Sea Otter Populations in AlaskaThat news item on the decline of sea otter numbers in Alaska floated around in the news a few years ago. It was a peripheral item I wondered about and never got a conclusive answer for if such exists. In the 2008 book 'Where the Wild Things Went' there is a chapter at least partially explaining the phenomena.
I have had my own theories of course. Since the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and later collapse of the Prince William Sound herring fishery, and continuing, persistent oil below the gravel of the beaches and probably in piles in the deep waters I believed that the entire trophic food chain was adversely impacted. Stolzenburger's book provides better insight than just that. It has provided some material I can use in forming my new understanding of several issues in Alaska.
Long before the oil spill researchers and had studied predator-prey relationships in the oceans and the Aleutian islands. Sea otter eat sea urchins that decimate kelp beds.
Without sea otters sea urchins wipe out kelp beds that provide life support for a variety of sea life and fish. Sea otters are necessary for a good fisheries.
Killer whales eat sea otters in large numbers now because they are an intelligent, adaptive species, and also because their traditional foods such as stellar sea lion, whales and healthy fish populations have been decimated.
It isn't so bad that some sea otters are eaten by k. whales, yet too many dead otters let the sea urchin eat the kelp like goats eating grass down to the root. The entire food chain dislocation is theorized to have started with mechanical whaling in the early 20th century that killed a half million larger whales that k. whales preferred for the main course of their diet.
Large numbers of large whales let the entire food chain occupy a more balanced niche without domination by any one species. Sure humans killed the whales and radically overfish the available remaining fish, the salmon fishery in Alaska rivers like the Kuskokwim, Yukon and Susitna is a pale shadow of its former robust health. Russian promyshleniki exterminated the stellar sea cow and a vast prospective copper mine may leach heavy metals into Bristol Bay for hundreds or thousands of years-it is not just one particular element of the ocean ecology that is out of balance-human technical supremacy has devastated the ranks of normal marine trophic relationships that kept natural balances intact.
The long downward slope even through mariculture farming toward destruction of oceanic bio-diversity will be increasingly difficult to recover from in the decades and centuries ahead. Especially as presently Alaska State politics is corrupted by global extraction industry powers and natural resource management policy develop discognizant of biodiversity conservation methods required for recovering a vibrant marine ecosystem in Alaska.
Killer whales evidently are shot by boaters and others with no respect for life on Earth. A shoreline road from Juneau to a mine north of Juneau would let plinkers have new access for shooting whales of a few kinds.
Restoration of North Pacific whale numbers and an increasing resident fish population would let the entire food chain become a little healthier. For numbers of fish to increase overall it is probable that simultaneous management of all north Pacific species must occur as the balances amidst the species is as important to a particular species as vertical human predation quantitative harvest decisions on any particular specie.
6/18/11
Stop Wasting Billions of U.S. Tax Dollars Defending Alaska
The U.S. Government has thousands of armed forces in Alaska that could be discharged or relocated from service here in order to save billions each year of purposeless federal spending.
Fund a moon base for the future instead of Prussianesque military archaism of Alaska. Why spend billions of dollars each year-perhaps for the next decade, to keep a substanl force in a U.S. state without reasonable odds of invasion from Canada, Russia, China or Japan? It might be more reasonable to prep an effective attack counter-strike structure than to spend billions like drunken sailors each year for fear the Aleutians will have hordes of invaders in a few days.
A large military force in Alaska to defend against Moslem terrorists is not a reasonable paradigm, and they are perhaps the main military threat to the U.S.A. today besides congressional debtonomics. The expense of keeping a numerous standing army in Alaska is unnecessary. If we wait until Alaska is attacked before spending money, we probably can pocket the savings for decades and invest it in border security and national bicycle paths..
One wonders why the U.S. Army should have a significant presence in Alaska long after the end of the cold war?
Alaska could create jobs for Alaska residents by spending two billion dollars of its 50 billion dollar permanent fund each year on its National Guard troops instead of providing state workers an extra check from the oil royalty investment fund. The state could create jobs for people that need them instead of free money to some.
If the United States wants to effectively reduce its federal debt it should cut pork barrel military spending in Alaska. An invasion of the state of Alaska isn't likely, and a defense of Alaska with neutron bomb cruise missiles costing a few million each would be less costly over the long run compared to keeping concentrated military forces here that could be similarly depleted en mass by an opposition force nuclear device or two. Maybe Russian nuclear scientists could work with American bomb builders to create a peace through neutron bomb readiness defense arsenal for each nation.
Some are concerned with the moral aspect of military spending. Is it more morally correct to spend less on war phenomena than more if the less costly way comprises neutron bomb deterrence? Christian ethicists might select the same option as a pragmatist in choosing to reduce large present military costs and allow a less costly potential military method-I cannot say. Christian grace might provide opportunity to avoid making such Hobson's choices. Actualization of conflict parameters may not always be understood a priori. Sub-nuclear conflicts may bring more damage than neutron conflicts in some circumstances should the warlike select to activate war scenarios at some juncture.
The U.S. Government should lead its budgeting plans to modern force use criteria that would not break the bank while providing full coverage-at least as good as that the Congress has designed for health insurance coverage for the nation's poor.
Send 50 extra F.B.I. agents, border security and D.E.A. personnel with good field training to Alaska and reduce the cost of stationing thousands of soldiers in Alaska.
In the era of robotic aircraft ahead invading foreign forces can receive an appropriate condign response of neutron bombs reasonable soon after arrival.
Fund a moon base for the future instead of Prussianesque military archaism of Alaska. Why spend billions of dollars each year-perhaps for the next decade, to keep a substanl force in a U.S. state without reasonable odds of invasion from Canada, Russia, China or Japan? It might be more reasonable to prep an effective attack counter-strike structure than to spend billions like drunken sailors each year for fear the Aleutians will have hordes of invaders in a few days.
A large military force in Alaska to defend against Moslem terrorists is not a reasonable paradigm, and they are perhaps the main military threat to the U.S.A. today besides congressional debtonomics. The expense of keeping a numerous standing army in Alaska is unnecessary. If we wait until Alaska is attacked before spending money, we probably can pocket the savings for decades and invest it in border security and national bicycle paths..
One wonders why the U.S. Army should have a significant presence in Alaska long after the end of the cold war?
Alaska could create jobs for Alaska residents by spending two billion dollars of its 50 billion dollar permanent fund each year on its National Guard troops instead of providing state workers an extra check from the oil royalty investment fund. The state could create jobs for people that need them instead of free money to some.
If the United States wants to effectively reduce its federal debt it should cut pork barrel military spending in Alaska. An invasion of the state of Alaska isn't likely, and a defense of Alaska with neutron bomb cruise missiles costing a few million each would be less costly over the long run compared to keeping concentrated military forces here that could be similarly depleted en mass by an opposition force nuclear device or two. Maybe Russian nuclear scientists could work with American bomb builders to create a peace through neutron bomb readiness defense arsenal for each nation.
Some are concerned with the moral aspect of military spending. Is it more morally correct to spend less on war phenomena than more if the less costly way comprises neutron bomb deterrence? Christian ethicists might select the same option as a pragmatist in choosing to reduce large present military costs and allow a less costly potential military method-I cannot say. Christian grace might provide opportunity to avoid making such Hobson's choices. Actualization of conflict parameters may not always be understood a priori. Sub-nuclear conflicts may bring more damage than neutron conflicts in some circumstances should the warlike select to activate war scenarios at some juncture.
The U.S. Government should lead its budgeting plans to modern force use criteria that would not break the bank while providing full coverage-at least as good as that the Congress has designed for health insurance coverage for the nation's poor.
Send 50 extra F.B.I. agents, border security and D.E.A. personnel with good field training to Alaska and reduce the cost of stationing thousands of soldiers in Alaska.
In the era of robotic aircraft ahead invading foreign forces can receive an appropriate condign response of neutron bombs reasonable soon after arrival.
Copy of Letter to Eligibility Tech I Bradley Johnson at the Alaska Permanent Fund
State of Alaska
Permanent Fund Eligibility Tech I
Mr. Bradley Johnson; to remove any possible confusion you may have about my Alaska residency I will reiterate here the main points of my home ownership at Wrangell 1990 through 2008 and at the Mat-Su Otter Lakes subdivision 2008 through 2010 and my effort to move to build a new home beyond the Susitna River at the Otter Lakes subdivision in 2010. I bought that subdivision lot in 2008 and hoped to move my things from Wrangell there after buying a skiff and motor and building a geodesic dome. Fate and the lack of state work presented destitution outside (not down south) as the future home instead.
I first arrived in Alaska in 1974 and worked several months in Juneau before returning south. I returned to Alaska in 1977, 1979 and 1983 thereafter remaining in the state continuously until 1994 (except for visiting Seattle, Hawaii, Europe and Mexico on vacations from the Alaska State Department of Labor and going active for military service on a few occasions).
