Anchorage & homelessness

Posted on Wed, 21 October 2009 by marcia
A homeless camp near Valley of the Moon Park, May 2006

A homeless camp near Valley of the Moon Park, May 2006

Crossposted at
Celtic Diva’s
Blue Oasis

A note from Mel: This is to introduce a guest post from my friend Marcia Barnes, who contacted me earlier tonight in reaction to a report in the Anchorage Daily News about the eviction of a homeless camp on Veteran’s Ridge in the Mountain View neighborhood of Anchorage. [Ref #1] She had actually written something about it, but didn’t know what to do with it.  I’d already offered to publish on my blog a guest post from another friend — it didn’t take any thought at all for me to offer that to Marcia as well, especially because this is also an issue that I’m concerned about, but I haven’t the energy to write much about it now.  So I’m very happy to have Marcia’s thoughts, & that she was willing to present them here.

I work, as I’ve mentioned before, at the Justice Center at University of Alaska Anchorage, where among other things I’m responsible for the layout of our quarterly research publication the Alaska Justice Forum.  Our most recent issue, published just a couple of weeks ago, includes an detailed look at homelessness in Alaska and in Anchorage. [Ref #2] Who are the homeless? where are they found? how many are there? what are their circumstances?  Take a look at that article to gain some context for what we’re really facing with homelessness in Anchorage, & ask yourself: are we handling it the best way possible?  See also the website of the Anchorage Coalition on Homelessness. [Ref #3] — Mel

Anchorage & homelessness

by Marcia Barnes

I am trying to decide how to respond to the article in the Anchorage Daily News yesterday regarding the clearing out of the homeless camp in Mountain View. [Ref #1] I understand people’s concerns regarding the presence of the camp and possible problems.  However, I wonder at the humanity of the way it has been handled.  People with no place to go are routed and their possessions confiscated.  If they are fortunate they have various family, friends or acquaintances with whom they may stay.  However if not, they are still out on the streets and  it is getting closer to winter, most of their winter gear is gone and they have to start scrounging all over again, perhaps stealing or more panhandling to get enough money for gear at the Salvation Army or Bishops Attic. Several people there were working but because of past problems, messing up ASHA or being disqualified because of a felony or simply not earning enough to be able to pay the amount of money it costs to get into an apartment, they are homeless.   Though some are working,  with no place to stay they might actually lose the jobs they do have.

It does not look like the city has offered many options for help to this group of really desperate people.  Supposedly things are in the works so that when it happens again there will be social services available with recommendations of places to go for help.  Perhaps  the Mayor’s Homelessness Task Force is working on it, but that does not help those people currently routed from some kind of stability, it does not provide the Housing First option that is working in some other states and cities;  it, in fact does nothing but cause the problem to move to another location, or back to the present one in a few weeks.   Did the “clean up” of the camp accomplish making the area safer for the school and the neighborhood?  I don’t know, perhaps it might have.  Perhaps it did not.  The reality is that Anchorage will continue to see deaths of homeless people that could have been avoided with better preparation and support.  It is a difficult situation, but if we are to deal with it with hope for any positive resolution, a plan needs to be in place to work with people prior to shoving them out of the camps.

There may be  money available through the Mental Health Trust Authority for start up to help those who need it and qualify as stakeholders.  Money might also be available through Behavioral Health to help those dealing with mental illness or substance abuse.  I believe funding should be sought from Native Corporations, as there are a large number of homeless Alaska Native people and culturally appropriate interventions could help tremendously.  There might be funding available through Alaska Housing for specialized housing and there might be funds available through a consortium of private or church charities. I assume the Task Force will deal with some of these organizations and attempt to develop some kind of program for those the city is moving.

Expecting any real benefit from routing out a group of people from one area only to watch them move to another because the problem of housing is still not solved is futile.  It allows the news to have something to do, the police have something to do, and those living at the homeless camps can become more and more desperate.  A small band-aid over a severed artery is not much help.  The city needs to develop a humane and effective program to assist homeless people into appropriate  housing with supports that help them maintain that housing.  Then, rousting a camp could make sense or not be needed.

References

  1. 10/19/09. “Mountain View homeless camp cleared out: Citations issued as squatters have 20 minutes to gather belongings” by Lisa Demer (Anchorage Daily News).
  2. “A Look at Homelessness in Alaska” by Justice Center, University of Alaska Anchorage. Alaska Justice Forum 26(2): 2–5 (Summer 2009).
  3. Anchorage Coalition on Homelessness (website).
Posted in Guest blogger, Social justice | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The Daily Tweets, 2009-10-20

