Open Thread
Our virtual flight has come to a close. Here we are approaching Anchorage before landing at Merrill Field. We’ve traveled across Cook Inlet, and flown over the incredible wilderness, wetlands, marshes, and rivers over the communities of Beluga, Tyonek and beyond. Tomorrow, I’ll share the whole story with you. It’s a curl up and settle in kind of story, and one that very much needs to be told.
I love talk like a pirate day….it makes you think about language.
and rum.
That too.
Just for the fun of it …. the formerly favorite AK governor now has 2.2Mil friends on FB – but gotta give credit where credit is due…… The Twilight Saga page has ….. 14 mil
And a good one to remember ……
snip] Looks like somebody ate an extra two scoops of CRAZY this morning for breakfast! [end snip
…and as a trival bit of info… from the Rachel show a while back.. Spongebob Squarepants soundly beats The ORiley Show for TV ratings… guess we know what the wingnuts tune into when he’s not on !! 🙂 ( ok, ok… I like watching it too…)
oh dear… pirates all over the open thread!
For LoveMyDogs-
put your head down and maybe they won’t notice us…
I can’t begin to explain the whole of the issues in rural, mostly Native Alaska but I can point to some of the things rural Alaska deals with and some of the response by the fed…
here’s a place to start
it’s a few years old but not much is different
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5338992
Thanks AK Pi.
I knew that there were issues with running water and fuel vs food and HUge fisheries issues. And I was vaguely aware that Lisa was championing some of these issues. Are the rural folk so dismyed because they do not believe anyone else could champion them as well? Is it because they feel that her seniority gives her some kind of extra clout? If she is losing her seniority with this write-in move, how would she be able to help any better than Begich and/or Scott McAdams? Or is it about fear of Miller (who seems to have no one’s best interest at heart-other than white males)?
I’m just trying to understand.
I worked on the Navajo reservation for awhile. They have some of the same issues. As well as a very corrupt (at times) tribal leadership. They are not dealing with quite the same isolation (although there are often 200-300 miles of desert between the people and anything remotely “modern”). And they certainly aren’t dealing with the same temperature issues (although the desert can get cold in the winter, it isn’t -60 degrees).
I know that there are also health issues associated with a lot of this and that diseases such as TB, meningitis and even diptheria can be an issue. Not to mention diabetes, alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, suicide, etc..(and this last list is not just for natives mind you).
We cannot have a government without a safety net. It seems that the right wing wants to deny that safety net to so many. I am glad to hear that Lisa was at least doing something good for some of the people in this state. But I want to believe that Scott could do a lot as well. He isn’t a city boy. And Southeast is a place with some of the same issues of isolation and resource destruction. I like his education credentials. I am a big believer that education is the key to many things. We desperately need fresh, new minds in this state that can work towards dignity and respect for all of our people.
Same goes for the country and the planet.
LMD-
Ms Murkowski HAS done a great deal for rural Alaska and she does need to be recognized for that. The ignorance in this state, my own included,about the bush is ridiculous. Mr Springer left an answer behind my note to come over here which covers more of her work.
All the problems you mention are there, just as they are in any population which is battling for parity at the table for so long as to be overcome at times by despair but there a lot of very good things going on as well… in healthcare, energy independence, etc.
Yes- there are some skunko tribal governments… think of any tiny rural town and the bully smart alecks who shove their way into the foreground but there are some great governments who are working hard to create a framework for healthy futures for all.
I cannot square Ms Murkowski’s work for the bush with her garbage about the EPA and emissions though… because some of the places most affected so far are in the Alaska bush…
I am in Southeast, we have plenty of the same issues here as anywhere in Alaska that is off the road system and off the radar of ANC and the valley…
I will be voting for Mr McAdams because I can’t square Ms Murkowski’s behavior of the last 2 years with where I want to see us go as a state or as a country( but I do not want to gloss over the good work she has done either.) as well as my personal desire to see us change direction some right here at home. I’m awfully tired of the current framing of resource extraction issues and have some hope Mr McAdams will help change that.
Mr Miller seems to feel comfortable about pretending Alaska is no bigger than the road system and his hunting camp…
Ms Murkowski doesn’t do that.
