My longtime colleague and friend, bronze sculptor and community organizer Peter Bevis, has been playing Shadowsover loudspeakers outside of Gallery 154 in the Fremont District of Seattle since May 14th. 24/7.
Inside the main front window of the gallery sit the bronze replicas of heads of Sea otters, killed in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Peter cast them, as he has many other animals killed by oil spills or other examples of man's stupidity, to raise awareness of human selfishness.
My music - Shadows - accompanies an epic poem by former Alaska poet, Ann Chandonnet.
A couple of weeks ago, the Seattle police compained to Peter about the sound. The gallery is attached to the Fremont Fine Arts Foundry, which Peter owns. It sits smack in the middle of a non-residential area, far from any houses or apartments. You can barely hear the music 200 feet away, and it is often completely covered by the sounds of machinery operating across the street, or heavy trucks driving down 34th. I'm staying with my sister, her husband and my mom out on Mercer Island, just east of Seattle, on Lake Washington. Yesterday, today, Saturday asnd Sunday, the Navy's Blue Angels aerobatic team is flying over the Seafair hydroplane race course just north of Seward Park on Lake Washington. The reviewing stand is about two miles from where I'm staying.
The planes make a lot of noise. Probably about 100 times as much noise as the music Peter is playing in Fremont. It is heard at an almost painful level by about 75,000 people in Seattle, Renton, Tukwila and Mercer Island. I doubt the Seattle police will be questioning the Blue Angels about their noise levels. They're way too busy shutting down the I-90 floating bridge and other roadways and arterials for hours each day this late week and weekend, inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of people to accomodate war worship.
Alaska's best investigative reporter, Richard Mauer, reports in the Anchorage Daily News this morning:
Rep. Don Young said Wednesday that federal authorities have decided against seeking his indictment and have dropped their long-running corruption investigation of him.
Young, a 77-year-old Republican who has represented Alaska in Congress since 1973, announced the end of the government's investigation in a terse, one-sentence statement from his Washington office that offered no details. He had been under scrutiny by the FBI and the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section since at least 2006.
Meredith Kenny, Young's press secretary, said Young's attorneys got the word from the Justice Department in a telephone call Wednesday. Young was in Alaska at the time, she said.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. The agency rarely makes a public announcement when it drops a case, though it will sometimes alert crime victims and potential defendants of a no-prosecution decision.
Kenny said Young wouldn't comment until he's cleared to talk by his attorneys.
"I'm waiting for guidance from the legal team about what he can do and what he can say," Kenny said. "They were notified this morning and that is all we can say. This all happened in the last couple hours."
Young's lead attorney, John Dowd, declined to comment.
"There is nothing to talk about beyond the statement issued by the Congressman's office," Dowd said in an e-mail message.
Mauer's article reiterates some of the material known to have been investigated by the FBI and Justice Department over the years, probably since sometime in 2005. Although Young's office has stated he spent well over a million dollars on legal fees by the time of the 2008 election, to my knowledge, there have been no recent updates on total expenses accrued by Young in defense during these long investigations.
Young's August 24th GOP primary opponent, Sheldon Fisher, said Wednesday:
A decision that there is a lack of evidence to prosecute Mr. Young is not the same as being cleared of federal corruption. I call upon Mr. Young to release Department of Justice correspondence allegedly clearing him of federal corruption charges. Alaskans deserve to know whether he was cleared or whether the Department of Justice merely decided not to prosecute in light of the embarrassment resulting from prosecutorial misconduct in other trials involving Veco Corp.
Young has refused to speak about these issues in the past due to the pending investigations, but now it appears he is free to speak on such matters. It is time for Mr. Young to respond to questions from Alaskans, the media, and fellow Republicans regarding how legislation from his Transportation Committee was unconstitutionally altered after had been passed by both the House and Senate to insert the Coconut Road earmark.
And Young's probable opponent in the November election, Alaska state Rep. Harry Crawford, "called on him 'to disclose to all Alaskans the full extent of the charges under which he was being investigated.'"
As some readers here know, I've been writing about Don for some time. Here are links to my October 2006 articles on Don's troubles up to that time, written for Down With Tyranny!