Posted on Tue, 20 October 2009 by Mel Green
  • Missed Sweet Honey in the Rock last Thursday — so listening to them today on iPod. Freedom's coming, & it won't be long. #
  • Commented on Dear Feminists: Which Woman Will You Side With? The Lesbian or the Ex Lesbian? / SistersTalk http://tinyurl.com/yk4s86l #
  • RT: @feliciaday: RT: @Veronica Blog post: Pink is the new STFU http://bit.ly/2nIXHr HAHA, totally agree./// Me too! Yuuuuuck! #
  • Commented on Dear Feminists: Which Woman Will You Side With? The Lesbian or the Ex Lesbian? / SistersTalk http://tinyurl.com/yzsrmm2 #
  • Commented on There Are Rich White Gays and Lesbians, And There's The Rest of Us / SistersTalk http://tinyurl.com/ygb6ptw #
  • I guess Palin didn't get my prior open letter. Here it is again: STFU. Go away. STFU. Go away. STFU. Go away. STICK A SOCK IN IT! GO AWAY! #
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It’s all just an act… or maybe not

Posted on Mon, 19 October 2009 by Mel Green

It's all just an act (018/365)

I created this photomosaic & posted it to my Flickr photostream on November 9, 2007 under the title It’s all just an act.

This is another story about how depression & its close relative despair work their way in my life.

But first I will explain what occasions this topic over any other today. For reassurance to my friends, if nothing else.  Today I’m in the grey, & something of a light grey at that, which is all to the good.  I’m not in the state that most of this post is about: what I call the pit. I’m just a little low in mood from having had to go through some boxes yesterday that allowed an egress to some of the grief that I need mostly to have shuttered away right now.  (It’s time will come.)

So I feel crummy. But not dangerously crummy.  Not even as crummy today as yesterday.  In short, I’m okay; tomorrow I should be even okay-er: I’m doing the necessaries to take care of myself.

But sometimes on such a day it’s good to remind myself where things can go if I don’t stay mindful.

A self-portrait I took on October 23, 2007 -- my moms birthday. I didnt realize until after looking at it that I was feeling pretty low. Its there in my eyes. It was just short of two years since her death.

A self-portrait I took on October 23, 2007 — my mom’s birthday. I didn’t realize until after looking at it that I was feeling pretty low. It’s there in my eyes. It was just short of two years since her death.

Two years ago, when I made that photomosaic: I was feeling pretty bad, from a combination of things. We’d entered the dark of the year, which also means the cold of the year, plus there was the approaching anniversary of my mom’s death on November 29, and it was also very shortly after her birthday (October 23). Add in some relationship stuff, & probably I was a bit run down.  Nor did I know about 5-HTP then.

And, as is common for me, I had a hard time just coming out & saying I felt bad.  Even in in how I created & posted the photomosaic: I used Photo Booth (a Mac program), which has one setting that allows for particularly lurid colors which give a sense of melodramatic overkill.  I gave the mosaic tags like Mel o’drama which lent further credibility to the idea that, hey, I was just screwing around, this wasn’t serious (even though it was). I was a little more honest with another tag: the actor sometimes becomes the character played — though even that was sufficiently obscure that unless someone knew me really well, they would be unlikely to interpret it to know its relation to me.

So what was going on with me?  I was in the pit. The black hole.  The well.  Those are names I have for the worst form of depression/despair that I get — when I’m just hanging on by threads, & the threads are unraveling.  My thinking unravels, too: it’s a form of craziness, what my partner Rozz called at the time warped in mel darkspace. Yep. Rozz has seen it many a time. When I’m in that place, I no longer know things that I know when I’m sane, & I can cycle into the crazy pretty damn fast.

I actually pulled out of it that November — can’t remember quite how.  Maybe I just did my basic self-care stuff.  I was in the midst of NaNoWriMo 2007, & in looking back, I see that I wasn’t turning out much writing for a few days around that episode in the pit.  I wouldn’t have finished NaNoWriMo that year if I hadn’t come out of it.  But once NaNoWriMo ended, I started descending into it again in December.  Still, I was just enough sane that on December 2, 2007, three weeks after posting the photo, I wrote a long explanation of what the photo signified.

Written Dec 2, 2007, 3 weeks after posting this picture:

Thing about these pics is that I really felt that way: the mood I was attempting to depict in the photos. Despairing, fucked-up, in the black hole — ridden by my own personal demon that I’ve had most all my life. Over the years I’ve learned to deal with it, what to do when I start falling into the pit, & normally my time there isn’t that long anymore. Two or three days, maybe, instead of weeks or months, & the really horrible intense parts complete with suicidal ideation or at least the desire to disappear last maybe a few hours, instead of as a near constant. When I feel that way, I look to myself: I pull back from obligations, I make sure to get more sleep, I eat healthily, I don’t require things of myself except to take care of myself. Mostly, I try to get horizontal.

