Mel the reluctant political blogger is going to Netroots Nation after all — on full scholarship through the LGBT Netroots Connect initiative. Wanna know what I said on my scholarship application? Then read this post.

I wasn’t going to go.  I didn’t want to go.  When I ran into Shannyn Moore at the Bear Tooth back in February, and she suggested I apply for a Democracy for America scholarship to Netroots Nation, I told her that since I was trying to steer myself toward my writing — which feeds my spirit in a way that political blogging does not — I didn’t actually want to go to Netroots Nation.  I directed the energy I might have used to fill out a scholarship application toward instead writing a post in support of the candidacy of my friend John Aronno of Alaska Commons — and, because he’s such a great ally of LGBT Alaskans, I asked Bent Alaska readers to support him, too. (And I’m happy to say that John won an NN scholarship in Round 1 of the competition. Shannyn is also going to NN.)

All of that was before I became as deeply involved with Bent Alaska as I now am: a coadministrator and behind-the-scenes geek, as well as an ongoing contributor.

So at the beginning of May, when Jeanne Devon of The Mudflats (aka AKMuckraker) wrote to me about an “interesting opportunity,” I went for it. Yeah, I decided.  I do want to go.

The opportunity she put me onto was for a full or partial scholarship under a new Netroots Nation initiative, LGBT Netroots Connect, which — well, let the mailer tell the story —

For the past three years, an activist named Mike Rogers has taken it upon himself to organize LGBT bloggers, organizations and their allies at Netroots Nation. His efforts have been so successful that we’re making it an official part of our program—a new initiative called Netroots Connect.

Netroots Connect will bring small groups of progressives together for a day of strategizing around a particular issue. We believe the conversations that happen here will lead to the next generation of organizing efforts for key progressive issues.

And most importantly, we want you to be a part of it. You can apply to be part of this special strategy day for LGBT bloggers, organizations and allies, which will take place June 15.

Click here to apply for a spot.

The program also features some budget for full or partial scholarships to attend Netroots Nation in an effort to make sure the LGBT community is fully represented at the conference.

The day-long event will bring together those with a stake in a strong LGBT movement—bloggers, key activists and representatives from various LGBT organizations—for a daylong session designed to help form greater strategic alliances within the movement.

As of this writing, the “Click here to apply for a spot” link still takes you to the application form I filled out.  But don’t bother filling it out — the deadline was May 6.  But feel free to take a look, if you’re interested in the kinds of questions I was asked.

This scholarship didn’t have a public “support your candidate” component like the Democracy for America competition John & Shannyn were in, but I did keep a record of my most important answers. So I’ll supply those to you too.

Write a tweet: Who are you and why should you be at Netroots Nation?

I’m a writer, poet, & deep thinker who aims to educate & persuade with fact & opinion expressed with reason, clarity, passion, & respect.

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.

In 50 words or less, what do you hope to bring to Netroots Nation as a participant?

I bring my perspective: I’m ambivalent about being a “political blogger” because politics, commonly understood, tends to be about political parties, ideologies, who’s got the most votes. I want a deeper democracy, in which every person has right of participation in any decision affecting her/his life and work.

Blogging/Online Qualification * Scholarship recipients must be a regular blogger with an average of 5 posts per week or engaged as an online activist for 10 or more hours per week.

•    I blog 5 times per week on average for the past 4 months.
•    Other: I’m principle investigator of the Anchorage LGBT Discrimination Survey (in progress); we plan also to conduct a statewide LGBT community survey.

Website names/address(s)

www.henkimaa.com
www.bentalaska.com
alaskacommunity.org

Do you work for an organization or company working in the on-line arena? Tell us a bit about your experience and the work you currently do.

I’m a 20-year staff member of the Justice Center at University of Alaska Anchorage, where I’m a publication specialist and web manager responsible for our large research-oriented website and online and social internet activities. justice.uaa.alaska.edu

In 50 words or less, what issues do you focus on and what issues would you like to learn more about.

I’m eclectic. I write about writing, my life, health and mental health, the justice system, politics, religion, philosophy. Politically, my most important focus, especially on Bent Alaska, is LGBTQ equality. I’m especially interested in unlocking the lock rightwing Christianist ideologues have on religious discussion of LGBTQ people and issues.

Three links * Please enter three blog post links you would like to include in your application. (Important: Do not worry about design issues at all, this is about original content.)

http://www.bentalaska.com/2011/03/harm-at-the-center/
http://www.henkimaa.com/2009/09/03/no-debbie-title-vii/
http://www.henkimaa.com/2009/05/29/prevos-devil-masks/

[I also thought about these links, but opted for the 3 above. Actually, I thought about a whole buncha other links too, but opted for the 3 above.]

http://www.henkimaa.com/2009/05/22/prevos-red-herrings/
http://www.bentalaska.com/2011/01/anchorage%E2%80%99s-lgbt-discrimination-survey/

Here’s your chance…. Anything you want to share that is not covered above? This is the place.

I’ve accomplished some important work in Alaska toward LGBTQ equality, including blogging about the 2009 “Summer of Hate” in Anchorage regarding a sexual orientation/gender identity equal rights ordinance. I’m also known here for some of my in-depth posts on Sarah Palin, Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan, and efforts by rightwingers to overturn provisions of Alaska’s constitution on judicial selection and retention, among other “political” posts.

But by 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 . That’s how I live my daily workaday life, and it’s also how I blog.  Thus, I write about all sorts of stuff that I care ranging from day-to-day trivia to philosophical ponderings to the well-researched and documented political.  I think it’s important to fight the political fights we fight, but it’s also important to live the lives those political fights are about — and to reflect our lives, with integrity, in how and what we write.

And so, this past Sunday night I got the word: I was in.

Mel the reluctant political blogger with Brian the Moose at the True Diversity Dinner, September 2009. Photo by Jeanne Devon (AKMuckraker) of The Mudflats.

I did inform a few people — notably Jeanne Devon, who told me about it in the first place, and my co-admin at Bent Alaska, E. Ross, and my fellow members of the newly created Bent Alaska News Team — but didn’t get around to writing a post about it until now because, well, I’ve been busy writing other blog posts. Oh yeah, and doing some of that writing that I told Shannyn Moore back in February I wanted to do instead of any of this political blogging.

Besides, I also wanted to get my travel arrangements in place.  I did that today, with the help of the very activist whose efforts over the past few years led to the LGBT Netroots Connect, Mike Rogers.  Turns out that this is the Mike Rogers who’s the managing director of Raw Story — and a really cool guy who’s looking forward to get an Alaska LGBT blogger down at Netroots so he can grill me about… well, you know which famous Alaskan he wants to grill me about.

Now I really want to go.

You’ll be hearing more about Netroots Nation on both Henkimaa and Bent Alaska over the next few weeks, especially when I’m right there in Minneapolis: one of my obligations as a scholarship recipient is to write at least two 125+ word blog posts per day over the course of the conference.

(125 words? Ha! Think I could possibly ever right a blog post shorter than 125 words?)

Meantime, I want to thank Shannyn for thinking of me back in February, Jeanne for thinking of me back earlier this month, Mike Rogers, for deciding he’d like to meet me in Minneapolis on June 15, and E. Ross, who founded Bent Alaska in March 2008 and single-handedly made it the single most important source of news and information for LGBTQ Alaskans and their friends and allies.

(She really should be going to Netroots Nation herself,  but unfortunately has other obligations.)

Related posts:

1. Help John Aronno of Alaska Commons go to Netroots Nation
2. Prepping for Netroots Nation — #nn11 #nn11lgbt
3. The Daily Tweets 2011-06-03: The Netroots Nation 11 mobile phone app is just as cool as bow ties

Summer 1978, Columbia Falls, Montana. I was 19 years old, back at home after my freshman year in college, working at the local aluminum reduction plant to earn money toward the following year’s tuition — and trying to figure out if I really was, as I had started figuring out back at college, a lesbian. I had no one to talk with about it — no friends I could trust with this stuff…and family? — family was even scarier. Nowhere to get any information, either — there were no blogs, no YouTube, no Internet at all.

I did, finally, locate in a used bookstore in Kalispell (our county seat) a copy of the feminist anthology Sisterhood is Powerful (1970), which included two essays by lesbians. One of them was by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, founders of the first lesbian rights organization in the U.S., Daughters of Bilitis, and authors of the landmark book Lesbian/Woman (1972). I can’t remember who wrote the other one.

