In honor of the turning of the year–past the solstice and heading for a new year and new decade, go back to something you wrote long ago and look at it again.  Find something you like about it and give it a fresh start–either rewriting from the seed of the old material,  or just dusting it off and reading it with new eyes, as my old friend Larry Laraby did with this poem:

The Light Waits (a winter solstice poem)

The inexorable movement of darkness
Slow accumulation of night
We gather the multitude of dark hours
And cast them to the sun
Light waits behind the closed
Doors of winter
Light that waits to dance
That waits to sing
The sun’s day
Solstice
In that immense moment
The earth stops its turning
And we celebrate
The retreating night.

(Thanks, Larry!)

—————————————-

A Response from Glow:

“At dawn she went to the ridge to wait.”

For years, I have wondered
why she waited
and for what?
Did her wait turn fruitful?
Did she come, did the letter arrive, was the child born?
The news arrive? The medicine turn up? The mystery solved?

There is a drawing,
the title is the mystery phrase:
at dawn she went to the ridge to wait.
butch dyke in a woman’s cloak
a stout walking stick held before her
a tiny grassland village hunched on the ridge
folded into the valley below her.

For me the mystery is double.
I both wrote the title and drew the drawing.
I do not know what either mean.
Only that I, too, will eventually recognize
the ridge in the drawing
it will manifest into reality some dawn
I will grasp my sturdy walking stick
climb up the hill in the early twilight
and wait.

The Gaucho (1927), dir. F. Richard Jones, with Douglas Fairbanks (The Gaucho), Lupe Velez (the Mountain Girl), Joan Barclay/Eve Southern (the Girl of the Shrine), Gustav von Seyfertitz (Ruiz, the Usurper), Mary Pickford (the Virgin Mary)

I’ve seen some commentators consider this Fairbanks’ best film.  It is the one that has a serious message, that of redemption.  I think that rather like Chaplin’s sentimental flights of fancy in some of his films, with angels and the like, this film is bogged down by that sentimentality.  Give me the action figure, who is much more in evidence in Robin Hood, Don Q, the Son of Zorro, and the Three Musketeers.  In those films, the hero is able to be moral and adventurous.  Here, Fairbanks plays an outlaw.  Admittedly, he is an outlaw in a society beset by a tyrant, the evil Ruiz.  It is clear how evil Ruiz is, as he shuts down the miraculous shrine on the outskirts of the land, where people receive miraculous cures from the waters.  Still, this is a hard drinking, hard smoking Fairbanks.  He’s just as vigorous as in the other films, but only becomes a moral figure when he is converted after being inflicted by something akin to leprosy.  He is cured, and saved.  That saving makes the film too preachy, and undercuts the unmitigated joy Fairbanks clearly takes in action.

This film is notable in that Mary Pickford makes a couple of cameo appearances as the Virgin Mary in visions by the shrine.

I added a few more pieces of art.  It’s still not complete and the photos of the paintings aren’t that great, but it is something.

I’m going to start looking for a group of artists and art models who would want to start a weekly figure drawing get-together.  If anyone is interested, email me: jessiedesmond@rocketmail.com

Don Q, the son of Zorro (1925), dir. Donald Crisp, w/ Douglas Fairbanks (Don Cesar de Vega & Zorro), Mary Astor (Dolores de Muro), Donald Crisp (Don Sebastian), Warner Oland (Archduke Paul of Austria), Jean Hersholt (Don Fabrique Borusta)

The success of The Mark of Zorro in 1920 was unexpected. Sure they expected the film to do well, but it did so well that Fairbanks’ career made a dramatic change — he began to make more and more costume pictures.  And so it was decided to do this sequel.  In it, Fairbanks plays both father and son.  The action takes place in Spain, where Don Cesar has gone for his education.  While there, Don Sebastian, a military officer and Archduke Paul of Austria quarrel and the Archduke is killed.  Don Sebastian then frames Don Cesar who becomes a masked outlaw (just like dad had been) called Don Q.  Don Q’s weapon of choice is a bullwhip, and it is clear that Douglas Fairbanks had become a master at the whip — there are lots of demonstrations of his prowess (no cutting — all done in continuous shots so you know that Fairbanks is the one wielding the whip).  The action moves at a much quicker pace, and is more humorous overall than its predecessor.  Donald Crisp does a good job at directing Fairbanks, and is equally at home playing the villain — interesting considering that for much of his career in the sound era, he played kindly fathers and grandfathers.

From Eve Fairbanks’ latest dispatch from Johannesburg:

I love Johannesburg, but I had been wondering how the hell hundreds of thousands of foreign soccer fans will navigate this violent, chaotic city. Jo’burg is infamous for car-jackings and home invasions, a security squad nicknamed the “Red Ants” that evicts squatters with crowbars, and urban blight so extensive that most big businesses have fled downtown for the suburbs. The latest trend is the hijacking of entire buildings.

At least it’s not Detroit.

Robin Hood (1922), dir. Allen Dwan, w/ Douglas Fairbanks (Huntingdon/Robin Hood), Wallace Beery (Richard I), Sam de Grasse (Prince John),  Enid Bennett (Lady Marian), Paul Dickey (Guy of Gisbourne), Alan Hale (Little John).