Although I have thoughts about suicide or of other self-destructive things at some times, I have never in my life made a suicide attempt. To the extent in my past that I’ve engaged in self-harm, it’s been of the nature of hitting my head against a wall, or hitting it with my fists, or tearing up writing (though that’s a form of suicide), or throwing something of mine. I don’t do that kind of stuff anymore. Lately, my thoughts frequently will run towards cutting myself off — say, removing all my profiles from sites like Flickr, kicking off all the mail lists I’m on, destroying my files… disappearing. It would be hard to do. Pieces of me are scattered all over the place. When I feel like that, I want to find each & every such piece & extinguish it, & then myself. I don’t do it, I have never come close to doing it but it’s incredibly painful to feel like that.

I have always been held back from trying by thinking about my family, friends, people who love me. I couldn’t do that to them. One time when I hurt that way, I told my friend Scott, who at that time was my roommate, that I almost wished that everyone who loved me would turn their back on me, because then I would be free to off myself. Though it was painful to contemplate such a possibility, too: everyone I loved, betraying me at once? Anyway, Scott just kinda smiled at me wryly & said, Sorry Mel, you’re just going to have to put up with us loving you.

But dammit, when it happens, it hurts like all buggery. (Thank you, Sian, for teaching me that Aussie phrase, which captures the pain of it perfectly.)

So. Why then, the title of this photo? Why the tags that make it seem this is a joke? Why the lurid colors, which also melodramatize it?

Because some of how this demon came to take such tenacious residence in my soul was through an invitation of sorts, back when I was in high school, & I used to “pretend” I was in such a bad place. At that time it was — or so I though — all just an act. I didn’t have the maturity at the time to consider that maybe there really was something wrong inside of me, that I felt need to manipulate people’s behavior toward me with such an act. I only thought of that when I decided to try to put the act aside, & discovered that it wasn’t an act anymore. Act as if for a long enough time, & you become the character you play.

So I’m caught, ever since, between the rock & the hard place. Even though it’s real, & I really feel this way, I’m also very conscious of how people around me are reacting to my behavior, & I feel that I’m being manipulative, & I feel wrong about that because manipulation is wrong. So nothing I can do is the right thing. If I show myself in this state to people, then I’m manipulating them. If I go into hiding, that may in one part be another way of manipulating, but even more importantly, I cut myself off from the people who care about me, who I often need, to help me climb back out of the pit.

Pretty screwed up thinking, really. Now, don’t get me wrong. I have come a far long way since I was 16 or 17 in high school, & I’m usually pretty good about asking for help nowadays when I need it. But this screwed-up thinking still occurs sometimes, & it’s been occurring a few times over the past couple of months, for reasons that I’m only starting to figure out.

That’s what this picture is. It’s a visual demonstration of that screwed up thinking. Which I put together even as I was struggling with it. Because yes, I took these photos when I was in the deep in the pit, trying to communicate to any who would see them that I was in pain, that I needed some kind of help, if only that my state of mind would be recognized. But see — I believe, I truly believed in the midst of my pain that if I just showed the photos straight on, or even just said outright, “I’m hurting bad right now,” that I’d be manipulating. So I undercut it. Use the “glow” effect in Photo Booth to get those lurid, melodramatic colors. Use tags & a title that make it seem just pretend. Though it wasn’t.

It’s hard to communicate honestly when I’m like that. Because when I’m like that, I’m crazy. It’s a form of delusion, of madness. I literally do not understand that it is okay to simply say, “I’m in pain right now.”

Remote. Photo taken Dec. 2, 2007, the same day I wrote this account.

But you know, lately I’ve been noticing a couple of friends/acquaintances on Flickr who have been going through tremendously painful situations themselves, who have reminded me of that. I’m writing this from a state that is near but not quite in the black hole (same date as the photo Remote), so I’m still near enough to sanity that I was able to check my descent into that screwed up thinking. I’m in a bad headspace today, but today (December 2, 2007) I’m just going to say that. Instead of putting on the act that isn’t an act.

So here it is. I’m in a bad headspace today. It isn’t quite the black hole, but it’s not okay either. It’ll right itself, but it hasn’t yet. Today, it rises out of some events that I’m not really prepared to talk with anyone about. So, I’m probably going to be a little remote for a bit, till I do work it out. But, better to be honest & say so, than to just kite off by myself without leaving a note.

And having written all this, I’m already feeling a bit better. I may not have to go remote for a very long period after all.

Thanks for listening.

As it turned out, the following day was the really bad one, when sanity absolutely fled midway through my day at work.  I was able to hold on to just enough sanity to put out a call for help, which took the form of a tweet, typo & all:

3:23 PM: Imploding. I guess that’s better than exploding & killing someone. But I’m fucked in the head, badlyl.

Wouldn’t you know it: Twitter (still a fairly new thing back in 2007) was updating slowly that day.  I don’t think anyone got my tweet until the next day.  I tried again over an hour later:

4:47 PM: Imploding. Better than exploding & killing someone I guess, but still pretty fucked up.

