Open Thread – Patience
As many of you have noticed, we’ve been experiencing some … how shall I put this… unforeseen opportunities to practice patience and tolerance here at Mudflats Central. Most people refer to that as “having technical difficulties.” Although the bad news has been problems accessing the forums, outages on the blog, long loading times, broken RSS feeds, missing images, and link challenges, the good news is that we have a shiny new server now, and that most of the big stuff is behind us! (insert loud and sustained cheering noises here) All that is left now is some minor tweaking, which…
Bear Zombie-cam!
A trip to the world-famous Brooks Camp from the Lower 48 will set you back thousands. Even from Alaska, you’ve got to be lucky enough to win the bear lottery, and it still isn’t cheap. It’s almost 300 miles from Anchorage, and no roads lead there. Try to get there before 2014 at this point. You’ll be lucky if you do. Almost anyone who likes bears will recognize the area. If you’ve seen a picture of a grizzly standing in the river grabbing a salmon in mid-air as it tries to leap up the falls, it was almost certainly taken…
Muni Played Favorites With Ballots (*Update*)
In last week’s installment of the Municipality of Anchorage’s continuing 2012 Election debacle, new Municipal Clerk Barbara Jones made a disturbing find while attempting to (quite literally) clean up the old Municipal Clerk’s mess…141 unaccounted-for ballots. This has led the trusty Election Commission to meet this coming Thursday and review the ballots they missed the first two times around. While all of that has been going on, members of our Recount Observation Team have continued to research and slowly pursue the auditing process the Municipality has refused to provide. …and it’s been free of charge… The latest bombshell was discovered…
In My Alaska Garden: Hoop House Heaven
With some health challenges and the really rainy weather, I was glad this week that the hoop house is at the point in the summer where it doesn’t require too much constant care. I can leave one door open now day and night because the evening temps aren’t below 55 (even with one door open, the interior stays about 5 to 10 degrees above the outside.) It’s been a very slow process due to our chilly summer, but finally this week I’m starting to see some real plant explosion! This is good, because I need something to counterbalance the disappointing…
Seattle’s Stake in Bristol Bay Seafood
One of the newer outrages that Rep. Don Young, Congressman for all Alaskans who voted for him, has to face is the U.S. Senator from Washington, Maria Cantwell. What has she done to incur his infamous wrath? She has stuck her nose in the business of Alaskan resource management. You see, one of Senator Cantwell’s main issues is sustainability of salmon populations and the fishing jobs they provide. Not only has she been working to secure funding for the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund – from the Columbia River to Puget Sound, salmon populations are struggling to recover after decades of…
The Seven Stages of Gun Violence
It is easier for a crazy person to get an automatic weapon than healthcare in America. – Shannyn Moore So, America, here we are yet again. Another mass killing. Another hellish scene of smoke and blood and murder. Another day of death and pain, panic and terror. Another dozen people shot dead. Children. Young people. Sixty more wounded, gut shot, shot in the head, shot through the lungs, bones shattered, flesh torn. Bleeding, hurting, crying, some will die, some will live. People we knew gone in a second, torn apart, destroyed, changed forever. Another hundred American families grieving with loss…
Un-American – The More Things Change…
McCarthyism: demagogic, reckless, hysterical, deliberate, and typically unsubstantiated public accusations and/or personal attacks on the character, loyalty, patriotism, and beliefs of an individual opponent or group. Usually for political gain in the guise of patriotism and/or “national security.” Normally based on widespread racial, political, religious, ethnic, and/or sexual prejudices. Can often lead to persecution, disenfranchisement, mass hysteria, and violent mob behavior. Particularly common during periods of conflict, political unrest, migration, and economic uncertainty. In 1950 a minor freshman Senator gave a speech in West Virginia. A conservative from Wisconsin, he spoke before a chapter of the Republican Women’s Club. Despite…
The Wrath of Captain Zero
Well, somebody’s still mad. After he didn’t get his way during the legislative session, he broke his crayons and went home. After Governor Sean Parnell’s embarrassingly botched special session that cost Alaskans upwards of $30,000 a day, in which his woefully underprepared administration tried in vain to get the Alaska Senate to green light his second $2 billion dollar a year, no-strings-attached, prezzie to the oil companies, he’s now got another plan. Revenge. It didn’t register with the governor that Alaskans actually didn’t like his oil tax plan. They didn’t like the idea of moving $10 billion over the next…
The Time to Toss Pebble is Now. Really.
Here in Alaska, the proposed Pebble Mine project is not a partisan issue. It’s an issue of fish vs. cyanide, Alaskans vs. multinational corporations, Native culture vs. the bottom line, sustainable jobs vs. instant gratification, and food security vs. greed. It’s a battle between holding on to the best of our state, and the last great wild salmon run in the world, and letting it all slip away to line the pockets of the already wealthy multinational mining conglomerates. We have a lot at stake. And right now, we can actually help to influence how this all turns out. What…