Stuffsack #1: 14 July 2009

A collection of the most important, interesting, and/or visited stuff I’ve been writing on this blog recently. This list is based partly on what my blog stats say people are visiting, partly on what is most important or interesting (or fun!) to me. This post will stay on top as a sticky post until my next Stuffsack.

What are you looking for?

Palin's ethics complaint against herself (the green part of the pie) represented nearly 2/3 of the cost to the Alaska Personnel Board of investigating ethics complaints against Sarah Palin during state fiscal years 2008–2009.

Topics

• Palin ethics complaints. Follow this tag for posts about what I call the “Two million dollar meme”: Sarah Palin’s questionable claims that ethics complaints and related public records requests and lawsuits against her (1) cost the State of Alaska in the area of $2 million to address; (2) were what caused her to resign as Governor of Alaska.  As of this writing, I’ve written 6 posts about this, & have maybe a couple more in me.
• Ordinance. Posts about the current battle in Anchorage over equal protection against discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender/transsexual Anchorage residents.  AO 2009-64 would which would add sexual orientation (including gender identity & expression) to the list of personal characteristics in Title 5, Anchorage’s equal rights code, against which discrimination in employment, housing, financial practices, education, and practices of the Municipality of Anchorage would be prohibited within the Municipality of Anchorage.  The local Christianist antigay contingent is out in force against it.
• The incredibly true adventures of Rev. Jerry Prevo. Prevo is the chief high muckety-muck of the aforementioned local Christianist antigay contingent.

Individual posts

• 7/8/09. “Mel Green, Occasional political blogger” and “About me”: Since the first Palin ethics post, traffic on this site has gone way up, & I — a writer/poet — have needed to tell visitors just a bit more about myself.
• 6/24/09. “No Questions, Questions.” My first new poem in a really long time: responding to the Christianist narrowness of a recent Jerry Prevo sermon.
• 6/23/09. “Christianist, defined”. A term I’m using a lot lately: think Christianity as political ideology, i.e., the religious right.
• 10/7/08. “Sarah Palin & intermittent Gunderson syndrome.” A “blast from the past” post about Palin’s interesting accent.

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

On the wider website

• One in Ten and Identity Reports. Two landmark studies from the 1980s profiling Alaska’s lesbian/gay community & profiling sexual orientation bias in Alaska. I was principal writer of one, coauthor of the other. Follow the tags to other posts about One in Ten and Identity Reports.

Recent lifestuff

• Besides writing a lot of Palin ethics stuff last week, I just returned last night from a four-day weekend in Spokane, Washington, where I joined my brothers Dave & Mark, sister Mer, & extended family in celebrating the lives of my mother, Rauha Elizabeth (neé Siukola) Green (1928—2005) and father, Rial Eugene Green (1919–2009).  I also had a great Saturday visiting a local winery with Dave & Linda, & we got to see members of the extended Green-Brewster family (my sister-in-law Linda & her brother Steve’s families) and other talented people perform in a production by Davenport Theatrical, Davenport, Washington of the Steven Sondheim musical “Into the Woods” (photos forthcoming).
• If you’re as interested in the daily trivia of my life as I am, see The Daily Tweets.

About this new exciting weekly (or so) Stuffsack series

I decided just now to do a new weekly (or so) sticky post to help direct visitors to the most recent and/or interesting and/or viewed stuff on this blog.  Courtesy Wikipedia:

• Sticky post: “type of entry in an online forum that is ‘pinned’ near the top of the forum index, enhancing its visibility and preventing it from being buried by newer posts. On blogs it refers to a blog entry that remains on the front page while others around it change.”

Why am I calling this new weekly (or so) post stuffsack?  For several reasons:

1. I’m a weirdo wordworker who likes having unconventional yet evocative metaphorical titles for things.
2. I like the word stuff.  Esp. since it’s got a couple of different connotations that fit here: stuff is a great generic term for miscellaneous things, kinda like junk but without the slightly negative connotation; & stuff is also a verb having to do with cramming a lot of stuff into a small container. Check out the online Free Dictionary for some other meanings of the word stuff.
3. I like camping & backpacking, & have done all to little of it lately.  What better way to give myself a faky metaphoric way of kinda sorta maybe feeling like I’m camping than filling my blog with stuffsacks?  Esp. because they do exactly what this weekly (or so) post is supposed to do: to collect a buncha stuff into a container so it doesn’t get lost, sorta like a sticky post.

Again courtesy Wikipedia:

• Stuffsack: “a type of drawstring bag, usually used for storing camping items. Stuff sacks may be used to collect many small items together, just so that they do not become lost.”