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Great Expectations
- Christa Farris Contributing Writer
- 2004 2 Jan
A few streets over from the quirky, vintage clothing shops, rows of quaint fixer-uppers and eclectic eateries nestled in Nashville's Berry Hill neighborhood, Jars of Clay seems right at home at Blackbird Studio this particular Wednesday. The foursome is taking a break this evening from putting its creative spin on a U2 track ("All I Want Is You") for the upcoming benefit compilation, "In the Name of Love: Artists United for Africa" (Sparrow).
While many artists in Nashville's music community always seem ready for their close-up with a deliberate "rock star" look in place, even during low-key moments like recording, Jars of Clay's Dan Haseltine, Charlie Lowell, Stephen Mason and Matt Odmark skip the fanfare on the fashion front. When they walk into the studio's kitchen, they look as comfortable as people lounging in their Saturday-morning attire. Tousled hair. Baggy jeans. Wrinkled tees. Cool gym shoes. And with the exception of Charlie's clean-shaven face, a few days worth of stubble completes the band's nearly no-frills appearance.
As the guys crowd around the rectangular wooden table, they amuse themselves by arranging magnetic poetry into clever musings. "There are never enough articles," Matt points out as he puts his wordsmith skills to the test, while his cohorts chuckle at a recent word pairing they've concocted. Meanwhile, Steve is happily typing away on his Mac laptop as Charlie mentions Steve's hidden talent of creating specialty icons for his computer's desktop. "Just send him the pictures, and he'll make you a computer icon of your family," Charlie offers in a pitch reminiscent of a late-night infomercial. Laughter ensues.
Throughout the course of the evening, it's the band's easy rapport, non-stop humor (which often involves quoting popular movies) and the maturity that comes with growing older and raising families that really stand out. After 10 years of making music together and enduring a demanding tour schedule, Jars of Clay hasn't become the usual band statistic someone might read about in Rolling Stone or watch unravel on a VH1 "Behind the Music" marathon. Instead, they genuinely seem to enjoy and thrive off each other's company; and this unique camaraderie and a return to musical simplicity are the prominent trademarks that shine through on Jars' latest studio effort, "Who We Are Instead" (Essential).
"This record, for us, seems to represent something in the way of maturity." — Dan Haseltine
With 15 No. 1 songs to Jars' credit (along with three GRAMMY Awards, six Dove Awards and countless other accolades, including more than five million units in career sales), confidence in creating its art would almost seem like a given. But that reality didn't come to fruition until recently.
"We've been a band for 10 years, but it was really strange to walk into the studio this time around, begin the process and actually feel a little different," Dan says. "I feel like we actually matured and walked into something we knew how to do. We went into the recording and writing process going, 'We have confidence; we know how to make this work.'"
Cliff Young, front man for Caedmon's Call (who's now with Jars of Clay on the second leg of what's been dubbed "The Thinking Man's Pop Tour") was also excited to hear the fruit of the band's latest artistic labor. "They bring an authenticity to Christian music and raise the bar on quality musicianship. It was amazing to sit and watch them write and sound check each day."
And with Jars' new-found clarity, longtime listeners can't help detecting new confidence in Dan's vocal delivery on tracks like "Amazing Grace", "Trouble Is" and "Show You Love" that richly resonate in stark contrast to the songs on its self-titled debut in 1995. "Well, that was a different singer on that first record," Dan jokes before Steve jumps in with a story.
"We actually watched something that Charlie had unearthed from a closet recently — a Hi-8 tape with some band named Jars of Clay. And it was like, 'Man, we didn't know how to play or sing.' But we were all having fun, and you could see the raw elements that we've been able to watch grow and expand to different places," Steve recounts. "It should be a general kind of inspiration for life — that if you keep at it, you'll get better at some point. If you give enough, and you're passionate enough about something, you won't remain the same."
Our desire is to take a Christian voice and elevate it on the more artful side of what pop music is." — Matt Odmark
When recording "Who We Are Instead," the Jars of Clay guys say they were determined to keep the music simple and concentrate on what makes their faith genuine. Usually choosing to record in the familiar quarters of their own Sputnik Studio, flooding led to a change of venue. "Our studio kind of broke down, so we wrote at Matt's house for a while," Dan recalls. "We weren't really sure if we were going to find that creative place we needed in a different atmosphere, but we did. We ended up writing six of the record's songs there."
But even before one lyric was set to music, Dan seriously questioned whether Jars of Clay's musical well was running dry. "Sometimes we wonder if we're going to be able to write, to say things that are important. You wonder if it's worth it to even write music," he says. "But when you have a day like that, where the songs really come together and they're not fluff — they're about real things — it's why we do what we do. A day full of creating like that is powerful. That keeps us going."
With the band in "creating" mode, many of the age-old discussions that began with Jars' mainstream radio success of "Flood" and gigs alongside Sting, Sheryl Crow and Matchbox Twenty sparked new dialogue on Christian music message boards: "Is Jars of Clay planning to cater its new songs to a primarily mainstream audience?" When asked about the debate, Jars emphasizes a commitment to make music that communicates spiritual truths in a way that's relevant to modern culture — whether the band performs in a church, college campus or in a bar.