This is the third of the costume dramas produced by United Artists featuring Douglas Fairbanks — he had been in The Mark of Zorro and The Three Musketeers earlier.  It has a lot in common with Musketeers, and something in common with Zorro.  It has the big sets just like Musketeers, and that’s a good thing — lots of places for Fairbanks to demonstrate his athleticism.  He is also part of a greater band, rather than a totally solo figure  — Fairbanks looks best as the star of a team.  He also has a double identity (sort of) like in Zorro.  Of course, here, both as Huntingdon and as Robin Hood, he is an athletic figure, the king’s right hand man.  When he returns to England to set things aright, it looks as if he is chickening out of the Crusades, and the king loses faith in him for a moment.  But he never plays the part of a coward or a fop, as he did as Don Diego.  The set design of the castle was quite outstanding, even though much of the great hall was done with a painted glass panel.  It looks impressive, and that’s what matters.  Lots of sword fights and leaping around, well done as always.

One thing that I don’t understand — why the story veers from the Howard Pyle version of the legend, which we get in the 1939 version — why is Robin Hood the second in command to Richard, rather than a Saxon knight, who comes afoul of royalty because of his Saxon blood?  And there is nothing to explain why Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, is now Robin Hood — in the legend, he is Robin of Locksley, and so Robin Hood when he takes to robbing the rich and distributing to the poor.

Wallace Beery was a strange choice for Richard — a big lug of a guy, he doesn’t seem very royal — a tugboat captain, yes, king, no!  That choice does make for a great contrast with Sam de Grasse as John, who is small and rather frail looking, and clearly someone not given to athletic endeavor.

The Three Musketeers (1921), dir. Fred Niblo, w/ Douglas Fairbanks (D’Artagnan), Leon Barry (Athos), George Siegman (Porthos), Eugene Palette (Aramis), Nigel de Brulier (Richelieu), Marguerite de la Motte (Constance), Adolphe Menjou (Louis XIII).

Following hard upon the success of The Mark of Zorro (1920), Fairbanks produced this costume piece based on Alexandre Dumas’ novel of the same name.  With this film, I think Fairbanks really hit his stride.  It’s not that he didn’t demonstrate his athleticism in Zorro, but it gave him less of a field in which to demonstrate his athleticism.  Also, there is something in the characters Fairbanks plays that call for him to be a part of a larger group.  In Zorro, he is on his own — he gathers the caballeros together at the end of that film to confront the corrupt administration of California, but that happens only at the end.  Here, he is a member of the ultimate group (“one for all, and all for one”), and that adds something to the tone of the film.  In addition, there are plenty of stairwells and rooftops from which Fairbanks can leap.  And this film, unlike Zorro, where Fairbanks plays a dual identity, here we have Fairbanks as D’Artagnan able to simply be his athletic self.  Throughout the film, he is bursting with energy, including a comic scene where a poor tailor tries to fit him for a new set of clothes.  Only in one moment, after a long fight, does he appear fatigued — and kudos to Fairbanks for that scene — filmmaking doesn’t move from one shot to another, but scenes and shots taken out of sequence.  And so Fairbanks, though he appears quite tired, was not tired when he shot that sequence, but gives a great sense of fatigue.  The supporting cast is excellent, and de Brulier, as Richelieu, maintains a stillness that sets of Fairbanks’ active persona quite well.  Adolphe Menjou in an early performance as the king, and Eugene Palette, the deep-voiced actor of the 30s (he plays Friar Tuck in 1939’s The Adventures of Robin Hood), is almost unrecognizable as Aramis.

The film takes some liberties with the book — we have a happy ending for D’Artagnan, rather than a bittersweet one — in the book he loses Constance, and no hint of Aramis’ ultimate renunciation of the life of a musketeer for the religious life.

Tonight, as I sit sipping tea and grading student papers, I hear the strains of the Nutcracker in my mind.  Over at Hering Auditorium, the cast is running through its second full dress rehearsal for the young dancers of Cast B.  At 8pm, I hummed the sprightly music of the opening scene, which in our performance features young elves tidying up the drawing room of Clara’s house and spreading magic for the evening.  Later I heard the chorus of the Snow scene, my favorite, with the white romantic tutus—the long calf-length tulle gowns—and the crisp short tutu of the Snow Fairy as she is lifted through the falling snow by her cavalier.

This year, dancers who’ve gone off to start dance careers—including my son, Ira, who started as a seven-year-old boy cherub with a quiver of arrows—are returning to dance together again as professionals.  The younger girls of the corps de ballet—the snowflakes in those gauzy gowns and the flowers swaying in the breeze—are precise and beautiful.  The returning dancers give them something to aspire to.