Richard Mauer's article mentions Young's 2005 House Omnibus Transportation bill earmark for questionable road works on Coconut Road in Florida, but doesn't mention the connections Young had with the sleaziest lobbyist in recent Washington DC history, Jack Abramoff:
CONTRIBUTIONS — YOUNG RECEIVED $20,000 FROM ABRAMOFF CLIENTS: Abramoff’s clients have contributed about $20,000 to Young’s Midnight Sun political action committee. [Anchorage Daily News, 2/19/05]
FAVORS — YOUNG SPONSORS BILL FAVORED BY ABRAMOFF CLIENTS: “In 1997, Young sponsored a bill to hold a vote in Puerto Rico on statehood for the U.S. territory. Abramoff was a lobbyist for a group called Future of Puerto Rico that wanted the same thing.” [Anchorage Daily News, 2/19/05; Roll Call, 1/25/06]
FAVORS — YOUNG SIGNED A LETTER PUSHED BY ABRAMOFF, COLLECTED CAMPAIGN CASH: “In 2002, Young and another congressman signed a letter requesting that the administration favor minority and disadvantaged bidders for the redevelopment of a historic Washington, D.C. post office. At the time Abramoff’s clients — The Mississippi Choctaw and California Aqua Caliente — “wanted the same rules applied to the project, and [Abramoff] was seeking congressional signatures on a letter to that effect.” Young’s Midnight Sun PAC received $7,000 from the tribes on Oct. 17, 2002, just five weeks after signing the letter. [Anchorage Daily News, 2/19/05; Roll Call, 1/25/06]
GIFTS — YOUNG FAILED TO REPORT USE OF ABRAMOFF SKYBOXES: “Young also used Abramoff’s skybox at the MCI Center in D.C. for two fundraisers, events he did not report to the Federal Election Commission until after the Abramoff scandal broke.” [Roll Call, 1/25/06]
MARIANA ISLANDS — YOUNG BLOCKED BILL, FAVOR TO ABRAMOFF CLIENTS: Following a trip to Mariana Islands in 2000, Young “blocked a bill sponsored by House Democrats that would have made the garment industry there comply with federal labor laws” — an action that was favored by the Abramoff-represented local government and garment industry. [Anchorage Daily News, 2/19/05]
MARSHALL ISLANDS — YOUNG LED CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION TO ISLANDS AT BEHEST OF ABRAMOFF: In 1999, Young led a congressional delegation to the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). Abramoff’s firm claims that it was responsible for “organizing a visit by a congressional delegation led by Representative Don Young (R-AK) to the RMI … and coordinating the delegation’s activities with the RMI military.” Abramoff represented the local government of the Marshalls at the time of the trip. [Anchorage Daily News, 2/19/05]
Like ex-Alaska Representative Vic Kohring, ex-KMBQ/KBYR General Manager John Klapperich somehow believed that if one affirms an ideal hard enough and long enough, it will come true, no matter what. I met both of these men in the mid-1990s, and they were often seen together over the years at the same events in and around Wasilla. Through mid-2007, at events where I saw both of them, Sarah Palin was often also there.
All three seemed to also believe that the power of the free market to come up with the best for everyone is not only a worthy mantra, but an unassailable truth.
Palin was never a successful business person, at least until she traded her sacred oath to the citizens of Alaska for a book deal in which she lied her goddam butt off in exchange for millions of dollars. Kohring was a somewhat successful sheet-rock contractor through about 1999. Klapperich projected an image of the savvy small-town entrepreneur. Until this Monday.
Kohring, as was obvious in the testimony, audio and video tapes of his 2007 Federal corruption trial, was so enamored with his zany version of free market economics, that he couldn't distinguish between right and wrong; between his perception of a Milton Friedman-esque duty to his constituents and to the letter and spirit of Federal law. Kohring's misperception has played out as minor tragedy. Palin's duplicity is playing out as major farce.
Emerging in the details of Klapperich's demise are items like his mortgaging of houses, properties and of his younger kids' college savings accounts; and of his inability or unwillingness to recently fulfill payroll tax obligations to his employees as required.But John wasn't about to skip out on these debts. He truly believed the solution was right around the next corner.
Like Kohring, Klapperich has been a relentless cheerleader for so-called "conservatism" in business conduct. As a prominent fixture at the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce during recent scandals there, Klapperich managed to keep his reputation intact in the broader Mat-Su Valley business community.
