Alaska Real turns 1!

A year ago today I began this blog - and so sorry to be cliche, but oh - what a year! I coudn't have dreamt up half of what happened this last year.



I learned a lot from this little experiment, and will continue it further. The last several weeks have been a flurry of activity for me personally, and I hope to be gone for a sizeable chunk of the summer. Some of my focus needs to go to exciting new things happening in my own life (okay, a whole heaping bunch of my focus.) But I do want to tweek the blog a bit, and really define what should go into it - and not neglect it so poorly as I have lately (though I might add, I've also neglected sleep and healthy stress levels as well.)



I got into this to get an Alaskan Native voice out there, a perspective on things both mundane and elevated. Some of my goal for this year is to get MORE. I would love for Alaska Native guest bloggers to post on here, and hope a whole lot more Alaska Native blogs will get notice, and begin.

Happy Birthday to me! And here's to another year...

New Anchorage Daily News Village Blog

Hey, when did this start?

The Village

From the little blip about it on the side:

The Village is a Daily News blog about life and politics in rural Alaska. Its main author is ADN reporter Kyle Hopkins. Come here for breaking news on village issues, plus interviews, videos and photos. But that's just part of the story. We want to feature your pictures, videos and stories, too. Think of The Village as your bulletin board. E-mail us anything you’d like to share with the rest of Alaska -- your letters to the editor, the photos of your latest hunt or video of your latest potlatch. (We love video.)

Could be very cool... keep you updated.

Remember to check out the live blog!

Although I will be covering various aspects of the convention, the "live blogging" from the convention floor will be done on Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis - she's the credentialed Alaska blogger. I will be going on the Pepsi Center floor Tuesday (for Hillary!), but will still be doing all the live blogging from the Blue Oasis. I will post more "niche" type posts later on my own blog.

The live blogging will roughly be between 1pm (probably more like 2) and 7pm ALASKA TIME.

And is there something you want to know about the convention? Right there on the floor? Do you want to hear from Alaska delegates, other state's delegates, Dan Rather? :) Do you want to know about the security, the speeches, those silly hats?

Let us know!!

Journey to The Big Tent

As we tried to figure out the transportation situation (a source of confusion for pretty much everybody) I talked to American Samoa delegate Jacinta Titialii-Abbott and Congressman Eni F.H. Faleomavaega.

Jacinta and I first talked about some strong relations between Alaska and American Samoa, especially between Samoan people and Alaska Native people, and just who is looking for statehood, and who is not. Congressman Eni asked if I was Athabascan - which I am! - and talked about the strong ties with Athabascan people. He also mentioned his work with Congressman Don Young and said he was sorry to hear about Stevens.

What a remarkably small world.




A delegate from Dallas County, who was excited to show us that Dallas County is turning blue! We talked with several Texas delegates on the light rail on the way into downtown, and they were all so enthusiastic about Mark Begich and Alaska turning blue! They encouraged us, and congratulated Alaska on its "blue" efforts several times.













This man had an incredible amount of knowledge about Alaska politics and issues - and he was from Chico, California! He recently went to an environmental law convference, and was full of questions and comments about ANWR, offshore drilling, Pebble Mine, etc.














What are we all waiting for? What are they looking at? The group of mounted police officers stopped traffic for a bit, and had everyone wondering why. The big mystery?










This guy's horse had... uh... "made a mess" and he had to go clean it up. Nothing like having hundreds of people watch you clean up after your horse.

I will say that I've seen some incredible acts of environmental concern from some of these officers. At the concert we attended last night, there was one officer who kept picking up beer bottles and cups that were lying around and taking them to the recycling bin.

Wow. Everyone really did come to Denver.

Betcha Abe never had to do this when he was president.

Where do Londoners and Alaskans go to meet?

Apparently at The Big Tent in Denver.

You may recognize the "Bond" guy from an earlier post. This time he was working - informing people about The Israel Project, check them out!

I got the golden ticket...

I was sent this article from Media Shift about the Big Tent - the bloggers home away from home. I didn't realize 3,000 people had applied to be in the Tent - and only 300 got in. I feel like I've got a golden ticket now! Much more so because Celtic Diva is sharing her Pepsi Center blogging credential with me. The article discusses whether or not blogging from the Big Tent will make a difference (as opposed to just watching from home.)

Another convention note - although I try not to just shamelessly plug someone else's product, this is still a pretty cool idea: Rock the Vote and Xbox are teaming up to register voters via Xbox Live. As some from the generation that is occasionally called the "Nintendo Generation" (I would like to file my official protest on that one,) this is a pretty great idea.

"Xbox is a natural partner to help us reach out to youth voters," said Heather
Smith, executive director, Rock the Vote. "To realize our goal of registering 2
million young Americans by this fall, we need to go where young Americans are,
and there's no doubt in our minds that many are on Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE."

This is especially good for Obama. Although McCain has a some of these "young voters" the "Millenial Generation" (this is my vote for a name) has gone overwhelmingly over to Obama's side.

Maybe they could create the game "Showdown 2008: Obama vs. McCain." They could verbally duke it out (whoever hits the most talking points wins a battle) with their sidekicks, Dinko the Donkey and Elton the Elephant. You win votes by kissing babies and shaking hands (a speed game, really,) but lose votes if you are caught "mispeaking" about your history (the memory game aspect.) Then, in an epic last battle, the candidates have to face Alex Trebek in the Ultimate Jeopardy Showdown - the true litmus test for any good President.

Okay. I'm going to bed.

Just a few more days to go...

It's getting close! I'm headed to the Democratic National Convention in just a few short days. We leave Thrusday night/Friday morning for what is officially the most diverse convention to date.

Indian Country Today announced something I didn't know -

"Colorado's first residents will offer the first official welcome to the
Democratic National Convention in Denver Aug. 23, when Southern Ute, Ute
Mountain Ute and Northern Ute tribal leaders and other Indian notables in full
regalia will lead the pageantry of a grand entry before officials address some
13,000 media representatives."

Other plans include a pow wow on the 24th, various Native gatherings and discussions, crafts booths and all sorts of dance/drumming groups.

The DNCC let out numbers that show 2.5% of the delegates are Native American (110 total) - up from 1.8% from the 2004 convention, and up from .9% from the 1984 convention. Meaning in my lifetime, attendance by Native American delegates is up nearly 300%. In all,

"44.3 percent of the delegates elected to attend the Convention in Denver represent minority communities, 50.1 percent are women and 31.4 percent are either seniors or youth, making this the most diverse Convention in Party history."

Not to mention at least one VERY excited Tlingit/Athabascan blogger!

I will be participating in as much as I can cram in to nine short days. (Yes, nine days. Due mostly to the fact that our air travel plans weren't so much PLANS as... well, "get on the first few available seats at the last possible second." Hence - we found a need to extend our stay.)

For those that don't know, I will be attending the convention with Team Blue Oasis, headed by Celtic Diva. I will share credentials with her, so I will be blogging both from the floor (with the delegation) and from The Big Tent, depending on what's going on.

I will also be attending the Native American caucuses, and really any event I can canoodle, beg or bribe my way into.

P.S. Thanks to some very generous people, we were able to get plane tickets, and I was able to get a laptop with wireless capabilities this weekend (I was picturing some funny things, carting my desktop around...) But I could still use a bit more - we've learned that the blogger tent doesn't supply plug-ins for everyone to recharge, and I need to get a couple of (expensive!) universal batteries to make sure I don't get cut off in the middle of something exciting (or not so exciting, really). If you can give, every little bit REALLY does help! There is a donation link to the side - and gunalcheesh!!