I quit employment at Worker’s Comp and moved to Fairbanks in 1988 to attend U.A.F. I also transferred membership in the Alaska Army Guard to the U.S. Army Reserve. In 1988 the reserve sent me to Ft. McClellan Alabama for several months and I returned to U.A.F. in September. In 1989 went active for training at Ft. Bliss Texas and after discharge returned to live at Juneau.
In 1990 I completed two college degrees-one from U.A.S.E. (I lived at the dorm one semester after returning from a trip to Wrangell where I got lost in the forest in late winter doing some damage to my feet) and the other degree-a Bachelor’s, from Excelsior College at Albany (an external studies educational facility accredited by the middle states association of colleges).
I bought a lot at Wrangell in 1990 five miles south of the airport. It was in a roadless area. I was purchasing it with my permanent fund checks yet was going to let it go. An emergent situation in 1990 led me to decide to pay off the property and move material stored in Juneau to the Wrangell property. I moved a few hundred pounds of material south including taking a stationary bicycle via boat and a trail to an empty forested, roadless lot.
In 1991 I built a small home at the lot. I had never built anything before and it was an interesting effort constructing upon sloped muskeg with selections of minimal logs to cut to serve as foundation footings.
I first built an 8’ by 6’ hut with a steep roof where I spent the first winter. I added a small plywood porch for extra working space.
That hut only lasted until the year 2000. In 1992 however I built an 8 by 10 shed roofed building with a metal roof that never required snow shoveling as it faces south. I tore down the original hut and used the materials from that refinishing the outside of the newer building in 20O0. In 2000 the new hut thus had its first door.
The state gave the City of Wrangell waterfront development rights to that subdivision in 2000 and the city surveyor stopped at my home as I was removing the original hut. My home was on the back row of the subdivision up from the waterfront.
My idea was to construct a long-term temporary storage building that was also livable to keep my things in until the road to the subdivision was constructed. I rightly regarded my home as my home since I had no other.
By 2007 the road actually had made some progress when the drop in timber prices made the logging and road building operation unfeasible. With a road to the property I might have had a real home built on the lot if I had saved enough money from work elsewhere –perhaps in Juneau or Fairbanks. I was not unhappy without a road though, as wolves, bear and other wildlife still wandered across the property line and there was no noise from snow machines. I travelled the 14 miles r.t. to town for supplies by boat usually because a walk through the woods before the road extension required six hours one-way during dry weather.
I learned quite a few practical building concepts over the 20 years at Wrangell. I discovered that one can buy an Incinolet electric toilet for $1500 and not need a privy. It needs to be emptied just every 6 months and runs on propane or electricity. I learned about producing energy at home with wind generators, and researched making hydrogen for fuel cell power. I had hoped to use these concepts and more practical low-displacement building ideas at new Otter Lakes subdivision that I was compelled eventually to relinquish, along with any hope of vegetable gardening and northern pike fishing there.
Building at Wrangell was quite a bit of work as I transported supplies several miles by small boat from town with just one load delivered by commercial vessel and then I carried materials up a trail.
I first damaged my right shoulder carrying pieces of ¾ inch plywood cut in half on my shoulder with upraised arm in 1991 and 1992. The plywood set in the top of the shoulder pushed the arm out of the socket. I saw a chiropractor who temporarily put it in place and the ligaments did not pervasively rip out until about 2006.
It was about that time (1991) that the Alaska State radio network harassment began. Something I have regarded as a form of state terrorism. Consistently designating my home ‘the lem’ and sending rave death by a thousand cuts is costly to a single individual. By 2007 I realized that owning ‘the lem’ at Wrangell was adversely impacting my life socially and financially.
Stripping my home ownership of the usual social privacy and of my freedom to quietly go about my private interests in my home and work created social adversity. The state’s power to generate the big lie and to corrupt equal rights (as in the PFD fiction about my having no history of Alaska residency in 2009 or before 2010) and equal legal benefits (the PFD) generated socially by Alaska State APRN terrorism-and that of NPR as well, meant that I should relocate to another address and cut the coordinated tie-ins networked and leaning on my home (not in a legal sense). When enough preferred target location connections build up eliminating the target validity still presents the phenomena of continuing attacks on the no longer valid target for at least two or three years.
I did get much writing done at Wrangell and began copyrighting some science fiction stories written there as early as 1990-92. Yet by 1994 I was fairly well starved out and rowed an 8 foot inflatable boat to Juneau. It took 18 days in the month of April. I left Wrangell weighing 148 pounds more or less and gained a couple of pounds on the way eating fish and clams, kelp and four pounds of flour.
In Juneau I camped out and eventually got 6 weeks of work as an administrative clerk non-perm with the State. That was the only work I got with the State government since looking for a job with the state from 1987 to the 2011 putting in hundreds of applications over the years.
I should make the point here that I did travel to Houston in 1992 to try to continue graduate school after U.A.F. thrice denied admission to their M.A. program in Northern Studies. Including my one year of C.L.E.P. credit scores my g.p.a. as an undergraduate was 3.8.
It is true that I had attended one trimester at Chemeketa C.C. in Oregon from which I did not officially withdraw before receiving an unexpected grant of 200 dollars I used to hitchhike to Houston and look for work prospecting for oil again offshore, yet U.S.N.Y. where my B.A. is from only accepts passing grades, and the U.A.S.E Associates Degree is of no value-I wish they would consider taking it away because when I started it was named U.A.J. and I don’t like the name change.
That costly exclusion meant a waste of time and money searching for a quick replacement. Since student loan funding was cut off to the entire school (The Houston Graduate School of Theology) there because of the default rate I never completed the M.A. program and never became qualified to become a journeyman educator with a decent annual income. I had a 3.5 g.p.a. at H.G.S.T. when I left school.
I had planned to get two M.A.’s with the first being in Biblical Languages and the second from a different school in philosophy and history.
Thus I paint houses when I can find work. Just last month the Settlers Bay Lodge in the Wasilla area let me go after one day of washing dishes.
My home in Alaska at Wrangell slowly improved when I could afford to bring supplies in. I had initially planned to use my place as a storage facility and to keep it low-key until retirement, and hoped to get a job with the state or complete my graduate education and be an educator in a rural Alaska in the meantime. There never was work at Wrangell besides the Alaska Pulp Corporation predominantly which closed its doors in 1994 I believe after polluting the water and defaulting on contracts I seem to remember. The null income scenario changed that however.
With little work I spent more time at the hut and made a few more emergency rowing trips to Juneau eventually moving up from an 8 foot inflatable boat to a 14 foot monarch scow with a tarp for a square sail. I also made several trips outside to paint and buy sailboat and attempt to sail it to Alaska without success.
In 2008 I sold my home at Wrangell to some people from the lower 48 whom I had worked for painting and roofing two summers. I bought a new lot of 4.99 acres at Otter Lakes with the proceeds of the sale of my home at Wrangell and then needed to find some way to solve the logistics of the move. That was to be my new home when work occurred locally in Alaska to afford the transition.
A couple matters complicated the situation. There wasn’t that much money to work with though I sold the Wrangell place for a fair price. I found a cheap sailboat in Maryland on eBay and bought it yet it sank near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and it cost 2000 dollars to have it refloated and destroyed. Coincidently the seller was retired from Dutch Harbor. It was a good boat with new keel bolts that could have made it to Alaska. I planned to store it at a low cost place in the North Chesapeake Bay area near the cut to Delaware until some time when I might have tried the Northwest Passage with it-or maybe Cape Horn. Sailing can be very treacherous in socially crowded environments such as Chesapeake Bay if one is poor.
In 2009 I made an addition on to the hut at Wrangell to keep snow sheets from sliding off the roof down on to the front entrance. I experimented with making strong little gusseted tresses as in a storage shed sold at Home Depot.
I also wrote a novel in 30 days there named eventually ‘St. Novilistricka Dimensions’ (available at my online bookstore at http://www.lulu.com/garycgibson).
I took Russian and Alaska history courses at U.A.-Juneau and read Dostoyevsky in Fairbanks during a course on Siberian exploration. A Mrs. Bartlett at U.A.F. was my course instructor for a philosophy course of independent studies that I took while going through my second time through basic training at Ft. Bliss and an air defense school in 1989. I had sent a science fiction story to Moscow Russia from U.A.F. in 1989 seeking to earn money for publication. It was about rockets, seventh heaven and Coney Island. A drill sergeant at Ft. Bliss gave me the letter of rejection from Moscow at Ft. Bliss the day before issuance of security clearances-yet the Russians pulled out of Eastern Germany a week before in December 1989 anyway. My active duty ended early in 1990. At least I saw the space shuttle on the runway at El Paso.
