clear days mean cold nights
Mt Wrangell peeking out behind gertee
revised platform bed with new shower!
We're having a gorgeous spring in Kenny Lake this year. I got a little ahead of myself when I put my sleeping bag in the wash and store pile though. After two nights of freezing and thrashing about and finally dragging myself awake to start a fire and get the house above 20 degrees, I dug my dirty, smelly down sleeping bag out of the laundry pile and slept like a baby last night. It's so lovely in my gertee now I almost forget I'm still camping in sub zero temps, until early morning comes and it always reminds me. Got another cord of wood delivered which means I can burn hot fires and make use of the new shower set-up I built in the living area. Put it right next to my bed where the coat/winter gear closet was. Pure luxury and I really don't mind having all the nice smelling soaps and lotions near my head while I sleep. With a steady water source I could take a bath every night!
Still having lots of trouble with my browsers but sometimes, like today, super slow but it works well enough to blog. facebook barely loads. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-us-feds-on-facebook,0,6183802.story
So here's the link that's the title of this post:
http://www.neighbourhoodjournal.com/index.html
"We provide training and development services for a range of organisations in the field of evaluation, appraisal, programme management, project development and strategy development. Training is provided at over 40 locations across the UK and Ireland and is also available for in house training if required. "
Somehow I'm on their email list and now I get these updates from them. So today since my browser is working so well I opened their link and poked around their site. Not much there... not much at all... just dates and times where they'll be around England and Ireland training facilitators to evaluate and manage local people. No link to Common Purpose but it's hard to imagine they're not affiliates of this. John?
Been thinking a lot about new articles I'd like to write, and one about neighborhood groups and councils keeps popping up in my brain. Everything at the ACL that deals with these local yokel groups was written in 2000 when I was a pilot test subject under their communiy policing programme. My perspective has changed a wee bit since then and I'm no longer begging them for explanations and definitions of their terms. I know what neighbourhood renewal is today. I know what strategy development is too.
I'm thinking it might be a big ol' hoot to call myself the Kenny Lake Chitina Development Association. I have been working in neighborhood economic revitalization since I got here four and a half years ago and made the deal to build Tim and Lorayne's website in exchange for a campsite with electric at Camp Redington (called R's RV Park then). I fulfilled the plans for a community website which was part of Copper River Development Association's master plan for my community. I've made local fun maps and promoted local businesses online via all my gertee projects and somewhat through the ACL. I can claim to have the best interests of the community at heart, because my record here shows I do. I am just another unelected, self proclaimed development "expert" in what my community "needs." uh huh.
And I didn't give BJ (owner of Pippen Lake Gifts) any trouble when she showed up last Sunday to do the 2010 Census like we were old best friends (we've never met). She accidentally dropped some computer labled readouts of our personally identifiable information. I helped her pick them up and saw names alonside a bar code and a bunch of other codes that I'd be interested in knowing what they were. When I asked where was my address in this new census "short version", she assured me the feds didn't need my actual address since she was making a small dot on the GIS map she was carrying that identified my exact geographical location. I agreed to answer the questions if she placed my dot in an unpopulated, inaccessible roadless area of the map. Oh no worries she said, the ONLY purpose of all that personally identifiable information was to make sure Alaska gets another US Congressman! When I told her I am a political researcher, she said she knew that. hmm. Wonder what else BJ "knows" about me.
As I plod through my chores and spring cleaning my mind drifts to articles I wish I had time to work on. I really want to write something about the Madonna-whore dialectic and the influence it's had on my entire life. I think less about research and validating my position anymore, and more about how many ways the communitarian dialectic has affected my life and the lives of everyone I've ever met. I've also started singing, stretching, dancing and walking, my way of respecting the needs of my aging body. The harsh environment has made me leaner and much, much stronger but if I don't make time to stretch and relax too I will become all hunched over and crippled. Etzioni made me hate the word "balance" because of the way he uses it to destroy freedom, but I have to get over that now. I need balance between my hard core writing and my hard core lifestyle, the need is real and it's always been real. Etzioni didn't coin the term and he doesn't own it, just as the many other words he co-opted for communitarianism and changed the meanings of. He used the word "spirit" in his book title The Spirit of Community and I've avoided using that term too. Most everyone knows how I see/use the word "community".. heh.
The gertee book is coming along, especially now that I can barely get online! heh. We've worked out the PVC yurt design and Tim went to town and bought enough pipe to make 2, 16 footers! He's thinking the PVC gertee may actually be stronger than the wood. I designed it to all fit in a max 4' long box for shipping and easy carrying, but I may need to modify the lengths because the pipe all comes in 10 foot pieces. Adding the specs to the tutorial after we build it and test it in the spring winds. Thinking of ways to cover interior plastic and how to hold the materials up. I want to make one of them my greenhouse this summer and the other into a cute little guest house. Tim thinks I should sell them. :)
7 comments:
Hi Niki
Sorry you have computer trouble.