It’s the deepening of the dark time of year.  We still remember summer, but in a couple of weeks we’ll be at the darkest day, winter solstice.  The Nutcracker with its sparkly music and comic second-act bits counters that darkness, somewhat, though if you listen closely, you can hear Tchaikovsky’s acknowledgement of darkness in the bassoons and deeper bass notes throughout.  The part where I tear up is always the Sugar Plum pas de deux, so full of strength, inspiration, yet deep longing and nostalgia.  In their perfection, the Sugar Plum and her Cavalier represent the best young Clara can aspire to as an emerging adult, yet we sense in the music the sorrow, regret, toil, and pain it takes to reach that point.  The Sugar Plum offers all that richness to a young girl in love with a wooden soldier doll, then offers her the Kingdom of Sweets, a real prince, and a chance to find out for herself.

To me this is the metaphor of Nutcracker: the younger dancers reaching and reaching for the “plum” roles and the older dancers returning, some of them year after year, to mentor them to reach that point, just as Clara is mentored in the various possibilities of her womanhood-to-be by all the dances of the second act.

And behind it all is our Drosselmeyer, Norman Shelburne, who patiently teaches the young dancers the roles in a year-after-year progression till they, too, go off to their own adult Kingdom, with memories of all this sweetness and tunes of the Sugar Plum in their heads forever.

So, if you’re in Fairbanks, don’t miss it this weekend—Friday and Saturday at 8pm; Saturday and Sunday at 2pm.  See you there.

Who doesn’t have seeing the northern lights on their “kick the bucket” list?

If you’re wondering where on earth is the best place to see the aurora borealis, check out this list of TP bloggers who have successfully experienced the natural light show in the sky.

1. Reykjavik, Iceland

Dc314 went on a Northern Lights bus tour in Reykjavik

“As we are heading back, and midnight approaches, the right side of the bus could see the northern lights. The bus pulls over in the middle of nowhere and everyone gets out in the street. We saw the dancing white light in the air, and it was actually pretty cool. We got to see it for about 30 mins. Then we drove a little more and hopped out of the bus again. I was able to take a few pics, but unfortunately I am not able to hold a camera still for 10 seconds without a tripod, so they are a tad blurry (you can get the idea). Interestingly enough, the lights are green in the pictures, instead of white. At about 1 a.m. we head back to the city. We finally went to bed and called it a night, very tired but very happy to have witnessed this natural phenomenon.” – Dc314

2. Svolvaer, Norway

Everardt snapped this picture while searching for Moelje in Norway

“When I came outside I happened to look up in the sky and there were 2 pale green bands of light in the sky. All of a sudden there was some electrical activity and I just managed to get my camera out in time to photograph the northern lights.” – Everardt

3. Iqaluit, Canada

Yours truly in the northern tundra

“On our way home, I look up in the sky and it is FILLED with green and grey colours. The northern lights! On my last night in Iqaluit, the sky is clear enough to see it! It’s not more colourful than in Yellowknife, but it’s a LOT more monstrous. It just fills up the entire sky with dancing light. It lasts for about 30 or 45 minutes and just abruptly as it began it stops.” – starlagurl

4. Tromso, Norway

Jimborussell in Norway

One of the workers rushed into our tent and excitedly pronounced that the Northern Lights could be seen outside. I was outside in a flash and stood there gaping at the sky for about an hour. The lights were quite faint, but definately visable. They covered a third of the sky at their most intense, and fluctuated and moved slowly in large waves which seemed to point downward from the heavens in a way I find very difficult to explain. They didn’t last all that long, but were amazing. – Jimborussell

5. Fairbanks, USA

Margiewilson spent a week enjoying the wilderness in Fairbanks

“The afternoon was great, but the evening was better than we could have ever have imagined. We were told that the night would be a good night for the Northern Lights, so we could hardly wait to see them. Around 9 p.m., the first line of Lights were showing but they came and went. We went outside and another band of light was showing around 10 p.m. A group of us were outside in awe of the lights and we were all trying to get pictures of the lights. The lights started dancing around in the sky and we were mesmerized by them. We watched for a while, then went to the room and watched from the balcony. The lights were very active that night, there were some other people watching from their balcony and when the lights went dancing again one man from Russia started screaming and jumping around on the grass saying it was a miracle. And I think it was. What a wonderful way to end the day. We will never forget the sight and we are so thankful that we were able to experience the colors in the lights.” – Margiewilson

6. Tok, USA

Neeterb and her dog in Alaska

“As we prepared for bed, Warren came in and said he thought we were going to see northern lights. Back outside to stand with our necks craned to see the display that seemed just for us. To the naked eye, the lights appeared faint and white. I wasn’t able to get pictures with my camera, but Warren did. The lights, to the camera, were actually green. Absolutely astounding and another checkmark off my list of things to see in Alaska.” – Neeterb

7. Yellowknife, Canada

Lolly's fiancee proposed under the Northern Lights in Yellowknife

“We found a dock on Great Slave Lake and watched the northern lights until they disappeared and the sky started to lighten again around 1am. It was then that Senica proposed to me on bended knee – how romantic!! What a beautiful setting on such an auspicious day – the highlight of the trip, literally!!” -

8. Cantwell, USA

Docn saw a glimpse of the Northern Lights amidst a herd of caribou

“After cooking myself dinner and resting for a bit I headed back to the dog sled jump off point to check out the norther lights…which were amazing. Even cooler though was the fact that as I was standing there checking out the lights I started to hear what I thought were footsteps…quadraped footsteps…then out of the corner of my eye I saw what was making the noise…Caribou…they were all around me…apparently they were crossing the road where I was parked…I couldn’t get any pictures because it was pitch black…but they were everywhere!!!” – Docn

9. Edmonton, Canada

Nancydeb visited the West Edmonton Mall and saw the Northern Lights in the same day!