During the three winters I lived in Fairbanks during the late 80s I usually walked around. One winter I had a Honda civic wagon with a rusted out floor that let 45 below zero wind flow in at 60 m.p.h. with the heater blower motor broke-I drove with the windows open to exhale out in order not to frost the windows. I moved from Fairbanks to Wrangell in 1990 via Juneau. Having completed the work for both of my college degrees I applied for admission to U.A.F.’s Northern Studies Program and had every reason to believe I would be admitted since I had good recommendations from Professors Olsen and Fitzpatrick at U.A.J. I was not admitted, an emergent situation developed and I ended up paying for the lot at Wrangell.
I left Wrangell to go to Juneau in October 2009 and camped out at Douglas. I had two inguinal hernias and an umbilical hernia and no idea of how to pay for it. I had torn my rotator cuff on the right shoulder three or four years before and had not had surgery. If I could get work with the state I would have medical insurance and get the repairs made.
Of course I did not get hired to work for the state or anyone else. The Hospital did write off the surgery costs (one time for most poor people) a priori so I was surprised when a bill arrived for an additional six thousand dollars eventually. The surgeon and the anesthesiologist are not on the Hospital Staff and did not write off their fees.
I had researched the cost of hernia surgery and thought it was 3000 dollars-so the 13,000 dollar charge was a little surprising. I gave the surgeon my Otter Lakes subdivision lot across the Susitna River where I had planned to move to, and move my things at Wrangell to via small boat from Deshka Landing at Willow and portage a half mile from a navigable tributary.
So after surgery post-op four five weeks I got a job at Taku Smokers in Juneau. Unfortunately there was an occasional heavy lift of a tub filled with fish and water that weighed more than 200 pounds. I had to quit as my groin was being damaged. A year later it is still stressed though it doesn’t need surgery.
I flew to Anchorage in April of last year with the hope of getting enough work to buy a replacement property in the Otter Lakes subdivision. That wasn’t good judgment for I could not find work and spent the winter except for a few weeks sleeping outside without even propane to heat coffee. The State Permanent Fund division informs me with the most galling and importunate timing possible that I never had the intention of being a resident before 2010 in Alaska, that I never had a home here. If I were a good brainwashed idiot I almost might believe you. If there was a need for state taxes or military conscription though I am fairly sure the state would determine that I have been a resident the last 25 years at the least.
I need the perm fund check this year in order to exit Anchorage and Mat-Su. I will not have luck finding work here and want to move toward Juneau and my sailboat on the beach near my former home at Wrangell. The bitterness I get from this galling experience is a reason why I do not apply generally in years when I am eligible for a PFD. One obeys the laws, follows the rules and has the government simply corrupt things and profit victimizing the poor-that’s the way of the world too often generally isn’t it?
So a sadistic state government might choose to decide that I have never intended to have a home in Alaska now that I am have lost my last real estate (in February 2010) and must sleep outside. I suppose the state will make the same determination next year and the year after if I am still here since things won’t get better. As a social philosopher I feel the inequitable allocation of resources is disturbing.
Permanent Fund Eligibility Tech I
Mr. Bradley Johnson; to remove any possible confusion you may have about my Alaska residency I will reiterate here the main points of my home ownership at Wrangell 1990 through 2008 and at the Mat-Su Otter Lakes subdivision 2008 through 2010 and my effort to move to build a new home beyond the Susitna River at the Otter Lakes subdivision in 2010. I bought that subdivision lot in 2008 and hoped to move my things from Wrangell there after buying a skiff and motor and building a geodesic dome. Fate and the lack of state work presented destitution outside (not down south) as the future home instead.
I first arrived in Alaska in 1974 and worked several months in Juneau before returning south. I returned to Alaska in 1977, 1979 and 1983 thereafter remaining in the state continuously until 1994 (except for visiting Seattle, Hawaii, Europe and Mexico on vacations from the Alaska State Department of Labor and going active for military service on a few occasions).
I quit employment at Worker’s Comp and moved to Fairbanks in 1988 to attend U.A.F. I also transferred membership in the Alaska Army Guard to the U.S. Army Reserve. In 1988 the reserve sent me to Ft. McClellan Alabama for several months and I returned to U.A.F. in September. In 1989 went active for training at Ft. Bliss Texas and after discharge returned to live at Juneau.
In 1990 I completed two college degrees-one from U.A.S.E. (I lived at the dorm one semester after returning from a trip to Wrangell where I got lost in the forest in late winter doing some damage to my feet) and the other degree-a Bachelor’s, from Excelsior College at Albany (an external studies educational facility accredited by the middle states association of colleges).
I bought a lot at Wrangell in 1990 five miles south of the airport. It was in a roadless area. I was purchasing it with my permanent fund checks yet was going to let it go. An emergent situation in 1990 led me to decide to pay off the property and move material stored in Juneau to the Wrangell property. I moved a few hundred pounds of material south including taking a stationary bicycle via boat and a trail to an empty forested, roadless lot.
In 1991 I built a small home at the lot. I had never built anything before and it was an interesting effort constructing upon sloped muskeg with selections of minimal logs to cut to serve as foundation footings.
I first built an 8’ by 6’ hut with a steep roof where I spent the first winter. I added a small plywood porch for extra working space.
That hut only lasted until the year 2000. In 1992 however I built an 8 by 10 shed roofed building with a metal roof that never required snow shoveling as it faces south. I tore down the original hut and used the materials from that refinishing the outside of the newer building in 20O0. In 2000 the new hut thus had its first door.
The state gave the City of Wrangell waterfront development rights to that subdivision in 2000 and the city surveyor stopped at my home as I was removing the original hut. My home was on the back row of the subdivision up from the waterfront.
My idea was to construct a long-term temporary storage building that was also livable to keep my things in until the road to the subdivision was constructed. I rightly regarded my home as my home since I had no other.
By 2007 the road actually had made some progress when the drop in timber prices made the logging and road building operation unfeasible. With a road to the property I might have had a real home built on the lot if I had saved enough money from work elsewhere –perhaps in Juneau or Fairbanks. I was not unhappy without a road though, as wolves, bear and other wildlife still wandered across the property line and there was no noise from snow machines. I travelled the 14 miles r.t. to town for supplies by boat usually because a walk through the woods before the road extension required six hours one-way during dry weather.
I learned quite a few practical building concepts over the 20 years at Wrangell. I discovered that one can buy an Incinolet electric toilet for $1500 and not need a privy. It needs to be emptied just every 6 months and runs on propane or electricity. I learned about producing energy at home with wind generators, and researched making hydrogen for fuel cell power. I had hoped to use these concepts and more practical low-displacement building ideas at new Otter Lakes subdivision that I was compelled eventually to relinquish, along with any hope of vegetable gardening and northern pike fishing there.
Building at Wrangell was quite a bit of work as I transported supplies several miles by small boat from town with just one load delivered by commercial vessel and then I carried materials up a trail.
I first damaged my right shoulder carrying pieces of ¾ inch plywood cut in half on my shoulder with upraised arm in 1991 and 1992. The plywood set in the top of the shoulder pushed the arm out of the socket. I saw a chiropractor who temporarily put it in place and the ligaments did not pervasively rip out until about 2006.
It was about that time (1991) that the Alaska State radio network harassment began. Something I have regarded as a form of state terrorism. Consistently designating my home ‘the lem’ and sending rave death by a thousand cuts is costly to a single individual. By 2007 I realized that owning ‘the lem’ at Wrangell was adversely impacting my life socially and financially.
Stripping my home ownership of the usual social privacy and of my freedom to quietly go about my private interests in my home and work created social adversity. The state’s power to generate the big lie and to corrupt equal rights (as in the PFD fiction about my having no history of Alaska residency in 2009 or before 2010) and equal legal benefits (the PFD) generated socially by Alaska State APRN terrorism-and that of NPR as well, meant that I should relocate to another address and cut the coordinated tie-ins networked and leaning on my home (not in a legal sense). When enough preferred target location connections build up eliminating the target validity still presents the phenomena of continuing attacks on the no longer valid target for at least two or three years.
I did get much writing done at Wrangell and began copyrighting some science fiction stories written there as early as 1990-92. Yet by 1994 I was fairly well starved out and rowed an 8 foot inflatable boat to Juneau. It took 18 days in the month of April. I left Wrangell weighing 148 pounds more or less and gained a couple of pounds on the way eating fish and clams, kelp and four pounds of flour.
In Juneau I camped out and eventually got 6 weeks of work as an administrative clerk non-perm with the State. That was the only work I got with the State government since looking for a job with the state from 1987 to the 2011 putting in hundreds of applications over the years.
I should make the point here that I did travel to Houston in 1992 to try to continue graduate school after U.A.F. thrice denied admission to their M.A. program in Northern Studies. Including my one year of C.L.E.P. credit scores my g.p.a. as an undergraduate was 3.8.
