Anchorage public works crews use a ‘friendly snowplow’ that prevents the pushing of snow into residents’ driveways during snow-clearing operations.

Right. Coleman and the Livability people obviously never tried walking on non-downtown Anchorage sidewalks in the wintertime. “Friendly snowplows” in Anchorage — whether belonging to the Municipality of Anchorage or the State of Alaska Department of Transportation — plow all the snow after a big snowfall onto the sidewalks, in huge berms often made worse by icy chunks that make things even more unwalkable for people who walk, ride the bus, etc. — especially for people who have any kind of physical disability. Sometimes sidewalks get cleared, but frequently only weeks after major dumps of snow — if ever. Until then, good luck.

Try walking a few blocks in my winter boots, & see just how “friendly” the snowplows of Anchorage are. Here’s a typical scenario facing any Anchorage pedestrian who walks in places other than downtown or from their doorway to their car:

That’s a photo from Monday, December 5 next to the Sockeye Inn on the north side of Fireweed between C & D streets, looking west. Anchorage residents may remember that we were on the second or third day of some unseasonably warm weather & partial thawing. The sidewalk was barely walkable here, so long as you weren’t old or disabled — full of lumpy chunks of ice thrown up from the road by snowplows on whatever day that most recent snowfall before December 5 had been.  And see that hump of snow beyond the light pole? That’s where snow was pushed to clear the Sockeye Inn’s driveway.  There’s no pathway for pedestrians at all there, short of climbing the berm.

Why so bad? Because the State of Alaska and Municipality of Anchorage have placed low low priority on making the streets safe for pedestrians, including those who, like me, ride the bus. The Anchorage Daily News reported, also today, on problems with road conditions after recent major dumps of snow — snowfall which occurred after I took the photo above. ADN reports:

The problem appeared to be worse on roads the state maintains — most of the bigger roads in Anchorage, such as Dimond and Northern Lights boulevards, C and A Street and Minnesota Drive. The state also plows the Seward and Glenn highways….

The city plows a few major roads, including Lake Otis Parkway, 36th Avenue and Bragaw Street, and also cleans all the neighborhood streets. Each agency [Municipality of Anchorage and State of Alaska] clears bus stops and sidewalks, too.

Sure. Once in a blue moon. The photo above from December 5 was taken long after the most recent snowfalls.  So were these, taken that same evening:

That’s on the west side of C Street just north of Northern Lights, next to the Wells Fargo Bank.  This, again, is after the unseaonable warmth & partial thaw earlier in that week — but sidewalks were still a mess because as usual, whoever was responsible had never bothered to plow them. (Along C Street I believe the Alaska Department of Transportation is the (ir)responsible party.) It’s next to impossible to walk on, and definitely impossible if you are old or have a physical disability.

(Julia O’Malley of the Anchorage Daily News wrote an excellent column last January about how lousy the sidewalks are for people in wheelchairs.)

This next one is a few yards further north, by the Wells Fargo parking lot.  Already a dangerous area because the drivers of vehicles coming out of that lot tend to crane their necks to the left to look for oncoming cars, seldom checking to the right for oncoming pedestrians.

And a little further to north, approaching Leroy’s Diner.  The sidewalk is only marginally better here, but still uneven & poorly maintained.  Alaska DOT seems to have decided that it needn’t bother plowing sidewalks if there are parking lots next to them, since parking lots inevitably get plowed by the businesses who own them.  Unseen in this photo is that next to this sidewalk is a large vacant lot full of berms that are even more impassible (if that’s possible) than the typical Anchorage wintertime sidewalk.

Here’s one from a few days later, December 8. This is on the north side of Fireweed Lane west of Arctic Boulevard.  The sidewalk was so bad that I walked on the street, only using the sidewalk when there was oncoming traffic.

Here’s a couple photos from last February 28, on Northern Lights Boulevard just west of Spenard. Again, snowplows at the last snowfall had thrown a snow berm up onto the sidewalk, and the responsible agency never bothered to clear the sidewalks. Even after the berms began to melt off, pedestrians were left with only a narrow aisle barely wide enough for one person — if she walked partly sideways. Looking east:

Same place, looking west:

None of this is new.  Whether it’s the State of the Municipality at fault, Anchorage has had a dismal record of giving a crap for Anchorage pedestrians for years. Here’s the first “lousy winter sidewalks of Anchorage” photo I took on November 20, 2005, on Denali Street next to Sears Mall Carrs. I’m pretty sure this is a Municipality-”maintained” sidewalk.

When it comes to people who walk in the winter, it’s clear: Fairbanks cares more.

Related posts:

1. Against discrimination in Anchorage
2. Sermon (a poem)
3. The Daily Tweets 2011-01-08: Saturday twice over

In any case, Jesse made a tough call, & had her put to sleep this afternoon. His girlfriend Gina was with him, of which I’m glad. He was pretty torn up about it.

Sweetheart was a mutt with a preponderance of Rottie who we adopted on Jesse’s behalf from Animal Control in August 2009. I don’t have any pics of her when she was a puppy, but I spent lots of time tonight going through other photos & adding to the set I already had on Flickr, & showing them to Jesse & Gina, & all of us sharing memories of a dog who lived up to her name — in spite of the name my cat Vai gave to her: Evil Dog from Hell.

I lost Vai on October 13.  Now Sweetheart’s gone too.

We’ll miss you, Sweetheart. Rest in peace.

Some of my favorite photos of her (captions below photos):

On Homer Spit, Homer, AK, summer 2003.

This young moose, perhaps two or three years old, wandered around our back yard all morning (see other piks in my Anchorage moose set), then came up alongside the house through the carport, & finally to the front of the house, where Sweetheart finally got to see it. Amazingly, she didn’t bark once, just stared fascinated with her nose to the window, until the moose moved onto our front porch, and Sweetheart went to the other side of the door — unable to see the moose, but still fascinated. This was the supreme “Gotcha” moment, with her head cocked to the side, listening intently for whatever that moose might be up to. 18 Jan 2004.

Jesse & Sweetheart resting up after a hike up Powerline Pass, Chugach State Park, Alaska. 13 Jun 2004.

Jesse & Sweetheart, Homer Spit, Homer, Alaska. 3 Jul 2005.

In our backyard, March 2006.

With Ptery (then Rozz) in the Ft. Richardson woods, April 2006.

With our friend Chris on a hike on the Kenai Peninsula, May 2006.

Point Woronzof, Anchorage, August 2006.

“It’s, y’know, a little crowded back here with this bike.” August 2006.

Snowplow! December 2006.

Getting a bath. August 2007.

Holding paws with Jesse, November 2007.  She used to love getting up on her haunches and having her paws held like this — she could sit there for long minutes, just blissing out.

Holding paws with our friend Marcia, January 2008.

Playing dress-up, February 2008.

In the back of my car, September 2009.

Rolling in the snow, March 2010.

Here’s the full slideshow:

Related posts:

1. Despite distance
2. Tramping in the woods
3. I’m not a mother, but I am. And then there’s Anya James.

He’s gone now.

Pretty sudden… a heart attack…?… he was perched on top of me this morning, as he often did, and visited me in the bathroom, bumping up against me this morning as I was getting ready for work… and then went into my room, & I heard a weird miaow, like he makes sometimes when he’s being silly, & I looked in & he was lying on the bed in a silly cat-drama way, or so I thought, and I went to give him some love, and he was just twitching a bit… possibly aware I was there… & then his life left him. I loved him so much.

The rest of this post is a reprise of one I wrote about him in early 2010.  There’s more about his namesake, the Finnish epic hero Väinämöinen, here.

Rest in peace, my sweet fuzzy-wuzz.

I’m too tired to write much, so I’ll make this a cat post instead.

Väinämöinen, or Vai for short, was named after the Väinämöinen of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, who was a creator figure & a tietäjä, or man of knowledge — the Finnish word for what in Siberian cultures would be called a shaman.

This painting is called “The Defense of the Sampo” by the Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Väinämöinen is the whitebearded guy on the left.