Those two essays were all the information I had — that, and the information from my own heart — upon which to base the decision of whether to accept myself as a lesbian or not.

But they made a difference, maybe even the difference that helped keep me from giving up. While I didn’t think of it at the time, these women — Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon, and the author whose name I don’t remember — were lesbian elders, teaching me, a lesbian youth, that it was okay to be me, okay for me to love myself, and that as hard as things were for me at the time, they would get better. And they did.

Fast forward to September 2010 and the birth of the It Gets Better Project. We wrote about it then: after a rash of suicides by gay kids who had been bullied and harassed by their peers, Savage Love columnist Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller made a YouTube video to let LGBT kids know that however tough their teenage years, please hold on: it will get better. Two months later, there were over 10,000 videos giving kids that message, and the numbers continue to grow.

Thing is, not every kid has access to YouTube. And so Dan Savage and Terry Miller have now compiled a book: about 100 selected accounts from the It Gets Better Project, now in print as It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living, published just last week. I downloaded a copy into my Kindle for iPhone app last Thursday.

In his introduction to the book, Dan Savage eloquently expresses the frustration a lot of us LGBT adults have had as we were forced to stand idly by while homophobic parents, ministers, teachers, and kids battered the hell out of the bodies and spirits of LGBT youth:

The culture used to offer this deal to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people: You’re ours to torture until you’re eighteen. You will be bullied and tormented at school, at home, at church — until you’re eighteen. Then, you can do what you want. You can come out, you can move away, and maybe, if the damage we’ve done isn’t too severe, you can recover and build a life for yourself. There’s just one thing you can’t do after you turn eighteen: You can’t talk to the kids we’re still torturing, the LGBT teenagers being assaulted emotionally, physically, and spiritually in the same cities, schools, and churches you escaped from. And if you do attempt to talk to the kids we’re still torturing, we’ll impugn your motives, we’ll accuse you of being a pedophile or pederast, we’ll claim you’re trying to recruit children into “the gay lifestyle.”

That was the old order and it fell apart when the It Gets Better Project went viral. Suddenly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender adults all over the world — all over the world — were speaking to LGBT youth. We weren’t waiting for permission anymore. We found our voices.

The project, of course, cannot solve all the problems of anti-LGBT bullying in school — much less the self-hatred fostered by homophobic preachers and their believers who are, all too often, the family members and “friends” of trans, bi, gay, and lesbian kids. Dan Savage acknowledged as much in his introduction, and also in an interview last week with the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

There are kids in situations of extreme isolation, where all we can do is put the message in a bottle and throw it to the sea and give them hope for the future.

But sometimes that message in a bottle makes all the difference — as it did for me. And so this story, which Savage told to NPR’s Terri Gross last week on “Fresh Air” —

Forty percent of homeless teenagers are LGBT kids who were thrown out after they came out or were outed. And you know, a huge problem, something that makes the bullying of gay youth very different from the bullying of other kids – and other kids are bullied – is that often the families are active participants in the bullying.

You know, LGBT kids are four times likelier to attempt suicide. If their families reject them or are hostile, they’re eight times likelier. And this girl wrote to say that she’s 15, she tried to come out. Her parents freaked out, threatened to throw her out of the house, threatened to not let her see her siblings anymore, not pay for her education.

And so she went back in the closet and told them that she made a mistake, that she was just a tomboy and was confused and thought that meant she had to be a lesbian when she grew up but that she was wrong.

And she wrote me to tell me that she was watching the videos, and they were really helping her be strong and filling her with hope that her family could come around, because a lot of the videos, and now the essays in the book, are by people who had – whose families had similar reactions and then came around and are now supportive.

And she wrote to tell me that the videos were keeping her sane and she was watching them in her room at night, under the covers, on her iPad. And so that one email for me really captures the reach and power of this project, that LGBT adults are able to talk to this girl and give her hope for her future and for her family, give her hope that her family will heal, and talk to her whether her parents want us to or not.

Buy the book: for yourself, for your kids’ school library, for your church or other faith organization. You can also contribute to the It Gets Better Project’s effort to get copies of the book into every high school library in the country.

Here’s Dan Savage and Terry Miller’s video about the book:

P.S. I’m happy to say that my family turned out to be not quite as scary as I thought they were in the summer of 1978. I love them all.

Related posts:

1. Coming out
2. Anchorage & LGBT: if those words apply to you, we need your help
3. An LGBT rundown of the election

Today the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee is hearing testimony on Senate Bill 11, the the Alaska Hate Crimes Act, “An Act relating to the commission of a crime when the defendant directed the conduct constituting the crime at the victim based on the victim’s race, sex, color, creed, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, ancestry, or national origin” [click for full text].

Jim Minnery of Alaska Family Council at a public hearing on the Anchorage equal rights ordinance AO-64, 7 July 2009

In spite of the fact that the bill addresses hate crimes based on a number of personal characteristics, the factually incorrect “action alert” sent by Jim Minnery of Alaska Family Council to his supporters yesterday focused exclusively on sexual orientation and gender identity.  As John Aronno of the Alaska Commons noted this morning in his debunking of Minnery’s alert, “nothing seems to get [Minnery's] soul patch flaring like ‘the gay.’”  (John’s piece has also been crossposted it at Bent Alaska.)  Indeed, the only opposition I’ve heard about regarding this bill is based on antigay/antitrans sentiments.

But the Alaska Hate Crimes Act isn’t only about LGBT Alaskans.  It’s about all Alaskans.  So while my letter in support of SB11 brought up a bunch of stats about the violence  lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transfolk have experience just for being who we are, let’s not forget the paintball attacks on Alaska Natives in Anchorage just a few short years ago, or the two Anchorage youth who thought it was cool  to post on YouTube their assault on an Alaska Native man in summer 2009 — a “summer of hate” not only because of the hate directed at LGBT folks in Anchorage during the public hearings on AO-64.  Let’s not forget the other ways in which violent crime is directed at some people based simply on the color of their skin, what religion they practice, their sex, their national origin, their physical or mental disabilities.  Hate: just for being who you are.

Given the inaccuracies being propounded by Minnery and his followers & allies, I thought I’d present some of the facts about what the bill actually says and what it will actually do if passed, before presenting the email I sent today in support of the bill.

What the Act says:

SENATE BILL NO. 11
“An Act relating to the commission of a crime when the defendant directed the conduct constituting the crime at the victim based on the victim’s race, sex, color, creed, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, ancestry, or national origin.”

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA:

* Section 1. AS 11.76 is amended by adding a new section to read:
Sec. 11.76.150. Motivation by prejudice, bias, or hatred. (a) A person commits the crime of motivation by prejudice, bias, or hatred if the person commits a crime in this title and the person knowingly directed the conduct constituting the crime at the victim of the crime because of the victim’s race, sex, color, creed, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, ancestry, or national origin.(b) In this section, “gender identity” means actual or perceived gender-related
characteristics.
(c) Motivation by prejudice, bias, or hatred is a
(1) class A misdemeanor if the crime committed is a class B misdemeanor;
(2) class C felony if the crime committed is a class A misdemeanor;
(3) class B felony if the crime committed is a class C felony;
(4) class A felony if the crime committed is a class B felony;
(5) unclassified felony and the defendant shall be sentenced to a definite term of imprisonment of at least five years but not more than 99 years if the crime committed is a class A felony.

* Sec. 2. AS 12.55.155(c)(22) is amended to read:
(22) the defendant knowingly directed the conduct constituting the offense at a victim because of that person’s race, sex, color, creed, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, ancestry, or national origin; in this paragraph, “gender identity” means actual or perceived gender-related characteristics;

What the Act will do

From the sponsor statement of Senator Bettye Davis (the bill’s co-sponsors are Senators Hollis French and Johnny Ellis):

This bill increases the sentencing for crimes motivated prejudice, bias, or hatred based on the victim’s race, sex, color, creed, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, ancestry, or national origin. This new crime can only be committed when a person commits some underlying crime and the person directed the conduct constituting the crime at the victim due to one of the listed characteristics of the victim. The new crime increases the classification of the underlying crime one level.

Without creating a new list of “hate crimes” under AS 11.76, new Sec. 11.76.150 simply reclassifies the level of any crime up one notch if motivated by prejudice, bias, or hatred based on the victim’s race, sex, color, creed, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, ancestry, or national origin. For example, a class B misdemeanor becomes a class A misdemeanor; a class A misdemeanor becomes a C felony; a class C felony becomes a B felony, etc. Such reclassification, of course, increases the penalties appropriate to the classification in sentencing under AS 12.55. The bill also amends AS 55.155(c)(22), an aggravating factor as sentencing for felonies, by adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the list of protected characteristics.