Twitter still malfunctioning: no response.  And when you’re already crazy, & don’t know the software is muckety-mucking, the paranoid portion of your mind goes, Nobody even gives a shit!

So I’m pretty amazed that I, working late & still in my office, tried again:

6:11 PM: Inside of my mind is getting worse & worse. Could someone pull me out of it please?

6:20 PM: Seriously. Usually I do okay fending for myself, but I’m not fending too well today.

Still no response.  But luckily, my Flickr friend Katie came online in Gmail — probably the very best person possible, because she was someone who knew from the inside the kind of crazy I was experiencing, & therefore knew exactly how to talk me down.  (She told me later her thinking was “hmm. now what would mel tell me when she was sane & i was going through a rough time?”) Here’s a portion of our conversation, a partial transcript, if you will, of the crazy:

me: hey

Katie: hey mel whats up

me: head’s been in a bad place for a couple of days now

Katie: oh dear, whats been going on

me: not sure really but it’s been getting worse today because i’m in a nobody gives a shit mode
& starting to engage in cut & run behaviors
like removing all my pics except one from [a Flickr group we were both in]

Katie: ah yes, i’ve gone through that …

me: & feeling like just removing myself from groups & shit altogether b/c i feel like nobody gives a shit

Katie: dont do that – people do … it’s just the frame of mind you’re in that’s fooling you into thiking so

me: yeah i know i’m just barely remembering that
but it’s on the edge at the moment

Katie: hmm, well i’ll remember for you … don’t do it !

me: some guy here killed his dad with a machete yesterday & then came in to anchorage & shot some innocent grad student in his car & killed him & badly wounded a couple of other people during his rampage
he got caught after a car jacking this morning
& i’m like, well, that’s the way i feel
except i take it into myself
instead of runnign around fucking other people’s lives over
but it’s kinda like today
oh let me not mention how badly i’m feeling, lest i ruin your day

The rampage mentioned was that of Christopher Erin Rogers, Jr. on December 2–3, 2007. Rogers was ultimately convicted in two separate trials of two murders and four attempted murders in Palmer and Anchorage, plus animal cruelty for his attack on the dog that saved the life of his father’s fiance. And I would say that Rogers, whose confession was heard by the jury in his second trial in Anchorage, very much had a similar kind of craziness going on his mind which prompted his crimes. Read the details for yourself. [Ref #1] Something, who knows what exactly, set him off, & he went explosive, harming & even killing other people. And, as is so often the case, refusing to accept that he was responsible: not aliens, not other people with their perceived mistreatment of him.

Well, if I’m going to sometimes go crazy, I’m sure glad I don’t do it that way.  My tendency is to implode: I don’t harm others (usually), I harm myself.  And I suppose another difference between me & Rogers is that I do my best to take responsibility for my craziness.

Not, to be sure, when I’m actively crazy: then I’m just as likely to blame other people.

Katie: you can never ruin someone elses day by tell them you’re having a bad day

me: no i can just tell ’em i’m having a bad day & they can go “oh shit, mel’s having a bad day, better avoid her so i don’t ruin myown”
that’s the way my thinking’s giong today
because i’m all fucked up

But at least I recognized I wasn’t thinking sanely.  And had taken enough responsibility for my craziness over the long haul of my life that by that point in time, I had at least a few clues of what to do to help myself, by getting help — especially from someone like Katie who had (1) some knowledge of the kind of stuff I was going through from the inside, & (2) had the patience to listen.

Katie: I don’t think telling people you’re in a bad space will put them in a bad mood, at least it wouldn’t to me … i’d just like to help you no longer be there … hmm, do people actually say that? oh right. okay … well, know that people definitely don’t feel that way, they just get awkward in dealing with depression …
what can we talk about that would help you?

me: i dunno, this is probably helping just to say the kinds of thoughts that have been going through me all day

Katie: okay, keep them coming

me: y’know, i wrote a really long thing to that “it’s all an act” photo to about 4 or 5 am satnight/sunday morning explaining how it all works
laura saw it, rozz saw it, they commented
dunno who else saw it
but this morning i privated it
that’s kinda part of what set me off feeling like well basically most people don’t give a shit
they don’t mind you saying you’ve got the flu
but say anything about the really hard shit, then too fucking bad
well that’s not completely true
[some people have lots of people batting for them]
but me, no, i should be over all the kind of shit that i’ve got in my soul
me, i should just take drugs
me, i should just shit or get off the pot

Katie: you feel like that’s how people feel towards you?
that you should just take drugs or shit or get off the pot?

me: wehn i get like this, meds is one of the first topics to come up

Katie: i don’t think meds are a good idea

me: neither do i
mostly i think people just want to have fun & not be bogged down by someone’s shit