Vaistache

Adamastache

This Väinämöinen is a really cool cat. He also has the power to occasionally & temporarily give me a really fat porno mustache so that I bear an uncanny resemblance to Admiral Adama at the beginning of Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. Don’tcha think?

Like all cats, he likes hanging out in weird places that he doesn’t consider weird at all, like my laundry basket.

He also enjoys the back of my couch. Here, he was watching me sitting at my computer desk.

He finds it irritating when the dog looks at him. Sweetheart continually fails to understand that it is blasphemy for a mere Evil Dog from Hell to gaze upon the countenance, or even just the back fur, of His Lordship. That’s what was happening in this shot.

Here’s a slideshow of all the photos of him I’ve uploaded to my Flickr photostream.

Related posts:

1. Väinämöinen
2. Who I sleep with every night
3. Hyvää Kalevalan päivää!

James Crump came to Alaska to find himself, and stayed in Alaska to share himself with us. His death on June 25 at Anchorage’s Pride parade was a blow not only to his family & friends, but also to our whole community. But just what is our community — and where do we go from here?

A week ago Wednesday, June 29, I went to the Service of Remembrance held for James Crump at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. St. Mary’s has always been one of the really welcoming and inclusive churches in Anchorage. As its senior priest Father Michael Burke put that night, “All are welcome here — and all means ALL” — which seems to be a common saying at St. Mary’s. I’d first heard the phrase at St. Mary’s the previous Sunday (June 26) at the Pride ecumenical service, which, because of James’ death the day before at the start of Anchorage’s Pride parade, was in part a memorial to him. The ecumenical service was led by four local LGBT clergy from four different faith groups. One of them — Susan Halvor, a chaplain at Providence Hospital — led the June 29 Service of Remembrance.

There were a lot of people there: three members of James’ family up from the Lower 48; Elvi Gray-Jackson, who is my representative on the Anchorage Assembly and is one of our strongest allies in local government; James’ boss from the Municipality of Anchorage’s Department of Health & Human Services, where he was a nurse; some of James’ coworkers; fellow students and a faculty member from the University of Alaska Anchorage School of Nursing, where he’d gotten his nursing education; one of his patients, whom he had helped nurse to health; and lots of us from the LGBTQA community — most of whom were James’ friends, but some, like me, who had never known him.

I looked around, and I thought: I am so proud of my community.

It was a feeling like the one I had two years ago, after the introduction in the Anchorage Assembly of proposed ordinance AO-64. Under AO-64, sexual orientation and gender identity would have been added to the list of personal characteristics in Title 5, Anchorage’s equal rights code, that it’s prohibited to use as a basis for discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, and municipal practices.

The summer of 2009 in Anchorage featured a protracted period of public testimony at the Anchorage Assembly, with accompanying sign-waving and letter-writing both by ordinance supporters and those who opposed equal rights — led in particular by antigay pastor Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple (ABT) who as usual made frequent use of hate-terms like perverted to describe LGBT people, and Jim Minnery, whose Alaska Family Council supplied red-shirted ordinance opponents with scores of red and white preprinted signs reading Truth is Not Hate and other begs-the-question slogans.

… (Of course truth is not hate. But the implicit claim: that these sign-wavers had the truth or that they were free of hate: not so self-evident. Three of them surrounded a friend of mine and told her she was going to hell. Is that love?)…

Kids on youth mission from Mississippi Avenue Baptist Church (MABC) of Aurora, Colorado were bused over by Anchorage Baptist Temple to wave signs printed by Alaska Family Council. June 17, 2009.

Lots of the the anti-ordinance sign-wavers weren’t even Anchorage residents, but had been bused and carpooled in from the Mat-Su (yet were permitted by Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander to testify). Some of them weren’t even Alaskans: a group of teenage missionaries from Mississippi Avenue Baptist Church (MABT) of Aurora, Colorado, who were being hosted by ABT, spent several hours of their youth mission on two different days to wave signs on behalf of Prevo et al. urging the denial of equal protection under the law for citizens of a city and state not even their parents had right to vote in. Some of them were young kids, who just like Westboro Baptist Church kids, were used as billboards to carry their elders’ antigay messages.

One of the children bused in to wave signs for ordinance opponents on June 9, 2009. Courtesy Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska.

Hence the name given the summer by one commentator: the Summer of Hate — a name Anchorage’s LGBT community has used about that time ever since.

The ordinance passed the Anchorage Assembly by a vote of 7 to 4 on August 11, 2009, but was vetoed six days later by Mayor Dan Sullivan. It was the third time in Anchorage history that equal protection under the law for at least some LGBTQ people in Anchorage was granted, only to be stripped away again. In fact, it was Mayor Dan’s dad, George Sullivan, who vetoed our first equal rights ordinance way back in 1975 — also backed by Jerry Prevo and his ABT followers.

My nephew Miles and his two friends outside the June 17, 2009 public hearing at Anchorage Assembly

But back to my point: pride in my community. Part of the Summer of Hate took place during Pride week that year. And outside the Loussac Library where the Assembly chambers are housed, the Loussac’s big green lawn facing the major thoroughfare of 36th Avenue had become part of our Pride celebration.

Yes, the redshirts were there — the Christianists with their red and white Truth is Not Hate signs. But so were we, wearing not only blue shirts, but ALL the colors of the rainbow. We were having a big damn happy Pride festival right out there: people with signs most of them handmade, people with rainbow flags, people with hula hoops, my nephew Miles who showed up with a couple of his friends, unasked, just because my fight was also their fight. Gay, straight, trans, nontrans — it wasn’t just us, embattled: it was our nongay friends, too — our families, our allies.

I remember walking across that lawn toward 36th seeing a woman in a long skirt blowing bubbles, adding to the color and joy of the moment even in the face of the Truth is Not hate that was having a barbecue on another part of the lawn. That’s when I felt it: I thought to myself, I’m so proud of my people; and I realized in that moment that who I thought of as my people no longer just consisted of LGBT people, but of my non-LGBT friends and family and allies too. Our friends, our families, our allies. I saw a glimpse, then, of what life is in a place where difference is not just tolerated or accepted, but is celebrated. Every. Damn. Day.

I caught that same glimpse at the Service of Remembrance. I saw my community — LGBT and non-LGBT alike, all means all, gathered together to mourn but also to celebrate the life of a remarkable well-loved man in the presence of his family. And his family — his father, one of his two sisters, one of his three brothers, others of his family who have checked in on the first post we wrote about James’ death: it’s clear how much they all love him, how important it was and is for all of them to know how James was known and loved here, in this, the place he chose —as his sister put it — to share himself with.

I am so proud of these my people, this my community, this my extended family, and how my family and James’ family met and became family to one another.

This is what we have become. What a beautiful what it is.

* * *

Not that it’s all lovely and hula-hooped and bubble-blowing acceptance here. Not that everyone in Anchorage or in Alaska has had something comforting or caring to say to James’ family and friends after his death. A lot of the same Truth is Not Haters who were here in 2009 are still here in 2011, after all. And so, on the first stories published on local media websites after James’ death, some comments went in a mode exactly opposite to the love, care, and compassion that anyone who has lost a son, brother, and friend is in need to hear.

Two of the comments posted June 25 at KTVA Channel 11′s story about James’ death —

Well that is what happen when you are at a dirty little Faggit event

Just another example that gay life style can be deadly

— just two of the ugly slurs and hateful comments compiled by Christopher Constant and brought to the attention of the Anchorage Assembly and Mayor Dan Sullivan when Christopher testified before the Assembly on June 28.

Majik Imaje, site owner of A blog of ICE — a blog normally devoted to Inupiat art — wrote a post titled “ALASKA GAY pride (CANCELED)” comprising mainly a quote of a June 25 Fox News story about James’ death. But Majik Imaje (an invented name made up from the names of his four sons) first prefaced the news story with a cheery graphic reading “Let the PARADE * begin * !” and went on to claim,

PROOF: GOD does indeed work in mysterious ways. Let this be a message to all !!

— the death of a loved son, brother, coworker, caregiver, and friend reduced to an object lesson from a murderous God, by a man who didn’t even know James’ name — only his own unexamined prejudice.

