Mel the disheveled writer at a NaNoWriMo write-in in November 2007, where I began "Cold." I already had my 50K the day before, but the writing I did at this write-in & up to 3 AM that night -- to the tune of an additional 3455 words -- was some of my best.
Cold and Long Dark
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There are several cool things I could do tonight of a (contemporary) political nature:
But I am doing none of those things. Instead, I’ll be heading over to Denny’s to join my NaNoWriMo peeps for an evening of writing.
NaNoWriMo, as I’ve mentioned before, stands for National Novel Writing Month — an annual month-long (& actually international) event which calls upon its participants to write 50,000 words of a “novel” over the course of November — the equivalent of about 6 pages double-spaced for each of the 30 days of November. I did it first in November 2007 as a way to get my writing chops back; started it in November 2008 but didn’t complete that year due to personal issues; & did it again last November. The 2007 & 2009 NaNos are where my science fiction novels-&-stories-in-progress Cold and Long Dark originated.
But this is March, so why am I getting together with my NaNoWriMo buds tonight? Well, back in November 2007 as that year’s NaNo came to an end, we decided amongst ourselves that we would continue to meet for a write-in throughout the year every third Thursday of the month. And today’s third Thursday. I hold it sacred. So no contemporary politics for me tonight.
But please note the qualification: contemporary politics. I’ll still be present in the political world, just not the one I’ve been involving myself in with my work on understanding Sullygate, or reminding people about the federal probe into Alaska public corruption, or saying anything (ack!) about Palin, or preparing an update on Miller v. Carpeneti, the rightwing lawsuit against the Alaska Judicial Council that’s attempting to toss out part of Alaska’s Constitution. (The suit was dismissed in District court, but has been appealed to the Ninth Circuit; I’ll be uploading briefs in the case over the weekend.)
The political world I’ll be present in tonight is my invented Consensus society that I’ve been building into the story universe of Long Dark & Cold, as I’ve partially described in a couple of earlier posts (“Good for my worldbuilding, bad for my world” and “Building Consensus”) — a society based on governance by consent, in which every individual without exception has a say in every decision that affects their life and work. I’ve just completed reading a couple of books about collaborative decisionmaking & consensus-style governance, both of which have greatly enriched what I know about how my invented society runs itself — & also sent me into a paradigm shift with regard to the dysfunctional government & politics — local, state, national, & international — that we’re all putting up with right now. I just finished reading two books in my reading list —
— which I will be writing more about after I finish my Sullygate timeline. And I think I’ll be putting together a bibliography on consensus & sociocracy stuff too — a bibliography fitting not only to my background research for writing, but also to exposing other people, I hope, to some stuff that works a whole lot better than the messy adversarial way we’re trying to run things now. All in all, learning about this stuff & writing it into my fiction — & in nonfiction commentary on my blog — seems a whole lot more important in the long term than any of the other political stuff I’ve written about — however important that stuff is in the short term.
At the moment I’m writing a story in the Long Dark end of things (that is, in a time period about 3 centuries before the events of Cold), working title “Asura,” about the murder of one of my principal characters Jyoti by a confused young man who is attempting to effect an intervention by the Hindu god Shiva. Yep, really. (See my post “Storyminded” for what I’ve previously said about this story.) Jyoti is a farmer of sorts — a “farmer in the sky” who is expert in the production of food within a closed ecological life support system (CELSS) (which, yep, I’ve written about this before too, in my brilliantly named post from last September, “Eating (& breathing & crapping) in outer space”, and in a second one just before last NaNovember, “Taking life support for granted”)— that is, an artificial biosphere such as what would be required for human survival in one of the sublight interstellar space ships that Jyoti & her community live in as they cross the Long Dark from our solar system to the next one. Jyoti’s murder is a resounding shock to the community of the ship Celeritas, & not only to her partner, Esti Gusev. But what do you do with a murderer in a CELSS? And what do you do with a murderer in a society that governs itself according to sociocratic principles of consent? And how do you address the needs of the victim’s survivors? Here’s my chance also to mess around with how practices of restorative justice might play themselves out in a sociocratic society.