Neither does Mr McAdams
By the way, does anyone ever hear from Ann Strongheart anymore?
In today’s New York Times, on TP Express
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/us/politics/19russo.html?pagewanted=1&ref=us
The media reports a direct quote of Sarah Palin advising Christine O’Donnell to speak to Fox News. Palin denies the quote and the video, only to have reality come and bite her in the ass. (politicususa.com)
http://www.politicususa.com/en/palin-versus-reality
I love you guys but have to say I HATE “Talk Like a Pirate Day.” And I swear it happens more than once a year on this blog! I’m not philosophically opposed to a “Talk Like A (insert appropriate idea here) Day.” It’s just the stupid pirate stuff that is annoying.
For example, “Talk Like A Rill Americun Day” would be a lot of fun. “Talk Like An Accidental Senate Candidate Who Once Dabbled in Witchcraft Day” has great possibilities. (Double, double toil and trouble…) How ’bout “Talk Like a Media Ho Grifter Day?” Or, “Not To Be Catty, But Talk Like the Guy With the Most Pathetic Beard EVER Day.” I’m so up for “Talk Like A Person Who Talks About Our Troops and Our Freedoms Till I’m Ready to Ralph Day.” “Talk Like My Children’s Completely Absentee Mother Day.”
This is too easy.
This could keep us going for ever!
When I was at university, a loooooong time ago, we used to have phases of *talking like*. Winston Churchill and Damon Runyon were two of my favorites.
chortle…. I can’t talk like a Rill American !! my morals get in the way !!!! ( yes, ben has morals, dag nabit !)
I’d have to give up believing that women are equal to men, that the goverment has to stay out my bedroom, and out of women’s bodies, that corporations are NOT “people” and therefore are NOT allowed the same rights as a person.. and even WORSE, … that the goverment actually SHOULD do something for the welfare of the people…like healthcare (single payer), SS, unemployment,, medicare, Clean Air and water…and actually PROTECT our resources for future generations, not suck it dry for a quick buck..
but I COULD talk like an ignorant redneck what thinks change is bad, the South will rise again, State’s rights trump the Fed’s and PBR is a great beer………
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nahhh! can’t do it…:) but I had ya going , didn’t I !!??
Hrrrrr, ye blighter, ’tis the plank for ye.
…ben strides the end of the board , bounces on the end and performs a perfect 2 and a half flip with no splash entry…..
Show-off. 😉
almost evening here, so…
yo ho ho…and a bottle of rum
A Pirate Looks at Forty (Whoa! I’m looking backwards…)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYzdbCbxvlY&feature=fvw
For a moment I thought you were talking about me. 😆
(Not that I’m egocentric or anything)
forty what ? 40 lasses !!??? 40 rum bottles ?? 40 ships to be plundered ?? AARRGHH !! 40 be a good number… better than 39… 🙂 Things be better with age… 40 day old rum be better than 4 day rum …if you can wait that long… 🙂 same with wimmen !! they know what be important then… the young ones still haven’t nade up their minds,, always checking to see if the doubloon I gives them is good or not…
All this piratin’ has done me in. Headin’ to the crows nest….. ( thar she blows).
Just have to post this morning in an effort to purge by sharing the “ew- yuck” factor.
Spotted a woman in red with a HUGE Bumpit last night at the Valley Performing Arts production of Pride & Prejudice, starring Britta Hanson (Track’s GF). Was in denial at first, but when I saw that she was chewing her giant wad of gum like a cheap street whore, I knew it was her. No Todd, just (I think) her sister Heather & a bunch of kids, and Piper in tow. Piper appeared at intermission looking like a kid playing dress-up, wearing 2-inch-heeled black pumps with at least 11/2 inches of shoe hanging past her heels, and carrying a fugly black leather purse, size of a Grandmother’s breadbox.
It was dark and foggy out when I left the theater, and Sarah stupidly walked right behind my car as I was backing out of my parking space. Trust me, it took EVERY OUNCE of restraint I had…..