The need for this bill is demonstrated by increasing reports of violence against homeless persons, minorities, religious groups, and others motivated by prejudice, bias, and hatred in Alaska and across the country in our highly diverse and multicultural society. When crimes are committed because of people’s differences, the effects reverberate beyond a single victim or group into an entire community, city, state, and society as a whole. While this bill alone cannot eliminate prejudice, bias, or hatred, it will send a message that Alaskans will not tolerate hate crimes in any form, and sentencing for them will be substantially increased.

From the sectional summary by Legislative Counsel Gerald P. Luckhaupt, Division of Legal and Research Services, Alaska Legislative Affairs Agency:

Section 1. This new crime can only be committed when a person commits some underlying crime and the person directed the conduct constituting the crime at the victim due to one of the listed characteristics of the victim. The new crime increases the classification of the underlying crime one level.

Section 2. Amends AS 55.155(c)(22), an aggravating factor at sentencing for felonies, by adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the list of protected characteristics.

My letter today to the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee

Senator Hollis French
Senator Bill Wielechowski
Senator Joe Paskvan
Senator Lesil McGuire
Senator John Coghill
Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee

Dear Senators:

I’m writing in support of Senate Bill 11, “An Act relating to the commission of a crime when the defendant directed the conduct constituting the crime at the victim based on the victim’s race, sex, color, creed, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, ancestry, or national origin.”

In the 1980s, I was part of two major research efforts conducted by Identity, Inc. to document sexual orientation bias in Alaska. One in 10: A Profile of Alaska’s Lesbian & Gay Community, published in 1986, reported on the results of a statewide survey of 734 lesbian, gay, and bisexual Alaskans on a wide range of issues, including experience of discrimination, harassment, and violence. Identity Reports: Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska, published in 1989, comprised three papers including “Prima Facie,” which documented 84 actual cases (from personal interviews and documentary evidence) of violence, harassment, and discrimination due to sexual orientation bias. (Copies of both reports are available on the Internet at http://www.henkimaa.com/identity/.)

Of the 734 respondents to One in 10, 61% reported being victimized by violence and harassment while in Alaska because of their sexual orientation. This ranged from verbal abuse/harassment, reported by 58%, to physical violence, 11%, and sexual assault, 5%. In the “Prima Facie” component of Identity Reports, we documented 25 cases of verbal abuse, harassment, or threats; 10 cases involving actual physical violence (including 4 assaults, 3 murders, 2 sexual assaults involving multiple assailants, and one attempted sexual assault); 3 cases involving property damage; one smoke-bombing; and one tear-gassing.

We are working now to update the research of One in Ten and Identity Reports through the Anchorage LGBT Discrimination Survey, currently in progress, and a projected statewide Alaska LGBT Statewide Community Survey, which will cover a wide range of questions beside those on discrimination/bias. Unlike the studies in the 1980s, the current research includes gender identity as well as sexual orientation — an important distinction, as transgender persons are arguably victimized by violent crime at even higher rates than lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. For example, 7 percent of the 6,436 respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (which included Alaskans) reported being physically assaulted at work because of being transgender or gender non-conforming, 6 percent reported being sexually assaulted at work for that reason. In schools, 31 percent were harassed and bullied, 5 percent were physically assaulted, and 3 percent were sexually assaulted by teachers and staff because of their gender identity or presentation.

For these reasons, I’m pleased that the bill’s language includes both sexual orientation and gender identity. But I’m also in support of the bill for its inclusion of race, sex, color, creed, physical or mental disability, ancestry, and national origin. Along with other Alaskans, I was appalled and upset by the paintball attacks on Alaska Natives that took place in Anchorage a few years ago, or the more recent You-Tubed bias-motivated attack on an Alaska Native man in Anchorage in summer 2009. I’ve also read minutes of the Senate Judiciary’s February 16 meeting, and especially remember the testimony of Kate Burkhart, Executive Director of the Alaska Mental Health Board, that the Department of Justice has found people with a disability to 2 to 3 times more likely to be victimized by violent crime than other people.

Virtually all the opposition I’ve heard to this bill so far has come from those who opposition rests solely on its inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity. Yesterday, Jim Minnery of the Alaska Family Council sent out an action alert that claimed, among other things, that “A person who assaults a homosexual will be given a harsher penalty than if that same assault was perpetrated on, for example, an elderly person.” I considered whether Mr. Minnery would claim to his members that, “A person who assaults a mentally disabled person will be given a harsher penalty than if that same assault was perpetrated on, for example, an elderly person” — or substitute any other word that covers people whose personal characteristics would be covered by this act: Christian, Muslim, Alaska Native, Caucasian. Mr. Minnery also falsely claimed that passage of this bill would result in antigay speech itself being treated as a hate crime (in notable contrast to SB11 supporter Jeffrey Mittman of the Alaska ACLU’s efforts to ensure that the bill’s language steer clear of language that might subject it to constitutional “free speech” challenges). Other logical inconsistencies of Mr. Minnery’s action alert were persuasively debunked by John Aronno on the blog the Alaska Commons last night.

I hope that testimony and emails from Mr. Minnery’s supporters based on poor and even dishonest reasoning will not dissuade members of the Senate Judiciary Committee from acting positively on this important legislation.

Thank you for your consideration.
Melissa S. Green
Anchorage, Alaska

Related posts:

1. Against discrimination in Anchorage
2. My letter to the Anchorage Assembly
3. My letter to Mayor Sullivan: Please let AO 64 stand

….yawwwwwnnnn….

I couldn’t find a photo of me actually yawning, but here’s one where I look sleepy and have my mouth open, so it’ll have to do:

I do have an excuse.

From their Minority Report precog pool, the precogs may be heard to be crying out, “That’s what they all say!” All the same, it’s true: I’ve been busy.

There’s my day job, of course.  That always prevents me from becoming a full-time pajama-clad blogger.

But also, as announced on January 30, I’ve taken on the role of co-administrator (as well as ongoing contributor), on Bent Alaska, Alaska’s LGBTA blog. In the past few weeks, this has meant moving Bent from its former platform on Blogger to WordPress, starting up a Facebook page to supplement Bent’s (more private) Facebook profile, and joining Bent to the Twitterverse as @bentalaska.  On top of that, my co-admin, E. Ross, has been out of town for the past month, and so all posting to Bent for the past several weeks has fallen to me, as was the case last November just before my own trip to Australia.  I’ll tell you, the amount of work involved in just staying up-to-date on news, events, and other stuff in or of interest to the LGBTA community is pretty much a full-time job in itself, much less actually writing posts about all of it — I congratulate E. Ross on all she’s done to keep Bent Alaska going all by herself these past three years.

Besides posting for Bent (all posts for the past month have physically been posted by me, regardless of actual authorship), I’ve also written a few posts there, some of which I do not crosspost here at Henkimaa. The interested can find them here.  Most recently, I’ve written about the Anchorage LGBT Discrimination Survey (published originally as an op-ed for the Anchorage Press), a Fairbanks fundraiser for gay cabbie injured in an assault, the death two weeks ago of PFLAG’s Chuck O’Connell, and the consideration by the University of Alaska Board of Regents — and ultimately the passage last week — of a policy prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation on all University of Alaska campuses.

On the writing side of things, I’m still making it my business to head over every Saturday to Side Street Espresso, which has been my favorite writing venue since 1994.  We’ve lately been joined regularly by my writing buddy Rob, who I met through the past couple years of NaNoWriMo, and his non-writerly-but-nonetheless-very-cool wife Karen.  We’ve also been making it over to a new writing venue for me — the Sugarspoon — which has lots of tasty desserts that I never eat because I’m prediabetic, but also has great quiche, great coffee, great free WiFi, and great hours (Tuesday-Sunday, 11 AM — 11 PM) that are well-suited to the writerly crowd.  That’s also where the Anchorage Write Club (@AKwriteclub) & the local NaNoWriMo group (@AnchorageNaNo) have lately been meeting to cafe-write together every Tuesday late-afternoon/evening.

And what have I been writing? Well, up until the last couple of weeks, not a heckuva lot, really.  What I’ve been doing instead is using a great new (to me) program called Scrivener to get my writing stuff sorted out.  Fellow NaNoer Abby told me about Scrivener at the tail end of NaNovember.  I visited Scrivener’s website — or rather, the company’s website, called Literature & Latte — where Scrivener is described as

a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents.