Katie: that might be true – but for the most part, i think people geerally just don’t kow how to handle deep things – because it ends up shining a light inwards to their oen stuff – which they defiitely dont want to deal with

me: though for some reason they get along with some people’s shit better than mine
yeah you’re right about that i think

Katie: it’s not that they don’t get along with your shit mel, i think maybe it’s the fact that you seem strong? i think people might think that when you get down – you just want to isolate and you don’t want to talk about things .. maybe? i’m not really sure

me: this is the worst i’ve gotten into the whole rock & a hard place stuff about feeling like anyting i do is manipulating people in a reaaaaaaaallly long time
which is the very worst kind of thinking i have, i get so confused, i don’t feel like anything i do is right w/ regard to other people

Katie: i think that maybe because you feel like you’re manipulating people, you don’t ask for help … so people don’t really know that you want people to surround you in these times
catch 22
perhaps

me: yeah very big catch 22 gods it hurts

Katie: Hmm … well … i’m going to tell you that … you aren’t manipulating people when you want attention. None of us are. We all want help, we all want attention and there is nothing wrong with it, honestly. But i don’t knowif me telling you that will make that belief real for you or not

me: so i have all these destructive urges giong on
i know that stuff when i’m sane but i’m not sane right now

Be that as it may: the conversation helped to restore me to sanity. It’s also because of Katie that I reset the permissions on the “It’s all an act” photo back to public, & left them there. She went on to “babysit” me for the next bit of time while I finished the task I was working overtime to complete, & by the time I left my office I was able to tweet:

8:16 PM: Better now, thanks to Katie.

I reckon it took another couple of days for me to get completely away from the edge of the pit, doing the things I know to do: plenty or rest, good food, keeping the demands on myself low, & — importantly — not isolating myself.  Nobody got killed, including me.  (At the height of the crazy I did indulge in some “virtual suicide” — deleting files & so on — but somehow restrained myself from destroying anything really important to me.)

That was my last trip into the pit.  (Knock on wood.)  Even over the past year, during which I’ve experienced considerable loss — I’ve gone into the grey a number of times, but never into the pit.  When I feel myself at its edge, I’m lots more ready to follow the advice that Katie gave me, same advice I have given others when I was sane & they were not: ask for help from the people I know care about me.

It also helps that I now know about 5-HTP.  And use it.

References

  1. 4/2/09. “Accused murderer Rogers blamed aliens for 2007 attacks — ROGERS: Jurors hear taped confession of deadly events in Palmer and Anchorage” by Debra McKinney (Anchorage Daily News).
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The Daily Tweets, 2009-10-18

Posted on Sun, 18 October 2009 by Mel Green
  • Preparing to install Adobe Creative Suite 4…. wowza. #
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The Daily Tweets, 2009-10-17

Posted on Sat, 17 October 2009 by Mel Green
A church was giving out free hotdogs & coffee outside Kaladi Brothers downtown. I skipped the freebies in favor of writing.

A church was giving out free hotdogs & coffee outside Kaladi Brothers downtown. I skipped the freebies in favor of writing.

  • Writing @KaladiBrothers downtown: who knew I’d need to learn so much about Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs) — i.e., spacesuits? #
  • Gums still tender & unhappy on lower right side of mouth from Weds dental appt. Heal _now_ dammit. #
  • @JanFlora49 Thx Jan will do that. & salt water rinses. if not improved by Monday, will call the dentist. in reply to JanFlora49 #
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The Daily Tweets, 2009-10-16

Posted on Fri, 16 October 2009 by Mel Green
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Sarah James & Michael Pollan at Bioneers 2009

Posted on Fri, 16 October 2009 by Mel Green
Bioneers co-founder Kenny Ausubel, as seen in Anchorage in October 2006 via asatellite feed from the main conference in San Rafael, California.

Bioneers co-founders Nina Simons & Kenny Ausubel, as seen in Anchorage in October 2006 via satellite feed from the main Bioneers conference in San Rafael, California.

Per Wikipedia (in an article mostly written by me back in March 2007),

Bioneer (root: “biological pioneer”) is a neologism coined by filmmaker, author and eco-activist Kenny Ausubel. According to Utne Reader, a bioneer is “a biological pioneer, an ecological inventor who’s got an elegant and often simple set of solutions for environmental conundrums.” As coined by Ausubel, the term describes individuals and groups working in diverse disciplines who have crafted creative solutions to various environmental and socio-cultural problems rooted in shared core values, including whole systems, (anticipatory) thinking, a view of all life as interdependent, and sustainable mutual aid.

The article goes on to discuss other usages of the term bioneer, including what looks to be independent coinages relating it to biotechnology — an area which is pretty much antithetical to what Kenny Ausubel intended by the term. As the article later says,

In the book Nature’s Operating Instructions: The True Biotechnologies (coedited with J. P. Harpignies), Ausubel has made a clear distinction between corporate biotech, including genetic engineering, which he decries, and what he has termed “true biotechnologies” based on biomimicry, natural design, and the restoration of natural capital.

