Harvesting and Getting Ready to Plant

We had a freeze last night. It got down to 25 degrees F, and killed the potato plants. So the potatoes had to come up today.

I also pulled the zucchini, cabbages and few remaining outdoor lettuce plants.
It isn't supposed to freeze tonight, but it is already down to 37 degrees, and the sun just went down.
The carrots, beets , arugula and broccoli will remain in for now.
Friday, I'll till where I already pulled out the green beans, and plant five varieties of garlic.
Here's what I got to see, after I finished my chores.

Sen. Begich's U. S. Senate Health Care Speech This Morning

Sen. Begich will be holding a health care public forum this Friday at Bartlett High School, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. KBYR-AM-750 will broadcast the forum live.

My Favorite Report from the Crazy Woman's Speech

Press reports of the Crazy Woman's Hong Kong speech to a bunch of FoB's (definition # 11) are out. As no press was invited, reports will differ, based upon snippets. My favorite snippet from an attendee, apparently a reporter from the Asian Sentinel:

What they got was 90 minutes of boredom which had half the audience fiddling endlessly with their Blackberries. Ninety percent of her speech could have been – and probably was – written for a domestic US audience receptive to her "mom and pop" populism. Indeed the only newsworthy aspect of the speech was why her remarks had to be kept private despite their predictability.

My favorite headline on this - She Showed Up!

Max Blumenthal on MSNBC's Morning Joe Perplexes Scarborough

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Max had all his facts in order. Scarborough looked more and more perplexed during the course of the interview, as he seemed to be realizing something along the lines of, "This kid's here to stay. My party is more screwed up than I can possibly let people know....."

Max will be here Saturday and Sunday.

You can support his travel and expenses by donating at the paypal button on the upper right.

(We're almost there - THANKS! - to fellow bloggers and contributing friends)

Max Blumenthal Returns to the Land of Queen Esther

This coming Saturday and Sunday, progressive author, videographer, journalist and blogger, Max Blumenthal will be returning to Alaska, almost exactly one year after his research here on then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, work which immensely helped define her followers to the real middle America, not the one Palin pretended she represented.

Max is currently on a tour, promoting his new book, Republican Gomorrah. Some of Alaska's progressive bloggers, including Progressive Alaska, What Do I Know?, Just a Girl from Homer, the Immoral Minority and Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis - among others - have referred often to Max's work in our essays, and have asked him to come up here for three appearances during a two-day gap in his string of public appearances.

His publisher isn't paying for Max's return to The Land of Queen Esther. Instead, we're trying to raise the money for the trip's expenses - his plane fare from Seattle to Anchorage, & from Anchorage to Portland Oregon, and the fees for rental of the Fine Arts Recital Hall at UAA, ourselves. With your help.

Please help by contributing to the account PA has set up expressly for this trip. The button is at the upper right of this page, and doesn't require for YOU to be a paypal member.

Meanwhile, here is the most recent of Max's recent national media appearances, this one on the Laura Flanders Show:


Here's Max's video, made at the 9/12 Teabagger rally - the Million-Moran March - in Washington DC:


Here's Bill Moyers' use of some of Max's footage at the demonstration:


And here's one of Max's two videos made a year ago, from his trip to Alaska:


Here's a link to further links to many of Max's recent national media appearances.

Here's a link to my Saturday essay on Max's emergence as a mature author (more on that soon).

Here's a link to Steve's essay on the religious right, from today at What Do I Know?

In that essay, Steve refers to the many fine posts published recently by Linda at Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis, that cites the recent, very important books by Max Blumenthal and Frank Schaeffer.

The Empty Chair - Mat-Su Mayor Talis Colberg Stiffs Mat-Su Voters

Friday evening, at the Glacier Canyon Grill in Wasilla, the Mat-Su Democrats held a candidate forum for people running for offices on the Valley's school board, assembly and for the office of mayor. Of nineteen candidates running for the offices, fourteen were there. Three of the other five - Jim Colver, Adam Boyd and Bob Doyle - had conflicts. Two didn't respond to repeated requests from the Mat-Su Democrats - Jim Turner and Mat-Su Borough Mayor, Talis Colberg.

The picture above is of Mat-Su mayoral candidate John Leiner, addressing the crowd of about 80 people. Mayor Colberg failed to show Leiner and the people from all across the political spectrum who attended the respect they most assuredly deserved.

Why didn't Mayor Colberg even respond to requests to either attend or provide a statement for the forum? I invite him to call me, the Mat-Su Democrats' Vice Chairman, Pat Chesbro, or somehow convey a message as to why he refused to participate.

Sometimes it seems that all Talis Colberg brought back from his failed stint as Alaska's worst attorney general except Gregg Renkes (some don't give him that high of a rating), was some of the aloofness and deafness, so commonplace in the Palin administration.