“We did get to see the green haze of northern lights one night when we were in Edmonton. I was surprised they were visible even in town with all the street lights but there they were, so that was pretty cool.” – Nancydeb

10. Isle of Skye, Scotland

Hannahfoster with the standing stones in Callandish, Scotland

“The second night we were high up on the hills on the Ilse of Skye and that view was pretty awesome too. The night we stayed there we could see the Northern Lights. They weren’t that spectacular because we werent quite far north enough but still it was a pretty glow in the sky.” – Hannahfoster

The UA Board of Regents are meeting on the UAA campus this week to discuss budgetary matters with students. In addition, a group of students from Fairbanks plan to attend in support of amending the non-discrimination clause to include sexual orientation. And, so, of course, Jim Minnery of the Alaska Family Council has once again gone into hate-heat like it’s spring in Texas. The irony here is that the board of regents are not comparable to elected officials who tend to squirm when facing reelection in the wake of the Tea Party insurgency. The Board consists of appointments that tend to last as long as the board members wish them to, are not up for a vote, and only result in termination or resignation if the board decides so.

Thus, if hellfire, damnation, and demonic possession through fashion sense are the topics left in the board members’ inboxes, one might suspect that rather than the “quaking in the boots” effect intended, Minnery’s minions might just end up supremely pissing them off. We should all voice our support, but probably not by blunt force stupid to the head, as is usually the case with the Alaska Family Council. We should all let our support be known. Just… Respectuflly, calmly, and in the pursuit of equality.

Here’s the latest from Minnery’s super fun hate camp:

“We have learned that activists in the homosexual movement are attempting to convince the University of Alaska Board of Regents to change the university non-discrimination policy so as to give special recognition to homosexuals. If successful, individuals engaging in homosexual behavior will be afforded the same recognition as members of racial and ethnic minorities.”

Oh, the horror. And, really? We’re riding the “special” train again?

“This is just another attempt by homosexual extremists to demand public affirmation for their lifestyle. It is also the same tactic used this past summer in the Municipality of Anchorage to force AO-64 on the citizens of Anchorage. We prevented our freedoms from being infringed then by standing together. Let’s do it again.

The University of Alaska is a state institution that is supposed to serve all Alaskans”

Equally?

“Therefore, it should be subject to the same laws that apply to ALL state agencies with respect to discrimination. The university’s anti-discrimination policy should mirror the policy that the Legislature sets for ALL state entities. Nothing more, nothing less. If they wanted, the Alaska Legislature could prohibit discrimination based on ’sexual orientation.’ The legislature has wisely chosen not to do so, for good reason — because homosexuality has to do with behavioral choices, rather than a characteristic such as race that is in-born.”

Apparently sociology isn’t Minnery’s thing. Looking past the I’ve-been-locked-in-a-bomb-shelter-for-thirty-years use of the term “in-born”, the actual concept of “Race” is largely a social construct. You might be thinking of “ethnicity,” or you may just be dreaming about jogging again. And behavioral choice? Do you wake up in the morning and thinking about sleeping with men twenty times before making the choice not to? Sexual orientation and identity isn’t religion; it isn’t a choice.

“Many colleges and universities across the country have adopted policies on ’sexual orientation.’ These policies are advocated in the name of creating an open, tolerant, and ‘welcoming’ environment on campus. In reality, these policies are often used to muzzle free speech and discriminate against Christian student groups who may want to speak against homosexuality. Any speech or advocacy AGAINST homosexual behavior is deemed to be ‘hate speech’ and therefore it is branded as ‘discrimination’ against persons based on sexual orientation. It is a back-door attempt to crush freedom of speech.”

No. Unless you’re referring to cases where there is physical violence, threat of physical violence, or attempt to incite violence. That actually is hate speech and should be muzzled. Have you been to UAA Jim? The right-to-life club hands out fliers with a revolver aimed at a fetus. We’re not in any danger zone that threatens the suppression of free speech, nor is anyone impeding the free exercise of religion… Unless it’s hate speech. You’re the one asking people who are otherwise in no way affiliated with UAA to flood board member inboxes and voicemail, and if that doesn’t work, barge into a board meeting and scream bloody murder. Again.

“NOW is the time you can make a difference by contacting each member of the Board of Regents and ask them to not consider such a significant and harmful change to university policy. Remember, the University of Alaska is the property of the People of Alaska. The Regents are ultimately accountable to the very same… People of Alaska… YOU!

Make your voice heard. Make a difference. It only takes eleven phone calls and/or eleven e-mails. If you don’t have time for that…contact as many as you can. Please click HERE for contact information for the UA Board of Regents.

