men posted pictures of themselves holding hands in support of the couple. One picture in the article shows a group of men who work at the Dutch embassy in London walking along the street holding hands.
Jay and Gene ran Out North, a small theater/art space that regularly brought acts that challenged conventional thinking. They played a huge role in giving Anchorage a space in which to stretch its mind and continue to reexamine long held assumptions. I'm sure Out North played a role in preparing Anchorage for this day, when two openly gay men have been elected to the Assembly in a race where their sexual preference was almost completely a non-issue. For those of you who think I've gone off in a totally different tangent, Jay and Gene now live in London where those Dutch Embassy colleagues held hands. Jay and Gene they got fed up living in a state that vigorously denied their right to get married and moved to UK. But they did come back to Anchorage to get married here after that became possible.
Holding Hands In Thailand
I'd like to make one more connection to the idea of men holding hands. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, one of the American values that was deeply embedded in me was that men do NOT hold hands.
But in Thailand they do. It's no big deal. It happens all the time. Dealing with my own visceral response when men wanted to hold hands with me in Thailand, helped me understand the idea of biases that our cultures teach us without us even knowing that they are biases. Instead we think that they are 'truths' about nature. In this case, that it is unnatural for men to hold hands. But in Thai culture it isn't and a gradually became comfortable when someone took my hand as we walked somewhere.
The Other Winning Assembly Candidates
Here are some pictures of the other winners last night.
Suzanne LaFrance at the AFACT candidate forum March 12. She's won the south Anchorage seat 6 that tends to be conservative. But not always. Janice Shamberg held this seat. Suzanne LaFrance was supported by Berkowitz. In fact all the winners were except Dyson.
Tim Steele also missed the March 12 forum and I don't seem to have a picture of him in my files.
I realize this post seems to wander all over the place, but society is complicated. Lots of things are interrelated and if we look at everything as an isolated event suitable for a Tweet, then we don't get all that interconnectedness.
[Updated at midnight with 23:23 election results. 99% of the voter for School Board and the Propositions is in. Assembly seats all are missing 1 precinct. I'm guessing that may be absentee ballots and questioned ballots.]
In the Muni wide vote (School Board and Propositions) there are 2 precincts out still. Here are the results as of 10:45pm. On this round, I'm only doing the numbers for the close races.
Assembly winners so far look like
Christopher Constant in District 1
Fred Dyson in District 2
Tim Steele in District 3
Felix Rivera in District 4
Pete Petersen in District 5
Suzanne LaFrance is leading in District 6 (South Anchorage). It's been close, but this last tally with only one precinct out looks like it seals it for LaFrance.
School Board
Don Donley in Seat C
Seat D is too close to call - Holleman is ahead of Schuster by 80 votes, with two precincts out.
Propositions Passing
1. ASD
3. Parks
4. Roads/Sewers
5. Fire
6. APD expansion is the closest that is likely to win
7. Park District Expansion
Failing
2. Public Safety and Transit
8. Taxi ordinance repeal
Trends have continued for last several sets of results.
South Anchorage Assembly still close as is School Board seat C.
I'm starting this one with the numbers from the last post, so you can see the changes from one report to the next. Slash separates the reported numbers 1111/2222/3333
Putting in percentage points for the leader, or two leaders if it's still close.
Assembly and ASD are 22:13 numbers/ Propositions are 22:45 numbers
These are 9:47 results for Assembly and School Board and 9:57 for Propositions.
Still a few close races. Donley seems to have his school board seat though.
[UPDATE - I'm adding the 9:57 numbers to the 9:47 numbers for Assembly and ASD.
I'm sticking this in quickly because this show plays again tonight and tomorrow and I enjoyed it 
Breakup in Anchorage is when the temperatures start getting into the 40s or more and the snow and ice that are left thaw into puddles and small lakes. Breakups in recent years have tended to mild and quick, unlike 20 years ago and more when there were deep puddles everywhere. 
Here are some pictures of the other winners last night. 