It is true that I had attended one trimester at Chemeketa C.C. in Oregon from which I did not officially withdraw before receiving an unexpected grant of 200 dollars I used to hitchhike to Houston and look for work prospecting for oil again offshore, yet U.S.N.Y. where my B.A. is from only accepts passing grades, and the U.A.S.E Associates Degree is of no value-I wish they would consider taking it away because when I started it was named U.A.J. and I don’t like the name change.
That costly exclusion meant a waste of time and money searching for a quick replacement. Since student loan funding was cut off to the entire school (The Houston Graduate School of Theology) there because of the default rate I never completed the M.A. program and never became qualified to become a journeyman educator with a decent annual income. I had a 3.5 g.p.a. at H.G.S.T. when I left school.
I had planned to get two M.A.’s with the first being in Biblical Languages and the second from a different school in philosophy and history.
Thus I paint houses when I can find work. Just last month the Settlers Bay Lodge in the Wasilla area let me go after one day of washing dishes.
My home in Alaska at Wrangell slowly improved when I could afford to bring supplies in. I had initially planned to use my place as a storage facility and to keep it low-key until retirement, and hoped to get a job with the state or complete my graduate education and be an educator in a rural Alaska in the meantime. There never was work at Wrangell besides the Alaska Pulp Corporation predominantly which closed its doors in 1994 I believe after polluting the water and defaulting on contracts I seem to remember. The null income scenario changed that however.
With little work I spent more time at the hut and made a few more emergency rowing trips to Juneau eventually moving up from an 8 foot inflatable boat to a 14 foot monarch scow with a tarp for a square sail. I also made several trips outside to paint and buy sailboat and attempt to sail it to Alaska without success.
In 2008 I sold my home at Wrangell to some people from the lower 48 whom I had worked for painting and roofing two summers. I bought a new lot of 4.99 acres at Otter Lakes with the proceeds of the sale of my home at Wrangell and then needed to find some way to solve the logistics of the move. That was to be my new home when work occurred locally in Alaska to afford the transition.
A couple matters complicated the situation. There wasn’t that much money to work with though I sold the Wrangell place for a fair price. I found a cheap sailboat in Maryland on eBay and bought it yet it sank near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and it cost 2000 dollars to have it refloated and destroyed. Coincidently the seller was retired from Dutch Harbor. It was a good boat with new keel bolts that could have made it to Alaska. I planned to store it at a low cost place in the North Chesapeake Bay area near the cut to Delaware until some time when I might have tried the Northwest Passage with it-or maybe Cape Horn. Sailing can be very treacherous in socially crowded environments such as Chesapeake Bay if one is poor.
In 2009 I made an addition on to the hut at Wrangell to keep snow sheets from sliding off the roof down on to the front entrance. I experimented with making strong little gusseted tresses as in a storage shed sold at Home Depot.
I also wrote a novel in 30 days there named eventually ‘St. Novilistricka Dimensions’ (available at my online bookstore at http://www.lulu.com/garycgibson).
I took Russian and Alaska history courses at U.A.-Juneau and read Dostoyevsky in Fairbanks during a course on Siberian exploration. A Mrs. Bartlett at U.A.F. was my course instructor for a philosophy course of independent studies that I took while going through my second time through basic training at Ft. Bliss and an air defense school in 1989. I had sent a science fiction story to Moscow Russia from U.A.F. in 1989 seeking to earn money for publication. It was about rockets, seventh heaven and Coney Island. A drill sergeant at Ft. Bliss gave me the letter of rejection from Moscow at Ft. Bliss the day before issuance of security clearances-yet the Russians pulled out of Eastern Germany a week before in December 1989 anyway. My active duty ended early in 1990. At least I saw the space shuttle on the runway at El Paso.
During the three winters I lived in Fairbanks during the late 80s I usually walked around. One winter I had a Honda civic wagon with a rusted out floor that let 45 below zero wind flow in at 60 m.p.h. with the heater blower motor broke-I drove with the windows open to exhale out in order not to frost the windows. I moved from Fairbanks to Wrangell in 1990 via Juneau. Having completed the work for both of my college degrees I applied for admission to U.A.F.’s Northern Studies Program and had every reason to believe I would be admitted since I had good recommendations from Professors Olsen and Fitzpatrick at U.A.J. I was not admitted, an emergent situation developed and I ended up paying for the lot at Wrangell.
I left Wrangell to go to Juneau in October 2009 and camped out at Douglas. I had two inguinal hernias and an umbilical hernia and no idea of how to pay for it. I had torn my rotator cuff on the right shoulder three or four years before and had not had surgery. If I could get work with the state I would have medical insurance and get the repairs made.
Of course I did not get hired to work for the state or anyone else. The Hospital did write off the surgery costs (one time for most poor people) a priori so I was surprised when a bill arrived for an additional six thousand dollars eventually. The surgeon and the anesthesiologist are not on the Hospital Staff and did not write off their fees.
I had researched the cost of hernia surgery and thought it was 3000 dollars-so the 13,000 dollar charge was a little surprising. I gave the surgeon my Otter Lakes subdivision lot across the Susitna River where I had planned to move to, and move my things at Wrangell to via small boat from Deshka Landing at Willow and portage a half mile from a navigable tributary.
So after surgery post-op four five weeks I got a job at Taku Smokers in Juneau. Unfortunately there was an occasional heavy lift of a tub filled with fish and water that weighed more than 200 pounds. I had to quit as my groin was being damaged. A year later it is still stressed though it doesn’t need surgery.
I flew to Anchorage in April of last year with the hope of getting enough work to buy a replacement property in the Otter Lakes subdivision. That wasn’t good judgment for I could not find work and spent the winter except for a few weeks sleeping outside without even propane to heat coffee. The State Permanent Fund division informs me with the most galling and importunate timing possible that I never had the intention of being a resident before 2010 in Alaska, that I never had a home here. If I were a good brainwashed idiot I almost might believe you. If there was a need for state taxes or military conscription though I am fairly sure the state would determine that I have been a resident the last 25 years at the least.
I need the perm fund check this year in order to exit Anchorage and Mat-Su. I will not have luck finding work here and want to move toward Juneau and my sailboat on the beach near my former home at Wrangell. The bitterness I get from this galling experience is a reason why I do not apply generally in years when I am eligible for a PFD. One obeys the laws, follows the rules and has the government simply corrupt things and profit victimizing the poor-that’s the way of the world too often generally isn’t it?
So a sadistic state government might choose to decide that I have never intended to have a home in Alaska now that I am have lost my last real estate (in February 2010) and must sleep outside. I suppose the state will make the same determination next year and the year after if I am still here since things won’t get better. As a social philosopher I feel the inequitable allocation of resources is disturbing.
6/16/11
On Speculation that Al Qa'eda May Target India
I suppose it makes some sense that Al Qa'eda might target India. India is a rival of Pakistan and Pakistan of India and Pakistan shelters terrorists that war against Indian interests in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
http://www.hindu.com/2011/06/17/stories/2011061761760100.htm
That provides a tough choice for U.S. policy planners; support Indian defenses against Al Qa'eda or support Pakistan more and allow Al Qa'eda to blast away in India, either way the U.S.A. reaps political approbation from both contries as it ineffectively drives over the Hobson's choices with dumped billions of bucks to Pakistan perhaps angering India.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13801271
http://www.hindu.com/2011/06/17/stories/2011061761760100.htm
That provides a tough choice for U.S. policy planners; support Indian defenses against Al Qa'eda or support Pakistan more and allow Al Qa'eda to blast away in India, either way the U.S.A. reaps political approbation from both contries as it ineffectively drives over the Hobson's choices with dumped billions of bucks to Pakistan perhaps angering India.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13801271
‘Where the Wild Things Were’ etc./Juxtapositions of Human of Human Ecological Evolution and Nature
I have enjoyed reading this book by William Stolzenburg published in 2008. It is a work on naturalism, species diversity and predators in keeping natural balances leading methodically through an environment of naturalists, experiments, learning, academia, history and field insights. I have a few preliminary comments and synthetic observations to make though I have yet to finish the reading.
Actually I haven’t made it too far. Robert Paine’s work on ‘predator-prey’ interactions is the present topic. As a reader interested in the social sciences and humanities I naturally consider the examples from the natural world to that of human society as a species in its relation to the planet Earth as an ecosystem.
Paine published a famous paper in the Jan.-Feb. 1966 issue of The American Naturalist’ named ‘Food Web Complexity and Species Diversity’. Stolzenburg had already summarized Paine’s history as a young naturalist bumping through prestigious academic halls and inventive field studies such at ocean intertidal zones. Paine had researched what happens when predator species are removed from an ecosystem and discovered that one species tends to dominate others and end species diversity.
