A Photographic Diversion

Strider, waiting for his first raft trip of the year: Sunset over Neklason Lake:
Matanuska Peak, reflected on a glassy Neklason Lake:
Mooch missed the raft trip:

The Courage of Shannyn Moore

Shannyn Moore's new Saturday evening program on KBYR may be the most courageous radio happening in Alaska right now. It doesn't have to do with her views on Alaska politics nearly as much as an issue she has visited and revisited.

Torture.

By Americans.

For nothing.

Actually, for worse than nothing.

Moore spent much of the last part of Saturday's program asserting that we need to fully investigate how the Bush administration's extremely misguided policies on so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" eroded the fabric of what we are as Americans.

She brought it back up again in this week's program because new information seems to be coming out every day on how wrong this has been, how little it may or may not have gained us in intelligence information, and on how the Bush administration used their knowledge that anyone in congress who knew anything about how wrong it was all along constitutionally, could later be induced to go along with one misguided Bush program or another, because the Busheviks held something over the suborned enablers' heads.

Nobody else in Alaska media has remotely come close to Moore's sincere conviction on this subject. Other progressive blogs, including PA, have dealt with it peripherally, but Shannyn went out on Alaska talk radio Saturday, with both barrels loaded.

It made good radio, as KBYR caller after caller - almost all right-wing males - challenged her. She not only stood her ground, she demonstrated why it was such a shame to take this powerful voice off of KUDO last year.

Shannyn Moore reminds me of Diane Benson in the ways she refuses to take shit from guys who just want women to listen, rather than really listen to women.

Recently fired KUDO program director Cary Carrigan notably failed to cover Shannyn Moore's growing presence as a national media figure during the 10-month period after he fired Moore, and was covering Alaska politics and media at KUDO, 15 hours per week. He kept KUDO's web site from even listing Moore's web page in their links, once Moore started her own site. I never heard him mention Moore's numerous national appearances on MSNBC's Countdown, or other national media appearances.

Twice, calling Carrigan's program, I found myself cut off and terminated, after making a positive reference to Moore. That treatment, in retrospect reminds me of talk radio figures like Eddie and Mark.

Until Cary Carrigan makes a public statement supporting what Moore has done since he fired this dynamic personality, a big rift exists in the new media possibilities liberals are trying to now build to serve Alaskans.

Cary, I welcome you to write a column at Progressive Alaska in support of the incredible work Shannyn Moore has done since you showed her the door at KUDO.

You have my phone number. If you lost it, it's in the phone book.

Saradise Found - Chapter 8 - "I Always Thought to Myself, 'She'll Have a Show...'"

That's a quote from Saturday Night Live senior producer Marci Klein, when interviewed about dealing with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, by New York City community activist and Huffington Post blogger, Julie Menin.

Here's the part of Menin's interview with Klein on Palin:

Saturday Alaska Progressive Blog Roundup - May 9, 2009 -- Jeremy Lansman - Part III

The late Walt Crowley, one of Seattle's venerable underground figures from the 60s, and longtime chronicler of alternative media, wrote a sketch of the atmosphere in which Jeremy Lansman got his radio broadcasting start. Early in Crowley's book, rites of passage - A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle, the author quotes Lansman's mentor, Lorenzo Milam, as Milam sought to describe what Milam, Lansman and others were doing with their programming at KRAB Radio:

"Your scurrilous words are flooding the countryside, bouncing off hills and trees, ramming headlong into cows....filtering into that radio, into that tiny coil of heat....red, deep, mysterious."

Change the described animal to a moose, and you might get an idea of what Jeremy is up to 47 years later, with KWMD, and his current efforts to revive local programming in Southcentral Alaska, after KUDO-AM threw it overboard two weeks ago.

This past week, on Monday and on Friday, Jeremy, with a lot of help from Cary Carrigan, put Camille Conte back on the air. For two hours on Monday, three hours on Friday.