It was a very non-partisan forum. Rather than use the monthly dinner as we usually do, to attend to matters of concern to our local and state Democratic Party, we shelved all that, putting bulletins about upcoming Party activities and other liberal or progressive events on wall notices, or on sign-up sheets relegated to the corner. Even Shannyn Moore, who was asked to give some preliminary remarks, spoke passionately of the values Democrats, Republicans and all other Americans involved in local office commonly share. She managed to get Doyle Holmes and Ron Arvin, two very conservative men, laughing out loud.

Here are the questions we asked the candidates:

QUESTIONS FOR SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATES:
1. What is the chief responsibility of the school board?
Context: Historically school board members have had difficulty defining and adhering to the their roles and responsibilities versus the Superintendent's roles and responsibilities. From time to time this confusion has been detrimental to the best interests of our students.

2. Do you support the use of federal stimulus dollars for education? If so, how should they be used?

3. What should the school district do to ensure a safe environment for civil discourse regarding issues of ideology and race?
Context: Over the past year there has been a significant increase in the number of reports of inappropriate ideological and racial remarks by teachers and students in our classrooms, on our campuses and on our school buses. These remarks are intended to inflame rather than inform. These remarks have also resulted in retaliation against individuals who have had the courage to speak up for civility. To date, we have heard next to nothing from School Board Members, the Superintendent, principals or teachers regarding strategies for reining in these divisive, destructive and, usually, false remarks.

QUESTIONS FOR BOROUGH CANDIDATES
1. What is the biggest issue that convinced you to run?
2. What is the role of government?
3. What land use issues do you see in the Borough?

I wish the Frontiersman or the Anchorage Daily News Valley Bureau had been able to send a reporter. I was helping Pat Chesbro coordinate the candidates, who came forward, one seat at a time to address individual questions from the set. And I had to deal with a sound system that looked and sounded like it was going to blow up any second.

Even with the absence of Colberg, the forum went exceedingly well, and most candidates stayed around for 30 minutes or so, to meet people one- on-one.

I respect mayoral candidate Leiner, who is somewhat of a local muckraker. I'm not convinced he is mayoral material, though.

He told me afterward, "Talis isn't here because he's going to win, and he doesn't care."

I stupidly voted for Colberg in the bye election last summer, but I'm not going to make that mistake again. Any ideas on a write-in candidate?

Rick Sanchez Takes FOX Lies About CNN Seriously

hat tip to Gryph

Watching Max Blumenthal Grow to be a Major American Writer

One year ago, as Alaska's fledgeling progressive blogging community was assisting one Outside writer after another come to terms with just who John McCain's running mate, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was, I got a call from one more writer - Max Blumenthal.

David Neiwert had already alerted me that Max would be in Alaska to do research on Palin's past ties to the Wasilla Assembly of God, and to Rev. Thomas Muthee. I wasn't nearly as familiar with Max' previous work as I was with David's. I was familiar with his July 2007 video, Rapture Ready. I was also aware that Blumenthal had been a key figure in getting the truth out on the 2008 ABC "docu-drama," The Path to 9/11.

Max was able to spend well over a week in Alaska, dividing his time between Anchorage and Wasilla. While he was in Wasilla, he stayed with my wife and me. Our son had just left to go to college in California, and we were in a totally empty nest for the first time. Judy took him in as if he were another son.

Like I had done for a few other reporters, I went with Max to the Wasilla Museum, where Palin had caused an uproar among employees when she was the town's mayor. I took him to the library, where Palin had let the employees know she wasn't happy with gay-friendly books. Max noted shelves full of complete sets of the LaHayes/Jenkins Left Behind series. When he asked a librarian if the library had a copy of a book Palin had hoped to ban, Pastor, I Am Gay, by Rev. Howard H. Bess (a local Baptist minister and gay rights activist), Max was told that the library was very full, and didn't have room for some books.

I also took Max to Chimo Guns in Wasilla, Todd Palin's favorite gun store. Watching Max sincerely ask store employees and customers his simple, straightforward questions, I began to appreciate the genius Max has for quietly confronting the people he is interviewing, with a disarmingly modest demeanor.

Where I didn't take Max was to the local churches, where he managed to film some very bizarre practices. As he suited up for his church attendance - putting hidden and not-so-hidden microphones and video cameras on his person, and practicing speaking in tongues by rapidly reciting the first names of Michael Jackson's siblings, and other made-up words, I couldn't help but laugh heartily. I realized then that not only is Max charmingly confrontative, he's very brave.

Max's two videos made in Alaska, Sarah Palin's Secessionist Pal Speaks, and In the Land of Queen Esther, rank among the best Outside-of-Alaska material gathered about Palin last year. Combined with the work of the California-based Wasilla Project's work, Max's videos helped damn Palin's image to the truthful niche the McCain campaign should have seen as possibly looming, before she was chosen for the VP candidate slot.