The Board of Regents will be meeting in Anchorage, November 30th through December 1st, at the campus of UAA, so there is no time to waste. If this issue is not considered then it will be considered at the next meeting in February but the Board of Regents needs to hear from you NOW.

Thanks again for your support. Your involvement in our culture makes this organization possible.”

And what culture is that, exactly?

The bottom of the mailer contains this link which takes you to a recruitment page for a faux-college video called “Indoctrinate U; Our Education, They’re Politics,” and finally ends in uniformity with this humble plea:

“Standing firm for your religious liberties is an effort we take seriously and is an undertaking that simply put – requires resources. If you are in a position to do so… please consider financially partnering with our ministry by making a secure on-line contribution today.

Standing for families… in His name !

Jim Minnery – President

Alaska Family Council”

*Sigh*

Finals week just got a whole lot dumber.

Outgoing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (2nd L), her husband Todd (C) look on as incoming Governor Sean Parnell (2nd R) is sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Daniel Winfree (L) during the annual Governor's Picnic July 26, 2009 at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks, Alaska. Parnell' wife Sandy held the bible for the ceremony. Craig E. Campbell was sworn in as the new Lieutenant Governor.

Last July in Fairbanks, with Todd smiling at her side and Piper sitting in her lap, Sarah Palin watched Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell take the oath to fill out her term in office as Governor of Alaska. Then she vanished. For the past four months the Forty-Ninth State has seen neither hide nor hair of the woman. No speeches at chambers of commerce luncheons. No sightings on the street. No Sarah cheering on the sideline at Wasilla Warriors girls basketball games. No Sarah sitting in the pew on Sunday worshiping at the ChangePoint and Anchorage Baptist Temple evangelical mega churches. She’s been gone. Disappeared.

It now turns out that while Alaskans were hunkering down for winter Sarah was in San Diego working for a woman named Lynn Vincent, the ghostwriter HarperCollins hired to cobble together Going Rogue: An American Life, Sarah’s first person account of her it-only-would-happen-in-America rise from small town mayor to small state governor to Republican Vice Presidential candidate to popular culture icon.

Since Tuesday when Going Rogue was released nationwide copies of the book have been flying off the shelves at Barnes & Noble in Boise and Grand Rapids and not flying off the shelves in San Francisco and Seattle.

Since I already have enough to read, I had intended to give Going Rogue a pass until I had time this weekend to motor over to the Anchorage Barnes & Noble and give Ms. Vincent’s word-smithing a skim. But on Monday I learned that I’m in the book. Not surprisingly, that piqued my interest. And then yesterday a friend lent me a copy.

I’ve now read it. Here’s the review.

I usually begin reading a book that purports to be nonfiction by reading the index. But Going Rogue doesn’t have one. So I started with the acknowledgments section at the back of the book. In the first paragraph Sarah explains to her readers: “I’m very glad this writing exercise is over. I love to write, but not about myself. I’m thankful now to have kept journals about Alaska and my friends and family ever since I was a little girl. That practice allowed an orderly compilation over the past weeks and let me summarily wrap up at least some of my life so far.”

Sarah then thanks thirty-seven people (all but four only by his or her first name so that none of the rest of us have a clue who they are) before she thanks Lynn Vincent “for her indispensable help in getting the words on paper.”

If all that is read quickly, it leaves the veneer impression that Sarah wrote her book. But if read carefully that’s not what it says. “Help in getting the words on paper?” Too coy by half.

Decide for yourself when you do your own skim at your own local Barnes & Noble. But start to finish Going Rogue reads to me like Sarah sitting on the sofa in Lynn Vincent’s condo in San Diego, school girl diaries in her lap, talking hour after hour in her you-betcha patois into a computerized tape recorder like the ones court reporters use to record depositions. Then each afternoon when Sarah went off on her jog, Ms. Vincent would begin her real workday sitting at her computer editing and cut and pasting that day’s transcript of Sarah’s ramblings into a narrative.

I can’t prove that. But someone should ask Sarah if that’s how she “wrote” Going Rogue. Lynn Vincent would be a more reliable source. But, no surprise, her contract with HarperCollins contains a non-disclosure provision. Adam Bellow, Sarah’s editor at HarperCollins, also would know. But he for sure is not telling. At least until he has too much red wine during dinner at Elaine’s some night and lets the secret slip.

The book itself is a prosaic hagiography divided into three parts. Part one is Sarah’s autobiography from her birth in Sandpoint, Idaho, to her selection by John McCain as his running mate. Part two is Sarah’s story of her life on the road during the 2008 presidential campaign. Part three is a sanguinolent settling of accounts for the torment to which she was subjected in Alaska after the election – a torment so awful that it brought the operation of the entire executive branch of the government of the State of Alaska to a gridlocked halt and left Sarah no choice but to abandon her governorship in order to earn $5 million in four months talking into Lynn Vincent’s tape recorder.

If that three-part narrative has a unifying theme, the theme is that everything – and I mean everything – that has ever gone wrong for Sarah Palin was someone else’s fault.