Note, 11 July 2011: I have corrected details about Majik Imaje’s name based on comments made by David Eves, his apparent real name, at both Henkimaa and Bent Alaska. See comments for details.

Comments got so vile at the Anchorage Daily News that ADN shut commenting down on virtually every story about James’ death or the investigation into how it happened. KTVA Channel 11, for its part, ran a story on June 28 called “How Tolerant is Anchorage of Homosexuality?” —

Some of the things that have happened since a Pridefest parade walker was accidentally killed have brought up the question of just how tolerant Anchorage is of homosexuality.

After several media organizations, including KTVA, posted the story over the weekend, many negative comments soon followed, and some of the anonymous postings were just plain hateful.

Some people said the man who was killed deserved to die because they believed he was gay. We spoke with one of the Pridefest organizers who told us she does not think the comments represent how most people in Anchorage feel.

“I have never experienced the kind of hatred you are seeing on the website or in response to the news stories,” says Anne Marie Moylan, co-chair of Identity Inc.

When published on the web, the story soon accrued its own collection of frequently ugly comments, leading one commenter to lament on her Facebook page,

Are we returning to another Summer of Hate in Anchorage, Alaska for who we are as a community?

It’s not exactly what I hoped for on June 25, as I walked down H Street to the Park Strip praying, in part,

I pray that those who hate us open their hearts so far as not to use this death, this loss, as another avenue of hate. I know that’s asking a lot, but I pray for it anyway.

* * *

But wait.

Think about how parts of the larger Anchorage community have stepped up to help James’ friends, family, and community in the wake of his death.

Identity, Inc. Identity is, of course, the organization that organizes our Pride week. In one part its board, staff, and volunteers have been reeling from the impact James’ death has had on them both as an organization and individually as people; but in another part they’ve also worked hard and tirelessly to ensure that everyone who’s been most seriously affected — witnesses of the accident and of James’ death, especially — are being helped and cared for. Thank you, Identity, for all the work you do, and for the hard work you’re doing now, in the face of your own grief. Please let us know how we can help.

University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA). Three different UAA entities (the Psychological Services Center, the student health center, & the Dean of Students office) have offered free counseling both short term and long-term for those affected. As a UAA staff member myself, I can’t say how proud I am of how the University has stepped up to help us in our time of need. Thank you, UAA, and all the psychologists who are giving of your time to help us in our grief.

The faith community. Rev. Susan Halvor is acting as the central contact person for people in need of spiritual counseling, working with other local clergy both LGBT and non-LGBT. Thank you, Susan, and all the other clergy who are helping us to grapple with our loss.

Harriet Drummond (in pink) and Elvi Gray-Jackson (black dress and white sweater) shortly before the Pride parade began, June 25, 2011

Our local government. The Anchorage Assembly had its regular meeting on Tuesday night, June 28, just three nights after James’ death, and honored him there in the presence of his family. My Assembly representative Elvi Gray-Jackson and another of our Assembly friends, Harriet Drummond, had been banner-carriers in the Pride parade not far behind where James was walking when he was accidentally killed on June 25 — I’m not sure, but I believe they may have been witnesses. They introduced a resolution to honor and remember James Crump, who of course was an Anchorage municipal employee. According to the paperwork, the resolution was submitted by ALL the Assembly members — including the normally antigay ones — along with Mayor Sullivan, who two years ago vetoed AO-64. Harriet Drummond read the resolution, and it passed unanimously. Thank you, Elvi and Harriet, and all the members of the Assembly, and Mayor Sullivan, for giving honor to the memory of a man who so richly deserved it.

Resolution AR NO. 2011-183 honors James’ work as a nurse working with tuberculosis patients for the Municipality of Anchorage’s Department of Health and Social Services and as a loved member of the Anchorage LGBT community.

James Crump (left) and Michael Smith, ca. 2003. Courtesy Michael Smith.

Loved indeed. Though I never knew James, I’ve learned of him by way of the Pride ecumenical service on June 26; the Anchorage Assembly meeting on June 28 where he was honored; the Service of Remembrance at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church on June 29; the Circle of Support organized by Amber DoAll LaChores Sawyer at UAA. And last Friday a comment on the YouTube video I made of his honoring at the Assembly put me in touch with Michael Smith, who had been James’ partner for four years in the early 2000s. Michael had just learned that morning of James’ death, and he was desperate to talk with people who knew James, or at least knew what had happened. I talked with him for an hour. (People who would like to be put in touch with Michael can contact me at bentalaska2@gmail.com.)

I leaned that James Crump was a person –

James Crump receiving an ICOAA scholarship. Courtesy ICOAA College of Emperors and Empresses Scholarship Committee.

• who as a boy preferred National Geographic Magazine to the erector sets and slot cars enjoyed by his brothers because he liked reading about animals;
• who was such a good cook;
• who was a long-time member of Metropolitan Community Church of Anchorage;
• who wanted to be a nurse all his life, and finally realized that dream in 2009 at UAA with the help of four scholarships from a scholarship program of the Imperial Court of All Alaska;
• who had a cat he regarded as his son, named Fraidy, who died of cancer just a day before the Pride parade;
• who was very, very, very proud of his “man purse” and showed it off to his coworkers at HHS;
• who, even back when he worked at Fedex, made kick-ass cupcakes;
• who was hit hard by his mother’s death from cancer in 2000;
• who knew how to make friends, and did;
• who really really knew how to cook (there’s a theme here);
• who was there for his TB patients when they woke up, and helped them to get better;
• who could explain things to fellow students in ways that Nursing faculty never could;
• who loved to swim, and not only because of the lifeguards;
• who was always accepted and loved by his family, without regard to issues about sexual orientation;
• who one day told a Nursing professor that it was his birthday, and he wanted to see a baby born, and circumstances intervened to grant him his wish just 3 months ago (the baby’s name is Max);
• who brought joy to everyone he came in contact with;
• who used to speak with his family members about the community here he was part of, and his eyes would light up as he did so;
• who, by word of his sister, came to Alaska to find himself, and stayed in Alaska to share himself with us, because he loved us so much.

But why did he love us so much?

Here’s what I think. I think he saw the same thing that I saw as I sat in St. Mary’s at the Service of Remembrance. The same thing I saw when I walked across the Loussac Library lawn and saw a Pride celebration just elbows over from Truth is Not Hate, and saw a woman blowing bubbles, and thought, I’m so proud of my people. And knew that my people is not just an equation of “LGBT people + A for Allies”: but all my people, the people who not only love, but also fight for what they love, which includes justice and fairness and equality — which includes each other, everyone, all means all.

* * *

On June 25, I walked all over Delaney Park Strip, where Pridefest was held, taking photos as I had already been taking photos that morning before the parade began, before James died. At Pridefest: people who had known James, people who had not: people going on with their lives, celebrating what James would have been there to celebrate if he could. I wasn’t anywhere near the stage a lot of the time. At some point, I am told, someone on stage got on the mic and asked, Who here is not LGBT? And about half the crowd raised their hands.

Think about that. It’s not just “us” that is “our community.” Straight people like hanging out with us too. Straight people — more and more of them every passing year, every passing day — have an investment in equal rights for all (means ALL). My nephew Miles, my other nephew Jesse. Your niece. Our fathers and mothers and children and sisters and brothers. Our coworkers. Our bosses. People who love us and respect us just as much as James Crump’s family and friends and coworkers loved and respected him.

Think about that. Think about the fact that, of the 9 people nearest to James Crump when he died, all of them celebrants in the Pride parade —

— at least four are partners in marriages recognized by the State of Alaska — i.e., heterosexual marriages, “between one man and one woman,” as dictated by a 1998 amendment to the Alaska Constitution — and a fifth has also been identified as a “straight ally.” Think about the fact that all of these 9 human beings whether LGBT or non-LGBT wanted to be there, in that parade, and believed in its message of Pride, of “Step Up and Step Out”; that all of them, whether non-LGBT or LGBT, were shaken and shattered. Loss has nothing to do with sexual orientation or gender identity.