Far more than either Kohring or Palin, Klapperich's cheerleading for broader aspects of the Mat-Su Valley's sense of community has been genuine. I've been to soccer matches, basketball games, football games, track meets, parades, auctions, picnics and a plethora of community fundraisers, where John Klapperich was either the most vocal team supporter, was MC, or had another important, unpaid role.
While both Kohring and Palin despised our public schools (Kohring taught Palin to use his term for them, "government schools," for her first three local elections), Klapperich has been a strong supporter of the district in which his kids have been and are such outstanding students.
There will be no Track mysteriously disappearing to another state, Bristol pulling out of school with "mono," no 6th grade Willow looking at 2nd grade math flashcards, no TriG being hauled around the country, barefoot as the snow falls on him, with dirty diapers, in the Klapperich family. I've seen the Klapperichs, time after time, loving their kids, one way or another. It is something one all but never sees in the Palin family.
In the surprisingly pitiless comments at both the Anchorage Daily News and Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman articles on John's demise, a few commenters have derided John for the above traits, one labelling him a "community organizer, just like Obama."
John has often called me "my favorite liberal." I've heard him call others, like Katie Hurley, the same. He reinforced these statements, though, by respectfully citing examples of things in the community Katie or I had done. In that sense, John has shown a generosity and equanimity neither Kohring nor Palin have ever shown themselves capable of exhibiting.
John's attempt to turn KMBQ "green" with wind and solar power was Klapperich at his Quixotic best. His support of Shannyn Moore in 2008 and 2009 was genuine, even as he somehow hoped it might help, as John described to me, when I thanked him for the support, "our station's 'bottom line.'"
Driving through Glennallen last month, on the way to Chitina and back, there was KMBQ, by far the most liberal station in town, or for over 100 miles in any direction. John Klapperich put it there.
Judy and I hiked the easiest Cascade ridge hike on the western side of the range today. The weather was mixed - some sun, some cloudiness, a bit of rain, no wind. But very few insects.
In a move that apparently stunned the stations' owners:
WASILLA -- The operations of Valley Radio and KBYR radio in Anchorage have been taken over by a creditor of the station owner.
Spirit of Alaska Broadcasting Inc., which owns the stations, is in receivership by Gladstone Capital Corp., a Virginia company that took over the company's Wells Fargo loans of $2.1 million in 2005 and of $200,000 in 2006, according to documents filed in federal court in Anchorage.
John Klapperich, who owns Spirit of Alaska with his wife, Joan, called the development "an unbelievable situation."
"The truth is, my wife cleaned the potties on Sundays and we did everything we could for the station and the community. I thought the storm was behind me because we were finally showing a $10,000 profit in June and with all the political advertising coming in with the upcoming elections, I thought we'd be OK."
If Klapperich is right, and the station was looking forward to enough cash flow to stem the tide, as election ad revenue greatly increased in the late summer-fall political contest frenzy, this move makes no sense.
As much as I disagree with John on a number of political issues, we've always been good friends. I dislike seeing another local media company go to an Outside management group.
In clear violation of U.N. Resolution 1701, which Israel signed at the conclusion of their ignominious defeat in July-August 2006, Israeli troops violated Lebanese sovereignty this morning, cutting down a tree on the Lebanese side of the border. An MSNBC video and still (see above) clearly show the Israelis, attempting to cut down the first tree on the Lebanese side of the border.
The Lebanese Army (not Hizbollah) responded with warning shots, then with live fire. The Israeli counter-reasponse apparently killed three Lebanese soldiers and a reporter. A sniper from the Lebanese side of the border then killed "a high-ranking Israeli officer.
Although Israel routinely violates Resolution 1701 (overflights, shelling of Lebanese fishing boats, etc.), Hizbollah has also done so, though less blatantly.
The Israelis are now responding with heavy artillery and rocket fire, as well as white phosphorus. Numerous Lebanese soldiers and civilians have been injured in the exchange, which is probably escalating to include Hizbollah rockets, as I write.
Here's the longest report on this I have found yet, from Iran's Press TV, not always the best source, to say the least:
UPDATE - Wednesday 7:00 a.m: According to information coming out late Tuesday, the Lebanese not only fired first (as reported above), but the "pruning" operation - according to the IDF - had been announced to Lebanese forces and to UNIFIL in advance. If that is the case, the Lebanese Army, not the IDF, violated UN Resolution 1701.