Well, what could be longer and more difficult than the last four years of chaos — including passages of narrative spanning three centuries-plus of timeline; on-the-fly background notes & invention of a complex story universe; research notes; & occasional whinging about houseflies (mostly in 2009) — that I’ve written in my Cold/Long Dark story universe over the course of the last four years during & between NaNoWriMo’s?

So in early December, just before hopping aboard Delta 2223 for the first of my four flights between Anchorage & Brisbane, I bought & downloaded Scrivener to my desktop & laptop computers (both downloads on the same generous license!), & even started going through its well-designed tutorial during a few cafe-writing sessions with my BrizVegan friend Sian.  I finally completed the tutorial on my return, & spent most of my writing sessions on my return getting all my Cold/Long Dark material in order.  Let me tell you: Scrivener is all that it’s cracked up to be — & then some.  I intend (“They all say that!” cry the precogs) to put together a longer review of this magnificent application soon.

And then — yes.  I began to write again.  At the moment, I’m working on material from a storyline called “Arrest” featuring Louava Solà, who came to Earth as a “data trader” at a Consensus embassy in Vancouver (B.C.) after a childhood & youth at an orbital station around the Saturn’s moon Titan. Whaddaya reckon?

(Meantime, a story finished in the wee hours of November 1 featuring Esti Gusev, born in a really yucky Martian religious community, has been accepted for publication, but I’m constrained to be pretty mysterious about it otherwise.)

(It occurs to me that I seem to have pretty good luck with stuff completed on November 1.)

I anticipate being taken away from writing “my” stuff, at least somewhat, by upcoming work on the Anchorage LGBT Discrimination Survey. Scrivener should come in handy for that, too.  Important stuff… but I can’t help feeling ambivalent, given how good it feels to be running around in a science fiction universe again.

If I had time to write more Henkimaa posts, what would I write? Well, actually, I intend (“They all —!” — there’s those damn precogs again, STFU!) to actually write some.  There’s uploading my Australia pics & writing about my trip.  There’s stuff I’ve been thinking about restorative justice, partly in relation to the Anthony Rollins case.  And I’m still thinking a lot (& still thinking a lot about writing about) the form of governance I learned about last year, sociocracy, which amongst other things has helped me to better understand the governance of my fictional Cold/Long Dark society called the Consensus.  And I want to write more about writing & what I’m writing about.  And then I have a friend who’s saying, could you post more of your poems, please?

I’ll see what I can do.

But that’s what I’ve been doing.

Related posts:

1. About "Cold"
2. October plans
3. Momentum through Mystery

A friend who has spoken with Sen. Lisa Murkowski told me that she’d directly said to him, “We’re going to fight for your issues.”

But as shown in comments broadcast last night on Anchorage’s CBS affiliate, KTVA Channel 11 ( previewed at the Think Progress’s The Wonk Room earlier in the day [Ref #1]), the closest she’s able to come in public to saying what she said privately to my friend is more along the lines of, “I’m not going to fight you on your issues.”

And clearly she sees them as “our issues” — not her own.  Equality under the law for the homosexual community (the term she uses; transfolk are not mentioned) does not seem, in her eyes, to be the same as plain and simple equality under the law for all citizens.

So I caution people not to characterize Sen. Murkowski’s comments last night to KTVA Channel 11′s Matt Felling as “support” for repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Her actual words were, “I would not oppose the Defense Authorization bill because Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the repeal of it, is included within it.” It’s not just semantics: to not oppose is not the same as to support. A person can not oppose, for example, by abstaining.

But when it comes to votes in Congress… well, I suppose that’s better than a “no” vote.

Below is the video from KTVA Channel 11 News. Matthew Felling introduced the segment referring to the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is “thinking about bringing to a vote.” Repeal of DADT is part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Senate authorization of NDAA was halted on September 21 by a Republican filibuster led by antigay former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain. [Ref #2] Sen. Murwkowski was not present at the vote — the only senator not present — because she was campaigning in Alaska. [Ref #3] Sen. Murkowski has previously indicated that her decision on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was partially dependent on results of the Pentagon’s comprehensive report on DADT.  The Pentagon review is due for release in early December, but portions have already been leaked to the press.

A transcript of Sen. Murkowski’s comments (corrected from the somewhat loose transcript at KTVA’s site) are below the video. [Ref #4]

Video: “Murkowski “I Would Not Oppose… DADT Repeal”

Matthew Felling:

You have been waiting to hear from them, and they have said — at least according to the polls that are out there, that have been leaked — they’re okay with it. Procedural behind the scenes things [notwithstanding]… are you more likely to vote for a bill saying “I hear them. And if they’re okay with it, I’m okay with it?”

Sen. Murkowski:

And I have said that I would work to make sure that as long as it is supported by the troops, as long as it doesn’t hurt the performance or the morale, or the recruitment — these are all things that we want to take into consideration — I think we will see that play out in this report. If in fact Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is included in the Defense Authorization and we get to the point where we can move that bill through — I would not oppose the Defense Authorization bill because Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the repeal of it, is included within it. I have made the statement to others, that we are at a different point in time, if you will. There is, more clearly, a level of acceptance in our communities, at all levels of supporting and providing for that level of equality to the homosexual community. And I think that’s important to recognize that.

Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (an independent, formerly a Democrat) announced yesterday during a press conference flanked by 12 Democrats that he was confident there were enough votes to repeal DADT, and named Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine and Richard Lugar of Indiana as “yes” votes on NDAA and repeal of DADT. [Ref #5] The Washington Blade reported that another Republican, Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, would also vote to repeal DADT. [Ref #6] So if Sen. Murkowski is good on her word, it seems that there are at least four Republican senators willing to cross party lines to repeal DADT… if only, in Murkowski’s case, because “a level of acceptance in our communities… for that level of equality” has been reached.

Make sure to let her know that equality under the law for LGBT citizens, including LGBT servicemembers, is important to you:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski
202-224-6665 (DC)
877-829-6030 (toll free)

or write:

The Honorable Lisa Murkowski
709 Hart Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

And be sure to also call Sen. Mark Begich to thank him and encourage him in his ongoing support for equality:

Sen. Mark Begich
202-224-3004 (DC)
877-501-6275 (toll free)

One good source of recent news on repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

Support LGBT servicemembers.  Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Recent DADT posts

I have recently become an ongoing contributor to Alaska’s most important LGBT blog, Bent Alaska.  Here’s a list of recent stories on DADT both on Bent Alaska and my own blog, Henkimaa:

• 11/4/10.  “President Obama on DADT” (Henkimaa).  Crossposted on Bent Alaska.
• 11/11/10. “Honoring LGBT veterans, and a Veteran’s Day message from Alaskans Together” (Bent Alaska).
• 11/11/10. “LGBT veterans and DADT: True stories from I’m from Driftwood (Bent Alaska).
• 11/15/10. “URGENT: Call Sens. Begich and Murkowski on DADT now!” (Bent Alaska).
• 11/15/10. “Murkowski & DADT: Turn up the heat” (Henkimaa).
• 11/19/10.  “DADT: Murkowski, update from HRC, and Maddow & the Daily Show take down McCain” (Bent Alaska).

References

1. 11/18/10. “Sen. Lisa Murkowski Tells Local TV She Will Vote For Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal” by Igor Volsky (The Wonk Room, Think Progress).
2. 9/22/10. “Senate halts ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ repeal” by Ted Barrett and Dana Bash (CNN).
3. 9/21/10. “Murkowski misses vote on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’” by Joshua Saul (Alaska Dispatch).
4. 11/18/10. “Murkowski “I Would Not Oppose… DADT Repeal” by Matt Felling (KTVA Channel 11 News).
5. 11/18/10. “Lieberman on DADT: We Have 60″ by Kerry Eleveld (The Advocate).
6. 11/18/10. “Sen. Ensign to support ‘Don’t Ask’ repeal: source” by Chris Johnson (Washington Blade).

Related posts:

1. Murkowski & DADT: Turn up the heat
2. Pentagon’s DADT report to be released today
3. President Obama on DADT

Transcript courtesy Queerty (I’ve filled in some of the gaps that they missed):

I’ve been a strong believer in the notion that if somebody is willing to serve in our military, in uniform, putting their lives on the line for our security, that they should not be prevented from doing so because of their sexual orientation. And since there’s been a lot of discussion of polls over the past 48 hours, I think it’s worth noting that the overwhelming majority of Americans feel the same way. It’s the right thing to do.