Paine wrote that “local species diversity is directly related to the efficiency with which predators prevent the monopolization of the major environmental requisites by one species’. We find this phenomenon obviously exemplified in human proliferation upon the world ending all interspecies predation upon itself. With the human elimination of predators except for a few microbes human life is implementing the elimination of species diversity killing other life forms intentionally and unintentionally with the assertiveness environmentally of its own cultural tool kit.
I wonder if the Internet is an accelerant of an intra-human reduction of human cultural diversity, and if a progressive reduction of cultural diversity is a parallel to Robert Paine’s observations about the natural world. If I had more time I might write an historical-sociological thesis on the subject. As a Christian I tend to rely on the prophetic criteria of the Bible and infer that by the time of the return of Christ human social power and its cultural developments will have made a complete totalitarian mess of things.
In the meantime intentional species diversity conservation might be made by replacing the lack of predators upon the human species with human intelligence acting to limit its own existential surge into geographical species totalization. Human intelligence collectively may need to substitute its own creative intellect for predation’s culling work of the monocultural domination of an environment by any one species free of predators. This should not be mistaken as advocating that human society become idiotic self-destructive human predators upon themselves as they have for most of history excelled at. It is a suggestion that intelligent and selective planetary environmental interactions may be actualized through far better human design of its own cultural insinuations into the word environment phenomenally.
The profit at the margins of human social sprawl in megacities such as Bangalore may be decreasing over-all as the currency of human culture draws upon a finite natural bank of resources. In time the irreplaceable lost species diversity and basic ecological eradication will hyper-inflate the value of human cultural money.
Actually I haven’t made it too far. Robert Paine’s work on ‘predator-prey’ interactions is the present topic. As a reader interested in the social sciences and humanities I naturally consider the examples from the natural world to that of human society as a species in its relation to the planet Earth as an ecosystem.
Paine published a famous paper in the Jan.-Feb. 1966 issue of The American Naturalist’ named ‘Food Web Complexity and Species Diversity’. Stolzenburg had already summarized Paine’s history as a young naturalist bumping through prestigious academic halls and inventive field studies such at ocean intertidal zones. Paine had researched what happens when predator species are removed from an ecosystem and discovered that one species tends to dominate others and end species diversity.
Paine wrote that “local species diversity is directly related to the efficiency with which predators prevent the monopolization of the major environmental requisites by one species’. We find this phenomenon obviously exemplified in human proliferation upon the world ending all interspecies predation upon itself. With the human elimination of predators except for a few microbes human life is implementing the elimination of species diversity killing other life forms intentionally and unintentionally with the assertiveness environmentally of its own cultural tool kit.
I wonder if the Internet is an accelerant of an intra-human reduction of human cultural diversity, and if a progressive reduction of cultural diversity is a parallel to Robert Paine’s observations about the natural world. If I had more time I might write an historical-sociological thesis on the subject. As a Christian I tend to rely on the prophetic criteria of the Bible and infer that by the time of the return of Christ human social power and its cultural developments will have made a complete totalitarian mess of things.
In the meantime intentional species diversity conservation might be made by replacing the lack of predators upon the human species with human intelligence acting to limit its own existential surge into geographical species totalization. Human intelligence collectively may need to substitute its own creative intellect for predation’s culling work of the monocultural domination of an environment by any one species free of predators. This should not be mistaken as advocating that human society become idiotic self-destructive human predators upon themselves as they have for most of history excelled at. It is a suggestion that intelligent and selective planetary environmental interactions may be actualized through far better human design of its own cultural insinuations into the word environment phenomenally.
The profit at the margins of human social sprawl in megacities such as Bangalore may be decreasing over-all as the currency of human culture draws upon a finite natural bank of resources. In time the irreplaceable lost species diversity and basic ecological eradication will hyper-inflate the value of human cultural money.
6/15/11
The Wasilla Report
Good morning from Wasilla Alaska. I don't usually write about local areas I live in-even temporarily, yet today I shall make an exception since there are several items of concern that otherwise comprise a sort of writer's block.
This is the time of year in the main part of the state that king salmon return to spawn upriver. Yesterday the state issued a 4 day closure of the Kuskokwim River because of low numbers of fish returning-at least a few need to migrate upriver.
I believe that the spawning season affects social psychology as well-people in Wasilla get more violent and criminally inclined-perhaps even the state Government's Permanent Fund Office is also affected by the June spawning season as it does then issue its denials of eligibility notices to many.
I have owned a home in Alaska since 1990-or did until trading the last of it to a surgeon to pay for hernia laparoscopy repair in January 2010. When Commissioner Butcher's Perm Fund office issued a denial of my P.F.D. check for this year it said I needed to show some evidence that I had ever intended Alaska to be my home. I replied that I have an honorable discharge from the Alaska Army National Guard, and honor's degree from the University of Alaska at Juneau and so forth pointing out that these are all on-line state records, yet will wait with extra stress to learn if they restore my check on a timely way so I can leave this part of the state so affected by June spawn season craziness.
The other item that occurred the night before the P.F.D. denial notice was very unusual yet informative. Five youths between 19 and 23 years of age arrived like a gang at my tent at night kicking it and appearing in a somewhat intimidating array. I learned that they had two purposes; to terrorize homeless people arriving from Anchorage into leaving Wasilla, and to find a new campsite for themselves.
Homeless people in Anchorage were a big news item last winter. The city sought to evict the people from city parks and after wrangling with the A.C.L.U. imposed a two week eviction schedule. Mayor Sullivan made no realistic alternative provisions for the homeless of the city to move into as an alternative. One cannot just leave this part of Alaska. One is stranded if broke and the Canadians want a U.S. passport and adequate funds to pass through the border at Beaver Creek.
I did stay at the Anchorage homeless shelter last winter for seven days. The people that built it were in a different era, and now it is sorely over-used. At night people sleep on the floor on mats two feet wide in rows five deep and many in length. The two hundred and fifty winter residents occupy all of the floor space except for a one mat wide aisle left to pass through. Over flow sleeping space is available at Bean's Cafe nearby, yet that two can reach capacity of cold winter nights. With the eviction of homeless individuals from tents they may have nowhere to go.
One may catch a bus to Palmer or Wasilla of course. I arrived in Anchorage last April from Juneau to look for a paint job after quitting a job that required occasional very heavy lifting at a seafood processor a month after 13,000 triple hernia surgery. A more reasonable job was required without potential new damage to groin or abdomen-besides, I had torn my rotator cuff and never got surgical repair four or five years ago, and still have extra bone chips in an ankle.
I search for work in the Wasilla area as a painter (of exteriors sometimes ), and have had bear problems in S.E. camping numerous times. I can't afford to buy a new tent as I would need to if I moved too far away from town, so I prefer to be within a few miles of a library where the only threats are human and falling, freeze dried trees in the wind.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/06/11/1702607/city-begins-cleanup-of-homeless.html
I am not persuaded that the main part of the state of Alaska has a good social attitude as it might have formerly, yet one must return to the main theme of this article on homeless phenomena and the lack of security in Wasilla Alaska presented by vigilante youth gangs and dope growers.
The gang leader said he was going to shoot me as I stood in front of my tent, so I took out a buck knife and readied to provide a retaliatory thoracic insult in event he produced a gun. He took out a knife and cut my hand just a little. I said I did not want to hurt him and eventually he put his knife away. We had a conversation lasting two hours thereafter, as that Sunday night they two or three would not leave until nearly midnight.
I learned that besides the infrequent roving youth gang seeking to sweep and clear Wasilla of any homeless people arriving from Anchorage there are other terrorist items one might encounter in the area. Besides corrupt police forces (I have no evidence of that and am quite skeptical as they are generally subject to adequate oversight in northern states at least) there are marijuana growers. Marijuana is the largest cash crop in the Wasilla-Palmer area these days, so it is said, and they may be violent too, supposedly.
The other topic of danger mentioned was meth producers that manufacture the drug illicitly in forests. They may use infrared deer motion sensors with automatic cameras to learn who goes in 'their' forest. Meth crystals may grow up a string suspended in some way in a plastic container buried in the ground and then sold for 50 dollars for a small crystal. In some way propane is involved in the manufacturing process.
From my point of view, I have no interest in meth production techniques or marijuana growing. I also learned that an .8% proof bottle of a beer like substance is called a 40 in reference to the number of ounces of liquid it has. The guys passed around a '40' and smoked some dope in a pipe. Marijuana in small amounts is legal in Alaska.
My summer reading program is moving along. I have some good pictures of moose on my cell phone, yet my computer is broken and I have no camera to get anything of quality. I have several books with of material to publish yet must wait until the computer is repaired-I need to earn a 150 dollars for that and still hope to find something to paint.