Nor does compassion. Think about the fact that Steve, the man who held James as he died is married, is “straight,” is a… well, please. Tell me. Is he an “A = Ally”? Or is he, simply, a human being who sees in you and me human beings with inherent worth and dignity? A human being who, at great cost to his own emotional equilibrium (there are no words for this) saw James, a human being, and gave him the gift of his love and presence and touch, so that James should not be alone in the moment of his death.

Yes. This is community. This is “my people.” This is what Truth is Not Hate fails to see, but which we all need to see, and to act upon, and fight for. John Aronno wrote it the other day:

Anchorage is a beautiful place to live, filled with the most amazing people I have been privileged to call as friends. But there remain rigid divisions that we need to man up and address. It’s easy to sit at home and make fun of the brazen idiocy of how politics works. But policy is different than politics, and politicians are different than statesmen. It’s time we demanded one over the other, in every category.

What happens if we stand up together? The future is ours. We just have to start showing up and claiming it.

Chris Constant wrote it too:

If you are wondering, I think this is what it is all about: Everything we do should pave the way for a better world beyond the reach of our lives. As they say, your reach exceeds your grasp. Any confusion or obfuscation of our mission as a community just evaporated.

Watch. We will recommit ourselves as individuals and as a community. We will fight harder, organize better, and love more. We will have more fun. We will reach more people who don’t understand the nature of our community. We will shine our light to dispel fear and darkness and to illuminate understanding.

Gay/lesbian, bi, straight, trans, nontrans, all means all: we are already the community that can do this, if we choose to. We’re the community James chose to share himself with. And we’re worthy of what he shared.

This one for you, James Crump.

If you or someone you know has been affected by the tragedy at the Pride parade in Anchorage, please be reminded that generous support has been offered by our allies in the community. You can get more information by calling the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Anchorage at (907) 929-GLBT, (907) 929-4528. Or you can call the Psychological Services Center at UAA (907) 786-1795.

Except when otherwise credited, all photos by Melissa S. (Mel) Green, yksin on Flickr.

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets 2011-06-29: Anchorage Assembly honors memory of James L. Crump
2. Happy wedding! (for John & Heather)
3. A word about our friends

A couple of weeks ago I announced that I’m going to Netroots Nation 11 on full scholarship through the LGBT Netroots Connect initiative. Now it’s time to finish preparing for it — if only because I’m just about to fly outta here.

I’m sticking a couple of hashtags in my post title so this post will tweet nicely. FYI, #nn11 stands for Netroots Nation 11, to be held starting next Thursday in Minneapolis, and #nn11lgbt is the hashtag for LGBT Netroots Connect program, via which I got the full scholarship to the LGBT preconference next Wednesday as well as NN11 itself. Got that? Cool. Too geeky for you? Oh well, sorry. I’ll translate: it’ll make my post, when Twitter picks it up, easily findable by other geeky NN11 attendees & vicarious spectators who want to know what’s being said about NN11 and NN11lgbt.

Bow ties are cool. — The Eleventh Doctor

A few days ago I wrote on Henkimaa about the cool-as-bow-ties Netroots Nation 11 mobile app that I downloaded onto my iPod Touch. So cool that it turns my iPod Touch into a veritable sonic screwdriver.  Don’t get that reference either?  Here, I’ll help you out: it makes my iPod Touch even more useful a tool than it was before.  Especially, it makes it easy for me to figure out which sessions I want to go to at the conference, and where they fit in my overall conference schedule.

Then the app went funky on me. Obviously, the good folks of NN11 were fixing it. They loaded some Netroots Nations sessions into the app that hadn’t been in it before. But other sessions disappeared completely, including some of those I was most interested in.  The attendees registered in slowly started climbing, though. For awhile there it looked like 90% of them would have first names starting with M. Now other letters are starting to fill out.

And now most or all of the sessions seem to be in there too.  Again with the bow-tie coolness and sonic-screwdriverly usefulness.  And so I can, again, better prep for NN11.

Good thing, too, because I’m flying out tomorrow morning.  (I’m writing this Thursday night.  By the time you read this, I’ll be on my way.)

Portland

Obviously, since even the LGBT preconference doesn’t happen until next Wednesday, I must be doing something else first.  Yes: I’m flying to Portland — the one in Oregon — to see my ex-but-still-beloved Ptery.  Ptery, a transman, is currently (& somewhat by choice) homeless, and is a homeless activist living in Dignity Village, a city-recognized homeless camp. But tomorrow — that is, Friday — he’ll be participating in a peaceful & direct action for homeless rights: camping with homeless & formerly homeless community members on the Rose Parade route. And since it’s Friday I’m getting there, I’m participating too, and thus will be sacking out in a tent Friday night somewhere along that route.  I’ll spend a couple of nights at Dignity Village, too, with in-between a night with my friends Genny & Deirdre, who I haven’t seen in a couple of years.

I hope to write a blog post or two while I’m in Portland. Homelessness issues… the trans community of which Ptery is part… the incredible community response to a viscious gaybashing that occurred recently on Portland’s Hawthorne Bridge, about which we included an item (including video) in Bent News a few days ago.

Then Tuesday I’ll fly on to Minneapolis via Seattle & Denver… yeah, that airport layover thing again. Arriving there quite late Tuesday night.

Minneapolis

And it’ll be pretty strange, after one night in a tent and a couple more at Dignity Village, to be residing for several days in the Hilton Minneapolis. Hopefully a hotel that’s not subject to the unfair labor practices that have been plaguing workers at Anchorage’s Hilton (as well as our Sheraton) the past few years.

The LGBT preconference will be all day Wednesday.  I have no idea what’s in store there, except to know that Mike Rogers, the guy behind LGBT Netroots Connect (as well as a whole lot else!) tells me that a lot of the folks down there are pretty excited that an LGBT blogger from Alaska will be there.  (I am still, by the way, waiting to see if anyone got the joke I inserted in my “I’m going to Netroots Nation” post about which famous Alaskan Mike was curious about. First person to write the correct answer in comments on this post gets some kind of cool NN11 swag from me.)

I should have Wifi, & whenever I do — here we go Twitter, again.  I intend to tweet from Netroots quite a bit.  So if you’re interested in what I or other LGBT Netroots Connect and NN11 participants are doing, get used to those hashtags. Here they are again: #nn11 and #nn11lgbt. Interested persons can also follow me on Twitter @yksin.  And my Tweets will be automatically compiled, as usual, into Daily Tweets posts at Henkimaa (but not at Bent), to which I’ll try to add descriptive subtitle & useful commentary as I have time.  I’ll also be writing regular posts (as indeed I’m required to by the terms of my scholarship), which will be posted at Henkimaa, and/or Bent Alaska (especially those that are directly LGBT-relevant), or both.

Netroots Nation itself begins Thursday, June 16.  If you’re curious, you too can download the cool-as-bowties NN11 mobile app from iTunes or whatever Android users use (assuming the app is there too). Or you can simply visit the Netroots Nation website.

Now, the reason I’m going to NN11 isn’t for Henkimaa.  The kind of conference Henkimaa would want me to go to would be one in which a whole bunch of writers sat at tables with laptops and coffee and wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote.  But hey, I do that with my writing buddies every Side Street Saturday and every Sugarspoon Tuesday — just a walk up the street or a brief ride on the People Mover.

No, I’m going to NN11 for Bent Alaska. Which is an LGBT blog.  And a blog, furthermore, which — well, let me quote from my scholarship application:

In 50 words or less, what do you hope to gain from your participation in Netroots Nation?

I recently became coadminstrator of Bent Alaska, Alaska’s LGBTQ blog. I hope to get counsel on how to bring in other writers/bloggers to enrich Bent Alaska with more content from more voices.

That question, that answer, is my single biggest reason for going to Netroots.  Hand-in-hand with it is the desire to connect with other LGBT bloggers and allies around the country to talk about our common goal of LGBT equality and how we, as the “media voices” of our movement can help to bring that about.