Between Monday's experimental show and Friday's beta version, Lansman fixed the signal at KWMD's 92.5 MHz Eagle River transmitter. Between the awkward beginning and decently finished end of Friday's program, the live talk studio seemed to get a lot better. The call-in set-up has a long way to go yet, but I'm sure Jeremy is dealing with the solution already.

People did call in, though, from as far away as the Mat-Su Valley in the north, and from a cabin near Kenai in the south.

The last hour of CC's show Friday featured Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate, Bob Poe. Bob has been on a number of Anchorage stations since his mid-winter declaration of candidacy. Both CC and Carrigan featured him on KUDO, before the late April 2009 programming cuts. CC's Friday interview with Poe was the best I've yet heard on the air.

(By far, the best article on Bob Poe the candidate so far, is by Brendan Joel Kelley, at the Anchorage Press.)

During the program, CC asked Alaska Democratic Party chair Patti Higgins about speculation that former Alaska House Minority Leader Ethan Berkowitz will be filing soon for the governor's race. Higgins certainly didn't say "no," but did say Ethan will be waiting for later in the year to make any announcement for a candidacy. Higgins went on to observe that the FBI investigations into corrupt Alaska politicians isn't over, and that people are waiting to see if Rep. Don Young is trolled up, before making a final decision on what race he or she might enter.

Alaska progressive bloggers have been helping get the word out on the positive changes underway at KWMD. Linda Kellen live blogged part of yesterday's show for Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis. Last Monday, Steve Aufrecht, from WhatdoIKnow? covered the premiere live call-in program.

Monday, the studio - actually Carrigan's garage - was called "Two Bay" studio. Friday, it was "Two Space" studio. I called in, getting a echo-laden feedback loop, tempting me to call the set-up the "Too spaced" studio.

Alaska's progressive bloggers covered the early May Hayes Research Group poll showing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's popularity continuing to slip. It is now at 54%, her lowest since being elected in 2006.

Shannyn Moore, from Just A Girl from Homer wrote the first local article on the polls. Her Huffington Post version of the article, titled Palin Popularity Plunging, now has 1,334 comments. Her Thursday afternoon appearance on Keith Olbermann's Countdown program has been copied and embedded at scores of progressive sites around the country, including the high-traffic blog, Crooks and Liars. Supposedly, Moore, along with APRN's Johanna Eurich, have won an award from a prestigious communications professionals group for their APRN production of Forget-me-nots.

Moore's local AM radio talk program on KBYR airs again this evening from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Tonight Moore will talk about the Federal decisions that came out last week limiting how Polar bears are dealt with in terms of their threatened status. She also hopes to interview the mayor of Sitka. (Sitka will be the site of the 2010 Alaska Democratic Party Convention).

Moore's KBYR program is followed by another progressive segment that is called The Madness of Method with Mike Method. Tonight's guest will be Ethan Berkowitz. I believe Ethan will be talking about renewable energy and some new ides he has on helping rural Alaska. That will be this evening, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Alaska's progressive bloggers united this past week in helping get constituents to call Sen. Mark Begich about the hate crimes legislation now before congress.

And, as I wrote about last week, Media Matters for America co-founder Eric Boehlert will be coming out with a book next week that devotes a chapter to our Alaska progressive bloggers' role in the 2006 and 2008 national campaigns.

More on Jeremy Lansman.

images - top - Jeremy Lansman at radio conference in Maryland; bottom - the scene at the KWMD studio last Friday (Celtic Diva)

The New World Symphony

Last night, I sat next to my longtime mentor and close friend, Dr. George Belden, during the dress rehearsal for tonight's Anchorage Civic Orchestra Spring Concert. The orchestra was playing the slow movement from Antonin Dvorak's evocative Ninth Symphony - the New World Symphony. As the music wound toward the restatement of the so-called "Goin' Home" theme, I turned to George. I play tuba, Dr. Belden is the orchestra's bass trombone. We were counting rests. Lots of rests, lots of counting.