Kenny’s coinage gave the name to an annual conference that he cofounded with Nina Simon in 1990, Bioneers — about which you can read the Wikipedia article (yes, I did some work on this article in March 2007 too), or better yet, visit the main Bioneers website.

One of the really cool things Bioneers did a few years back was to start their Beaming Bioneers program, through which plenary sessions from the main conference are broadcast through live satellite feeds to local conferences held simultaneously at sites throughout the U.S. & Canada — including, since 2004, Anchorage.  The Anchorage conference, called Bioneers in Alaska, is being held this weekend at University of Alaska Anchorage.

Jeffrey M. Smith was the keynote speaker for the Third Annual Bioneers in Alaska conference in October 2006. He wrote Seeds of Deception, a detailed look at the deceptive practices of the biotech industry, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food supply, and their effects on health.

Jeffrey M. Smith, keynote speaker at the 2006 Bioneers in Alaska conference. He's author of Seeds of Deception, a detailed look at the deceptive practices of the biotech industry, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food supply, and their effects on health.

And I’m not there.  Well, I am at UAA — in my office, at lunchtime.  I’d like to have attended Bioneers this year, but personal economics plus my strong strong need to focus on writing kept me away this year.  In fact, I’ve been unable for various reasons to attend since 2006, when one big focus of our local conference was on food security & other food issues, including genetically modified organisms (GMOs) — in fact, our local keynoter that year was Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of Deception about the dangers of  GMO agriculture & foods. (You can see my pics of Bioneers in Alaska 2006 in my Flickr photostream.)

Despite my inability to attend this year, though, I still got in on some of the action: turns out that this year Bioneers decided to livestream two of its plenary speakers each day of the conference, just for people like me.  So this morning, I tuned it & listened as I worked to Gwich’in Athabascan elder Sarah James & Michael Pollan, one of the most important thinkers and writers on our dismal industrialized food supply system.

I did manage to snap a couple of photos as I listened.

Sarah James

Sarah James, a Gwich'in Athabascan elder from Arctic Village, Alaska, spoke on "Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change: Report from the Arctic."

Update: You can still hear Sarah James’ speech: it’s archived here.

Sarah James is already a familiar name to many Alaskans, as she’s been a force in the struggle to protect the Porcupine Caribou herd, upon which her people depend for subsistence, from the push to explore for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).  She did talk about ANWR and the caribou; she also talked about the difficulties faced by Alaska Native villagers on the Lower Yukon River with the environmental changes & poor fishery management practices that have led to poor salmon runs, & possibly starving populations this winter. She talked about global warming & climate change — which Alaska Natives in Interior & northern Alaska are witnessing the effects of firsthand.  “Climate change is real, some say it is up to god,” she said. “We have to meet the god half way.” (h/t Erinely.)

Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan spoke on "In Defense of Food: The Omnivore’s Solution"

Update: You can still hear Michael Pollan’s speech: it’s archived here. He’s introduced by Kenny Ausubel.

Michael Pollan is the author, among other things, of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, & writes & speaks extensively on the effects of the industrialization of food production and agriculture on human health and the environment. I take a lot of what he says very personally: first, I live in Alaska, where most of our food is shipped long distances before it gets to us.  That makes it especially important for us to support local farmers & other efforts to address food security issues & sustainable practices — like the development of Alaska-hardy apple varieties by the UAF Cooperative Extension Service that I tweeted about a couple of days ago. Second, the products of our industrialized food system, with its emphasis on cheap, shelf life, & etc. as opposed to healthy & tastes good are, as far as I’m concerned, why too many people I know are suffering from diabetes, heart disease, & other lifestyle diseases.  It was my mom’s death from complications of diabetes in November 2005 that led me to finally overhauling my diet in order to prevent myself from also living the remainder of my life suffering from chronic & very unhappy diet-related illness.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to listen to the other four keynoters that Bioneers will be livestreaming, but in case you can:

On Saturday, October 17 starting at 8:00 AM Alaska time (give or take them being behind schedule, as they were this morning):

On Sunday, October 18, starting at 10:30 AM Alaska time (again, give or take):

  • Jerome Ringo will address the reality of green jobs in our re-made economy.
  • Annie Leonard will help us find our way beyond the Age of Stuff.

In addition, both today and tomorrow (Saturday) at 3:30 PM AKST, they’ll webcast a panel &workshop on sustainable social media, in partnership with InfluenceXchange.

To view these live streaming webcasts, go to:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bioneers-conference-09

Most of the speeches & discussions from this year’s conference will become available on DVD at some point by way of the Bioneers store, or on the Bioneers radio program, which I sometimes hear broadcast on KSKA-FM, Anchorage’s public radio station.  For more info, see the Bioneers website.