One of the Pacific Northwest's most vibrant musical pioneers and iconoclasts was killed Saturday near Winthrop Washington, as he was driving to a musical event:
George Shangrow, a longtime Seattle classical-music conductor, teacher and radio host, was killed Saturday evening in a head-on collision outside of Winthrop, Okanogan County.
Shangrow, 59, was on his way to lecture at the annual Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival on Highway 20 when an oncoming car crossed the center line and struck Shangrow's car. He died at the scene.
Shangrow was founder and music director of Orchestra Seattle and Seattle Chamber Singers, which he began 40 years ago. He had also hosted the nightly radio program "Live, by George" on KING FM, which featured live classical performances by local musicians.
Shangrow had a huge influence on the local classical-music community. He also toured and performed on piano and conducted operas in the U.S. and abroad.
George and I were close in the early days of his wonderfully rich career. My friend Michael Wiater, who was then Program Director at KRAB-FM radio in Seattle, hired George to do the latter's first radio music program. As station Music Director then, I worked with George from the beginning. He didn't need much help.
I'm in Seattle right now, so I don't have my notes handy to remember the name of the show, but I think it was called "Music from Anywhere." George went on to become a fixture at KING-FM in Seattle, with his live performance events, broadcast on evenings, and his important role at Seattle's flagship classical music station.
As performer, music director and cultural icon, George had a more important impact. He was one of the first people in the Puget Sound region to encourage historically informed performance prsactices for Early Music (the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque eras). He was a harpsichordist's harpsichordist. His renditions, with the Seattle Chamber Singers, of many cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach are one of the most underrated musical legacies of the region, perhaps the nation.
Peter Newman, from KING-FM, has written a touching, short memorial to George for Crosscut:
There is a big hole in the Seattle-area music community. Our friend and colleague George Shangrow did so many things and so many things well that he couldn’t help but touch many of us who care about music, community service, and communicating the joy of art to the public.
......
If you wonder why Seattle has such a rich classical music scene, why we enjoy chamber music, choral concerts, opera, ballet, symphonic music — all out of proportion to the size of our community — then you have George in large part to thank for this heritage.
He will be greatly missed because he was George and because there is so much more music that is waiting for us to explore and love.
From among my many George Shangrow stories, I'll share two:
In late September, 1972, when I was KRAB's Music Director, and George was doing his radio show there, we got together at my house between Northgate and Lake City. George was intrigued by my dog, D.S. (short for "Dumb Shit"). D.S. would sing when I played piano. He particularly loved Franz Schubert.
I had told George that DS would sing at the same places every time I played Schubert's op. 120 A Major Sonata. George didn't believe me. I offered to demonstrate. I played the first movement from its beginning. Three times. Each time, D.S. howled at the exact same places. George was impressed.He asked, "What else can D.S. do?"
I asked him if he believed I could get the dog to respond to a command to go up on the house's roof. "No!" George replied, "he can't do that."
I asked if he was willing to bet. We settled on $10.00, a lot back then.
We went outside. I called D.S. over.
"D.S. - the roof!" was my command. DS. went back to the rear of the house, climbed up onto a box, then onto the heating fuel drums, then onto the bottom of the roof. From where George and I stood, D.S. suddenly appeared at the top of the house's roof.
George started to hand over the money. I told him, "Let's settle for a couple of Martinis." We did.
About twelve years later, my friend James Acord told me George was directing the Seattle Chamber Singers in a performance of Brahms' German Requiem at the University Unitarian Church. Even though it was almost 100 degrees out, we decided to attend.
It was even hotter inside the sanctuary. George apologized to the audience. "The concert is free, the sauna costs ten bucks."
About 15 minutes into the masterpiece, a chorister up on the risers fainted, falling back to the floor. George stopped the ensemble, rushing back to see how serious the fall was. She was OK, but George wondered about whether or not to continue. The musicians wanted to go on. Audience members opened all the doors and windows possible.
It was the most stirring, stunning rendition of this remarkable work I've ever witnessed.