I told George, "this is one of the most beautiful pieces of music yet written."

He replied, "It's hard to imagine a more poignant, truthful and well constructed musical statement."

We were both near tears.

George and his wife Micky found out just over a week ago that she has a brain tumor. She needs surgery very soon, and the results from a series of tests are coming in.

Yesterday afternoon, my wife and I found out that the son of Scott Daugherty, her longtime boss and close friend, was in the awful multi-car crash on the Glenn Highway at Airport Heights yesterday morning. Conor Daugherty was driving the first car hit by an out-of-control SUV, driven by a man who works for the Chugach Alaska Job Corps facility in Palmer. Two other people were hurt, but young Conor took the brunt of the force. He is in critical condition, and is comatose at present.

Life can be so fragile, so precious.

Music like this can soothe the soul, though:



The Anchorage Civic Orchestra will play the New World Symphony and the premiers of Dan Heynen's orchestration of the late Alaska composer Curtiss Blake's Sonata for French Horn tonight. Heynen will play the solo.

The concert, directed by Tai Wai Li, is at the Sydney Laurence Theater in the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, and begins at 7:30 p.m.

The State's Response to the Yukon and Kuskokwim Flooding

Governments exist to respond to such things as floods. This spring's ice-jam flooding on the Yukon River, of Eagle, Alaska has been catastrophic. As the ice jam surge moves down river during continuing warmth and sunshine, more communities are at risk.

The Kuskokwim River flooding may not end up being catastrophic, but it is quite serious.

As agencies do what they are supposed to in reaction, some are asking questions like:

1) Is the degree of burden put upon the Alaska National Guard by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars seriously diminishing these state-owned assets in their ability to perform their vital mission of assisting communities that have suffered or are in the track of flooding?

2) Did the state perform full duty in evaluating the probable impact of the heat wave that struck interior Alaska over two weeks ago, on top of thick river ice packs and snow packs?

3) Have the reductions in experienced reporters at Alaska media outlets this past year reduced those organs' basic ability to evaluate preparations and responses to the flooding?

There are other questions too. The local person to whom my heart goes out to the most on building community awareness on this has been Mr. Whitekeys (his comments start at 5 minutes on this APRN report). Our Alaska bloggers, who were central to educating Alaskans and Outsiders on the food and fuel crisis on these same rivers in mid-winter, have been notably absent on this subject. This blog included.

Gov. Palin cancelled East Coast appearances this week, once the reality of the extent of this disaster started becoming apparent. Watching her TV appearances at flood sites this evening, she struck me as actually being concerned and engaged.





How ready are Alaskans to assess our current Governor's role in preparation and response to this event without cluttering up the dialogue with the baggage her new national stature carries with it? I'm not at all sure. Do note, though, that the Governor's name leads the header of both of the news coverage YouTubes above.

A big turning point in my Alaska political education was watching Gov. Steve Cowper deal with the Exxon Valdez catastrophe so pathetically. Before Good Friday 1989 Cowper had been one of big oil's biggest, cushiest doormats.

He still is. But when the spill occurred, he was all over the media, trying to paint a picture of himself as something he certainly was not.

We'll see how Sarah does.

Sen. Begich targeted by opponents of Hate Crimes Act - Call Our Senators Today!

--- by E. Ross

"I just called Senator Begich's office to ask him to "Please SUPPORT THE MATTHEW SHEPARD ACT (S. 909)" which is coming up for a vote in the Senate soon," writes Marsha Buck of Alaskans Together for Equality.

"The aide or intern who took my call said she was surprised to hear that I was asking him to *support* the bill, because they are getting lots of calls today from our opponents asking him to vote against the Matthew Shepherd Act."

"This is a time when we need to raise many, many Alaskan voices to give our senators the support they need to vote with us!"

