indefatigablog

I met Bradley Bergey in Seattle where we worked together for two years at the Children’s Institute for Learning Differences on Mercer Island.

Around the same time, we each moved from Seattle to different parts of the world : I moved to Alaska and he moved to Mexico City. Over the next 4-5 years, we visited each other regular and I had the good fortune of watching him evolve from a naturally gifted painter into a focused and even more talented artist.

To boot, he’s an amazing educator, the kind of teacher I’m jealous his students get to have. World-traveled, intuitive, imaginative, playful and wise beyond his years - he’s a bona fide compliment to the practice.

Recently, Bergey was featured in Art and Letter, a monthly webzine focused on Architecture, Art and Design.

You can read the interview in its entirety here, if you likey.

He’s our pal and we’re very proud of him : )

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Power is flowing from the Snettisham hydro dam once again!

Returning to the renewable energy source means Juneau folks no longer face the temporary increased cost of living [53 cents per kilowatt hour versus 11].

Since the avalanche in mid-April, Alaska Electric Light & Power has been supplying the entire city with electricity from diesel generators, thus, the dramatically increased rates.

Fortunately, this didn’t last as long as anticipated. What a good thing for both locals’ pocketbooks and lifestyles, which have been hamstrung in order to avoid electric bills that no one could afford. I can’t imagine paying upwards of $500 for what is usually around $100.

Now you can all plug everything back in and take energy for granted again like all the rest of us!

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I submitted Tag to IFP for their Spotlight on Documentaries competition right before we left for Juneau - literally just in time to meet their deadline [special thanks to Z].

I’m hoping to be one of 75 films selected for admission to their Lab in order to develop it into a truly great film with a potential $10,000 in funding for post-production.

Send any spare good juju my way will ya?

: )

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Pollee and i head back to Juneau tomorrow to celebrate the wedding of our pals for a few days and suck up some of the air up there in the Great Northern latitudes.

The town has entered into a renaissance of sorts lately, in terms of folks coming together under a rather stressful situation.

As most of you have prolly read, an avalance on April 16th put the city into a conniption when power lines between Juneau and the hydroelectric power plant at Snettisham were severed, driving the price per kilowatt hour from 11 cents to 53.

From the New York Times article posted on Wednesday :

Conservationists swoon at the possibility of it all. Here in Alaska, where melting arctic ice and eroding coastlines have made global warming an urgent threat, this little city has cut its electricity use by more than 30 percent in a matter of weeks, instantly establishing itself as a role model for how to go green, and fast.

Comfort has been recalibrated. The public sauna has been closed and the lights have been dimmed at the indoor community pool. At the library, one of the two elevators was shut down after someone figured out it cost 20 cents for each round trip. The thermostat at the convention center was dialed down eight degrees, to 60. The marquee outside is dark.

Schoolchildren sacrifice Nintendo time and boast at show-and-tell of kilowatts saved. Hotels consult safety regulations to be sure they have not unscrewed too many light bulbs in the hallways. On a recent weekday, all but one of the dozens of television screens on display at the big Fred Meyer store were black — off, that is.

Yet even as they embrace a fluorescent future, the 31,000 residents of Juneau, the state capital, are not necessarily doing it for the greater good. They face a more local inconvenient truth. Electricity rates rocketed about 400 percent after an avalanche on April 16 destroyed several major transmission towers that delivered more than 80 percent of the city’s power from a hydroelectric dam about 40 miles south.

We are looking forward to the spartan spirit now thriving in our old neighborhood of 5 years and are anticipating that with more computers, TV and other gadgets turned off more often than on, we’ll be able to squeeze even more hang time out of this trip than usual.

It’s good to recalibrate our comfort amidst a culture that borders on sloth.

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