Sarah’s lackluster performance during her interview with Frank Murkowski when she somehow made the short-list of candidates to succeed Frank in the U.S. Senate? That was Frank and his Attorney General, my friend Gregg Renkes’s, fault. The Troopergate scandal? Walt Monegan and the Democratic members of the Alaska Senate pulled that mean-spirited prank on a blameless Sarah. The nationally televised interview with Katie Couric that branded Sarah Palin as an ignorant and uneducated laughingstock? Katie sandbagged her. The fabulously disastrous Thanksgiving television interview when Governor Palin pardoned a turkey while in the background unpardoned turkeys were having their heads shoved down a funnel and their throats slit? Sandbagged again. That time by a local TV news cameraman.

Don’t take my word for it. Thumb through Going Rogue on your own. Page after page after page. It’s always someone else’s fault.

When discussing George Herbert Walker and Barbara Bush, Richard Nixon is reported to have said that George was a nice guy. “But his wife. That woman knows how to hate.” Since Dick meant that as a compliment, he would be impressed with Sarah’s penchant for settling scores. Because scattered throughout its content Going Rogue contains an enemies list as long as the list the nation’s Thirty-Seventh President and his henchmen compiled during the run-up to Watergate.

Sarah trashes Nick Carney (the Wasilla city councilman who recruited Sarah into politics), John Stein (Sarah’s predecessor as mayor of Wasilla), Anne Kilkenny (a Wasilla resident whose viral email educated the nation to Sarah’s lackluster record as mayor), an unnamed City of Wasilla librarian, Frank Murkowski (Sarah’s predecessor as Governor of Alaska), Gregg Renkes (Frank’s Attorney General), Lyda Green (the former President of the Alaska Senate), Hollis French (the chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Alaska Senate), Steve Schmidt (John McCain’s campaign manager), an unnamed KTUU television cameraman [Scott Jensen], Walt Monegan (Sarah’s Commissioner of Public Safety), Randy Ruedrich (the chairman of the Alaska Republican Party with whom Sarah worked at the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission), Bill Allen (the corpulent head of the oil field services company VECO, a odious scum bag whose reputation as the bag man for Big Oil in the state capitol had been a matter of common knowledge in Alaska for a generation when Sarah went with her hand out to Bill for the campaign contributions she used to launch her statewide political career), Mike Wooten (Sarah’s ex-brother-in-law), unnamed executives of the Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum, and Conoco-Phillips oil companies, Pete Rouse (a former Alaskan who was Senator Barack Obama’s chief of staff), Rahm Emanuel (President Barack Obama’s chief of staff), Kim Elton (a former member of the Alaska Senate who is Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar’s Special Assistant for Alaska), unnamed members of the McCain campaign staff who prepped Sarah for her television debate with Joe Biden, John Bitney (Governor Palin’s liaison to the Alaska Legislature), Levi Johnston (the hockey-playing, Playgirl modeling impregnator of Bristol Palin).

That’s not the complete list. There’s no index and I’m tired of typing.

Of all the individuals on the Going Rogue enemies list, the two firsts among equals are Andrew Halcro and Andree McLeod.

Halcro is a former Republican member of the Alaska House of Representatives who ran as an independent candidate against Sarah Palin in the 2006 Alaska gubernatorial election. After the election he started a website that he used to become one of Governor Palin’s most articulate and factually well-informed critics.

It was Andrew Halcro who broke the story that Governor Palin had fired Walt Monegan, her Commissioner of Public Safety, because Walt had refused to fire Mike Wooten, Sarah’s ex-brother-in-law, from his union job as an Alaska State Trooper. That news led to the Troopergate investigation of Sarah (and Todd) Palin’s misuse of the Office of the Governor. In the Troopergate report that Sarah touts as clearing her of wrong-doing, the investigator, a former prosecutor with whom (unlike the Legislature’s investigator) Sarah cooperated, implies that during his investigation either Walt Monegan committed criminal perjury or Sarah Palin committed criminal perjury. But the Legislature had no stomach during the remainder of Sarah’s tenure as Governor to determine whether she was the felon.

In Going Rogue Sarah describes Andrew Halcro as “a wealthy, effete young chap who had taken over his father’s local Avis Rent A Car, and he starred in his own car commercial. He would go on to host a short-lived local radio show while blogging throughout the day, all of which were major steps up from a previous job as our limo driver at Todd’s cousin’s wedding.”

Andree McLeod is where I come in.

I am an attorney by trade and an historian of modest reputation by avocation. In 1987 I briefly convinced an Alaska Superior Court that it was a violation of the U.S. and Alaska Constitutions for the State of Alaska to have a campaign finance system that allows individuals who are not eligible to vote for a candidate to influence the candidate’s election by making campaign contributions. In 1998 I came within one vote of convincing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to uphold the constitutionality of an amendment to the Oregon Constitution that would have mandated a similar result. Over the years since, I have frequently represented individuals for a reduced fee or no fee in cases in which I think the public policy benefits merit my effort.

For that reason, I was not surprised in September 2008 when a friend called to ask if I would have a cup of coffee with a woman named Andree McLeod. By that date, I had been active in Alaska’s (small state) political life for thirty years. But my answer to that query was, “Who’s Andree McLeod?” But I went for coffee and discovered that Andree McLeod is a quite amazing woman.