Now, as commander-in-chief, I’ve said that making this change needs to be done in an orderly fashion, and I’ve worked with the Pentagon, worked with Secretary Gates, worked with Admiral Mullen, to make sure that we are looking at this in a systematic way that maintains good order and discipline, but that we need to change this policy. There’s going to be a review that comes out at the beginning of the month that will have surveyed attitudes and opinions within the armed forces. I will expect that Secretary of Defense Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen will have something to say about that review. I will look at it very carefully, but that will give us time to act, potentially during the lame duck session to change this policy.

Keep in mind, we’ve got a bunch of court cases that are out there as well, and something that would be very disruptive to good order and discipline and unit cohesion is if we’ve got this issue bouncing around in the courts as it already has over the last several weeks, where the Pentagon and the chain of command doesn’t know at any given time what rules they’re working under. We need to provide certainty. And it’s time for us to move this policy forward. This should not be a partisan issue. This is an issue as I’ve said where you’ve got a sizable portion of the American people squarely behind the notion that folks who are willing to serve on our behalf should be treated fairly and equally.

Update

Steve Benet of the Washington Monthly writes,

Given the make-up of the next Congress, policymakers will have just one more chance to clear the way for repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy — and it will come during the lame-duck Senate session that begins in two weeks. If the effort fails, it will be at least two years, and probably more, before anyone can even try again.

DADT’s fate in December will depend largely upon whether at least two Republicans will be willing to vote for its repeal. Writes Benet,

In about a month’s time, a majority of the troops, a majority of American civilians, a majority of the House, a majority of the Senate, the Commander in Chief, the Secretary of Defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and two of his recent predecessors will all be saying the exact same thing: it’s time to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

And in all likelihood, it’ll be up to Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine to decide whether the repeal effort lives or dies.

Related posts:

1. Murkowski & DADT: Turn up the heat
2. The Daily Tweets 2010-12-30: DADT report
3. Murkowski: “I will not oppose the Defense Authorization bill if DADT repeal is part of it”

The election is finally over.

Or… not quite. With 432 out of 438 precincts reporting, the front-runner in the hotly contested U.S. Senate race is “Write-in Votes” with 41.0% of the vote — nearly 7 points ahead of Tea Party-leaning Republican candidate Joe Miller (34.2%). Democratic candidate Scott McAdams, who consistently polled with the best “favorables” — i.e., people liked him better than either Murkowski or Miller — nonetheless drew only 23.74% of the vote counted so far.

Most of the write-in votes were presumably cast in favor of Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski — but it’ll be a couple of weeks before the Division of Elections will finish counting the actual write-in ballots, not to mention more than 31,200 absentee ballots. And then, it’s likely that at least some of the write-in votes will get tied up in litigation. The Anchorage Daily News reports that lawyers are already on their way up to assist Joe Miller’s campaign in a battle over the numbers. So it will be some time before we’ll know if Sen. Murkowski really beat the math and historical precedence to become the first in Alaska, and only the second in U.S. Senate history since Strom Thurmond in 1954, to win an election as a write-in candidate.

Late breaking: The Division of Elections has now announced it’ll begin counting write-in ballots on November 10.

Other statewide races didn’t bring much change. Gov. Sean Parnell will remain governor (though he’ll have a new lieutenant governor, Mead Treadwell) and Congressman Don Young will remain a Congressman. We thank Democratic candidates Ethan Berkowitz (governor), Diane Benson (lieutenant governor), and Harry Crawford (Congress) for their efforts to give Alaskans an alternative.

Arguably the other most important race to LGBT Alaskans statewide was the retention election of Alaska Supreme Court Justice Dana Fabe, who was targeted for defeat by Alaska Family Action, the political action arm of the antigay/anti-choice organization Alaska Family Council. Funded largely by Outside money from the national antigay organization Focus on the Family, Alaska Family Council sent out huge mailings in the last two weeks before the election on Justice Fabe’s involvement in Alaska Supreme Court rulings on abortion, benefits for the same-sex partners of state workers, and similar issues, often mischaracterizing her role in these decisions. Fortunately, friends of Justice Fabe countered with a website giving voters the true facts on her record, and in one of the bright spots of the election Justice Fabe retained her seat on the bench. It was a close call, though: she finished with 53.3 percent of the vote, versus 46.7 percent voting to unseat her.

An analysis of all Alaska races is beyond the scope of this article. For complete election results, see the Alaska Division of Elections and coverage in the Anchorage Daily News, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Juneau Empire, and other news sources.

There was both good news and bad news for LGBT folks nationally. On the positive side, a record number of openly LGBT candidates won public office, including at least 106 of the 164 candidates endorsed by the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund. Among the winners: Representatives Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Barney Frank (D-MA), and Jared Polis (D-CO) won reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives; David Cicilline (D-RI), the openly gay mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, will join them in Congress in the new year. Jim Gray was elected mayor of Lexington, Kentucky. LGBT candidates will take office in legislatures in Ohio, North Carolina, Washington, Maryland, and California. Victoria Kolakowski was elected to the Superior Court of Alameda County, California, becoming the first openly transgender judge in the U.S.

On the other hand, three justices of the Iowa Supreme Court were voted out of office after a major campaign by national antigay activists, who targeted the justices — David Backer, Michael Streit, and Chief Justice Marsha Ternus — because of the unanimous Iowa court’s decision in 2009 legalizing same-sex marriage in the state. Over $700,000 was spent to oust the justices in a campaign reminiscent of Alaska Family Action’s unsuccessful campaign to unseat Justice Dana Fabe.

Republican victories in the election were enough to give Republicans a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, while Democrats continue to hold a majority — if a smaller one — in the Senate. It’s unclear how the change of power will affect LGBT-related measures like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) or the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT). Talking Points Memo reports that Log Cabin Republicans think they might be able to line up enough Republican votes to repeal DADT in the lame duck session in December (but see TPM’s reader comments for a lot of skepticism).

Pundits and commentators are already busy trying to explain what it all means. We’ll have a bit of that here too, as we have time.

Meanwhile, you can see my less… errr… formal response to the election at Henkimaa.

Related posts:

1. Election night Tweets 2010-11-02: Alas, poor Yorick, we now foster hope write-in voters spell’d abhorr’d Murkowski’s name right. Our gorges rise.
2. Nosedive v. “hold your nose” v. Scott McAdams
3. Scott McAdams: The clear choice for LGBTA Alaskans

“Sismo de magnitud 7,3 sacudió a Haití” — photo taken 12 Jan 2010 by Globovision. Used in accordance with Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic license.

• RT: @JanFlora49: RT @spacetrucker: Sarah Palin given a job @ Fox “News” 2 help struggling late night comedy shows with unending material. #
• Follow Wednesday? Sure, why not: follow @celticdiva for best info/links on helping quake victims in Haiti. #fb #
• FiveThirtyEight gives history of U.S. relationship to Haiti. http://bit.ly/71GOFC #
• Firedoglake’s liveblogging of Prop 8 Trial, Day 3 (Wednesday morning) http://bit.ly/82J8mP #
• A better link to Teddy Partridge’s liveblogging of Prop 8 @ Firedoglake: all posts collected here. http://bit.ly/7mCxtH #
• RT: @adn_jomalley: Does technology bring loved ones closer, or does it create more distance? // Closer, since none of them live w/ me now. #
• Pat Robertson: Haiti “swore pact to devil” to be free of French, thus “cursed.” Christianism ugh http://bit.ly/5L650b (ht @shannynmoore) #fb #
• Donate to American Red Cross http://www.redcross.org/ for Haitian earthquake relief. #fb #
• Damn. Fire drill. Signing off. #fb #
• Returned from fire alarm. “Duct alarm” rather. (wtf?) Nothing exploded. #fb #
• FBI: Haitian Earthquake Relief Fraud Alert http://bit.ly/89rdVE – Please retweet. #Haiti #HelpHaiti (ht @celticdiva) #
• Helping Haiti means helping, not blaming it stupidly as lackwit Pat Robertson does — again. http://bit.ly/7nQm05 #haiti #helphaiti #
• An intelligent _Christian_ (& conservative Christian at that) response to Pat Robertson’s “devil” comment on Haiti. http://bit.ly/7ztC6h #fb #
• RT: @jansonjones: Call it a day. I’m heading home. Bleh. // Didn’t you already call “it” a day yesterday? (Hope you get good rest @ home!) #
• @jansonjones A balloon boy? “It’s a day.” Except that was one of those several weeks ago its, wasn’t it? (Wasn’t _it_? “It’s a day.) in reply to jansonjones #
• Pat Robertson: Haiti?! I Thought They Said “Hades” http://bit.ly/8T3eyW (satire – but no doubt PR will have a real lame-ass apology soon.) #
• CNN.com: Wyclef Jean helping through ‘Yéle Haiti’ http://bit.ly/5m7N4A – donate at http://www.yele.org/ #ffb #
• Bent Alaska summarizes days 2 & 3 of Prop 8 trial: homophobia and the fear of transparency. http://bit.ly/84lOOT #

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets, 2010-01-15: Haiti relief efforts
2. Helping Haiti (& telling Pat Robertson to STFU)
3. The Daily Tweets, 2010-02-01: Buzzcuttedness

And so I begin the new year by coming out of a period of silence.

