Most of the blogging I’ve been doing these past few weeks — most of it, really, since opening up business at Henkimaa.com — has been about the Anchorage equal rights ordinance, which if passed would protect LGBT people from discrimination based solely on their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression in jobs, housing, financial practices, and Municipal practices. As you already know, those opposed to the proposed ordinance have come up with all manner of untenable arguments against it, which no matter how ridiculous & repetitive the Assembly has obligated itself to hear.

But this post isn’t actually about that. It’s about our friends.

I mean the nongay/nontrans allies who have stood up for us to testify for tolerance & equality with the Assembly, or have come out & joined in the sign-waving while the Assembly hearings have been going on, or have written letters to the editor or reader comments on the Anchorage Daily News website, or marched with us in last Saturday’s Pride parade, or given us their moral support in emails, on Facebook, on Twitter. Or all of the above.

Thank you. Thank you all.

I also want to add a special word to the Alaska progressive blogger community. They have been tremendous in three ways I can think of right off the top of my head:

A number of them have testified for the ordinance (Linda Kellen Biegel of Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis & Shannyn Moore come immediately to mind) and/or taken part in some of the other stuff listed above in support of our fight for equal rights.

Bunches of them have written about the ordinance on their blogs. Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis, Shannyn Moore, Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska; Gryphen of Immoral Minority; AKMuckraker of the Mudflats — to name but a few.  Heather James of SOSAnchorage.net and John Aronno also of SOSAnchorage.net (the good guys version) as well as Alaska Commons, both fairly new to the Alaska progressive blogosphere (as indeed I mainly am too) have been blogging almost wholly so far about the ordinance.  I can’t say how much the work of all these wonderful people has helped those of us bloggers — most prominently me & E. Ross of Bent Alaska — who as LGBT folks ourselves are most directly affected by this fight.  If it had only been us blogging about it, well, we’da been swamped. Not only  information-wise, but also in terms of morale. See my compilation post of last Thursday and my previous one of June 2 for just some of what all the Alaska progressive blogger community has been doing to help us in this battle for tolerance & equality.

They’ve continued meanwhile to do all the important work they do in service of the larger cause of governmental accountability in Alaska and the best interests of all Alaskans.  As important as the fight for LGBT equal rights is, these are important issues too. Please visit their blogs & support our friends in this important work.  Some of the stuff going on now:

• Linda Kellen Biegel at Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis is fundraising to collect the $5,552.64 fee required by the Palin Administration to be “transparent” — to release records of potentially questionable conversations between the Palin Administration with “preferred” members of the media — like rightwing radio host Eddie Burke and “Alaska Ear” gossip columnist Sheila Toomey.  See Linda’s FAQ about the fundraiser here — & spare her a few bucks.  What a high fee for Sarah Palin’s much-vaunted “transparency,” eh?
• AKMuckraker at the Mudflats (AKMuckraker) is passing on info from Emmonak, where Dennis Zaki is reporting on continued efforts to bring much-needed assistance to Yukon River villages suffering from the a crisis in the Yukon’s king salmon fishery.
• Phil Munger at Progressive Alaska is calling  for support of Linda’s & Dennis’s work, & also writing in-depth about the corruption & mismanagement that led to the crisis on the Y-K Delta in the first place.

Those are only a few of the things going on at these & other progressive blogs.  And I am so grateful that they are doing this work, so that I can both stay informed, & can also be freed to devote my own writing/reporting energies to the ordinance battle right here in Anchorage.

Last week when I was liveblogging the June 16 Assembly meeting, I went out during a break to see what was going on outside the Loussac Library.  I wrote,

Let me tell you, my people know how to have a great time!  My people being not just LGBT but also our fantastic allies….

Since then the feeling has only widened & expanded that my people includes our allies as much as it does members of the LGBT community “proper.”  Thank you, friends & allies, for your unwavering support of equality & economic & civil justice not only for us LGBT folks, but for all Alaskans.

Related posts:

1. Chuffed
2. Equality Works fundraiser
3. Words for equality

We fought the good fight, people, and we WON!

The lima beans of the state are dancing. And so, I bet, are Alaska Natives, women who’ve suffered from domestic abuse & other violence, and all of the friends and allies of all of us.

Who next will Palin nominate to continue her neverending circus?

Not much more I have time to add at this point, except:

Booyah!

More on the day’s events later, from home, when I have time.