😉
dear Mullet you done good me dear. i salute you with a tot of Jamaica Dark Rum…and a yo ho ho and a barrel of rum.
Hrrrr, Mullet, the bilge-sucking scurvy dog is not worth scratching yer bumper on. Hrrrrrr, bubbles, be a good lass and pass a snort this way, will ye?
LOL! Arrrr, You be correct there, Mateys, I’m supposin.
Just wish I had stuck my Palin/Beck “Teahadists” sticker on the bumper last week when I got it at the Park Strip Rally. But I might have returned to a car with a stiletto puncture in the bumper instead….
Cap’n Mullet, you did good to resist. Only keelhauling is good enough for that lass. Ho ho ho.
keelhauling be too good for the likes of her !! a flogging ’round the fleet be more to my taste, a dozen lashes with a cat o’nine tails at every ship in port… ay , matey’s … tis a rough life we lead, but the rewards be great if we but weather this storm of insanity… So man the braces and reef in the mains’il , tis a’blowing a grand nor’easter til we make port in the month of November…. and Irish… do you no be lashing the wheel to sneak off to the bilges for a swig of rum !
Arrrgggghhh…this old seadog is battening down the hatches til November. If Miller and O’Donnell – those scurvy wretches – try and hornswaggle us…..by jove then we’ll weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen!
Only the very best of grog on my poop deck, Cap’n Ben!
oooohhh!!! Aye, Grog be goode… tastes right fine, and with a buxom lass as yoreself on me arm, twill be a fine voyage ! ye’ll not be a-fronted if we have Zyx and bubbles along for the trip, will ye ? Aye, and with Slip at the helm an’ Buff to keep the scurvy dog in line (ye must keep a close eye on Slip… he likes his rum a bit too much whilst on watch!) we’ll weather many a squall between here and November. tis a fine crew we be with…Legal and Rip, Citykid , LMD, Crowwoman and the whole lot of them arrrgh , a more murderous lot of scalywags and ne’er-do-wells did never sail the seas.. Hoist the colours and run out the guns ! Tis the Hag of Wasilla we be a-searching for, and we’ll give her a broadside she’ll ne’er forget in November !
opps, me peg leg just fell off , and the parrot just crapped on me shoulder… off to the frying pan with him !
Got mixed up with Santa on that one.
Aye, & I’ll be manning that helm, me hearties, if it be all the same to ye. ! Slip’ll be three sheets to the wind, let ‘im trim the sails this trip!
This is the Open Thread, so I’m posting here. Please read the entire page, watch the three minute video, and, should you want more info, click the links:
http://godsownparty.com/blog/
Vote, vote, vote, vote, and vote.
Then read this: http://www.politicususa.com/en/rightwing-palin-chosen/comment-page-1#comment-29164 for a look at what the Sarahites are really up to.
Yep, and COD is a Lady in Waiting. In her acceptance screech, she mentions the “war weary” and pledges to fight against the “politics of personal destruction”. Dog whistles folks.
OT, there is a tragic story of 13 people including kids who are wandering the high desert outside LA. Apparently they think the Rapture is happening now. It’s a headline on CNN. While I usually don’t follow this type of stuff, this may be a great opportunity to educate many folks about this Rapture stuff.
Urban America is not exposed as much to the “End Times” like the more rural parts. While I hope everyone is found and safe this should be a wake up call to many about the extreme religious right and the beliefs they hold. Let’s hold $P accountable for her beliefs and send her back to Wasilly to practice them.
OK, everyone is safe. They spent the night in the desert praying and have shown up at a park.
CNN doing more about the why the families were so worried about these “cult” folks.
Glad to hear that they are safe.
Couldn’t we just set her up on that island that rose up in the south pacific? Wasilla don’t need her either!
This is where I am pillaging me language.
http://www.piratetreasure.org/pirate-phrases.htm 🙂
Well, I’m just a touch disappointed. I thought you were going to tell us you were the long lost granddaughter of Gunpowder Gertie, the Pirate Queen of the Kootenays, a but hey, a website’s good too. Thanks.