I do not anticipate that the homeless of Anchorage actually will arrive in Wasilla in large numbers or at all in an exodus of eviction from Anchorage. I looked for much of last summer in Anchorage and found nothing. I looked all winter for a seafood processing job and the closest I got was when Unisea of Dutch Harbor and Japan said in September that I was hired for the January season this year. So in January they were supposed to send the itinerary via Gmail. It worked for others yet for me they said it does not work, so after a week of long distance walks to get to a phone and useless calls to their office in Seattle-they mailed the itinerary to Wrangell Alaska-not to close to Anchorage.
I was fairly unhappy with the Japanese corporation for not putting me to work in January, yet did consciously forgive them before the tsunami hit in March. My belief is that some of the seafood processors won't hire people over 50 because they might use workers comp more often that younger people. I was the only grey haired guy in some of the job hiring interview briefings.
Anchorage is a city where getting any sort of work can be very difficult. It is a privileged city and has even low level janitorial jobs locked up through agencies that place the retarded in them to a certain extent. That is, it is very difficult to find just any free enterprise opportunity in Anchorage and one can't just ride a bike someplace else to look as in the south. If the corporations won't hire you-that knocks out much of the employment possibilities.
The city of Anchorage should have constructed winter camping facilities for those that don't want to live packed in like sardines to contract airborne illness lasting for months. The camp sites need to be free in order to accommodate the broke. They should have good privacy and good surveillance by adequate internet cameras and possible on-site security. It is just too cold in Anchorage to compel people to improvise shelter-event tents freeze to the ground for the rest of the winter after a while. It is possible to believe that people governing from indoors lack competence at how to provide realistic facilities at low cost that work for independent, poor people stranded in the aloof and sometimes vicious Wasilla-Anchorage social and physical environment.
This is the time of year in the main part of the state that king salmon return to spawn upriver. Yesterday the state issued a 4 day closure of the Kuskokwim River because of low numbers of fish returning-at least a few need to migrate upriver.
I believe that the spawning season affects social psychology as well-people in Wasilla get more violent and criminally inclined-perhaps even the state Government's Permanent Fund Office is also affected by the June spawning season as it does then issue its denials of eligibility notices to many.
I have owned a home in Alaska since 1990-or did until trading the last of it to a surgeon to pay for hernia laparoscopy repair in January 2010. When Commissioner Butcher's Perm Fund office issued a denial of my P.F.D. check for this year it said I needed to show some evidence that I had ever intended Alaska to be my home. I replied that I have an honorable discharge from the Alaska Army National Guard, and honor's degree from the University of Alaska at Juneau and so forth pointing out that these are all on-line state records, yet will wait with extra stress to learn if they restore my check on a timely way so I can leave this part of the state so affected by June spawn season craziness.
The other item that occurred the night before the P.F.D. denial notice was very unusual yet informative. Five youths between 19 and 23 years of age arrived like a gang at my tent at night kicking it and appearing in a somewhat intimidating array. I learned that they had two purposes; to terrorize homeless people arriving from Anchorage into leaving Wasilla, and to find a new campsite for themselves.
Homeless people in Anchorage were a big news item last winter. The city sought to evict the people from city parks and after wrangling with the A.C.L.U. imposed a two week eviction schedule. Mayor Sullivan made no realistic alternative provisions for the homeless of the city to move into as an alternative. One cannot just leave this part of Alaska. One is stranded if broke and the Canadians want a U.S. passport and adequate funds to pass through the border at Beaver Creek.
I did stay at the Anchorage homeless shelter last winter for seven days. The people that built it were in a different era, and now it is sorely over-used. At night people sleep on the floor on mats two feet wide in rows five deep and many in length. The two hundred and fifty winter residents occupy all of the floor space except for a one mat wide aisle left to pass through. Over flow sleeping space is available at Bean's Cafe nearby, yet that two can reach capacity of cold winter nights. With the eviction of homeless individuals from tents they may have nowhere to go.
One may catch a bus to Palmer or Wasilla of course. I arrived in Anchorage last April from Juneau to look for a paint job after quitting a job that required occasional very heavy lifting at a seafood processor a month after 13,000 triple hernia surgery. A more reasonable job was required without potential new damage to groin or abdomen-besides, I had torn my rotator cuff and never got surgical repair four or five years ago, and still have extra bone chips in an ankle.
I search for work in the Wasilla area as a painter (of exteriors sometimes ), and have had bear problems in S.E. camping numerous times. I can't afford to buy a new tent as I would need to if I moved too far away from town, so I prefer to be within a few miles of a library where the only threats are human and falling, freeze dried trees in the wind.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/06/11/1702607/city-begins-cleanup-of-homeless.html
I am not persuaded that the main part of the state of Alaska has a good social attitude as it might have formerly, yet one must return to the main theme of this article on homeless phenomena and the lack of security in Wasilla Alaska presented by vigilante youth gangs and dope growers.
The gang leader said he was going to shoot me as I stood in front of my tent, so I took out a buck knife and readied to provide a retaliatory thoracic insult in event he produced a gun. He took out a knife and cut my hand just a little. I said I did not want to hurt him and eventually he put his knife away. We had a conversation lasting two hours thereafter, as that Sunday night they two or three would not leave until nearly midnight.
I learned that besides the infrequent roving youth gang seeking to sweep and clear Wasilla of any homeless people arriving from Anchorage there are other terrorist items one might encounter in the area. Besides corrupt police forces (I have no evidence of that and am quite skeptical as they are generally subject to adequate oversight in northern states at least) there are marijuana growers. Marijuana is the largest cash crop in the Wasilla-Palmer area these days, so it is said, and they may be violent too, supposedly.
The other topic of danger mentioned was meth producers that manufacture the drug illicitly in forests. They may use infrared deer motion sensors with automatic cameras to learn who goes in 'their' forest. Meth crystals may grow up a string suspended in some way in a plastic container buried in the ground and then sold for 50 dollars for a small crystal. In some way propane is involved in the manufacturing process.
From my point of view, I have no interest in meth production techniques or marijuana growing. I also learned that an .8% proof bottle of a beer like substance is called a 40 in reference to the number of ounces of liquid it has. The guys passed around a '40' and smoked some dope in a pipe. Marijuana in small amounts is legal in Alaska.
My summer reading program is moving along. I have some good pictures of moose on my cell phone, yet my computer is broken and I have no camera to get anything of quality. I have several books with of material to publish yet must wait until the computer is repaired-I need to earn a 150 dollars for that and still hope to find something to paint.
I do not anticipate that the homeless of Anchorage actually will arrive in Wasilla in large numbers or at all in an exodus of eviction from Anchorage. I looked for much of last summer in Anchorage and found nothing. I looked all winter for a seafood processing job and the closest I got was when Unisea of Dutch Harbor and Japan said in September that I was hired for the January season this year. So in January they were supposed to send the itinerary via Gmail. It worked for others yet for me they said it does not work, so after a week of long distance walks to get to a phone and useless calls to their office in Seattle-they mailed the itinerary to Wrangell Alaska-not to close to Anchorage.
I was fairly unhappy with the Japanese corporation for not putting me to work in January, yet did consciously forgive them before the tsunami hit in March. My belief is that some of the seafood processors won't hire people over 50 because they might use workers comp more often that younger people. I was the only grey haired guy in some of the job hiring interview briefings.
Anchorage is a city where getting any sort of work can be very difficult. It is a privileged city and has even low level janitorial jobs locked up through agencies that place the retarded in them to a certain extent. That is, it is very difficult to find just any free enterprise opportunity in Anchorage and one can't just ride a bike someplace else to look as in the south. If the corporations won't hire you-that knocks out much of the employment possibilities.
The city of Anchorage should have constructed winter camping facilities for those that don't want to live packed in like sardines to contract airborne illness lasting for months. The camp sites need to be free in order to accommodate the broke. They should have good privacy and good surveillance by adequate internet cameras and possible on-site security. It is just too cold in Anchorage to compel people to improvise shelter-event tents freeze to the ground for the rest of the winter after a while. It is possible to believe that people governing from indoors lack competence at how to provide realistic facilities at low cost that work for independent, poor people stranded in the aloof and sometimes vicious Wasilla-Anchorage social and physical environment.
6/13/11
U.S. Congress Blames Shoddy Budgetwork on Hot Twits of Weenie Gate
I wrote this post a little factiously because I do not perceive the U.S. Congress as an island of high moral standards in a nation of low-life fans of legislators. For many years the Congress has enriched the rich and increased the ranks of those dispossessed of opportunity. The Congress has some of the better and many of the worst sorts of people interested in governing.
Like righteous students complaining that they can’t concentrate on their homework because of the noise, many congress persons complain that Wienergate is a distraction preventing completion of homework on the federal budget and debt ceiling, Afghan and Iraq troop deployment levels, use of steroids in pro sports and the price of oil.
A portrait of Congressman Wiener as a kind of exceptional immoral loony failing congress’s usual aretaic ethics conversing through hot twittering below impeccable standards of an august society of supporters of abortion, legislators that believe in same sex ‘marriage’, protracted foreign wars, 14 to 20 trillion dollars of public debt and increasing concentration of wealth and disempropertyment of ordinary Americans is an unpersuasive portrait.