So nonpolitical? Not hardly. Just not contemporary.
Should be fun.
Anchorage attorney Cliff Groh, keeper of the Alaska Political Corruption blog
One of the blogs I’ve been longtime following is the Alaska Political Corruption blog kept by Anchorage attorney Cliff Groh. This blog has consistently been the best source available about the ins & outs of the wide-ranging federal investigation of political corruption in Alaska that first entered Alaskans’ consciousness with a raid on legislative offices in August and September 2006, led to the conviction of several former Alaska state legislators (members of the so-called “Corrupt Bastards Club”) & the downfall of Bill Allen of VECO, the conviction of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens which was later voided due to prosecutorial misconduct… a big wild ride in Alaska politics that’s been going on now for several years. (A wild ride considerably longer than Palin’s, I might add — & with a much larger impact on Alaska politics too.)
Cliff Groh will be at UAA tonight delivering a lecture in the university’s Polaris Lecture Series. Unfortunately I won’t be able to make it. But maybe you can — so here’s the info:
Background information:
Groh is a model to emulate when it comes to blogging about politics: he presents facts, is careful to distinguish facts from his own theories & suppositions, & refrains from emotive & incendiary language which mostly just distracts from clear understanding. That’s as should be from someone who is concerned more about the rule of law than about narrow ideological concerns. He has my utmost respect.
Bus rider reading the Anchorage Daily News. The front page story, from October 1, 2008, is about former Veco CEO Bill Allen testifying at the Washington, DC trial of Senator Ted Stevens on corruption charges. Stevens was found guilty, but his conviction was later voided due to prosecutorial misconduct. (Not the same, of course, as vindicating him.) Cliff Groh's Alaska Political Corruption blog makes sense of it all.
Chronos, god of time, with wings like an angel, sleeping on Georg Wolff grave at Friedhof IV der Gemeinde Jerusalems- und Neue Kirche. Sculptor: Hans Latt, around 1904. Photo copyright Mutte Erde, 21 Sep 2006; used by permission via Wikimedia Commons.
For other news stories & posts on this topic, see my bibliography on all things Sullygate.
This is something of another update — more substantive than yesterday’s, but more a preview of what’s to come than the full kerblooey post I’m writing about Sullygate.
For those who are just catching up, Sullygate is the nickname that’s been coined (possibly by me — I’m not really sure) for all the stuff surrounding former Anchorage Mayor George M. Sullivan’s “life insurance policy” through the Municipality of Anchorage, which culminated in a February 16 vote by the Anchorage Assembly to pay out $193,000 from public monies to a trust headed up by Sullivan’s son, current Mayor Dan Sullivan.
Fishy. And not in a nice omega 3 fatty acids-rich way.
One of the first questions Shannyn Moore asked me last Friday when I guested on her radio show was, when I first began paying attention to the story of Sullygate, where did I begin? Did I start with the events of 1982, when the plan to keep George Sullivan on the Muni’s group plan was first put together, & move forward from there? Or did I start with the Assembly’s February 16 vote and move back from there?
Good question. I first learned about it by reading Sean Cockerham’s excellent Anchorage Daily News article first posted on the web on March 3. [Ref #1] And then I went to the PDFs of relevant Muni documents that the ADN acquired through a public documents request & posted to accompany the article. And then… well, long story short: I started with 1982, & moved forward. Chronos god of time is not on the zodiac, but I’m sure if he was, he’d be my sun sign.
Kippers. Yum. Good brain food.
(My sun sign is Pisces. Fishy. But in a nice omega 3 fatty acids-rich way, as you can tell from all the kippers & sardines & salmon & tuna that I eat.)
All this by way of saying: I do my best in figuring out how long strings of events relate to each other if I can look at them in chronological order. In fact, my first action when I downloaded the PDFs of relevant Muni documents was to rearrange them into chronological order (the Muni had provided them to ADN in some other order which, while creative, did not hasten my understanding). And then I read ‘em through. And counted on that ordering to help me write my big posts on this stuff.