Related posts:

1. Anti-WAR letter: Opposing Wayne Anthony Ross
2. Pro-WAR = anti-LAW
3. Jay Ramras: "We won't necessarily be coloring within the lines"

• Fairbanks Daily News-Miner — “Reject Ross: Nominee for top legal post is wrong man for the job” (April 16)

The ADN is doesn’t really like him, but is quite a bit more week-kneed:

• Anchorage Daily News — “Our view: Hurtful bigotry” (April 15)

Both base much of their argument on WAR’s antigay bigotry , with neither of them convinced that he can fairly act on the behalf of the LGBTQ* Alaskans.  That’s great — because we “lima beans” aren’t convinced, either.

But there’s plenty else to oppose him on too.

I’m interested to learn what the Juneau Empire might say.  After all, thanks to Palin’s refusal to abide by Alaska Statutes on the appointment of former state senator Kim Elton’s replacement, Juneau has been without representation in the Alaska Senate for quite awhile now — and Wayne Anthony Ross played an instrumental role in the latest iteration of Palin’s revolving-door fiasco.

My sympathies to the people of Juneau.  You deserve better.

So do the rest of us, also too. Step number one: reject Ross.

* LGBTQ: That’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, & queer, for those who aren’t quite so familiar with our alphabet soup.

Related posts:

1. Pro-WAR = anti-LAW
2. Jay Ramras: "We won't necessarily be coloring within the lines"
3. WAR's antigay letter to the Alaska Bar Association, 1993

This is the full PDF that was provided to Steve, which included Mr. Ross’ response to the creation of an ad hoc group called Lawyers Against Discrimination chaired by John Suddock. The group was formed to attempt to prevent repeal of an ordinance, which had recently passed in the Anchorage Assembly, that prohibited the Municipality of Anchorage and municipal contractors from employment discrimination on the basis of “sexual preference.”  It was a big messy battle in Anchorage in late 1992/early 1993 in Anchorage. The ordinance was ultimately repealed. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (or preference) remains legal in Anchorage, as in the rest of the state.

The attached Acrobat .pdf document is page 7 of the May-June 1993 of the Alaska Bar Rag, a publication of the Alaska Bar Association.  The content under the general heading of Anchorage debates gay rights ordinance includes:

• John Suddock’s announcement of the formation of Lawyers Against Discrimination;
• Wayne Anthony Ross’ responding letter (which starts with Mr. Ross sneering at the group’s acronym LAD), written on March 19, 1993; and
• a response to Mr. Ross’ letter by Jeffrey M. Feldman, a member of the group.

A portion of the page including only Mr. Ross’ letter was posted earlier today at Progressive Alaska; a commenter there asked someone for a PDF of the entire page including Mr. Feldman’s response — that’s what I’m responding to with this post.  (I saw a copy earlier at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, I think, but I can’t find it right now, so I’m just doing it  myself).

Please note that the page is wider than letter-size, so if you want to print it out, you’ll need to adjust your printer somehow.

Alaska Bar Rag, May-June 1993, page 7

Bent Alaska has posted a transcription of Mr. Ross’ letter (though not John Suddock’s or Jeffrey Feldman’s stuff, so read it in the PDF). Here’s what Mr. Ross had to say:

Dear LAD: (LAD??? Intentional, on your part? Or merely a Freudian slip?)

I received your letter of 23 February 1993 regarding the Anchorage homosexual rights ordinance. While I am not surprised to see some of the names on your letterhead, I am most disappointed in other names thereon. I had more respect for some of you than I do now.

I am in favor of repeal of the measure. I see nothing involving civil rights in this matter. We all, heterosexual or homosexual, have certain rights. This bill seems to give extra rights to a group whose lifestyle was a crime only a few years ago, and whose beliefs are certainly immoral in the eyes of anyone with some semblance of intelligence and moral character.

It is a shame that you folks don’t have some causes you could become involved in that are of benefit to society in general. Instead, you support degenerates. No wonder the legal profession is treated with less respect than we wish.

If, as you apparently believe, morality is not based on long-standing God-given and God-instilled principles, but is something that changes from time to time based on public perception of right and wrong, then that is even more reason for you to allow this referendum to go to a vote of the people. After all, isn’t it your position that public morality is based upon whatever the public decides?

None of you has done anything publicly (to my knowledge) to attempt to protect the millions of lives of innocent children killed each year through abortion, yet you collectively contribute $5,000 to the cause of sexual perversion. It is quite disheartening to me to see my fellow members of our honorable profession display such a lack of proper priorities.