I would bet that many congresspersons are serial adulterers, pork barrel thieves and/or have sex as warmer weather moves them with congressional pages or assistants, parking lot attendants, secretaries, car wash attendants or visiting constituents. If one compares the net worth of members of congress before and after being in office the average increase is probably not on average consistent with their salary. The seven deadly sins perhaps descend like a mantle of wickedness upon the spirit of those politicians sojourning through life via the U.S. Congress. One must hope they could in some way become better men and women; more pragmatic, more realistic, fair, creative and with a better public spirit.
The broadcast media reported that ‘new, explicit photos’ of the Congressman in a Capitol Hill gymnasium (in Greek the word meant, I believe, a place where men are naked because everyone went naked in the gymnasium) were published at an Internet site. I personally believe congresspersons generally should keep their clothes on in public places and not seek to get extra earnings with subscription only Internet office web cams even if their legislation is not of better quality than that produced by a million orangutans typing randomly for several sessions.
Remember the woman set free from stoning by the Lord, or the congressperson with the lampshade on and nothing else juggling oranges amidst a pile of small whiskey bottles at the reflecting pool and consider the principle of; ‘go forth and sin no more’ as a disposition on this matter if Wiener’s incorrigible twits can be limited to appropriate venues or eliminated altogether. If Weiner does not soon go altogether limp and give up he might experience congressionally sanctioned methods of torture such as Pavlovian waterboarding in the sort of stimulus-response loops congress regards as ethical when applied covertly and with plausible deniability, when ordinary political leadership excoriation fails to intimidate.
Livy wrote in his history of Rome of a Senator testifying who felt compelled to defend his loyalty to the Republic. He disrobed in front of the Senate and pointed out each of the numerous scars that he had received in battle as a Roman soldier explaining the origin of each and every one. Times are different today. Perhaps few Congresspersons and Senators would have scars to show before the membership.
In former times members of congress at least would haves scars of political battles to show. Happy warriors fought to accomplish worthwhile goals that improved the standard of living of all Americans without excluding the poor.
All Americans want to have the benefits of a good job, or to own a home, land or even a humble hut. The present congress has allowed foreign corporations and nations to purchase their acquiescence in globalism, fossil fuels and monetary policy. Because congress is mostly satiated, wealthy and without understanding of the issues creating poverty they have insufficient interest in solving them.
Several congress persons have said that Weinergate is a distraction that should be put behind them, and have called for Queen’s Congressman Weiner to quit, resign, ‘step down’ or become a political transvestite and run as a Massachusetts Republican.
If Congressman Wiener quits instead of being fired he may be ineligible for unemployment benefits. Extended unemployment benefits would be available at least through 2013 though, and many high paying jobs for the private sector may be created through congressional genius in the next two years so he shouldn’t worry about being one of more than 400,000 first time unemployment insurance applicants next week. Getting rid of the dead wood is an important principle of corporate management. The Congress has everything all planned out in advance for their 410 k’s, condo investments, mutual funds and etc. With quality job skill retraining the former congressman could be a computer guided sanitation engineer without insurance and a productive member of society without danger of congressional election recidivism.
Congress can only function effectively when not distracted by boom boxes, tapping of pencils, snapping of knuckles, numerous flies buzzing and/or Congresspersons in the news for putting too much of themselves in the news.
Some have said that since Congressman Weiner’s wife is pregnant he should act responsibly and quit his job. Others find potential new political issues and violations of the second and fourteenth amendments juxtaposed with litigation over school textbook revision regulations in support of demonstrating that the civil war was fought to end gay apartheid in Massachusetts, private property rights and free speech in dissent.
President Obama slipped down to visit Puerto Rico this week…the first President in a half century to visit the territory. We anticipate that he may investigate Alaska’s Brooks Range for Arctic Char fishing for a few days during the heat of the WeenieGate scandal.
I don’t usually watch television intentionally so I haven’t seen any salacious congressional pictures distracting the congressional ethics (an oxymoron I know) committee. I have no substantive information about what the Congressman’s relationship with the women permitted to view the congressional weenie was.
Did the congressman receive emails from fans asking him to show them more of himself? He should have had an I.Q. sufficient to realize that sending constituent weenie-vista twits isn’t a good idea. Yet with an I.Q. sufficiently high a Congressperson could swiftly balance the federal budget. The federal budget and economy have been imbalanced a very long time.
Some might wish to cast millions of barrels of oily balm upon troubled congressional waters-yet they’ve had enough of that already. Instead, maybe Rush Limbaugh could be called before a congressional committee to act like Hal Holbrook playing Mark Twain-to portray President Bill Clinton offering advice on lying to Congress and the painful process of recovery from the rare political illness of ‘lying addiction’.
Limbaugh’s imitation of Bill Clinton is simply the best available. Maybe the Weinergate scandal is comparable to the Lewinsky scandal a little-there were initially lies to protect a family in each instance, and Congressman Weiner’s wife now works for Bill Clinton’s wife in the U.S. State Department. Big Sister may be able to console ‘little sister’.
Congress might be less distracted if Limbaugh were to say “Monica, bring in a fat, juicy Havana”? They might be rolling in the aisles with laughter before going on vacation to some foreign islands for research at public expense. The Nobel Prize committee probably won’t be sympathetic and offer Oscar Meyer a peace prize for feeding the 5000 at the Illinois State fair to relocate the distraction.
Usually the Congress hums along at a peak efficiency rating getting a lot done. This is not a 4 m.p.g. congress but a 100 m.p.g. class of political theorists. Extending tax cuts for the rich last December only took the entire lame duck session, and the prior Obama health plan was also a model of efficient bi-partisan economic planning.
Though many of the nation’s poor will die or get dumped debt before finding free health care, litigation on the Obama Health bill constitutionality is expected to be completed as fast as that of remaining Exxon Valdez litigation issues.
The controversy over Congressman Wiener’s hot twits is the hot topic on the political grill and may remain so. Already opportunistic politicians have found the right side of the us vs. them to be on or agin.
As an 800 pound gorilla jumping upon desks in Congress, Mr. Wiener’s distracting has prevented the usual fast, competent processing of the nation’s political legislating work
The congressman has already sought professional help for his Internet sexting addiction. He has taken leave of presence from Congress for counseling at Madam Boofant’s Custom Psychiatric Advising Therapeutic Retreat of the Hills. These burgeoning businesses of the psychiatric-industrial complex may be in line for a couple trillion dollars of congressionally budgeted contracts for future counseling for veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some Congresspersons passing around photos pertaining of Weiner have decided that violating the American Civil Liberties Act to fire retardant on Weinergate distractions may not be necessary. The Congress may instead create an Internet amnesty box named ‘CongressTwits’ where any congressperson sending inappropriate twits, attachments or other uploads may send a copy for public viewing and be off the hook.
Secret Congressional protocols and Patriot Act blue-ribbon panel approved warrantless wireless taps have promulgated special digital photo dossiers of the Congressman’s ethical violations kept hidden from viewing by the general public previously in concern of creating foreign policy repercussions harmful to the security of global concentrations of wealth.
We learn that Congressman Wiener may resign after enlisting in the Army Intelligence Corps for two years of service in Afghanistan before discharge to return to run for the U.S. Senate in New York. The Congressman may also apply for admission to a class of 60% of the national population qualifying for congressionally approved psychiatric disorders and matching revenue sharing block grants (i.e. Internet exhibitionist syndrome).
Wiener may duke it out with the powerful minority leader Nancy Pelosi and allied feminine anti-chauvinists. Civil liberty issues of equal rights, jejune weenie roasts, birth control pips and freedom from discrimination may arise.
Though Wiener may be reassigned a small office far away from the Congressional chamber where he is ostracized and be prone to injury like a knee of Tiger Woods shooting from the rough, the Queens political bee’s knees search for political pollen may bear fruit in time leading to re-election. Voters sometimes like fighters more than quitters.
If the congress were to explain Internet sexting legal issues plainly, along with Internet taxation issues, Wienergate might have been a productive issue after all. Instead, as a vague ponderous clave of contract kickbacking legislators might prefer, the Congress wants to return to a chthonic mushroom factory torpor as soon as possible lest anyone notice they aren’t getting anything done to balance the federal budget, create full employment or free health care for the poor, restore the vitality of the ecosphere, structure a 50,000 man S.F. BOP military force for global rapid deployment, reduce the budget of D.O.D., stop all illegal entry to the U.S.A.
Like righteous students complaining that they can’t concentrate on their homework because of the noise, many congress persons complain that Wienergate is a distraction preventing completion of homework on the federal budget and debt ceiling, Afghan and Iraq troop deployment levels, use of steroids in pro sports and the price of oil.