Short, smart, politically committed, and tenaciously energetic, Andree McLeod is a Republican political activist of Armenian heritage who had once been a personal friend of Sarah Palin’s, who Sarah had endorsed when Andree ran in the Republican primary for a seat in the Alaska House of Representatives.

When I went to her home in east Anchorage to have my cup of coffee I found Andree sitting at her dining room table surrounded by two-foot-high stacks of paper print-outs of several thousand emails that the Office of the Governor had given to her in July in response to a request she had filed in June pursuant to the Alaska Public Records Act. The request had asked for emails that had been sent to or received by employees of the Office of the Governor who Andree suspected had been engaging in partisan – i.e., Alaska Republican Party – political activities during their public employee workdays. Andree submitted her public records request three months before anyone other than those of us in Alaska had ever heard of Sarah Palin.

The reason I had been invited to meet with Andree was that one of the things she had discovered by reading the emails was that when Governor Palin assumed office she had set up a private back-channel email system so that she and her senior staff could communicate with each other about state business without the content of their communications being “captured” by State of Alaska computer servers, and hence being available for public inspection pursuant to the Alaska Public Records Act. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other national media would later report that story.

After researching the Alaska Public Records Act I concluded that, for reasons not worth detailing here, the private back-channel email system that Sarah had created was a violation of the Alaska Public Records Act. As a consequence, representing Andree McLeod, on October 1, 2008 I filed a lawsuit against Governor Palin in the Alaska Superior Court, the purpose of which is to obtain an order prohibiting state officials from using private email accounts to conduct state business.

The month after the McCain-Palin ticket lost the presidential election, again representing Andree McLeod, on December 8, 2008 I filed a second lawsuit against Governor Palin when a further review of the emails that Andree had been given revealed that the Office of the Governor had given to Todd Palin, a private citizen who was an employee of British Petroleum, copies of emails that it was withholding from public inspection on the ground of deliberative process privilege.

That litigation is ongoing. The legal questions of first impression that they present for decision are important enough that my expectation is that both lawsuits will end up in the Alaska Supreme Court.

What does any of that have to do with me and Going Rogue?

Prior to me agreeing to represent her in the two lawsuits above-described, Andree McLeod had begun filing what became a series of complaints against Sarah Palin with the State Personnel Board that alleged ethical transgressions unrelated to the lawsuits. Other Alaskans did the same thing. According to Going Rogue, those ethics complaints have driven Sarah Palin flat-out full-crank nuts.

After trashing Andree McLeod at page 354 of Going Rogue Lynn Vincent aka Sarah Palin moves on to me. Here’s what Lynn and Sarah say:

We always suspected that someone was funding and directing
Andree’s efforts. During the spring of 2009, she was actually still
begging my administration for a job and led others to believe she
hadn’t worked for a couple of years. Yet somehow she had enough
time or money to turn harassment of the governor’s office into a
full-time vocation. Over time, the wording of her ethics complaints
became more and more sophisticated, and we later found out why:
prominent liberal attorney Don Mitchell was advising her. As early as September 2008, weeks before the presidential election, Mitchell had already detailed the ethics attack strategy in an article in the Huffington Post. Later he sat with Andree as her counsel at one of her hearings.

I wish my late mother was still alive. Because I know how proud she would be that I made the Going Rogue enemies list and have been mentioned by name in a book whose first printing is 1.5 million copies. (Because he is not named, the mother of the KTUU cameraman who posed Sarah in front of the turkeys can take no such pride.)

But my number is listed in the Anchorage telephone book. If that failed, Lynn and Sarah could have googled “Donald Craig Mitchell.” And if that had failed, since Meg Stapleton, the increasingly strange combination of Sancho Panza and Odd Job who works for Sarah, and I have mutual friends, Meg could have found me quite easily.

Had Lynn Vincent, Sarah, or Meg called me before Lynn had finished writing Going Rogue, I would have told her that in a single paragraph Lynn/Sarah got almost every one of their facts about me, other than that I am an attorney, wrong.

While I probably once was, I haven’t been a “prominent” attorney in Alaska in years. While I am a registered Democrat, my personal politics are hardly “liberal.” To the extent anyone cares, I am a social libertarian who is an Eisenhower era deficit hawk who agrees with Teddy and Frank Roosevelt that the principal responsibility of government is to save capitalism from itself. And while during the presidential campaign several of my ‘Governor Girl Reports‘ were posted by individuals other than me on the Huffington Post and Atlantic Monthly web sites, none of those musings “detailed an ethics attack strategy.”

But most importantly, not only have I never advised Andree regarding her ethics complaints, to the best of my recollection I have never read an Andree McLeod ethics complaint. Had Lynn, Sarah, or Meg called me, I also would have told them that neither Andree McLeod nor I have been paid a nickel by anyone for anything (although if I win either of my lawsuits I intend to send the Office of the Governor a bill for my attorneys fee, which under Alaska law I am permitted to do).