Wayne Anthony Ross

Nowadays, instead of being immoral, degenerates, and alleged practitioners of sexual perversion, we’re just… well… lima beans. Which Wayne Anthony Ross hates.

Related posts:

1. Against discrimination in Anchorage
2. Alaska newspaper editorials against WAR
3. Pro-WAR = anti-LAW

This post, I’ll let Rena Delbridge of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner explain it:

Gov. Sarah Palin is not complying with state law to fill a Senate vacancy by submitting three names at once, according to a legal memo.

Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow told a reporter Tuesday that Wayne Anthony Ross, the governor’s recent appointment to attorney general, had checked off on her process.

Ross, who has not been confirmed by the Legislature, told Rhonda McBride, a KTUU reporter, that he approved Palin’s process.

In other words, a process which does not follow Alaska Statutes — in this case AS 15.40.320, 15.40.330, and 15.40.350 (see the legal opinion of Pam Finley of Legal Affairs, Alaska Legislative Affairs Agency) — was vetted & okayed by the guy who Palin wants to serve as the head of Alaska’s biggest law firm, the Alaska Department of Law.

I’ll say that again: the would-be head honcho attorney of the entire state said that a process which does not comply with Alaska law was a process that the governor was okay to follow.  What were those scores in the bar surveys on Ross’s legal competence, again?

Not that Ross apparently cares about following the rule of law to begin with, as I earlier discussed:

“It seems to me the most important thing that can be done by the Senate is not argue with legal or illegal but to appoint somebody to represent Juneau,” said Ross, whose own appointment is up for a confirmation vote by the Legislature tomorrow.

Enter Rep. Jay Ramras.  He’s a Republican state representative from Fairbanks who is also chair of the House Judiciary Committee.  Rep. Ramras presided last week over the House Judiciary hearings on whether or not to confirm Wayne Anthony Ross (aka WAR) to be Alaska’s Attorney General.  Here’s what he said today to the News-Miner:

“The murmurs around the building is that his confirmation is in jeopardy, but at this point I still intend to be a yes vote for him,” Ramras said.

“But I think this foretells the larger-than-life relationship that he is going to have with the governor and with the state,” he said. “We’re in for a colorful, bumpy ride. We won’t necessarily be coloring within the lines… There will be more of this to come.”

Pretty scary.  As I wrote in my reader comments on that story at the News-Miner website:

Representative Ramras: the lines you’re willing to stop “coloring within” here are the lines of Alaska state law. And yet you will vote for the appointment to be Alaska’s chief law enforcement officer, & head of its largest law firm, someone who thinks that legal vs. illegal is OPTIONAL?!!!

It’s disheartening to learn that the chair of the House Judiciary Committee seems to care no more about the rule of law than does the nominee himself.

Let’s hope the Legislature votes tomorrow in such a way that there won’t, in fact, be “more of this to come.”

But this is Alaska under Palinocracy.  So even if WAR goes down… there’s not too much doubt the circus will continue.

Update 7:25 PM: Andrew Halcro has an excellent analysis of the Juneau appointment fiasco.  Read it.

Related posts:

1. Pro-WAR = anti-LAW
2. Alaska newspaper editorials against WAR
3. WAR's antigay letter to the Alaska Bar Association, 1993

His middling scores on the Alaska Bar Association surveys when he applied for seats on the Alaska Supreme Court and Court of Appeals are not simply statistics, but indicative of the opinion those of his colleagues in the bar who have had direct professional experience with him have for his professional competence, integrity, fairness, judicial temperament, suitability for the position, and overall performance. Obviously candidates for Attorney General are not judged according to the same standards as used by the Alaska Judicial Council — but perhaps they should be.

Today WAR himself offers further proof, in his public statement about the current standoff between Sarah Palin and Democrats in the Alaska State Senate over the appointment of a state senator for Juneau. Shannyn Moore has a good summation of the order of events here: essentially, Palin is attempting to bypass Alaska Statutes in how the replacement for former state senator Kim Elton (who has gone to work for the Obama Administration in the Dept. of the Interior) should be appointed.

This morning, this announcement, as reported by Sean Cockerham in the Anchorage Daily News politics blog:

State Senate Democrats are refusing to vote on the three names that Gov. Sarah Palin forwarded as appointees for the open Senate seat. They obtained a legal opinion this morning saying it is illegal for Palin to submit more than one name.