The House of Representatives passed hate crimes legislation on April 29, with a vote of 249-175. The legislation adds protection for actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability to existing protected categories such as religion, race, and ethnicity. Most law enforcement and civil rights groups support it.

The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S 909) was introduced in the Senate on April 28 "to provide Federal assistance to States, local jurisdictions, and Indian tribes to prosecute hate crimes, and for other purposes." The haters are calling it protection for pedophiles.

Judy Shepard, the mother of murdered gay college student Matthew Shepard, made a video appeal for the bill.

Please call both Senator Begich and Senator Murkowski today and ask them to SUPPORT THE MATTHEW SHEPARD ACT (S. 909):

Senator Begich 202-224-3004

Senator Murkowski 202-224-6665

Senator Begich can be contacted by email on his website, and Senator Murkowski can be reached by email on her website. Or send the same message to both senators at the same time, watch the PSA, and find out more about the Matthew Shepard Act, at the HRC Action Center's Hate Crimes Act page.

Alaskans Together for Equality, Inc. advances civil equality for all Alaskans through grass roots organizing and advocacy.

image - Matthew Shephard

Jeremy Lansman - Part II (Updated)

At the end of Progressive Alaska's first month - November, 2007 - I wrote a tribute to Jeremy Lansman. Even though I'd known of him since 1962, we only finally met in 2008.

This past week, Jeremy has taken his alternative radio efforts to a new level. On Monday, he aired two hours of call-in talk radio, featuring Camille Conte. For being, spur-of-the-moment and jury-rigged, it was pretty good radio.

CC will be back on KWMD Radio again today, beginning at 4:00 p.m. She promises "special guests." Here's part of her lineup:

Cutting Edge with CC today from 4 - 7 pm on KWMD 104.5 in Anchorage, 90.7 Kenai. Guests include Patti Higgins, Bob Poe and The Demo Memo with Sen. Johnny Ellis!

We'll have an 800 number to give out at 4:00 pm. Hot fun in the summertime!

Anchorage: 104.5 and 87.7 FM

Wasilla: 107.9 FM when it works

Kasilof: 90.7 FM

Eagle River 92.5

Call in at 771 0205

Here's an excerpt from WhatdoIknow's Thursday article on CC's program:

This could become regular if enough people listen and call in. There's even been interest in linking in from a radio station outside of the general Anchorage/Matsu/Kenai area. And they are working on the streaming too, but probably it won't be up for tomorrow. In some ways this is something of a breakthrough for Anchorage audio media.

Bloggers have broken the dependence on a publisher. CC mentioned Monday how dependent a radio person is on a station to give her airtime. KWMD is still radio, but it's a non-commercial community station that should be doing this sort of thing. But it also used internet technology plus it had a group of blogs publicizing the fact that CC would be on so that interested listeners could catch it.

Jeremy Lansman posted a comment on the radio broadcasting setup, at my earlier post on the new stuff at KWMD:

FYI - I am working on rebuilding the 92.5 KWMD translator. It is broadcasting silence now, but when we get audio back into it it, I hope before Friday, should extend a good signal to Eagle River and much of Mat-Su. As KWMD (FM) is solid in central Kenai, and much of South Anchorage its coverage should be roughly comparable to KUDO (AM).

The important question is where is the funding for local hosted programs of a different political outlook than those on KENI, KBYR and KFQD? It would be nice to think that some more progressive business people would support alternatives to the right wing media blasters, but I won't hold my breath.

I've been listening to KWMD a lot since Monday. In the Mat-Su Valley, 107.9 FM signal comes in better than KUDO's 1080 AM one does. In Anchorage on Tuesday, I was able to get 104.5 very well from Dimond to Fort Richardson.

images by Steve Aufrecht

Joe the Plumber Becomes Joe the Free Agent

Samuel Joseph Wurzelebacher, AKA Joe the Plumber, announced earlier this week that he's had enough of the GOP. From this week's Time Magazine:

Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, tells TIME he's so outraged by GOP overspending, he's quitting the party — and he's the bull's-eye of its target audience.