It is true, however, that, as Going Rogue reports, because she asked me to, I did accompany Andree to her interview with Tim Petumenos, the former prosecutor the State Personnel Board hired to investigate both the complaint Sarah filed against herself regarding the Troopergate affair and a complaint Andree filed against Sarah and Frank Bailey, Sarah’s Director of Boards and Commissions, for violating state civil service rules in order to give one of Sarah’s campaign supporters a job for which he was not qualified. Again to the best of my recollection, I have never read either complaint. And if he is asked, I think Tim will say that during his interview with Andree I pretty much just sat there.

It also is worth mentioning that the State Personnel Board found the ethics complaint that Andree McLeod filed against Frank Bailey meritorious.

Why should anyone care about any of that? The reason they should care is that if Lynn Vincent aka Sarah Palin got as many of the facts, asserted and implied, about me in Going Rogue as wrong as she did, what does that say about the validity of the many other, much more important, “facts” in Sarah’s book?

It’s fully fine by me that billions of federal tax dollars are being spent annually to invent an AIDS vaccine. But it is just as important to someday invent a Pinocchio serum.

If the world had one, before a faux celebrity like Sarah Palin writes a book, doctors from the CDC could roll up the celebrity’s sleeve and inject him or her with a jolt of the serum. And a serum also would have other important uses.

For example, on page 214 of Going Rogue Lynn Vincent reports that when the McCain campaign vetted Sarah, she confessed to Steve Schmidt, the manager of the campaign, that “the one skeleton I’d kept hidden in my closet” (my emphasis) was that she had gotten a D in a college course.

Had Sarah been shot up with Pinocchio serum prior to the vetting, the immediate growth of the length of her nose would have tipped off Schmidt that the more truthful answer to the one skeleton in the closet question would have been, as The National Enquirer subsequently reported with no push back from Team Sarah, “cuckolding Todd when he was working on the North Slope by hooking up with Brad Hanson, Todd’s business partner in the Polaris snow machine sales business Brad and Todd owned in Wasilla.”

Once perfected, Pinocchio serum also would be useful to find out whether Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell really supports health care reform and, before the United States sends more troops there, whether Hamid Karsai really is committed to rooting out corruption in Afghanistan. But before a Pinocchio serum can be widely used, the FDA would need to conduct a clinical trial. Shooting up Sarah while she’s still on her book tour would be a good first test of the potion’s efficacy.

Donald Craig Mitchell
The Huffington Post

The day after Thanksgiving.  The weather has warmed so that going outside is comfortable again, though the paths and roads are slick.  All day yesterday, we could hear the snow sliding off the roof.   We sat and ate turkey and pie and talked about the sorrows that have come into our community lately—too soon in winter for so much inexplicable pain.

It’s hard to write about, so here’s a poem.

The way “November”

settles in the mouth:

the dark “n” and “v”, the chilly

“b” and “r”, the hum of “m”

at the heart.  The name of the month

rumbles through our days,

dragging the shadowed season

with it.  Snow falls and packs

beneath our feet.   The moon hangs

half-hearted in the dark afternoon

sky; the night a tunnel we

plunge into with hope

that when daylight comes,

we all wake from darkness

to morning, rich with coffee,

the air tart with cut oranges,

with deep umber light

spreading to pink in the sky.

For everything that the music scene in Fairbanks, Alaska may lack, it is made up for, part and parcel, in encouragement and the most highly valued commodity ’round these parts, warmth. I’ve been making an effort not use this blog as a vehicle for promoting my own band and I don’t want to do that now, but being Thanksgiving as well as the eve of Paper Scissors‘ final Marlin performances I’d very much like to take a moment to express my gratitude. It all started in fourth grade when my now ex-step father, a percussionist in a local blues band, gifted me my first drum, a shiny silver snare drum, with which i joined the school band. It was a shot in the dark, to say the least, as I had little to no inclination towards learning to play music at the time. It’s impossible to say whether it was Hot Cross Buns or Three Blind Mice that made me realize there was something about the beat that spoke to me, but either way, the rest is history.

I remember Paper Scissors’ first Marlin gig very well, and in fact still have a recording of it. Listening to those songs, some of which we still play (with significantly more skill) serves to re-enforce my beliefs in the unwavering graciousness of music fans here. In other words we were pretty bad. We weren’t even called Paper Scissors at the time, we were known (for one night only) as the WMDs. My friend and lead guitar for Work, Caleb Kuntz in an interview with me pointed out that one of the coolest things about our scene is that bands are automatically given a number of chances to  get their  live sound dialed it. Over time those bands that can’t, fizzle out and those that can, percolate to the top, and with unwavering support of their fans, continue to perform. Paper Scissors was lucky enough to fall into the latter category and it is something that has changed my life for the better more dramatically than almost anything else ever has. There’s no way i could list the names of everyone responsible for this, but hopefully you know who you are, and from the deepest depths of my heart and soul…Thanks. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving and that music continues to satisfy your soul as it does mine, for the rest of your days, even if it’s Bon Jovi. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and come spend one last weekend of classic Marlin madness with Paper Scissors this Friday (11/27) and Saturday (11/28). Gobble Gobble.