I’m not of course unique in understanding the value of chronologies. Thus, Sean Cockerham’s March 3 article was accompanied by a George Sullivan timeline. [Ref #2] And in 2007, during the Mark Begich administration, Plan Adminstrator/Privacy Officer Joanne Hanscom preparing for a meeting to discuss the George Sullivan “life insurance” issue by putting together a timeline based on documents found on file. [Ref #3, pages 2–3]
So… that’s the full kerblooey post I’m preparing: the great-grandmother of all Sullygate timelines, based on all the factual information that has so far been publicly disclosed. Heavily annotated.
Now, if you have been paying attention to the way I do these things, you will know how geekily detail-oriented I am. So it’s taking a long time. I started it last night when I got home from work, & then I looked up at the clock & it was past midnight, & I was only 2/3 through the 2002 Wuerth administration emails. I hope to finish it tonight. It’ll probably take me through to past midnight again, so maybe I should stop by Carrs on the way home & get me some of those teensy 5-hour energy drinks.
I will say that already it’s caused me to rethink some of my earlier understandings, so I may also have to follow up with a post about that. But: chronology first. And with good luck, it will also be helpful for other people looking at this issue.
Before I close out this post, though –
Last Thursday someone wrote to tell me that Susan Lindemuth & Larry Crawford are married. “Don’t know if or how it ties into the saga,” my correspondent told me, “but I thought you might be interested.”
I don’t know if or how it ties into the saga either, but yes, I find it interesting. Susan Lindemuth was Manager of Records & Benefits for the Municipality of Anchorage from April 1970 to October 2000 — spanning the administrations of George Sullivan, Tony Knowles, Tom Fink, Rick Mystrom, & a few months into the George Wuerch administration. (She has served since then as Director of Human Resources with the Alaska Railroad Corporation.) [Ref #4] Due to her longtime position with the Muni, she shows up several times in the record that has so far been made public about the George Sullivan “life insurance” policy. She’s a central figure: you’ll see her time & again in the timeline I’m preparing.
And the other person? Well, Larry Crawford is Mayor Dan Sullivan’s chief of staff. He was also city manager under three previous mayors — George Sullivan, Tom Fink, & Rick Mystrom. [Ref #5]
I haven’t actually been able to verify that Crawford & Lindemuth are actually married — not every detail of people’s family lives shows up in news sources or on the Internet — but I have discovered that together they attended the 2009 reunion at Lindemuth’s alma mater Carleton College [Ref #6], & searches on each of their names at whitepages.com confirm that they live at the same Anchorage address.
The fact of their relationship might fit into the saga, but then again it might not. As Wikipedia explains, correlation does not mean that there’s necessarily a cause & effect relationship:
“Correlation does not imply causation” is a phrase used in science and statistics to emphasize that correlation between two variables does not automatically imply that one causes the other (though it does not remove the fact that correlation can still be a hint, whether powerful or otherwise).
The opposite belief, correlation proves causation, is a logical fallacy by which two events that occur together are claimed to have a cause-and-effect relationship. The fallacy is also known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for “with this, therefore because of this”) and false cause. [Ref #7]
So it would be false cause to assume that Larry Crawford’s relationship with Susan Lindemuth, in combination with him having top administration positions with four different Anchorage mayors — including (1) the former mayor whose “life insurance” we’re talking about; (2) the current mayor who is trustee of the trust the $193,000 of public monies was paid out to; and (3) two mayors (Fink & Mystrom) during whose administrations there were reductions in the so-called “premiums” — means that Crawford had any knowledge or anything else to do with any of this stuff.