Irish, I think you’re an incarnation of Graniauale O’Malley. For the non-Hibernians among ye, she was a 16th century Mayo woman who stepped in to assume the chieftanship of her clan after the menfolk got killed off. She maintained a private navy of merchant ships and did a thriving trade w. Spain. The English saw her activities as “piracy” and deemed her “The pirate queen of Ireland.” She went to London, had dealings with Queen Elizabeth I as “one queen to another” (they spoke Latin, their only common language), and she negotiated protection for her clan and merchant fleet. She was a great irishwoman, altogether.
Aaarrgghhh….gettaway with ye. I’m just a rum-soaked lass. 🙂
Aargh, now I am thinking of that fabulous Pogues album (w. equally fab cover art): “Rom, Sodomy, and the Lash”.
“The most shocking performance — Bristol Palin and Mark Ballas — they Cha Cha to “Mama Told Me (Not to Come)” … are you listening Levi? But the best part — Bristol will rip off some “tear-away clothes” while Sarah Palin sits in the audience!”
http://www.tmz.com/2010/09/17/dancing-with-the-stars-david-hasselhoff-song-list-sarah-palin-bristol-palin-songs-dances-audrina-patridge-the-situation/
Can we expect a Janet Jackson moment?
I wasn’t going to talk like a pirate today, but this makes me go AARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!
Hrrrrr, Zyx, it be Hrrrr.
HHRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!
i say DANCE little girl DANCE YOUR HEART OUT.
forget about mama in the front row. dance because you are young and healthy
dance because you are young and juicy
dance for your child and the blessings he brings.
dance because you will never go hungry or homeless.
dance because…just because.
Lovely, bubs.
Saw on IM that a few signs may show up in LA at Fairfax and Beverly at 5 pm as the show goes on live at Television City. Wish I wasn’t so far away to go bring a funny sign. That corner should be very busy at 5 in the most liberal part of the city could get a cacophony of horns going.
Just a bit of historical irony, Television City was also the home of the Smothers Brothers show. How far we have come?
How far have we SUNK? The Smothers Brothers were endlessly entertaining. They put Pete Seeger on television, ignoring completely that he was blacklisted for being a fellow traveler. They also all but openly endorsed smoking pot. I think Tommy did yoga, I remember him doing handstands from a seated position, lifting himself onto straight arms and then inverting. I studied gymnastics, and no gymnast I knew could do such a thing (not back then). I have seen similar feats performed by yogis.
Hi everyone! I hope to get this message back to Gryphen somehow. The buzzflash on his site has malware. I can’t visit.
The old salt’s poop deck has been pillaged! He did know about it earlier and said that he had got rid of it, but I’m seeing it now too.
Arrrrrg.
You’re really good at this pirate thing, Irish. Something you want to share with us? 😉
yeah Irish..what up wit that? arrr…me pretty one?
hahahahaha
Lovely photo, as always. I’ll have to go to Shannyn’s archives and listen to the conversation; everyone who knows me knows how I feel about coal. But Alaska, it’s not just coal. Collectively, as a state, you must make the decision to earn your living by some means other than resource extraction. Timber clearcutting, poisonous mining, trawling, oil drilling, and hydrofracking for natural gas are all environmentally and/or ecologically disastrous. Q: Why are the Koch Brothers trying to install their Kansan stooge in the Senate? A: Because they’re in the energy business. Vote for Scott McAdams!
I haven’t posted in a long time and don’t know if this is the thread where this link belongs but since the topic is flying over Alaska, it seems appropriate.
I don’t read the local paper in Jacksonville very thoroughly, but having followed the Mudflats blog for over two years, the word “Alaska” caught my eye in this column. Seems a local man was one in the park service plane that went down near King Salmon and his parents are still looking even though park service had to give up. Where is Mason McCleod?
http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-09-19/story/where-mason-mcleod
Need some old school blues to soothe your soul on Sunday mornin’ ?? Commercial free also , too.
http://kpft.org/
Click at top for sound.
listening to Ray Charles right now. LET’S DANCE mudpups…. thanks Austin
M-m-m-m………Chicken Fried Bacon and cream gravy. Heart attack on a plate.
http://i.imgur.com/ni3yN.jpg
Avast me hearties, yep those pics are a thing of beauty. Now me fellow bilge rats, pick up the grog and celebrate Talk Like A Pirate Day! 🙂
Arrrrgggggggggggggghhhhh,,,,and shiver me timbers it be Talk Like a Pirate Day, Mateys!