Thus, the very first session I added to my schedule as a “must go” was Managing a State Community Blog — “Need ideas for expanding your state blog’s reach? Trying to build your frontpage crew?” — no kidding, yeah.  I am. Especially to build the frontpage crew — because, y’know, I’m still that reluctant political blogger, who still wants to be a Henkimaa‘s version of a conference, where I can write write write write my “own” stuff.  We want to get more people in on Bent — more bloggers, more voices, more parts of the state represented.  (And not just on “political” stuff, but on the whole gamut of LGBTQ life, culture, politics, interests.)

Then I went through and added everything in the LGBT topic:

• Life Since Vegas: How the Netroots Forced Action on DADT and DREAM
• LGBT Strategy Session
• What to Do When the President is Just Not that Into You (one of the panelists: Dan Choi, kicked out of the military under DADT, and recently arrested in Moscow for participating in Pride there)
• Bullies and the Blogosphere: Creating Safe Spaces in Our Schools and Online
• Queer Media and the Alternative Revolution
• The Plan to Advance Marriage Equality, Inside and Outside of the 112th Congress

But there’s also lots of other sessions I’m interested in, and none — well, let’s say “not all” —  of these are cast in stone.  If there’s any Bent Alaska reader of an activist nature who sees something in the NN11 sessions that you think I should really consider going to — please get in comments or message me via my Facebook profile and tell me why.  And I’ll consider it. I really will.

If I had a highest goal of this Netroots: it’s that my participation in it this year could lead to the participation of someone else from LGBTQ Alaska next year. Someone, I hope, who becomes as committed to the health & welfare of Bent Alaska & the whole of the Alaska community we serve, as we strive to be.

* * *

But there’s one last item of note in my preparing for NN11.  I wrote on my scholarship application,

[B]y far the most important work I’ve done for the cause of LGBTQ equality and progressive politics in general is to live openly and matter-of-factly as who I am — as a lesbian, yes, but also as a writer of poetry and science fiction/fantasy; as someone with a B.A. in Religion who continues to be fascinated by the human religious impulse; as someone who has struggled lifelong with depression/despair; and as everything else I am .

Emphasis added.  That bolded item is another big part of why I initially had no interest in going to NN11.  It’s also the reason I didn’t go to my college class 30-year reunion, which was held last week, despite the urging of friends that I come.  And one of them — a classmate I didn’t know well in college, but with whom I’ve recently been getting better acquainted (no, not that way) — seemed just a little hurt, or at least dissapointed, when she learned that I’d stood up reunion, but was going to Minneapolis.  So I wrote to her:

I basically decided to go if & only if I got that LGBT Netroots Connect scholarship … & mainly because I felt (& continue to feel) that the conference can drop some wisdom on me about how to get other folks involved, consistently & reliably, with the blog. Because I am subject to burnout, thanks to my well-known (because I write about it) propensity to go into some Very Bad Places Inside Myself when I become overwhelmed with too much to do that doesn’t feed my spirit, that isn’t “mine.” (Like my writing is.) I want to do what I can for Bent, but not at my own expense.

I just wanted you to know that. I didn’t just stand up reunion in order to go to Netroots. Either of them is somewhat dangerous for me, b/c the Bad Places Inside Myself shit —

… (I don’t much like calling it “depression” anymore b/c what used to be a term of convenience for what I consider primarily a spiritual issue, though it does have it’s biological components, has been so medicalized & psychiatrized)…

— can easily have its wire tripped by big social events containing lots of people wanting to be talked & schmoozed with, with little downtime. Kinda like reunion. Kinda like NN. In fact, I’m just about to start writing a blog post about prepping for NN that will include some discussion of this: the care I’ll need to take to avoid derailing myself through what is otherwise a pretty cool thing.

I don’t mean to give the impression I’m some fragile vase or something that will shatter at a touch… but it was a long hard haul, figuring out how to take care of myself around this stuff — my dance with despair is the central stuff of my life — & I pay it mind.

So while you’ll find a lot of afterhours parties and late entertainments on the NN11 schedule — I doubt I’ll be going to many of them. With all the excitement of learning lots and meeting lots of cool people, I know I’m likely to become overhwelmed.  And I’m going to need some heavy duty downtime, and plenty of sleep.  If anyone wants to drop in the occasional reminder for me to remember that, please do.  I want to come back to Alaska invigorated… not swamped in a pit of my own making.

Did I say plenty of sleep?  And here it is 12:10 PM, with a 7:00 AM flight.  And I haven’t even packed yet. Gee, Mel, that’s a great start.

I’m prepping this for posting at 8:00 AM, Alaska time.  By that time I’ll be an hour in the air on my way to Portland.  Fast asleep, I hope.

See you on the other side.

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets 2011-06-03: The Netroots Nation 11 mobile phone app is just as cool as bow ties
2. I’m going to Netroots Nation
3. Help John Aronno of Alaska Commons go to Netroots Nation

With Rozz, Whylie the dog, & my thumb, Christmas 1996: just a few days after he arrived in Alaska

I never intended to become a mother, but then my partner’s nephew came to us from a background of severe abuse & neglect. Now he’s 23 & doing great. In contrast: the case of Anya James.

On May 8, the boy said to me, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

It was, of course, Mother’s Day, and I did, of course, help raise the boy — he’s actually a man now — from the age of 9 years and 2 days. That’s exactly how old he was the first time I saw him coming off an airplane when he first arrived in Alaska late 1996. He’s now 23.

I don’t know why, but I’d never really wanted to have kids.  I simply never felt that instinct or desire or whatever it is that so powerfully prompts so many women toward motherhood.  It worked out well that I turned out to be a lesbian.  Not that lesbians are unable to have children, but it takes effort to find a sperm donor; even more effort to go through large swaths of one’s life mistakenly assuming (as the endemic social propaganda would have it) that one is heterosexual, and having a boyfriend or marriage, having kids that way, & only then realizing you’re gay — & having to figure out what to do about it.

With me on a backpacking trip in the Chugach Mountains, Chugach State Park, near Anchorage, Alaska. Abt. Aug 1997. He was 9.

I never had those issues: I came out early enough never to have gotten sexually involved enough with a guy to risk pregnancy; & I never had the desire to go the turkey baster route.

Or, as I’ve often joked,

I thought I thought I had a foolproof birth control method — until I became pregnant with my partner’s nine-year-old nephew.

I’ve never gone through real labor, so can’t compare my experience with any other woman’s experience of becoming a mother.  I can only tell you that it hurt like hell.  As I wrote a couple of years back,

This was a boy who had been at the very least witness to sexual abuse of one of his siblings, if not a victim of it himself; & had most definitely been victim of physical & emotional abuse & neglect.  And for many long months in his fear of more of the same, he took it out on us.  I had never lived with abuse before — an abuse that I reckon was not him abusing me, but was his father reaching through him — as [the boy] used to say, “[My father] is in my head.”  It messed me up so badly, it took months to for me a wordworker to find words for it:

Cycle

the man in the head of the boy
the father of memory
the father who would pitch
his sons into the wall
the man who used their sister
for his “needs”
who sold them back for
four hundred dollars
in an Oklahoma City
KFC

the man in the head of the boy
the man in the boy’s fist
in his kicking feet his butting head
his spit on my face his biting teeth
in the bruise yellow and purple and green
on my arm the blood beneath my skin

the hurt that cannot speak

But, long story short, we got through the hard times, he learned to trust us, and the violence went away. And I became a pretty good parent.  I’ll never forget the success I felt after I successfully negotiated him and two other boys his age, his friends, through grocery shopping at Fred Meyer’s followed by a visit to the video store, where they had to agree on three videos for us to rent.  I lived! They lived! I had skills I’d never knew I had!

And life went on, and years were lived through, and here we are: a 23-year-old young man, working hard, living through his first (one doesn’t yet know if it’s his last) long-term relationship with a girlfriend, and sitting next to me on the couch Sunday night saying, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

For all that I’ve never been “Mom” ( I’ve always been Mel); for all that I’ve never had any form of legal relationship with him (he came up her as relative foster placement with his aunt, Rozz, now Ptery, my then-partner); for all that I had never actively wanted a kid — yeah.  All the same, I’m a mother.  And it means a lot that he sees me that way too.