Here's George, last December, leading musicians from the harpsichord, in Comfort Ye Every Valley, from Handel's Messiah:
Back in 2006, when both Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid and Walt & Mearsheimer's The Israel Lobby were published, ADL head Abe Foxman led the charge to have Carter excluded - as far as might be possible - from the public discourse. It was a craven attack. Since then, events have more and more proven Carter right, Foxman wrong. Carter never had to make excuses. Perhaps a statement by Foxman last week on a distantly related issue, over which Foxman begs to be excused, is the closest he will come to apologizing to Carter:
Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.
Author, journalist and blogger Max Blumenthal was able to be one of those documenting the forcible removal of all the residents of a longstanding community of Bedouins in the Negev Desert of Israel late last week. There have been several stories about this, mostly in the blogosphere. A google search New York Times Bedouin village of al-Arakib yields no NYT
results. Yet.
The problem that is so evident in the coverage of this removal isn't merely that it is such overt apartheid, but that the heavy-handedness of its implementation is so blatantly and hatefully racist:
Is the racist way this apartheid action of ethnic cleansing was implemented sanitized by Foxman's excuse?
Here's part of Max Blumenthal's description of the participation of Israeli school kids in the ethnic cleansing operation:
After interviewing more than a half dozen elders of the village, I was able to finally identify the civilians in question. What I discovered was more disturbing than I had imagined.
Arab Negev News publisher Ata Abu Madyam supplied me with a series of photos he took of the civilians in action. They depicted Israeli high school students who appeared to have volunteered as members of the Israeli police civilian guard (I am working on identifying some participants by name). Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and belongings. A number of villagers including Abu Madyam told me the volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced family photographs with crude drawings. Then they lounged around on the furniture of al-Arakib residents in plain site of the owners. Finally, according to Abu Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers destroyed the homes.
“What we learned from the summer camp of destruction,” Abu Madyam remarked, “is that Israeli youth are not being educated on democracy, they are being raised on racism.”
Perhaps. But let's get back to Abe Foxman's statement, "Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."
I'm going to be pilloried for this by some, but it may be worth the ensuing discussion:
1920: A spokeswoman for Armenian survivors of Turkish atrocities was heard saying, "Survivors of the Turks are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted
1925: Gen. Ludendorff was quoted as saying, "Survivors of the Versailles treaty's indignities are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."
1935: Gen. Franco was quoted as saying, "Survivors of the Communist Madrid government are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."
1937: A woman in Nanking, who was raped 150 times by Japanese soldiers last week, was screaming, almost incoherently, "Survivors of Nanking are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."
1942: A Lone Polish officer, who survived the rumored mass murder at Katyn, was heard muttering, "Survivors of Katyn are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."
1946: A man whose entire immediate and distant family were incinerated in the atomic bomb blast in Nagasaki, has stated, "Survivors of this horrific blast are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."
1960: Alabama Democratic National Committeeman, Bull Conner, responding to his renewed pleas for racial segregation, stated: "White Alabamians are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."
1963: Standing in front of the Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama, Gov. George Wallace cried to the white crowd: "Our white students are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."
Let's step forward a few years:
1994: Rwandan radio announcers are broadcasting: "Survivors of Tutsi insults are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."
1995: Bosnian Serb leader, Ratko Mladić, was overherard, telling a Belgrade newspaper reporter, "Our Christian Serbs are entitled to feelings that are irrational. Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."
.... and so on.
Foxman's statement wasn't just lame. It was indefensible unless one willingly accepts his viewpoint to be from an acceptably exceptionalist arena that somehow trumps normal morality.
My personal experiences with young Cambodians who survived Pol Pot's genocide have demonstrated to me that multi-generational PTSD is real and can be heavily debilitating. That is what Foxman seems to be describing. Nothing more. But I find very little difference in having read Foxman's personal experiences from 1940 to 1945, from what I have heard many, many times from Cambodian friends and relatives.
It is likely that Foxman will jump even more sharks before he comes to his senses and seeks forgiveness from Jimmy Carter. Were that unlikely event to occur, though, one suspects Jimmy Carter would fully, warmly and sincerely embrace Abraham Foxman.
My longtime colleague and friend, bronze sculptor and community organizer Peter Bevis, has been playing Shadows over loudspeakers outside of Gallery 154 in the Fremont District of Seattle since May 14th. 24/7.