Ahoy to all of ye.
But I don’t want to be a pirate!
http://i.imgur.com/z4ZV0.png
Very fetching!
…but you look so…dashing me dear. ARGGGH.
Hoist the colors.
http://i.imgur.com/b9Y4E.png
Hrrr, me wilde Celtic beauty, this very day will I thee lay at yer feet the heart of yer worstest enemy still beating. Hrrr.
Oh my!
Captains log –
Oh this dreadful invasion of filthy brigand speech has come aboard my facebook page, as well. I fear for my friends and associates who have been taken in by these would be Pirates! An object of romantic fantasy, Pirates are really as filthy and underhanded as can be. It is not known whether the adoption of such unruly speech is a reversible malady.
Thank you MKR.
This series of photographs are real keepers. My first 10 years in Alaska were in and around Cordova. The extent of the Copper River drainage has changed significantly since I first saw it. There have been so many stories similar from that region to yours from the west side of Cook Inlet. But the lakes, streams, dunes that are too far forward to the Gulf of Alaska, are so similar. Cook Inlet may be more restrained except for the extreme tidal differential. (I don’t mean to diminish the extremes of that location, so different in so many ways.)
The Cooper River region has experienced the boom and bust of the Alaska economy, such as it has been for the last 200 years +/-. If anyone wants to learn about the natural history of Alaska, go for it. We are all techtonic, the foundations are shifting everyday. Then add to that the weather extremes.
All of this is to say that I did watch “Moore Up North” this afternoon and I am appalled (sp?). I may comment another time, but I surely did want to add into the mix of that discussion about protection of salmon streams. During the Chugach Alaska and SeaAlaska clearcutting days in the 80’s and 90’s, a ruling from somewhere did come down to insist that loggers must leave buffer zones at salmon streams sufficient to protect the recognized importance of the natural stream for salmon progeneration. I don’t think that logging occurred in the Cook Inlet Region the way it did east and south. And this decision (as I say by someone) didn’t come until late in the logging scams of the 80’s and 90’s in Prince William Sound, the North Gulf of Alaska Coast and Southeast.
As I listened to the indictment of “managers” overseeing this coal project at the Chuitna River drainage I had to wonder, because I missed this in the discussion, is this Federal, State, Native land? Whose responsible to issue any permits for this? If this is “State ” land we should be grateful that the Feds do have some oversight. Like the thing about control of navigable waters. From the guys on Shannyn’s show it sounds like whomever has no respect for all that is in that region. (The fright of moose, Beluga whales). The cynicism of the Tyonek people is surely warranted from past experience.
I can’t keep this thread of mine going at this time. I just want to reiterate that the photo essay, collectively, has been extremely important to all of us, but I truly believe, critical for Alaskans.
Love to have some answers. Thanx again. nem
Five years ago, I was out in the wild Mosquito Coast of eastern Honduras. The inhabitants, the Moquito Indians as they’re called,, are descendants of English pirates and escaped African slaves, with a little Indigenous blood from tribes in the interior thrown in. One day I was approached by a wizened old man with the darkest skin I’ve ever seen. He was wearing tattered striped pants, an Army jacket, and an old slouch fedora ovr a red bandana. “Good mornin’, me lovely,’ he said, taking my hand. “I be Mister Morgan Davies.” I knew right then that pirates still walk the earth! Good mornin’, me lovelies and me hearties.
i be Bubbles me lovely and a bountiful good day tae ye….dang!!! i’m gettin’ good at this here pirate talkin’…,.shiver me timbers an stuff.
I love the Thoreaux book “The Mosquito Coast”. It is usually one of my goto re-reads in the deepest depths of an Alaskan winter.
almost evening here, so…
yo ho ho…and a bottle of rum
A Pirate Looks at Forty (Whoa! I’m looking backwards…)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYzdbCbxvlY&feature=fvw