Williwaw hike in the Chugach Mountains, 1997

And then enter the case of Anya James. She’s the adoptive mother who’s in all the Anchorage headlines now: indicted on 10 felony counts of kidnapping and 6 felony counts of first degree assault for her (alleged) abusive treatment of 6 adopted children. Kidnapping because she is accused of locking the kids up in their rooms in order to prevent their escape. A good chance she did a lot more harm than that: she’s had lots of foster kids over the years too.  And the Office of Children’s Services (OCS) and the Anchorage Police Department — both of whom had a number of complaints and contacts with James over the years — somehow missed it all. While the kids continued to suffer.  Yeah. They really dropped the ball. Read all about it.

I’ve been angry since James’ arrest was first reported. I’m angry not only about James abuse (alleged) of these kids, but also about many of the kneejerk & often highly biased comments made by online readers of the Anchorage Daily News about the case.  Case in point: the one that prompts me to come back to this post in the middle of the night, wherein a commenter identified as kearbear wrote,

Anya had everyone fooled.  It happens. The only true advocate for children are the biological parents. When the biological parents negate their job and abandon their children it is a crap shoot. Many foster parents and adoptive parents are loving. Sometimes they are cruel and abusive.

Maybe s/he’s just not a very good communicator in writing. But in any case, the comment that “the only true advocates for children are the biological parents” got me pretty ticked off.  After all, I have a good deal of firsthand experience with the results of what fine and “true advocates” my kid’s bio parents were for him and his siblings.

What I wrote in response:

“The only true advocate for children are the biological parents.” But then you go on to say, “When the biological parents negate their job…” do you see the contradiction in your words here?

Different cases are different. I am the nonbiological parent of a boy who at age 9 came to live with my and my partner, his biological aunt. We were two women raising a boy — the middle of three kids — who had been physically & (at least in his sister’s case) sexually abused & neglected by their biological father & stepmother, & got only a bit better deal from their biological mom & stepfather before they were taken by child welfare authorities in the county in Missouri where they lived at the time.  His biological parents were not “true advocates” for him. They were both disasters. His advocates were me & my partner: two women, lesbians. I have never even had any kind of legal relationship to my kid (though his aunt, my partner, did) — but I have been more an advocate and a parent to him then either of his bio parents ever in a million years would even think of being.

And now today, he’s a 23-year-old happily adjusted young adult (sitting next to me as I write watching Doctor Who) with a job & a girlfriend, who seldom has nightmares about his father anymore.

But back then: he was one of three kids, two of the whom were warehoused on pysch drugs in a children psych hospital for years, the third — the one who came to live with us — on a succession of 4 different psych drugs plus a succession of 6 or 7 foster homes in Missouri (we’re still not sure the exact number) before a group home for six months before he came to live with us.  He was scared, angry, violent, & passed it on to us because he thought we would treat him as he had already been treated.  It was horrific for me: I’d never lived with abuse before.  It was his father’s abuse — “[father's name] is in my head” he’d say after violent outbursts” — emerging through him, directed at us in threats, biting, spitting, hitting, kicking. It wrecked me for awhile.  What saved us was the help. We had wraparound services under the Alaska Youth Initiative — where has that program gone? Away?  We as parents were part of a treatment team also including a case manager from Alternatives, the community mental health center; an outpatient therapist; a home-based therapist who came in & helped us deal with in-home issues; & activity therapists who took him out on activities in the community (also providing us with needed respite at times from what was very traumatic for both of us).  And we had our friends.

Without that help we couldn’t have done it.  It takes a village.  It seems like in this case, & maybe it’s systemwide now, it’s a matter of “hand the kids off to someone & let them handle it” — alone, without either support, or checks on them.

Yes, OCS dropped the ball. Bigtime.  But you know: I’ll betcha that even as it was in our time with DFYS (OCS predecessor) & the continual revolving door of social workers coming into our lives, then burning out & leaving — OCS doesn’t have the resources to really care for the kids under its jurisdiction. I haven’t checked into it, but I’ll betcha that the budget just isn’t there.  I haven’t heard squat about Alaska Youth Initiative in years either, without which we could not have survived just _one_ kid who’d been evaluated as “severely emotionally disturbed.” And the reason the resources to look out for children of abusive parents isn’t there?

Because the people of Alaska will blather on endlessly about how much they love kids — but they won’t put their money where their mouth is.  They could care less about these kids, until something like this happens.  And most of them will forget about it by sometime mid-next week.

And I’ll just leave it at that (for now) and go to bed.

Except first to say: to hell with the creeps who claim that lesbians and gays should have no right to be parents. Yeah, Mr. & Mrs. Heterosexual did such a grand job with my kid & his siblings.  A grand job, that is, of beating the crap out of them & leaving us to pick up the pieces.

Resting up from another hike. Powerline Pass, Chugach Mountains, 2006. The dog here is Sweetheart.

Related posts:

1. James Dobson’s God is a child abuser, & so is Jerry Prevo’s
2. It Gets Better, the book: A “message in a bottle” to LGBT youth
3. Same-sex marriage: A personal history

… or so she would have me believe.

Her ship looks suspiciously unlike an early-1960s British blue police box. Maybe the Eleventh Doctor (or who knows, Dr. River Song, who seems to know how to operate a TARDIS better than the Doctor himself) finally was able to fix the control that was broken in the First Doctor‘s time, which makes it possible for a TARDIS to adopt the most appropriate disguise so as to be inconspicuous in its surroundings. Surely an old Alaska beatermobile of indeterminate color is more inconspicuous at my apartment complex than a 1960s-era British blue police box.

But wait! — look closer! Look at the plate! It doesn’t say TARDIS — it says TARD1S! That’s the numeral 1, not the letter I!

And look: here’s the back plate. Same problem here! “Time And Relative Dimension In Space” has become “Time And Relative Dimension —” what? — “One Space”? That doesn’t even make sense!

I think my neighbor’s messing with me. An imposter. Not a Time Lord at all.

And here it is, Rapture Eve, with a Rapture Van driving all over Anchorage warning about a “Judgment Day,” like some bizarre new form of Dalek aiming its harsh, Bible-Purple cry of exterminate, exterminate! against any who are not Dalek. From all over the world we’re hearing reports of people claiming that they will be somehow caught up into the sky, mystically teleported — apparently beginning tonight at 10:00 PM Alaska Time* — to some indefinable place called Heaven: the name, one must suppose, of an alien spaceship belonging to the powerful and xenophobic race to whom these people owe their allegiance.

And then, over a period of five months, the spaceship will rain its destruction down upon us.

And the Doctor, who could save us, is nowhere to be found.

Unless…

Do I have the wrong mythology? Yes. Yes. It’s obvious.  Like Sunnydale, California, and Cleveland, Ohio, Anchorage obviously sits on a Hellmouth, in our case centered somewhere in the vicinity of Baxter Road and Northern Lights Boulevard.

Surely Buffy will avert this apocalypse, as she has averted so many others.

But please, Buffy, please. Do not avert the Rapture. Let them go. Let all the xenophobes go.

* Note about Rapture timing: Per The Atlantic, The Rapture will begin 6 PM on March 21 in the first time zone at which that time occurs, then will proceed around the globe time zone by time zone. “So, according to these calculations, the Rapture will actually begin like a rolling brown out across the globe at 11 p.m. PST on Friday, May 20th” — i.e., 10 PM AST. But we’re in daylight savings time now, so I’m still a tad confused. In any case, those Alaskans whose loyalty to the xenophobic aliens is expected to be rewarded with Rapture will be among the last on the planet, at 6:00 PM tomorrow, to be rolling brown-outed to the alien mothership.

h/t John Aronno, Alaska Commons; Julia O’Malley, Anchorage Daily News

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets 2011-05-26: The sun’s gone wibbly
2. Q & A: What happens when you click "Volunteer" at the Alaskans for Parental Rights website?
3. There is more to life than Real Life

I still go to Sylvia’s place every week anyway.  We hang out talking, and watch lots of movies and entire TV series on DVD, from our first “Xenafest” in summer of 1998 to Battlestar Galactica, Six Feet Under, Bablyon 5 — we’re currently doing NCIS.  It’s my regular Wednesday gig, so important to me that folks who want me to do other things on Wednesday evenings are almost always SOL.