A silence, to be sure, less profound than the one I inhabited this time last year.  And for different reasons.  In the last month or so, mainly I’ve just needed a break.

1. The cave

But on New Year’s Day 2009, I was living in a kind of emotional cave, with no desire or wherewithal to communicate with anyone outside my day-to-day life except immediate family.  Especially my dad, who I’d learned just a couple of weeks before had been diagnosed with a terminal lymphoma. That news came on top of stuff I’d already been struggling with for some months, after my then-partner, Rozz who is now Ptery, made the decision while in school in Seattle to transition as a female-to-male (FTM) transsexual, & made accompanying decisions that have essentially ended our partnership as-it-was.

Thus, the cave, about which I wrote on April 2, a few days after coming out of it,

I seem to be have come out of the cave now. Not just feeling better — I’ve felt better a number of times (only to then go back into the grey again) — but actually able & willing to communicate. Maybe it was that I’m finally accepting the inevitable with my partner. Maybe it was finally getting the plane tickets bought to fly down in late April to see my dad. Maybe it was taking enough 5-HTP to keep the serotonin cooking in my brain. Maybe it’s the light coming into the days after a looooooong winter. Maybe it’s all just been perimenopause. Anyway… seems I’m back in the world again.

Now, before I go on, let me explain: this post isn’t just about the history of what I did or experienced in 2009: it’s also about what it meant.  Or, better yet, the meanings I’ve made of it — because that’s what it’s all about, for me — the story, the stories each of us make of our lives.  And this is my blog, of course, so this is my damn story.

And the story of coming out of the cave also has these meanings attached to it:

(1) The cave itself became a new term, describing a new form, of that rather large aspect of my life popularly known as depression (or, sometimes, despair): along with the grey, along with the pit, along with limbo — all of which are described in my late 2006 post The grey — the newly-discovered environment of the cave can include any one of the first three, or exclude all of them; it is chiefly characterized by that deep inability & lack of motivation to communicate.  Big whooptie, a new term — but I do find the language useful in understanding myself around this stuff.  Since, hey, halfway through my life give-or-take, I don’t see the depression/despair gunk suddenly evaporating from my life.  It’s a part of who I am.  I’m just lots better at handling it than before, & part of that is in refining my understanding of how it works in me.

(2) If I were to mark the exact date the cave walls dissolved around me, it would probably be March 30, 2009, which coincided with some important phone calls with Ptery, & also with my brother Mark & I buying our tickets to Spokane to see our dad for what we both understood would probably be the last time this side of our own deaths.  And also on that day, I wrote a lengthy post in memorial to Nicholas Hughes, a fisheries biologist formerly at University of Alaska Fairbanks who had taken his own life the previous week.  I hadn’t known him, but he was the son of the poets Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes, & Plath especially had been an significant figure in my life.  Not for the right reasons, initially — but the post explains that: it was my effort to honor Mr. Hughes not as mere adjunct to his famous parents’ biographies — as many of the news accounts of his death seemed to view him — but for who he himself was & for what he brought to all the people in his life, who were mourning him that day.

(3) My dad knew I’d been having a hard time. He was at peace with his own approaching death, & wanted us to be too.  But beyond that, he wanted our happiness.  He was so glad when he heard I’d come out of the cave.  That was one of the very best things about it.

2. Lima beans against WAR

Wow, after the Summer of Hate experienced by the Anchorage LGBT & allied community over Anchorage Ordinance 2009-64, one almost forgets its political prelude, when then-Gov. Sarah Palin named Wayne Anthony Ross — widely known by his license-plate acronym as WAR — to succeed the disgraced Talis Colberg as Alaska’s Attorney General.  Alaska’s top LGBT blog Bent Alaska informs us that its post about WAR, “Palin’s AG Pick Called Gays “Degenerates” (3/29/09), was one of its two 2009 posts to go viral — & that was even before he compared gays to lima beans, a vegetable that he “hates” but still claimed he could represent if he were, say, the lawyer for “United Vegetable Growers.”  We lima beans were, needless to say, not favorably impressed.

Ross also had a history of biased & even misogynistic attitudes in relation to domestic violence, sexual assault, & violence against women; hostility to Alaska Native sovereignty & subsistence rights; a mediocre reputation as a practitioner of law amongst his fellow members of the Alaska Bar Association; & a pretty shaky attitude about executive branch ethics.  Bad news all around: it motivated me to spend a considerable amount of time & energy researching him, listening to legislative confirmation hearings, & writing a very long letter to legislators, which I posted on my blog — thus embarking upon a part-time career as an occasional political blogger.  I wrote a few other posts about WAR, & commented on other sites’ coverage of him (especially Bent Alaska), & celebrated with most of the rest of Alaska when the Alaska Legislature rejected him by a vote of 23 yeas to 35 nays — an unprecedented rejection of a governor’s cabinet pick.

It took a day or two for the Alaska Department of Law to remove WAR from its website. This screenshot was taken on April 16. The red X is mine.

3. Dad

I flew to Spokane with my brother Mark in late April to visit Dad.  We also saw my sister Mer & brother-in-law Julius, with whom my Dad lived, and my brother Dave drove over from Montana.  Ptery hitchhiked up, at my request, so I got to see him too.

Dad was so happy to have all of us there. He had a lot of energy too, considering how ill he was; but near the end, as we began to return to our homes, he took a turn for the worse, as if he’d been holding to life so that he could see us all before he left us to be with Mom.  She had died in November 2005.

I took this picture during that trip: Dad telling one of his wonderful stories about growing up in the lumber camps of eastern Oregon in the 1920s where Grandpa Claude ran locomotives on the Sumpter Valley Railroad for the Oregon Lumber Company; or about the bootleg operation he & his pals in the Army Air Corps had in England during WWII; or about how he met my mom when he was looking for a job, & guy at Ellingson Lumber Company suggested he head to Izee because the camp cook there had two beautiful daughters. It was the younger of the two daughters, my Auntie Pat, who actually introduced my parents after Dad gave her a ride into John Day, where Mom was then working.

That photo on the wall behind Dad was his favorite picture of Mom, taken by a professional photographer shortly before they met. When I look at this photo, I feel his yearning to be with her again.

I last saw him on April 29.  He died not quite a month later, on May 27.  My sister was with him.

I’ve been at peace about Dad’s death almost from the beginning, partly because the peace he himself had about it put me at peace, & partly because of what for lack of better words I will call the messages that came, three of them — two of them to other family members, & the last one to me. My message was from my mother, in the form of sunflowers.  It told me that Dad was with her, & they are both okay.

On July 12, as many family members as could make it, including me & my sister & brothers, all gathered together in Spokane to remember Mom & Dad & to celebrate all that they gave us.

I love you, Mom & Dad.

4. Anchorage Ordinance 2009-64

The Anchorage equal rights ordinance AO 2009-64 was introduced in the Anchorage Assembly on May 12, & thus was my career as an occasional political blogger made much less occasional.

AO 64 would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of personal characteristics in Title 5, Anchorage’s equal rights code, which prohibits discrimination based on those characteristics in employment, housing, financial practices, education, and practices of the Municipality of Anchorage. 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 Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple, who used “perverted” and other hate-terms to describe LGBT people, hence the name given the summer by commentator at the Anchorage Press: the Summer of Hate.

Identity Reports (1989) and One in 10 (1986)

From May to September, I wrote in the area of 60 posts about the ordinance, including a number that delved into the background & prevarications of its most vociferous opponent, Jerry Prevo.  I also testified in support of the ordinance on June 16 ( the second of five nights of public testimony). My testimony was based on two major research efforts in the 1980s for Identity, Inc. in which we documented the rampant discrimination in Anchorage & in Alaska based on sexual orientation. (Our research unfortunately did not cover discrimination on the basis of gender identity, which we knew little about at the time.)