This past week, Wurzelbacher also made some statements about gays that have even offended some of his biggest fans.

Like The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck:


Talkingpoints Memo has a great Joe the Plumber photo gallery they've prepared of his rise and demise.

The caption next to the composite of Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber (at the top of this post) reads:

McCain's voters didn't seem to love Joe (was it the Obama-Sammy Davis, Jr. comparisons?)... but Palin sure did. Soon the Vice Presidential Candidate was introducing Tito "the Builder" and Jay "the Contractor" along with Joe at rallies. It may have been that Joe was like John the Baptist to Tito's Jesus or some such similar typology. (Though Tito and Jay never seemed to quite have Joe's staying power...

My favorite fall campaign Joe the Plumber cartoon was this one:

Alaska's 2008 Election Bloggers to be Discussed in Upcoming Book

Eric Boehlert, one of the founders of Media Matters for America, recently finished a book about important aspects of the rapidly changing American political scene.

The book, titled Bloggers on the Bus - How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press, will be released May 19th. Chapter Thirteen, about how Alaska's bloggers played a role in getting detailed information about Sarah Palin, and our kinky, sometimes difficult political customs out to an eager Outside press in late summer and early autumn of 2008, is called Saradise Lost.

I spoke with publisher Simon & Schuster's publicist for the book, Christine Donnelly, this morning. She told me that the chapter on Alaska bloggers will bring up the role local blogs like Alaska Real, Andrew Halcro, Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis, Just a Girl from Homer, Kodiak Konfidential, The Mudflats, Own the Sidewalk, Progressive Alaska, The Immoral Minority and What Do I Know? played in both the McCain/Palin and Begich-Stevens campaigns.

I spent a fair amount of time on the phone and emailing Boehlert last year, as he began work on this.

Here's a description of the entire book from the publisher:

Ever since radio entered the American private home, technology has shaped political campaign strategy. Radio brought candidates more intimately and vividly into citizens' lives than newspapers could. The televised presidential debate of 1960 -- in which a strapping John F. Kennedy embarrassed a clammy Richard M. Nixon -- was technology's next coup. In the last decade, though, it is the internet that has radically changed the way that candidates campaign: social networking sites, YouTube, and blogs have become important vehicles for political activism. And the grand editorial and political power that this group -- the "netroots," as bloggers call it -- wields has never been more apparent than in the groundbreaking 2008 presidential election.

Bloggers on the Bus traces the online events that rocked the campaign trail and reveals the untold stories of the internet activists who made them all possible. In the tradition of Timothy Crouse's classic, The Boys on the Bus, Bloggers on the Bus investigates the cutting edge of liberal politics to reveal the stories and scandals at its very heart. The cast includes everyone from former professional rock saxophonist John Amato who, years before YouTube, changed blogging forever by unleashing his TiVo and figuring out how to post TV clips online, to sixty-something Oakland housewife Mayhill Fowler, who joined the Huffington Post as a volunteer journalist and went on to break two of the biggest stories of the Democratic primary.

Boehlert tells the story of acerbic West Coast blogger Digby, whose gender shocked the male-dominated blogosphere, as well as that of graphic tech Philip de Vellis, who culture-jacked an iconic Apple ad in order to create the infamous "Vote Different" video that influenced the Democratic primary. These are just a few of the bloggers pioneering the major shift in today's media who are profiled in Bloggers on the Bus. All of their efforts have set off an industry-wide debate about journalism and privacy and have permanently altered the character of campaign strategy.

Using the 2008 presidential race as a dramatic backdrop, Boehlert details the myriad ways these bloggers influenced both the candidates and their campaigns, while also chronicling the bitter blogger civil war that erupted during the contentious Democratic primary season. Offering unprecedented portraits of these new power brokers, Bloggers on the Bus goes behind the scenes to chronicle a media and political rebellion in the making.

++++++

image - Eric Boehlert