But I mostly go there just on Wednesdays and the occasional Sunday.  The rest of the time, well, Sylvia doesn’t have the big bucks or the ability to get around much — so her main social outlet is via the Internet. It was therefore quite a blow to her when a fire in her apartment last December kicked her out of her home & into a hotel, computerless, for several weeks until her apartment was fixed back up again. Miraculously, her aging computer survived the fire.  But then, in early April, it died.  A friend helped get her to the library a couple of times to use the computer there, but mostly all she had time to do was to inform her online friends why it was that she hadn’t been online.  And her chances for getting another one very soon weren’t good.

A few days later I got an email from one of those friends, via a small email discussion list that Sly had created several years ago to talk about Hurricane Katrina, that no longer much discussion.  “Does this list still exist?” Kathleen asked. Her email described Sly’s situation, and went on to explain,

At least 17 people, mostly from 4MA, are getting together to raise approximately $500 toward buying Sly a computer.  If there is anyone on this list, particularly anyone in Alaska who could help us by finding out what kind of setup Sly has at home so we can try to duplicate it, or anyone with any idea where we could buy a computer.

Well, hot damn.  I got on it, & became 4MA’s Anchorage liaison.  Kathleen & another 4MA member, Lynne, would collect the funds & send them on to me, & I would take the money & help Sly buy a computer & set it up.

4MA is short for 4_Mystery_Addicts, a very active mystery book discussion list that has been one of Sly’s most important social venues for years & years.  I’m not a member — I tend more towards science fiction/fantasy, & in any case couldn’t keep up with 4MA’s high volume — but I’ve always had a strong affection-from-afar for the folks at 4MA because of all the warm and wonderful things Sly has said about them over the years.

I didn’t know the half of it. Neither, it turns out, did Kathleen — because in the end the funds that 4MA members (including our friend Cam here in Anchorage) donated toward getting Sly back online was — well, they say that pictures are worth a thousand words: how about 1,020 of them? — one for each dollar raised amongst themselves by 4MA members, and over twice what was originally expected.

That’s what I had in my pocket for a brief time yesterday after the last of the funds arrived, before Sly, Leslie, and I headed over to Best Buy to pick out a computer. Here Giovanni, the guy who helped us at Best Buy, is showing her some of the features of a Dell Inspiron, the computer we ended up getting for her.

Sly is a little blurry in this next photo because she moved her face just as I took the shot — but I still like this photo of her & Leslie as we were paying for the purchase.

Besides the computer itself, we set up an appointment next Wednesday for the Geek Squad to come over to Sly’s house & go beyond the basic computer set up I would do for her — teaching her some the computer’s features, setting up the printer I’m giving her (more on that in a minute) and her own little local wireless network, plus 6 month’s ongoing consultation, all for just $139.00. We also paid $139.00 for two years “insurance” so her computer can get fixed if there’s a power surge that fries her motherboard, or something. The $1,020 paid for all but $19 of that, but I was happy to make up the difference.

I’ll be really happy for the wireless network, because then I can check my own email on my iPod when I’m hanging out with her Wednesday nights, & both of us have a habit of looking stuff up in Wikipedia about the various programs we watch or stuff we talk about. As for the printer, I got a free printer from the UAA Bookstore when I bought an iMac November before last — but I already had a good printer, so it’s been just sitting in my office at work ever since. Sly will get it now.

Here’s Sly & me with Leslie & Giovanni outside the store after we loaded the new computer in Leslie’s car. Thanks for all your help, Giovanni!

Back at Sly’s place, Sly caught a breather at her desk before we got to work clearing it of old stuff so I could get her set up.

Here’s a slightly blurred shot of her old setup before we took it apart. The TV at left stays, of course, but the computer monitor in the middle is from the old dead computer, & must go, along with some of the other stuff.

There were a lot of cables and cords to sort out.

That’s when I told Sly the story of the Gordian knot. According to this legend, the person who could untie the Gordian knot would become the ruler of Asia. Alexander the Great tried to untie the knot, but it was too complex — so he pulled out his sword & chopped it in half. He went on to conquer big chunks of Asia… but he also died pretty young. Maybe because he cheated?

I only wanted to set up a computer, not conquer Asia.  But I was dealing with electrical and cable cords — so it seemed safer not to cheat. Besides, I don’t have a sword. In the end I got the cords all sorted out and the ones no longer needed got stowed away in a box.

The basic setup we did was easy, & didn’t take much time at all. And so… here we go: Windows 7 starts loading.

And here’s one happy Sly with her new computer.

The design of this computer is similar to an iMac in that the hard drive & DVD/CD player is all in one piece with the monitor, instead of having a tower off to the side. It makes for a far less cluttered desk. But I’ll probably make her a pedestal so the monitor can be higher off the desk (so she won’t get a stiff neck from looking down), & we’ll need also to figure out where the printer will go.

By the time I left at 9:23 PM, Sly was online writing her first email: a thank you to 4MA for making this possible.

And I caught my bus, and then had a very enjoyable walk home with a beautiful Anchorage sunset. It capped off a wonderful evening.

Thank you 4MA

When I told Sly on April 13 over the phone about what you the members of 4MA were doing for her, she said “I’m gobsmacked!” and, a little later, “Now I’m all a-twitter!” She was completely overwhelmed with appreciation for the kindness, generosity, and friendship of all of you at 4MA.

As indeed was I. I still am, especially because I know firsthand how important the computer and being able to talk with friends like you is to her quality of life. It means much to know that she has a huge pile of friends who care so very much about her.

Lynne (LC) sent me a list that she thinks is complete of those who contributed to this wonderful gift.  And so — Maddy, Jane B, Carl, David, Judy B, Julie, Ella, Barfly, Randy, Stacey, Annie C, Mary De,  Lucinda,  Judy W, Yvonne, Elizabeth R, Merrill,  Kim R, Fran, Jack, Karen C, Helen L, Don L, Donna, Lesley AS, Sunnie, Lourdes, Deanna, Peg, Kathleen H, LC (Lynne), Denise, and Cam — a heartfelt thank you.

As we left Best Buy last night, Leslie, Sly, & I were talking about you 4MAers, and Leslie remarked, “It takes a village.”  People like you make the village.  People like you make this world turn.

Related posts:

1. Happy wedding! (for John & Heather)
2. Same-sex marriage: A personal history
3. Who I sleep with every night

I’m not sure how I feel about the death of Osama bin Laden. I’m very glad he can no longer bring harm, but I’m pensive & mournful about the harm his followers & sympathizers, as well as his detractors & enemies, have already caused & will continue to cause.

I came in to work this morning, turned on NPR, & the first words I heard were about really bad things happening in New York & Washington, DC. My first thought was, “They’re retaliating already?!!!” until I realized, no, NPR is replaying some of its broadcast from 9/11. The words I heard were, in fact, probably the very same words I heard on that Tuesday morning in 2001 that gave me my first news of that event. I was going to say that “dreadful” event, but no adjective encompasses what happened that day, & what it did & is still doing to us. I mean “us” in the big sense: not just Americans (& of course the people who died that day were of many nationalities), but all the world.

So much death & stupidity has proceeded from that one day, catalyzed by that one man, who was so tremendously successful at unleashing the murderousness & hatred of so many. Too bad there are so people equally closed & fanatic in their chosen cause, equally intent on killing, equally locked into destructive & murderous cycles of retaliaton & counter-retaliation. It would be nice if all the killing & stupidity would end with the death of this one man. But it won’t.

Pres. Obama’s announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death (via Slate):

The night before last, Saturday night, I spent some time watching video of that night’s remarks by President Obama remarks — one might say, his comedy stylings — as well as those of Seth Myers at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. I thought Pres. Obama was the funnier of the two — and he was devastating in his takedown of Donald Trump & birtherism. If you haven’t seen it, you really should. Here it is, via CSpan:

The only false note for me was the use of “The Lion King” as Obama’s birth video…but that’s only because it seemed to me a direct ripoff of The Daily Show’s use of “The Lion King” on August 28, 2008 during the Democratic convention in 2008, though in that case not for “birther” reasons.