“There is nothing for us to vote on, there is no appointment,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Hollis French, an Anchorage Democrat. “The governor has taken an unusual course which is outside the law and leaves us no choice but to ignore what she‘s done.”

(The legal opinion is here.)

Wayne Anthony Ross’ response:

“It seems to me the most important thing that can be done by the Senate is not argue with legal or illegal but to appoint somebody to represent Juneau,” said Ross, whose own appointment is up for a confirmation vote by the Legislature tomorrow.

Great. Palin’s Attorney General nominee doesn’t even care about the rule of law.

Not that she does, either.

Related posts:

1. Jay Ramras: "We won't necessarily be coloring within the lines"
2. Alaska newspaper editorials against WAR
3. Still trying to quash the Troopergate investigation

Update, April 15, 9:10 PM: Just discovered I had the spelling of a name wrong: it’s not “Paige Hodgson,” but “Paige Hodson.”  My apologies: I was going by ear only, & found an internet reference that “confirmed” my mistaken spelling.  Separate post about her coming in the next couple of days, regardless of what happens with WAR’s confirmation vote.

Dear Senator/Representative:

I am writing on my own behalf to express my opposition to Wayne Anthony Ross as Alaska Attorney General. Amongst other things, this letter provides substantiation for one of the claims made in public testimony by Paige Hodgson Hodson during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on April 8 about Mr. Ross’ opinions about domestic violence.

I oppose Mr. Ross’ confirmation on several grounds:

• His biased and even misogynistic attitudes with regard to domestic violence, sexual violence, and violence against women and children, about which I have more to say below.
• His antigay attitudes, as expressed in his calling lesbians and gays “degenerates” in a letter to the Alaska Bar Association in 1992. In his House Judiciary Committee testimony last week, he compared lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual/transgender Alaskans to “lima beans,” a vegetable he “hates” but would still “represent” if he was hired to be the advocate for “United Vegetable Growers.” His un-apt and tortured analogy brings no reassurance to those of us who have already suffered the brunt of his antigay slanders.
• His longstanding opposition to Alaska Native sovereignty and subsistence rights, about which representatives of the Alaska Native community have testified.
• His lackadaisical attitude with regard to possible ethical violations by the Governor, as shown in his replies to Rep. Jay Ramras’ questions on Friday in the House Judiciary Committee (regarding Gov. Palin’s wearing of Arctic Cat gear, regarding her possible book tour, regarding other ethics-related questions). As has been pointed out by others, part of the Attorney General’s job is to advise the Governor on questions of executive ethics. Mr. Ross’ answers indicate he will more likely simply turn a blind eye.
• His qualifications as a practitioner of law. His middling scores on the Alaska Bar Association surveys when he applied for seats on the Alaska Supreme Court and Court of Appeals are not simply statistics, but indicative of the opinion those of his colleagues in the bar who have had direct professional experience with him have for his professional competence, integrity, fairness, judicial temperament, suitability for the position, and overall performance. Obviously candidates for Attorney General are not judged according to the same standards as used by the Alaska Judicial Council — but perhaps they should be. In any event, his mediocre scores are instructive. Further evidence of Mr. Ross’ capabilities as an attorney — particularly, I would say, with regard to temperament, and hence his ability to work productively with others — can be found in last Wednesday’s public testimony by Vic Vitale, a retired attorney who reported having tried many cases against Mr. Ross. Mr. Vitale described Mr. Ross as “ill prepared in court,” “bombastic,” and “very rigid,” and said that in his experience Mr. Ross “doesn’t give credence to contrary arguments.” The picture which begins to emerge is that of someone who has closed his mind and does not permit contrary evidence to sway him. Is this the person who should be appointed to direct the state’s largest law firm?

I want now to go into further discussion of his views about violence against women and children.

By way of background, I am an 18-year staff member of the Justice Center at University of Alaska Anchorage, where I am responsible for the preparation and layout of research documents, including our quarterly, the Alaska Justice Forum (http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/forum/). I’m also responsible for the design and maintenance of the by-now extensive Justice Center website. As such, I am very familiar with the groundbreaking research conducted in recent years by the Justice Center’s Dr. André Rosay and his research partners on sexual violence and violence against women in Alaska (http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/vaw/index.html), and in fact helped to prepare most of the materials which Dr. Rosay presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he testified there on March 25 (http://uaajusticecenter.blogspot.com/2009/03/dr-rosay-presents-violence-against.html).