Posted in Ecology, Journal | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Daily Tweets, 2009-10-15: Balloon boy

Posted on Thu, 15 October 2009 by Mel Green
Clouds above Anchorage

Clouds above Anchorage

Today’s tweets were dominated by news about “balloon boy”: 6-year-old Falcon Heene supposed flight across the Colorado sky in his father’s Mylar-coated helium experimental balloon. Good thing for the boy he was really hiding in a cardboard box in the attic, scared of getting in trouble for untethering the thing. [Update: But then it turns out the whole thing was a hoax from the get-go.]

  • Mouth still a little sore from yesterday’s dental appointment. Soft foods & liquids today — don’t want to chew! #
  • RT: @jansonjones: I promise, Aurelia, to never put you in a freakishly giant, experimental, helium balloon vessel. // You’re a good father. #
  • RT: @jansonjones: I embrace the crazy. // Why thank you. I like hugs. 😉 #
  • @jansonjones Yeah pretty horrendous. Just got one tweet saying they think the little boy is no longer in the balloon… hope it’s wrong. in reply to jansonjones #
  • RT: @jansonjones: RT @shannynmoore: RT @KagroX: Beck blames Obama for Balloonocaust #
  • I don’t see any basket or anything that boy could be riding in…. #
  • Balloon’s on the ground… #
  • … if that boy is still in there & alive, it’d be pretty much a miracle. #
  • Boy is not in balloon. Only good outcome now is if it turns out somehow he wasn’t actually in balloon to begin with. #
  • Hoping earnestly that report by sibling that Falcon was in the balloon was a practical joke, & that Falcon is safe. #
  • Note to self: do not tether experimental aircraft to back door without extreme security measures. #
  • Falcon Heene’s family http://bit.ly/1CjDDs #
  • HuffPost compiles ABC Wifeswap info & YouTube vids from Falcon Heene’s family http://bit.ly/1CjDDs #
  • @JanFlora49 Oh damn! I hope they are okay! in reply to JanFlora49 #
  • WTF!! Louisiana justice of the peace denies interracial couple a marriage license http://tr.im/BViN (via @SistersTalk) #
  • RT: @jansonjones: I miss the old days, when things were exciting. Like when we thought a kid was floating in a giant ufo hellium balloon. #
  • @jansonjones Life suddenly got so dreary & dull in the last two hours. in reply to jansonjones #
  • RT: @jansonjones: Wow. They found the balloon kid alive at the house… How you like that drama? heh. // Stupid prank, but good news. #
  • RT: @jansonjones: Every time a kid goes floating across the Colorado sky, I say, “Did you check the house?” And nobody ever listens to me… #
  • My. Gums. Hurt. (And liquid/soft food diets are BOOOORING!) #
Posted in The Daily Tweets | 1 Comment

Taking life support for granted

Posted on Wed, 14 October 2009 by Mel Green

Horsetail & black spruce

My username on NaNoWriMo: yksin.

My username on NaNoWriMo: yksin.

Did I say a couple days ago that a bunch of books including Spaceflight Life Support and Biospherics by Peter Eckart (Microcosm, 1997) that cover topics I need to know a bit more about to write the story universe of Long Dark & Cold were on their way to me & should be here by Wednesday?

Why, yes. I did. “Sublight,” quoth I, “but still pretty damn fast.” In fact they got here a full day ahead of Wednesday.

Given the importance of biospherics to the story universe I’m writing, I’ve temporarily set aside Centauri Dreams, which I’m about one-third of the way through, & started in on Eckart’s book.  So far I’m finding it even more helpful than I thought it would be, & I’m not even into the CELSS stuff yet, other than whatever I gleaned on a fast page-through before sitting down to read it properly.

Some historical background: biospherics as a name for the study of closed ecological systems was first discussed in July 1987 at the First International Conference on Closed Life Systems hosted by the Royal Society in London; & was adopted unanimously by delegates from Russia, the European Space Agency, the United Kingdom, & the U.S. at the Second International Conference on Closed Life Systems in September 1989 in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. (p. 2) Eckert’s book Life Support and Biospherics, published in 1994, was the first book that summarized knowledge on the topic; Spaceflight Life Support and Biospherics, published in 1996, is an update of that book.

What I didn’t expect is that a book on spaceflight life support would begin with a chapter talking about the fundamentals of the first biosphere, Earth itself.  But get into it: it makes sense.  It’s Earth’s ecological characteristics that any life support system will have to imitate to a lesser or greater degree.  Traditional spaceflight life support systems — physico-chemical systems — are on the lesser end of the scale: while they are well-understood & (relatively) easy to engineer, they don’t replenish themselves, & require an umbilical cord of resupply to keep their occupants alive. Greater: well, that’s where you’re getting into closed ecosystem life support systems (CELSS).  I’ve tended to think of them as being closed in the sense of them being inside an enclosure of some sort — a spaceship, a space station, a habitat on the Moon or Mars — but I’m starting to get that Eckart (& others who study this stuff) especially mean closed in the sense that they’re self-sustaining: ideally speaking, they don’t require inputs from outside themselves.