The most memorable comment about Trump:

But all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. [laughter] For example — no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice — [laughter] — at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil’ Jon or Meatloaf. [Laughter.] You fired Gary Busey. [Laughter.] And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. [Laughter and applause.] Well handled, sir. [Laughter.] Well handled.

What’s really striking now, in hindsight, is that Obama made these comments even as the operation to capture or kill bin Laden was already underway, following the President’s go-ahead last Friday morning. Andrew Sullivan last night:

And the steadiness under pressure, well, let’s just say: The cat is cool. The poker face of the man has for the last few weeks been pretty damn impressive. Just because he’s calm doesn’t mean he isn’t lethal. And imagine what must have been going through his mind as he was getting closer and closer to this just as Donald Trump was doing performance art with a birth certificate.

I don’t like Pres. Obama on everything. I’ve been disappointed by a lot. But, y’know, mostly I think the stuff I’m disappointed about is because being President of the U.S. is, yes, a powerful office for any man (or, one day, woman) to hold, but it’s also an office that owns whoever holds it as much or even more than s/he owns it. The office of POTUS is one nexus, if a very powerful one, in a large & complex system, & there’s only so much that one person can do in that position even wielding such power.

So there’s much Obama has been unable to do. There’s been much he’s wanted to change that obstacles in the system have prevented him from changing. There’s realities he’s had to accept that I’m sure he wishes he didn’t have to. (As was interestingly acknowledged in his response to some of Seth Myers’ comments at the press dinner the other night.) And yet, how much he’s accomplished in spite of those obstacles. If one must have a president, he’s a damn good one. I’m so glad it’s him in this office, rather than one of these walking jokes that even the most “viable” of the Republican candidates — not to mention the last election’s losers — are proving to be.

Well handled, sir. Well handled.

Related posts:

1. On celebrating the death of bin Laden
2. President Obama on DADT
3. Alaska post-election blues

Hanging out with bloggers: Me with Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska and Janson Jones of Floridana Alaskiana at the Loussac Library on June 23, 2009 during public testimony at the Anchorage Assembly on AO-64, the Anchorage equal rights ordinance. This was the first time I met Phil or Janson; there are other bloggers I admire & respect — including Steve Aufrecht — who I "talk" with but have never yet had the chance to meet.

This past Tuesday, I was honored to be asked by Steve Aufrecht of the blog What Do I Know? to be a guest blogger for class he’s teaching on blogs and blogging.  Other guest bloggers for the class (to be held later today) include Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska, Kellie (aka Tea N Crumpet) of Stress Management and Other Things, and Peter Dunlap-Shohl of Frozen Grin and Off and On:  The Alaska Parkinson’s Blog.

Steve blogged about the class on Wednesday, in a post entitled “Hatching New Alaskan Bloggers” — whence comes the title of my own post.  The class he’s teaching is an offering of Olé! (Opportunities for Lifelong Education) — which is, as my coworker Barbara Armstrong wrote Wednesday at the UAA Justice Center blog, is a UAA community partner.  Olé describes itself at its website as

a IRS-recognized 501c3 nonprofit corporation created to give Anchorage adults a place to continue learning together.

It defines lifelong learning as,

an attitude embraced by people who find life continually interesting and engaging and who welcome opportunities to learn.  In later life, perhaps in retirement, lifelong learners are people who have developed such a penchant for learning that they simply can’t stop; the habit has served them too well.

I can get behind that.

Steve’s post about the class introduces five of the blogs created by his students:

Those who had already created a blog:

Dorothy had set up a blog Meanderings by Dorothy to write about some of her interests such as Tai Chi, contract bridge, and Anchorage Opera. It was very basic, but now she has  added pictures, has a hit counter, and has set up links in categories.

Joe’s blog, HodgePodgepourri,  focused on documenting family history and personal recollections, has been around a couple of years.  There’s an interesting series of tales, last November, of his childhood working in the “Buckingham Palace” a hotel his family owned in Indiana.

Ed  has a very focused blog, Building an Alaska Wilderness Sauna, on the family’s sauna at their cabin.  There are dramatic pictures of it burning down.  He’s recently put up a lot of step-by-step pictures of the rebuilding.

Michael had begun a WordPress blog, but wasn’t doing much with it.  Since the class began, he created a new blog, Reflections, to share his interest in philosophy and particularly the ideas in his book, The Reality of Being.

The last one for this post, is Lynne’s first ever blog, Koralling Genius. Lynne can’t actually see her blog, because she is blind.  But she can hear it.  And you can tell she has a lot of thoughts on how the world tends to dismiss people with disabilities.  I think this is a blog that will give people a view of the world they don’t usually hear.  And give her a platform where she can speak without being prejudged.

Check them out: good stuff, & great new additions to the Alaska blogosphere.

* * *

After I accepted Steve’s invitation, he sent me an email with some ideas I (& my fellow guest bloggers) might want to talk about:

1. Getting started blogging.
2. How much time a day do you spend
3. What they get out of it
4. Are you addicted?
5. What you’ve learned from blogging.

Those are good enough questions that I might answer them not only in the class, but here as well.  Just not in this post, since my lunchtime isn’t long enough!

I can, however, write a partial answer to question 1:  I’ve been blogging: off & on since 2003.  My first blog is even still hanging out on the Internet at http://www.henkimaa.blogga.nu/.  This blog was an extension of my first website at Henkimaa.nu (which is no longer online) and used what I’d now call rudimentary blog software offered through the .nu domain.  Some (but not all) of those posts have been moved over to my present blog site  — mostly those having to do with the visit of members of Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church to Anchorage during Pride 2003, which was in fact the topic of my very first blog post on June 20, 2003. (I removed posts from the blogga.nu blog as I moved them over, so they no longer show up at the original site.  I need to get around to moving the rest of them, too.)

In 2005, I started Henkimaa using Blogger software, & eventually had an assortment of blogs there devoted to different issues that were important to me: Terveys, from the Finnish word for health, Field of Words on writing, and Eyes Remain Open, which was supposed to be a photoblog.  Although those blogs are still live, I never blog there anymore: all their posts were copied over when I decided to change over to a self-hosted WordPress blog at my current side at Henkimaa.com.

(I still have a couple of private Blogger blogs too: one contains the frenetic thirty days of writing from my first National Novel Writing Month novel Cold in 2007— a work I’m still working on — and one between my ex-but-still-very-loved-partner, which we just talked today about moving over to WordPress.)

I also blogged during the summer of 2006 at a University of Alaska website dedicated to a UA employee fitness program called Start Walking, which encouraged employees to walk at least 10,000 steps (or perform equivalent exercise) ever day.  Those posts got moved over to my old Blogger Terveys site sometime later in 2006, & have been duly copied over to the current blog.

I currently blog at my own blog Henkimaa, as a contributor and coadministrator at Bent Alaska (Alaska’s LGBT blog) a, at the Alaska LGBT Community Survey, and without byline for my job at the UAA Justice Center blog. Some of my more politically oriented posts have also appeared (usually as crossposts) at Progressive Alaska, The Mudflats, Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis, Alaska Commons, and (before I became a regular contributor there) Bent Alaska.

My blogging history gives some idea of what I blog about: all kinds of stuff. As Steve told his students in introduction, “poetry, short story writing, personal reflections, and GLBT issues” — but also at various times Alaska politics, the justice system, depression & despair, insulin resistance & diabetes prevention, fitness & fat loss, and the incredibly true adventures of the Rev. Jerry Prevo.  Lately, I’ve been focusing on becoming (with limited success) somewhat less of a political blogger & more of a “I’m trying to do my own writing, dammit!” blogger, & also on “god stuff” & religion, which stems in one part out of a sporadic & difficult conversation with an important person in my life, in another with my lifelong interest in religion (which amongst other things earned me a B.A. in Religion), & in another with the endemic use of religious ideologies to batter LGBT people.

And now my lunchtime is over. Therefore, so is this blog post.

Related posts:

1. Chuffed
2. A word about our friends
3. Words for equality