A portrait of Congressman Wiener as a kind of exceptional immoral loony failing congress’s usual aretaic ethics conversing through hot twittering below impeccable standards of an august society of supporters of abortion, legislators that believe in same sex ‘marriage’, protracted foreign wars, 14 to 20 trillion dollars of public debt and increasing concentration of wealth and disempropertyment of ordinary Americans is an unpersuasive portrait.
I would bet that many congresspersons are serial adulterers, pork barrel thieves and/or have sex as warmer weather moves them with congressional pages or assistants, parking lot attendants, secretaries, car wash attendants or visiting constituents. If one compares the net worth of members of congress before and after being in office the average increase is probably not on average consistent with their salary. The seven deadly sins perhaps descend like a mantle of wickedness upon the spirit of those politicians sojourning through life via the U.S. Congress. One must hope they could in some way become better men and women; more pragmatic, more realistic, fair, creative and with a better public spirit.
The broadcast media reported that ‘new, explicit photos’ of the Congressman in a Capitol Hill gymnasium (in Greek the word meant, I believe, a place where men are naked because everyone went naked in the gymnasium) were published at an Internet site. I personally believe congresspersons generally should keep their clothes on in public places and not seek to get extra earnings with subscription only Internet office web cams even if their legislation is not of better quality than that produced by a million orangutans typing randomly for several sessions.
Remember the woman set free from stoning by the Lord, or the congressperson with the lampshade on and nothing else juggling oranges amidst a pile of small whiskey bottles at the reflecting pool and consider the principle of; ‘go forth and sin no more’ as a disposition on this matter if Wiener’s incorrigible twits can be limited to appropriate venues or eliminated altogether. If Weiner does not soon go altogether limp and give up he might experience congressionally sanctioned methods of torture such as Pavlovian waterboarding in the sort of stimulus-response loops congress regards as ethical when applied covertly and with plausible deniability, when ordinary political leadership excoriation fails to intimidate.
Livy wrote in his history of Rome of a Senator testifying who felt compelled to defend his loyalty to the Republic. He disrobed in front of the Senate and pointed out each of the numerous scars that he had received in battle as a Roman soldier explaining the origin of each and every one. Times are different today. Perhaps few Congresspersons and Senators would have scars to show before the membership.
In former times members of congress at least would haves scars of political battles to show. Happy warriors fought to accomplish worthwhile goals that improved the standard of living of all Americans without excluding the poor.
All Americans want to have the benefits of a good job, or to own a home, land or even a humble hut. The present congress has allowed foreign corporations and nations to purchase their acquiescence in globalism, fossil fuels and monetary policy. Because congress is mostly satiated, wealthy and without understanding of the issues creating poverty they have insufficient interest in solving them.
Several congress persons have said that Weinergate is a distraction that should be put behind them, and have called for Queen’s Congressman Weiner to quit, resign, ‘step down’ or become a political transvestite and run as a Massachusetts Republican.
If Congressman Wiener quits instead of being fired he may be ineligible for unemployment benefits. Extended unemployment benefits would be available at least through 2013 though, and many high paying jobs for the private sector may be created through congressional genius in the next two years so he shouldn’t worry about being one of more than 400,000 first time unemployment insurance applicants next week. Getting rid of the dead wood is an important principle of corporate management. The Congress has everything all planned out in advance for their 410 k’s, condo investments, mutual funds and etc. With quality job skill retraining the former congressman could be a computer guided sanitation engineer without insurance and a productive member of society without danger of congressional election recidivism.
Congress can only function effectively when not distracted by boom boxes, tapping of pencils, snapping of knuckles, numerous flies buzzing and/or Congresspersons in the news for putting too much of themselves in the news.
Some have said that since Congressman Weiner’s wife is pregnant he should act responsibly and quit his job. Others find potential new political issues and violations of the second and fourteenth amendments juxtaposed with litigation over school textbook revision regulations in support of demonstrating that the civil war was fought to end gay apartheid in Massachusetts, private property rights and free speech in dissent.
President Obama slipped down to visit Puerto Rico this week…the first President in a half century to visit the territory. We anticipate that he may investigate Alaska’s Brooks Range for Arctic Char fishing for a few days during the heat of the WeenieGate scandal.
I don’t usually watch television intentionally so I haven’t seen any salacious congressional pictures distracting the congressional ethics (an oxymoron I know) committee. I have no substantive information about what the Congressman’s relationship with the women permitted to view the congressional weenie was.
Did the congressman receive emails from fans asking him to show them more of himself? He should have had an I.Q. sufficient to realize that sending constituent weenie-vista twits isn’t a good idea. Yet with an I.Q. sufficiently high a Congressperson could swiftly balance the federal budget. The federal budget and economy have been imbalanced a very long time.
Some might wish to cast millions of barrels of oily balm upon troubled congressional waters-yet they’ve had enough of that already. Instead, maybe Rush Limbaugh could be called before a congressional committee to act like Hal Holbrook playing Mark Twain-to portray President Bill Clinton offering advice on lying to Congress and the painful process of recovery from the rare political illness of ‘lying addiction’.
Limbaugh’s imitation of Bill Clinton is simply the best available. Maybe the Weinergate scandal is comparable to the Lewinsky scandal a little-there were initially lies to protect a family in each instance, and Congressman Weiner’s wife now works for Bill Clinton’s wife in the U.S. State Department. Big Sister may be able to console ‘little sister’.
Congress might be less distracted if Limbaugh were to say “Monica, bring in a fat, juicy Havana”? They might be rolling in the aisles with laughter before going on vacation to some foreign islands for research at public expense. The Nobel Prize committee probably won’t be sympathetic and offer Oscar Meyer a peace prize for feeding the 5000 at the Illinois State fair to relocate the distraction.
Usually the Congress hums along at a peak efficiency rating getting a lot done. This is not a 4 m.p.g. congress but a 100 m.p.g. class of political theorists. Extending tax cuts for the rich last December only took the entire lame duck session, and the prior Obama health plan was also a model of efficient bi-partisan economic planning.
Though many of the nation’s poor will die or get dumped debt before finding free health care, litigation on the Obama Health bill constitutionality is expected to be completed as fast as that of remaining Exxon Valdez litigation issues.
The controversy over Congressman Wiener’s hot twits is the hot topic on the political grill and may remain so. Already opportunistic politicians have found the right side of the us vs. them to be on or agin.
As an 800 pound gorilla jumping upon desks in Congress, Mr. Wiener’s distracting has prevented the usual fast, competent processing of the nation’s political legislating work
The congressman has already sought professional help for his Internet sexting addiction. He has taken leave of presence from Congress for counseling at Madam Boofant’s Custom Psychiatric Advising Therapeutic Retreat of the Hills. These burgeoning businesses of the psychiatric-industrial complex may be in line for a couple trillion dollars of congressionally budgeted contracts for future counseling for veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some Congresspersons passing around photos pertaining of Weiner have decided that violating the American Civil Liberties Act to fire retardant on Weinergate distractions may not be necessary. The Congress may instead create an Internet amnesty box named ‘CongressTwits’ where any congressperson sending inappropriate twits, attachments or other uploads may send a copy for public viewing and be off the hook.
Secret Congressional protocols and Patriot Act blue-ribbon panel approved warrantless wireless taps have promulgated special digital photo dossiers of the Congressman’s ethical violations kept hidden from viewing by the general public previously in concern of creating foreign policy repercussions harmful to the security of global concentrations of wealth.
We learn that Congressman Wiener may resign after enlisting in the Army Intelligence Corps for two years of service in Afghanistan before discharge to return to run for the U.S. Senate in New York. The Congressman may also apply for admission to a class of 60% of the national population qualifying for congressionally approved psychiatric disorders and matching revenue sharing block grants (i.e. Internet exhibitionist syndrome).
Wiener may duke it out with the powerful minority leader Nancy Pelosi and allied feminine anti-chauvinists. Civil liberty issues of equal rights, jejune weenie roasts, birth control pips and freedom from discrimination may arise.
Though Wiener may be reassigned a small office far away from the Congressional chamber where he is ostracized and be prone to injury like a knee of Tiger Woods shooting from the rough, the Queens political bee’s knees search for political pollen may bear fruit in time leading to re-election. Voters sometimes like fighters more than quitters.
If the congress were to explain Internet sexting legal issues plainly, along with Internet taxation issues, Wienergate might have been a productive issue after all. Instead, as a vague ponderous clave of contract kickbacking legislators might prefer, the Congress wants to return to a chthonic mushroom factory torpor as soon as possible lest anyone notice they aren’t getting anything done to balance the federal budget, create full employment or free health care for the poor, restore the vitality of the ecosphere, structure a 50,000 man S.F. BOP military force for global rapid deployment, reduce the budget of D.O.D., stop all illegal entry to the U.S.A.
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