The ordinance passed the Anchorage Assembly on August 11, 2009, but was vetoed the following week by Mayor Dan Sullivan — the third time in Anchorage history that equal protection for at least some LGBTQ people in Anchorage was first granted, & then stripped away again.

We weren’t real happy.

5. Friends & allies

The Summer of Hate wasn’t all hate & horror.  There was also some really cool stuff.

Cool stuff was people like Vic Fischer, Jane Angvik, & Arliss Sturgulewski testifying for the ordinance — people with just a teensy bit more credibility than, say, self-declared homophobic Bible-thumping Nazi “rascist” Eddie Burke.

Cool stuff was the huge number of people who turned out on the lawn of the Loussac Library to dance, blow bubbles, & hold signs upholding equal rights for all. The second week of public testimony, on which testimony was heard on two successive nights (June 16-17), was also the run-up to PrideFest, & every time I stepped out of the Assembly chambers for a breather, I felt like PrideFest was already in progress (once, that is, I got past the ABT redshirts & their hot dog tables).

I remember going out there one day & seeing how everyone — members of the LGBT community, & lots of non-LGBT folks including my nephew Miles & some of his friends — was celebrating equality & love for their fellow human beings, as sour-faced, red-shirted opponents stood nearby with their preprinted “Truth is Not Hate” signs agitating against equality.  I thought to myself, I’m so proud of my people — & I found myself for the first time consciously including in my people not just other LGBT people, but all the numerous non-LGBT allies who took it for granted that equality meant all of us.  And were as dumbfounded as we were at the “Truth is Not Hate” hate speech dropping out of the mouths of red-shirts both inside & outside the Assembly chambers.

On a personal level, I was lucky to make some new friendships.  John & Heather Aronno, both now of Alaska Commons, who I met a few days before the first public hearing, became my favorite folks to sit next to at Assembly public hearings: three bloggers, all in a row.

One of my other favorite new people was (& is) Janson Jones, whose fantastic photography at Floridana Alaskiana v2.5 (including of the ordinance battle) first drew my attention. He’s also an all-around cool guy who also became a new dad over the summer — & his photos of his precious daughter Aurelia are pretty wonderful too.

Thanks to the ordinance battle, I also got reaquainted with a friend from way back, Linda Kellen Biegel of Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis, who I hadn’t seen in years. I’d known Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska through email, but not until this summer did I meet him in person. I’ve known M.E. Rider of Grrlzlist, E. Ross of Bent Alaska, & longtime activist (& maker of Equality Works buttons) Stef Gingrich for years, though it was only through the summer that we saw much of each other, since normally — yes, true story — I’m pretty much a hermit.

It was the ordinance that brought me out, for ill & for good. Despite the ordinance’s eventual fate — for me personally, thanks to people like these, it was mostly for good.

6. Palinesque

Somewhere in the middle of this was Sarah Palin’s announcement on July 3 that she would be resigning her position as Governor of Alaska.  I don’t blog that much about Palin — there are other Alaska bloggers who cover her quite thoroughly (thank goodness!) — but within a few days after her announcement, I got fed up with how the national mainstream media was uncritically passing along what I dubbed the 2 million dollar meme: Palin’s claim that $2,000,000 taxpayer (or rather, oil revenue dollars — this is Alaska, after all) had been spent on responding to ethical complaints against her. So I started taking it apart, & continued to do so over at total of six blog posts.

Wow did that raise traffic on my blog. I got nearly 1,800 hits on the first post of the series the first day after it was published; to date it’s gotten 5,530 hits, making it the most read post on my blog.  The pie chart I created for that post also proved to be pretty popular.

My stuff didn’t stop Palin from repeating her lie; but then, who expected that it would?  I’m no fool.  I just hoped the damn mainstream media would wake up & do the job they’re paid to do — so that bloggers like me wouldn’t have to do it for free. I am proud to say that my efforts, which Anchorage Daily News reporter Sean Cockerham picked up on, contributed to Linda Perez of the Governor’s Office being forced to admit there were errors in the hokey spreadsheet the Governor’s Office had cooked up in an incompetent attempt to back up Gov. Palinocchio’s claim.  Cockerham’s story (posted, as far as I know, only on the ADN’s Politics blog, but not as a full-fledged ADN story) said that Perez was going to follow up on further questions he’d brought up — I’ve seen no sign that she ever did, or that ADN itself cared.  I didn’t follow up further myself because by time Perez ‘fessed up as much as she did, I was in Spokane with my family remembering my mom & dad.  I have a feeling everyone who had actual responsibility (because, of course, they were more than mere “community organizers”) decided to drop it.  Gee. I wonder why.

7. I got a new couch

More properly, it’s a futon loveseat. Whatever.  I got it in August, & I’ve been vegging more happily (when I vege) ever since.  My cat loves it too.

8. An effort to up-end the Alaska Judicial Council

Other things were going on in my life too, of course.  But the political stuff stands out, because political blogging is not my great purpose in life — writing my own stuff is. And yet, I kept doing it.

And so it happens that in late August I learned of a lawsuit by which certain Alaska conservatives, most if not all of whom have ties to the so-called right-to-life movement, had filed suit nearly two months before — a fact not covered at all by Alaska’s mainstream media in spite of all of them having received the press release when the suit was filed — which would, if successful, overturn major provisions of the Alaska Constitution with regard to the selection & retention of state court judges. The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, James Bopp, Jr., is a big name: he has litigated similar issues elsewhere.  My own feeling is that this guy is more likely to have shopped around for the Alaskans who could be named as plaintiffs in this case, than that the plaintiffs shopped around for him.  His agenda appears to be a nationwide effort to politicize judicial selection, so that candidates can be selected through popular vote based on litmus test questions on hot-button issues (“What is your opinion on abortion?” — “What is your opinion on same-sex marriage?”), instead of being selected for their judicial integrity & knowledge of the law.

Through my job on staff of the Justice Center at University of Alaska Anchorage, which I’ve held since 1990, I’d become very familiar with Alaska’s judicial merit selection process, & have a lot of respect for it too, & for the quality of judges we have in this state.  Not perfect — but a helluva lot better than in states that have the politicized & often politically corrupt types of selection processes that Bopp seems to prefer.

So, I read about Miller v. Carpeneti, & I wrote about it, & I even took a day off work to attend the hearing before Judge John W. Sedwick in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska on September 11.   I’m not a lawyer, but I read through most of the briefings, & it didn’t seem to me that Bopp’s arguments held much water.  Judge Sedwick apparently agreed: he heard arguments from both sides & then dismissed the case. His opinion was published on September 15.

But we haven’t heard the last from Mr. Bopp: he’s appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and, last I heard, the last briefs in the case must be filed no later than February 10, 2010. Oral arguments might then follow.  If Bopp fails at the Ninth Circuit, there’s every possibility he might appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court — he’s argued before them before, & won.

Meanwhile, I continue to wonder what in hell is wrong with the Alaska mainstream media, including our supposed paper-of-record, the Anchorage Daily News. First they all failed to follow up any further on Palin’s spreadsheet-of-hooey in support of her 2 million dollar meme-of-hooey; now it turns out they sat for nearly two months on a press release issued in early July about a lawsuit that could theoretically undermine our state constitution with regard to judicial selection.  Phil Munger at Progressive Alaska has drawn attention to numerous other instances in which the press has sat on its duff instead of investigating & reporting stuff that in some cases is right in front of their faces — for instance, the numerous lies propounded throughout Palin’s putative “memoir,” which the ADN has yet to write any review on.  What else are they sitting on?  How are we to have democracy that way, if the MSM isn’t doing its job?

Oh yeah, I remember now.  Bloggers like me are supposed to do that job nowadays.  In our spare time.  For free.

(All due respect to those reporters who as far as I can tell are doing their best to do their job — but are being shut down by management. I know you guys are out there.)

9. True Diversity Dinner

In the aftermath of Sullivan’s veto of AO 64, several of us bloggers who had been heavily involved in writing about it started talking about what we might do keep the flame alive.  Several of us met at lunchtime one day, & out of someone’s suggestion — I don’t remember whose — next thing you know, the True Diversity Dinner was born.  Its immediate impetus was that the upcoming Mayor’s Diversity Dinner, an event originally created during the administration of Mayor, now Senator, Mark Begich, had been renamed Mayor’s Unity Dinner by Mayor Dan Sullivan — the same guy who had just vetoed equal rights for Anchorage’s lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transfolk.