My familiarity with Dr. Rosay’s research findings made me all the more alarmed when I heard the testimony at last week’s Senate and House Judiciary Committee hearings on Mr. Ross’ appointment. I mean not only the public testimony of Leah Burton to the House Judiciary Committee on the statements about spousal rape and domestic violence which Mr. Ross is alleged to have made at a DADS group meeting in the early 1990s — testimony I personally find credible — but also the public testimony last week to the Senate Judiciary Committee of Paige Hodgson Hodson, who discussed comments made by Mr. Ross at a panel discussion a few years ago at University of Alaska Anchorage. According to Ms. Hodgson Hodson, Mr. Ross, who was one of the panel presenters, remarked that domestic abuse was on the rise because the equal rights movement “emasculated men” and caused them in turn to beat their wives. He further insinuated that women lied about domestic violence in order to gain advantage in child custody cases. On questioning by the committee, Ms. Hodgson Hodson stated that she had asked the university to set up the panel discussion, and that it was organized by Dr. Sharon Araji. Dr. Araji was at that time a sociology professor at UAA but has since joined the faculty of University of Colorado in Denver. In an attempt to verify the testimony, I wrote to Dr. Araji last week, and today received an email in reply, in which Dr. Araji wrote:

Yes, he was on the panel that was a community workshop. Andre [Rosay] and Pam [Kelley] are well aware of this workshop as [the] Justice [Center] also participated in it. I think it was Fall of 2005 — it was in conjunction with the PBS documentary “Breaking the Silence”. This was about children’s experiences when they were given to abusive parents in contested custody battles. I don’t remember what Wayne’s words were exactly, but his attitude was quite cavalier and placed the blame anywhere but on the abusive husbands/partners.

Research on the UAA website confirms that the event, cosponsored by the UAA Sociology Department and the Justice Center, was held on the UAA campus on October 14, 2005 in advance of KAKM’s broadcast of “Breaking the Silence: Children’s Stories” the following week. The event included a showing of the documentary, followed by a panel discussion and discussion with the audience. Justice Center faculty member Pamela Kelley, J.D. was among the panelists, along with Dr. Araji and Mr. Ross. I spoke with Professor Kelley this afternoon about the panel. Like Dr. Araji, she has no recollection of a specific remark by Mr. Ross about the equal rights movement “emasculating men,” but she indicated that Mr. Ross’ comments on the panel were much as both Paige Hodgson Hodson and Dr. Araji characterized them, “hook line and sinker” taking an extremist “dads’ rights” position that excused abusive men from any responsibility for domestic violence and abuse, and alleging that accusations of such crimes were generally fabricated in order to gain advantage in divorce or child custody battles — regardless of evidence to the contrary.

This should come as no surprise to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and others who heard Mr. Ross’ testimony last Wednesday, April 8, because many of his statements there echoed such opinions — for example, Mr. Ross contended that Office of Children’s Services workers, who are tasked with protecting children from abuse, are actually trying to remove children from families in order to “get money from the legislature” or that at least some people are accused of child abuse “just because they offended an OCS worker.” Of course there are men who prove to be innocent of charges of abuse and domestic and sexual violence brought against them. But Mr. Ross, who claimed in his testimony that “all my clients are innocent” (by implication, even those who were found guilty in court), appears to have a strong bias against even entertaining the possibility of guilt on the part of a husband, boyfriend, or father accused of these serious crimes, regardless of the evidence. Mr. Ross also showed considerable ignorance of the facts regarding sexual violence in the state — for example, that Alaska has the dubious distinction of having the highest rates of sexual assault in the nation. “I’ve heard that,” he told the committee, “and I have no way to verify if that’s correct.” (Committee members, of course, had received ample proof just two weeks before when Dr. Rosay presented UAA research to them.) Asked by Sen. Lesil McGuire “how you intend to tackle and educate yourself” about these issues, Mr. Ross evaded the question, telling the committee how after his few days on the job so far, he now knew “where the men’s room was” and was learning how to use the state email system, commenting that “learning new things” was part of the fun of the job. Once again the word “cavalier” comes to mind.

Is someone with such a proven bias qualified to take on the role of Alaska’s chief law enforcement officer, and head of the department charged with prosecuting these crimes? Research shows that less than 30 percent of founded cases of sexual violence cases reported to the Alaska State Troopers actually result in a conviction (http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/forum/25/1-2springsummer2008/b_attrition.html). Might we not expect conviction rates for founded cases to go down even further under an Attorney General who, biased to believe all the accused to be innocent regardless of evidence, might well pressure the district attorneys under his supervision to “pull their punches”?