As Max worked on Republican Gomorrah over the 2008-2009 winter and spring, he also began collaborating with Philip Weiss, perhaps the leading figure on the web in the realm of coverage of "American foreign policy in the Middle East, from the progressive Jewish perspective."

While Phil Weiss was in Cairo late last spring, covering President Obama's speech at Cairo University, Max was in Jerusalem, making a video that was so explosive, it was removed from YouTube, the Huffington Post, and other web sites. The video, Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem on the Eve of Obama's Cairo Address, is a set of interviews with young Americans and Israelis who have had too much to drink. Their expressions of hatred toward Obama are quite shocking. The fact that they were also into their cups made it convenient for YouTube, Vimeo and Huffington Post to censor Blumenthal's work.

Blumenthal's defense of the interviews makes for interesting reading, but the defense itself has been censored from some sites.

Over the summer, Max continued covering aspects of the intersections between politics, hypocrisy, religious superstition and secret or behind-the-scene connections amongst these and other elements of contemporary life. He's been watching the Tea Party movement. He's kept an eye on Palin's sputterings and twitterings, even as he and I have witnessed the seeming demise of some of Palin's most ardent supporters, most notably, mockumentarian, John Ziegler.

With the publication of Republican Gomorrah, Blumenthal has emerged as a major writer. Recently it pegged number 15 on the New York Times bestseller list. Perhaps the best proof beyond the book itself that Blumenthal has emerged from the formative period of his writing and video and into maturity, is his short op-ed printed in the New York Times, recently. In it, Max explains how President Dwight Eisenhower was prophetic about how and why the GOP's new right would depend upon the very elements Blumenthal covers so fully in Republican Gomorrah. Blumenthal notes that in a letter to an ailing Veteran named Robert Biggs, Eisenhower took the trouble to dissect the incompleteness and paranoia that was beginning to consume some GOP religious conservatives:

Eisenhower also recommended a short book — “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer, a self-educated itinerant longshoreman who earned the nickname “the stevedore philosopher.” “Faith in a holy cause,” Hoffer wrote, “is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.”

Though Eisenhower was criticized for lacking an intellectual framework or even an interest in ideas, he was drawn to Hoffer’s insights. He explained to Biggs that Hoffer “points out that dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems — freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.” The authoritarian follower, Eisenhower suggested, desired nothing more than insulation from the pressures of a free society.

Alluding to Senator McCarthy and his allies, Eisenhower pointed out that cold war fears were distorted and exploited for political advantage. “It is difficult indeed to maintain a reasoned and accurately informed understanding of our defense situation on the part of our citizenry when many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resorting to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy.”

I'm working my way through Republican Gomorrah. It is easy to read, because of the fluid narrative. It is hard to read, because it quietly, modestly asks the reader, without being at all explicit, "How did we let these dangerous people gain so much control over our lives?"

I'm now reading it side by side with Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason. They complement each other nicely.

Meanwhile, one of Max's most endearing qualities, his understated sense of humor is developing too.

cross-posted at The Seminal

Eric Deeter -- 1959 - 2009

The Mat-Su Valley and Alaska lost a great artist, musician, community activist, dad and husband Thursday. Wasilla artist Eric Deeter was killed in an automobile accident in Anchorage.

I was with many of his friends yesterday evening, at the monthly Mat-Su Democrats' Egan Dinner. When Mat-Su Democrats Vice President Pat Chesbro announced that Eric had been killed in the crash, many were stunned, including my wife, Judy. Some already knew, but most of his friends there didn't, and one could feel life and warmth being immediately sucked from the room, as so many of his friends tried to digest the sad news and real loss.

Eric thought of his painting and musical performance similarly, and expressed his vision of painting in a musical way:

Like music, a good painting has harmony and rhythm. My goal is to be fluent at a wonderfully different language, the music of form, value, and color.

Besides his paintings, blues & jazz piano work, Valley Performing Arts set designs, and volunteer work in support of our fledgeling Valley arts community, Eric was one of the key people at the Radio Free Palmer project. Fellow RFP board member and close friend, Mike Chmeilewski described his last meeting with Eric, this past week:

We just had as wonderful a time as can be when doing that kind of thing. Working for a non-profit, you have the ability to go the long distance, and Eric had that quality.

That quote is from Anchorage Daily News reporter Debra McKinney's portrait of Eric in today's edition.

images - Eric Deeter self-portrait; Sally Hitchcock and piano student, by Eric Deeter

Max Blumenthal in Anchorage Next Week

PA can't possibly thank enough those who are helping get this set of events going and the word spread!

Max will be taking questions for a couple of hours Saturday at the firedoglake book salon, beginning at 4:00 p.m. Alaska time.

Here's a link to his appearance earlier in the month on Democracy Now.

Here's a link to his appearance last week on NPR's Fresh Air.

Here's a link to his very recent interview with Scott Horton of Harper's Magazine.

Here's a link to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley's review, published today in The Huffington Post.