Instead of protesting, we decided to celebrate the rich diversity that the Mayor’s renaming of the dinner seemed designed to whitewash away. The True Diversity Dinner was our alternative, with the motto, “Because we all deserve a seat at the table.”  It was organized by the bloggers of Alaska Commons, Anchorage Won’t Discriminate, Bent Alaska, Floridana Alaskiana v2.5, Grrlzlist Alaska, Henkimaa, and SOSanchorage.net — but especially by John & Heather Aronno (Alaska Commons & SOSAnchorage.net), who I fear fell far behind in their studies thanks to the dinner.

But it was well worth it, right guys?  It was a tremendous event, with great speakers including my Assembly person Elvi Gray-Jackson, former Congressional candidate & longtime activist for Alaska Native rights Diane Benson, Rev. Marquita Pierre of the Center for Spiritual Healing, & radio host & blogger Shannyn Moore.

On top of that, I was honored to be the recipient of a True Diversity Award for Excellence in Online Media for coverage on my blog of the battle for the Anchorage equal rights ordinance.  Booyah!

10. Hilton workers

And more occasional politics.

When the True Diversity Dinner was first thought up, I hadn’t known that Mayor Sullivan’s Unity Dinner was booked for the Hilton Anchorage Hotel — which was (& still is) under boycott by its workers due to the bad faith practices of its management on orders of the Hilton’s owners, Kentucky-based Columbia Sussex Corporation.  A blog post by Shannyn Moore brought my attention to the fact that the Mayor’s Unity Dinner was also a union-busting dinner. I spent some time researching & writing about the labor dispute, & also attended the Hotel Workers Rising March from the Sheraton (which is now also under boycott due to similar management abuses of workers) to the Hilton two days after the True Diversity Dinner was held.

11. But I’m really about writing my own stuff, & that’s what I need to do now

I’d like to follow up on the hotel workers struggle, both at the Hilton & now the Sheraton.  I hope someone will.  But I can’t.  Here’s the deal.  There are people on this planet, there are people in this state, who thrive on political blogging, & what’s more excel at it.  I think I’m pretty damn good at it when I’m doing it — but I don’t thrive on it.  I start with enthusiasm, but over time… I wear down, my spirit flags, & pretty soon it winds right back into what I started this post with: depression & despair.

Midyear, in the post in which I claimed to be an occasional political blogger, I wrote,

The main reason I set up this site & blog was to help me get back into the flow of writing, of living my life as a writer.  And while writing about politics is writing — well, it’s not my writing, the stuff close to my heart.  Besides, I also work a full-time job.

Besides, sometimes the political stuff can really whack me out….

Another factor about how I handle political posts is that my style isn’t really amenable to fast-response writing, which is a feature of a lot of the best political bloggers I read.  But me, I like to think a lot about what I’m writing.  I like to go deep.  I like to be thorough & as comprehensive as I can.  I like to source all my references thoroughly.  I like — apparently — to write term papers.  (I sure never thought so when I was in college).  And that takes a long time.  Especially since, as previously mentioned, I work a full-time job.  And I also need a certain amount of down time or I am liable to put myself into a depression.

Sometimes, writing my own stuff actually feels like down time.  Reason: I said it above, it’s stuff that close to my heart.

So October saw me returning to writing — at that time, mostly background stuff or responses to stuff that I was reading in preparation for National Novel Writing Month 2009 (NaNoWriMo).  In looking back, I remember that True Diversity Dinner month — that is, September — also saw a bit of focus on writing: a couple of politically-oriented pieces about homophobia in science fiction, including one involving a publication I was writing a story for.  As it happened, I wasn’t far enough along on that story to meet the submission deadline of September 30 — so I picked up & polished an older thing instead.

And whaddaya know! in early October, I was told they wanted to publish it!  Which did much to make me feel like a writer again.

“Cold” was published on October 31, 2009 in Crossed Genres Issue #12, the LGBT issue, & you can still read it online there.  (When it’s no longer live there, & my contract with Crossed Genres permits, I will republish it right here at Henkimaa.com.)  “Cold” was also selected for inclusion in Crossed Genres‘ first-year anthology, which will include one story from each of the magazines first 12 issues.  I think it’s still on schedule for publication in February.

My username on NaNoWriMo: yksin.

November for me was the headlong hurry of NaNoWriMo.  As a result, as anyone who knows this blog saw, I didn’t do much blogging at all.  Such blog posts as got posted were mostly automatically generated “Daily Tweets” posts from my Twitter feed.  And I haven’t done much blogging since NaNoWriMo ended, either.

But whoa! I did a lot of writing — 51,607 words worth of it in November, making me a NaNoWriMo winner this year…. er… I mean, last year.  I was writing in the same story universe as “Cold,” which is about two young women on an extrasolar planet (that is, in another solar system) in the late stages of terraformation, which I’ve finally named Oikos — but my NaNovember 2009 writing was mostly about three centuries earlier in the timeline, before & around the time the ships that will eventually arrive at Oikos leave our solar system.  I called it Long Dark.

And a lot of it was background writing, rather than the story itself.  Because there is so damn much science that I need to have at least some kind of grasp on before I can do the story for real.

Though I came up with at least four stories over the course of the month that I know I can shape into good damn stuff.  And I also discovered that a character of mine from a supposedly completely unrelated project is, whaddaya know, an important historical figure for the society in Long Dark and Cold.  And since that character is very closely based on me… whoa, it’s an awful lot like, well, writing myself into history.  How cool is that?

(Or how egotistical?)

12. Since then…

… that is, during December — what have I been doing?  Not blogging, clearly. Except for one extensive rant about the leakage in various portions of my ceiling.  (Now cured, but the holes in the ceiling still need patching.)  Other than that, lots of vegging out, some writing, lots of reading — my latest topics have included atmospheric pressure, altitude sickness, & spacesuit design (background research for a story in the Cold universe) & how people with strabismus or amblyopia (the latter being the case for me), most of whom grow up stereoblind, might be able to develop stereo (binocular) vision.  Even at 50 years old. Which is what I am now.

50 years old, soon to be 51. And now I reflect on where I was at when I turned 50, early in 2009.  I was still in the cave.  But there were inklings of possibility.  I was still in the cave, for instance, when a confluence of ideas led me to decide how to go about my writing life, which included blogging & other forms of social media to get my stuff out there, instead of just through the old “send out craploads of query letters & get a shitload of rejection letters back before someone finally decides your stuff is good enough to publish” method that has been standard for a very bloody long time.  I knew I’d feel a lot more at ease finding my own audience through social media than going through the query letter drudgery.  It was still pretty remarkable that I made such a decision at such a time, though: social media? for someone who, at that point, was incapable & unmotivated to communicate at all?  But then, I knew the cave walls would dissolve sooner or later.  And they did.

I was also deciding, back in February of 2009 that age 50 was a good time to reach the milestone that I had apparently reached in the sorrows of that time.  The boy that I & Rozz-now-Ptery raised from age 9 was now 21 (& now, some months later, is actually 22), & is setting out on his own course in the world.  He’s in a residential job training program; I seem him some weekends when he comes into town.  Ptery is embarked on another course, living a nomadic life mostly off-the-grid in the Lower 48; we are no longer partners, however much we still love each other. So, I am single &, except for my cat & the boy’s dog, essentially alone.

When I was in college & took a class on Hinduism, I learned that the traditional life path for very pious Brahmin males was supposed to consist of several stages — four of them, I think — with the third stage being that of husband, father, & householder.  When the householding stage was over, these guys were apparently supposed to just up & lickety-split out to the forest to become religious ascetics.  Or something like that.

And when I turned 50, I thought: that’s it, I’m no longer a householder.  Well, I still have my apartment.  And I don’t plan to go live in the woods as an ascetic.  (Ptery’s path is a little closer to that, really.)  But I no longer have the responsibilities of a spouse/partner or of a parent to a minor child.  I can do what I want.  And what I need.

Which is to write.  But dang, it sure takes me a long time to get the politics out of my way to do it.

But I got to that point, & now I plan to continue.

That’s my story.

I’m such a cathead.

Related posts:

1. True Diversity Dinner 1 & 2: Video by Janson Jones
2. True Diversity Dinner video, part 3: Hotel workers, & Elvi's speech
3. True Diversity Dinner: September 25, 2009