But it’s still interesting. Indeed, when I mentioned the Crawford/Lindemuth relationship on last Friday’s Shannyn Moore show, Shannyn exclaimed, “I’ve just got like 16 instant messages that were like, What!?? Back up! hold on! This is new information!“
And the interestingness of it makes it all the more apparent to me that we’re going to have better luck getting to the bottom of this if there’s an independent investigation, as called for by the resolution submitted last week by Assemblymember Harriet Drummond. [Ref #8]
If you agree with me, & you’re an Anchorage resident, please tell your Assembly representative(s) so. You can also call the Anchorage municipal ombudsman at (907) 343-4461.
I’m writing this quick update because I saw that The Mudflats has just linked to this post [Ref #9] as a backgrounder to the Anchorage Daily News‘ editorial posted late last night (which means it probably appears in today’s print edition) which called Mayor Dan Sullivan on his clear conflict of interest between his roles as mayor and as trustee of the George M. Sullivan Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust. Here’s the money quote (both literally & figuratively) from that editorial:
In defending his actions, the mayor stresses his fiduciary responsibility as trustee to seek payment. What about his fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers of Anchorage? That comes first. [Ref #10]
And meanwhile… here I am not having yet completed my great grandmother of all Sullygate timelines that I promised in this post. It’s one of those things that comes with (1) working a 40-hour a week job which is not to write this blog (no matter how much I worship Chronos god of time, he obstinately refuses to provide me with more of that commodity); (2) needing to take care of responsibilities at home, including my responsibility to myself to not overtax myself into depression (a number 1 priority for me) or lack of sleep. I added to my chronology during my lunchtime today, but nope, still not done. I can only promise you that it’ll be worth the wait.
If you’re waiting with bated breath or are still catching up, I recommend checking out the bolded items in my Sullygate bibliography. If you’re fairly well caught up on the news, you still might have missed the excellent report by Len Anderson of KSKA-FM Anchorage Public Radio that was broadcast last Friday — the audio report can be listened to online & includes interviews with Assembly Chair Patrick Flynn and Municipal Attorney Dennis Wheeler. [Ref #11]
| For other news stories & posts on this topic, see my bibliography on all things Sullygate. |
Well, obviously I haven’t finished writing the post with more about Sullygate that I promised last Friday after being on the Shannyn Moore show. Sorry about that — got caught up in family stuff over the weekend.
It will come… probably tomorrow.
That’s all I have to say at the moment.
| For other news stories & posts on this topic, see my bibliography on all things Sullygate. |
I’ll be on the Shannyn Moore Show on KUDO 1080 AM to talk about Sullygate — former Mayor George Sullivan’s $193,000 faux life insurance policy that has already paid out to the trust headed by his son, current Mayor Dan Sullivan. I believe I’ll be on during the first hour, which starts at 11:00 AM.
Update: Now rescheduled for the second hour at 12:00 noon (Alaska time).
I have some new info that I’ll be talking about on the air. If you can’ t listen to the show, okay — I’m also writing a blog post that covers the same territory, which I’ll finish this morning or early afternoon.
You can also listen to the show livestreamed at KUDO’s website.
Update: Just finished. How’d I do?
Now I’m gonna get some breakfast, & then I’ll work on a post that covers some of the same territory as covered on the air. In particular: the relationship between Larry Crawford — who is Dan Sullivan’s chief of staff & was city manager under George Sullivan, Tom Fink, & Rick Mystrom — & Susan Lindemuth, who was the Municipality’s Manager of Records & Benefits from 1970 to 2000, including when George Sullivan’s so-called “life insurance” policy was set up, & further questions about Susan Lindemuth’s knowledge of the situation.
Thanks, Shannyn, for having me — it was a pleasure.
http://j.mp/9RyL3V // Glad you didn’t, hurts my ears. #
But that’s all right. Because I can see all of the winners in this one exceptional grand masterpiece epic generic Academy Award Winning Movie trailer. It’s even got a lesbo kiss!
(But beware! it uses the R-word.)
Update: unfortunately the video is no longer available on YouTube due to a terms of use violation. Probably a violation of copyright. But you can view it on the Cracked website. It can’t be embedded, but it’s well worth a visit to Cracked to see it.
h/t Kelley Eskridge