So far, best I can tell, the only truly closed ecosystem life support system we know of that’s really worked has been Biosphere 1: the Earth.  Experiments like Bios 1, 2, & 3 or Biosphere 2 have been just that: experiments to refine our knowledge — one day, it’s to be hoped, we’ll know how to build a small spaceship or space-colony-sized CELSS that will work.  Of course, my story universe assumes that we do.

Now, again, I’m early in the book — haven’t gotten to the CELSS chapters, not even to the physico-chemical LSS chapters — heck, haven’t even gotten to  the end of the Earth as an LSS chapter.  But there I was sitting on the bus today on my way from work to my dental appointment, & Eckart reminded me of a fact that I first heard so clearly stated by the Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki: most of what keeps us alive on spaceship Earth, we get for absolutely nothing.  Eckart:

In fact, man is able to breathe, drink, and eat in comfort, because millions of organisms and hundreds of processes are operating in a coordinated manner out there in the environment.  Life support is provided by a vast, diffuse network of processes operating on different time scales.  Unfortunately, there is a tendency to take nature’s services for granted because no money has to be paid for most of them. (p. 13)

But once you decide you want to take a big jump out of the gravity well, you can’t take any of it for granted.  Not least because it costs a lot in money, energy, work to rocket one’s way up into outer space, & to rocket everything one needs to keep one alive up as well.

It’s really pretty sobering when you think about it.  How much we get for free, just because nature is kind enough to provide it.  Next, notice how increasingly services that are given freely — that are part of the Commons belonging to all of us — are being claimed as property by this or that human entity, & especially, in recent years, by the fake persons known as corporations.  Patenting seeds? Patenting the human genome? Claiming intellectual or other property rights over stuff they didn’t do diddly to develop?  What bollocks.

That political element of the division of nature into property & my rejection of treating corporations as legal persons do have a part in what I’m writing.  But even more pertinent at the moment: the simple fact that in outer space, you can’t take life support for granted.  All my characters from Long Dark and Cold have lived — up until the moment that they successfully terraform the planet (still without a name, still just called XXXX) in Cold — in a situation wherein they’re unable to take life support for granted.  Even once CELSS has been developed to the point of making long space voyages possible, those systems will always need constant monitoring by humans or their tools (computers, AIs, whatever): intervention in thought & deed, if not by way of CARE packages or an umbilical cord or resupply from Mother Earth.

Such thoughts popped a lot more quickly into my head on the bus today than it took to write them up just now.  And so I quickly found myself thinking about Pina Chomko.

Pina Chomko is a character I invented two years ago during NaNoWriMo 2007 for Cold.  She’s important: not only as one of Bolyen Maheshwari’s most influential teachers & mentors, but also in her own right as one of the first inhabitants of (damn, I really need to give my planet a name!) XXXX.  She’s an ecologist — more specifically, a planetary ecologist: & that’s pretty kooky really when you stop to consider that she was born in a spaceship or space station aloft; all her ancestors to 5 or 6 or 7 generations back also lived in spaceships or other closed habitats; & she never set foot on a planet until she was upwards of age 25.  Until then, all her knowledge of a planetary ecology was theoretical stuff that came out of books (or, more properly, Library) or came from other people whose whole knowledge came out of books/Library.

She has never been able to take life support for granted.  Her dream is to do so.  To seed the planet & let it grow not under her watchful eye.

Next thing you know, I was laying back in the dentist’s chair thinking about Pina Chomko & how I’m going to fill out her story.

It’s not easy to write a story when you’ve got two people’s hands in your mouth.  But I made some good headway.

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The Daily Tweets, 2009-10-14

Posted on Wed, 14 October 2009 by Mel Green
  • Aaaaaaahhhh! I have an Abba earworm! Must fight back: Värttinä today. #
  • What can I say? Alaska State Troopers do great work on a tough job, but ride-along cop shows always suck. http://bit.ly/Y7eqR #
  • Johnny Appleseed comes to the Alaska Interior! A great apple crop at UAF's Cooperative Extension Service. http://bit.ly/1YbPrd #
  • @MermaidSocks Snow?!!! [looking around in alarm] Where are you right now? (No snow in Anchorage yet.) in reply to MermaidSocks #
  • RT: @tonei: 20 Best Signs At National Equality March http://bit.ly/mfm4N (via @buzzfeedfeed). No. 9 is my favorite, I think. // mine too. #
  • Two mercury fillings replaced w/ something less hazardous. One very sore mouth. Much aspirin. #
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