Mr. Ross claims that he can fairly represent and protect the rights of all Alaskans, including all of those he has shown enmity, disregard, and contempt toward throughout his long career. I am not so confident.

I urge you to vote against Mr. Ross’ confirmation as Attorney General.

Sincerely,

Melissa S. Green

Updates

April 15, 11:30 PM

More about Paige Hodson: She was a founder of Alaska Moms for Custodial Justice and helped to gain passage in 2004, I believe, of a law which protects abused children from being placed in the custody of the abusive parent — which reportedly won unanimous passage in both houses of the Alaska Legislature.

My letter/blog has now been excerpted or reprinted in full at:

• Think Alaska (excerpt)
• Bent Alaska
• Progressive Alaska

It was also quoted in the story “Temperament” by Krestia DeGeorge, Anchorage Press, April 15, 2009.

Related posts:

1. Jay Ramras: "We won't necessarily be coloring within the lines"
2. Pro-WAR = anti-LAW
3. WAR goes down! 23 yeas, 35 nays!

Crowberry: another indigenous Alaskan (i.e., North American) species. This one isn't yet ripe.

Much though I appreciate the Glycemic Index Newsletter, & all the GI people behind it, I wish they would be a little less lax about their inaccuracy about how many species of berry are native to the North American continent, which I reported a few days ago.

They say there are only three berries native to the U.S.: wild blueberry, cranberry, & Concord grape. And of course the only wild blueberries they recognized were the ones that grow in the northeast U.S. and eastern Canada. Never mind the blueberries that grow in the alpine tundra of such places as, say, the Chugach Mountains of Alaska just outside Anchorage, where I live.

I wrote them a comment about this inaccuracy, & someone else suggested that the GI Group test the GI of the “new” berries I mentioned.

To which I replied:

Well, I wouldn’t expect them to GI test every berry native to North America. The point I want to make is simply that their statement that Wild blueberries are one of three berries native to North America – the others are cranberry and Concord grapes. is wildly inaccurate — there are many more indigenous species of plants with berries, including edible berries, than that.

I will mention also that there is a wild blueberry which grows in alpine tundra in the Chugach Mountains right here in Alaska that is probably different than the blueberry species mentioned in the article. Given that these blueberries have that same blue pigment, & so do Montana huckleberries (& no doubt other species of huckleberries native to other parts of North America), and so do crowberries, they are also probably really beneficial.

Which is good, because we like to go up into the mountains in the fall & pick them.

A couple of days passed, & finally the GI Group answered:

Thanks for all the information on berries — we will try and make use of it in our next berry story. We really appreciate your taking the time to share your knowledge and post your comments.

This is nice, I suppose… but in the story itself, they are permitting the inaccuracy to stand.

Or might they run a correction in their May issue? Here’s hoping.

Related posts:

1. Say what….?
2. Low GI in the diet
3. Anti-WAR letter: Opposing Wayne Anthony Ross

A night shot of highbush cranberry -- an indigenous Alaskan (i.e., North American) species.

I finally got around to reading the April issue of the Glycemic Index Newsletter.

But I was pretty astounded to read, in an otherwise excellent article about how wonderful blueberries are (yes they are!), the following statement:

Wild blueberries are one of three berries native to North America – the others are cranberry and Concord grapes.

Huh? You really believe there are only three berries native to the whole North American continent?

I commented:

Excuse me, but there are lots more berries native to North America than just the three you name. I grew up picking wild huckleberries in Montana with my family (Vaccinium globulare and Vaccinium membranaceum), and in Alaska where I live now there are numerous berry species that aren’t mentioned here — highbush cranberry, lowbush cranberry, watermelon berry (AKA twisted stalk), salmonberry, timberberry, crowberry… to name but a few. All of these are edible.

(Note that lowbush cranberry & highbush cranberry are not the same species as those growing in the eastern U.S., or that are popularly associated with the cranberry sauce eaten with U.S. Thanksgiving dinner.)

Come to think of it, the species of blueberry which grows in the alpine tundra in the Chugach Mountains is probably also different from the species mentioned in the article.

And probably have a lot of the same benefits. I bet my childhood huckleberries do too.

Related posts:

1. Berry inaccurate
2. GI Newsletter for March
3. Learning what works