Greenhouse - good idea.
John
I don't know much about that Madonna/Whore stuff but I have observed that Lady GaGa (should be Gag Gag) is copying singer Madonna's schtick nearly entirely. And the masses are gobbling it up, just like they did before. GaGa is upping the ante, though, and being even more extreme.
I wonder who has manufactured Lady Gaga. Any ideas?
Niki,
Have been embroiled in an interesting discussion with my Communitarian family. It's been mostly a one way discussion.
I am the beloved grandchild of a simple woman who gave birth to a beautiful clan- it is said that one of her relatives was a Countess. She lived with my uncle and aunt, who would definitely be baffled by Communitarianism. My aunt is surrounded by Nazis and unaware of it, this dear sweet aunt who is the soul of our family is kept in the dark and DELIBERATELY made weak by her MIGHT MAKES RIGHT family. Her husband, my uncle, lived his life in agony from scrapnel in his leg, due to the Nazi's that my own family now kneel to.
MY OWN SISTER and family betray my powerless aunt and the memory of my Grandmother. My own mother has NO clue that she is surrounded by Nazi's, neither would most of the women in my family have a clue.
My grandmother adored me and I her.
My Grandmother's ABSOLUTE love for her entire family was either a lie or it wasn't. She hated Nazi's.
The Communitarians are deciding what to do about my questions to my Magus sister. I am surrounded and protected by Grandmothers love and I claim her as my protector. She never would want me deceived and harmed. She would not allow your son to kill his mother.
She would kill her own family if she knew they worshipped the Hitler who caused my uncle so much pain.
They harm me, they are destroying her. She has power, or not a one of them would be here. She used to call me Angel in Heaven.
She is yours too. I loved her and she was the guiding inspiration of my life. I take back my stolen power. What they do to us, they do to Anna Serpente.
Hi Niki,
You mentioned that you had some Gang Stalking a while back, in many countries, people are getting placed on lists.
Read the story of Jane Clift who was placed on such a list in the U.K. Your information is flagged and you are followed everywhere you go.
http://www.wcb.pe.ca/photos/original/wcb_wpviolence.pdf
The Canadian Center of Occupational Health and Safety
"Unless otherwise prohibited by law, the duty to inform workers under subsection (1) includes a duty to provide information related to the risk of violence from persons who have a history of violent behavior and who may be encountered by a worker in the course of his or her work."
"Workers have the ’ right to know ‘ all risks and safe work procedures associated with the job. This may involve identifying individuals with a history of unpredictable or violent behavior."
"The identity of the person and the nature of the risk must be given to staff likely to come into contact with that person. While workers have the right to know the risks, it is important to remember that this information cannot be indiscriminately distributed."
After you questioned the committee, this might be what happened. People are using these lists to go after innocent people.
http://www.24dash.com/news/Local_Government/2009-06-24-Good-citizen-wins-12-000-damages-from-council-who-labelled-her-potentially-violent
Jane Clift.
Ms Clift said she was horrified at being entered on the register and, eight months later, left Slough, where she had lived for 10 years, as it was impossible to function normally.
She sensed that, everywhere she went, there was "whispering, collaboration, people scurrying about".
"Everywhere I went - hospitals, GPs, libraries - anywhere at all, even if I phoned the fire service, as soon as my name went on to that system, it flagged up 'violent person marker, only to be seen in twos, medium risk'."
She felt she could not pursue her application to be a foster parent.
Telling the jury that what had happened to her could happen to anyone, she said: "I'm nothing special, no qualifications, don't have a fancy job, but I don't go getting into trouble. It cuts across class, race, everything.
"These people have this ability to do this and they can abuse it. Not many people know, I didn't even know, that such a register existed.
"Please put yourself in my position and consider what I feel to be the calibre of public employees who, at the end of the day, are paid for out of council tax.
"What right do they have to do this to members of the public? What possible right? Consider it can happen to anybody. It's happening right now and shouldn't be allowed to happen."
What I believe troubling is how persons negative response to negative pressure could exacerbate the dialectic. Namely, if anti-communitarians, aka: patriots react with violence, then the communitarians will most likely react and believe themselves justified in reacting with a suppression of individual liberties in the name of social order and security. So the anti-communitarians or patriots claiming to be for the fostering of individual liberty could by their violent reaction lead to a self fulfilling prophecy of a loss of freedom. Eric Hall
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