"I think we can say our philosophy about our music has never really changed in terms of where we'd like to see it go," Steve offers. "The encouraging thing is that a lot of people seem to be identifying with what they call 'spiritual music.' But we can never hope to 'mainstream' the message of the gospel to any fantastic degree. At the end of the day, what is the gospel but confessing that we have a great need that we can't fulfill on our own? And that's contrary to what's going to be preached by the world. Pop music is a disposable medium, and you're trying to put a message that's not disposable on any level with something that is."
"We're not just doing something and trying to pay the bills. God is working in our relationships with each other and in us as individuals." — Stephen Mason
Looking back at the last 10 years, it doesn't seem like there's much left for the band to accomplish, even if they do joke about "making a big comeback." After remaining quiet most of the evening, Matt thoughtfully pipes up when asked to look ahead: "I have a desire to see the Christian voice in the arts elevated. I believe that the key players in the Christian story are some of the key players in any art form. But for the most part, as a body, we've lost our ability to communicate in an ongoing dialogue with our culture about man and what he's here for. Maybe we got tripped up in our own language. Perhaps we lost a connection to it that feels authentic. So, for us, each record has been an attempt in that journey of trying to strip away all the things that could cloud what Christianity is all about — expressing it through art and letting it speak for itself."
While Charlie, Steve and Dan applaud Matt's thoughtful aspirations with affirming nods in his direction, the serious turn of conversation morphs back to being humorous once again.
Charlie: "Another thing we haven't done yet as a band is swap out the band members a few different times — except for Dan."
Steve: "Yeah, get some kids who can dance or something."
Charlie: "Maybe some modern ballet? Or choreography?"
Matt: "Oh there's been choreography!"
Steve: "Yeah, we had to stop because I couldn't do it."
"In some ways it feels like a lot of the stuff we spend our time doing is about building up our little Jars of Clay 'kingdom.' Then all of a sudden we talk about Africa, and it's Jars of Clay what?" — Charlie Lowell
When all is said and done, Jars of Clay also hopes to be more than just a band that talks about important issues from the stage — whether it's addressing the plight of the persecuted church in China or the poverty and AIDS crisis in Africa. Instead of being content simply to recite the horrifying statistics about the AIDS pandemic, Dan experienced the devastation firsthand during a stint with World Vision and African Leadership last year.
While a naïve cynic might claim these efforts to educate the world about AIDS are just a way to ride Bono's advocacy coattails, the band took a personal stake by reaching out to victims and recently forming its own non-profit organization, Blood:Water. The effort was developed to encourage the band's core audience of college students to invest in community development in third world countries by using their resources, ideas and passion to improve the lives of others.
"I think one of the things that drives me, whether I like it or not, is to work with people outside the scope of my community," Dan says. "I know that God seems to work best to grow faith in people when they're really outside their comfort zone. I think when we first started having encounters with people who are suffering and trying to make sense of how the gospel lived in that kind of place, I realized that I'll be challenged in ways I never could be otherwise. When God says you'll always have the poor, He almost says that as an encouragement because He's saying you'll always have the opportunity to experience real giving, real mercy and what real grace looks like. I think that's a big part of why we do what we do because we recognize that there are challenges within that kind of activity that are life-changing."
To read Dan's recent letter to the Christian music community about the AIDS pandemic or to find out more about Blood:Water and Jars of Clay, check out CCMmagazine.com.
© 2003 CCM Magazine. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Click here to subscribe.


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Battle for Bristol Bay, a resource struggle for the ages
DILLINGHAM, Alaska -- On a chilly day in late September, fishing boats were docked by the dozens in this remote town on Bristol Bay. Come wintertime, many would rest on blocks in people's yards.
The boats sit waiting for the rush of the summertime, when Dillingham's population of 2,300 will double. Fishermen come from across the region to make their living, just like the settlers who flooded Alaska just over a century ago in search of gold and the salmon that earned the nickname "money fish."
The salmon catch still sustains these towns, but today they face a new test. Because of a plan to dig a massive copper, gold and molybdenum mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay, people here are grappling with a question they would rather not ask: Can southwest Alaska make money from its wealth of minerals without doing harm to the money fish?
Even as wild salmon populations have dwindled elsewhere, southwest Alaska's fishing industry has stayed strong since the first canneries were built in the late 19th century.
Year after year, fishermen harvest almost 70 percent of the salmon, but the ones that make it past the nets are still enough to replenish the population, said Rick Parkin, a 30-year veteran of U.S. EPA who has spent the past 10 months leading a study of the Bristol Bay watershed.
"I'd like to have my stock portfolio do that," Parkin said in a phone interview this fall from his Seattle office.
Fishermen and village leaders in southwest Alaska have asked EPA to study the risk posed by projects such as the planned Pebble mine, a joint venture of British mining giant Anglo American PLC and Vancouver, Canada-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. The deposit's exact value is unknown, but with an estimated 80.6 billion pounds of copper, 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum and 107.4 million ounces of gold, it would produce hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of minerals at current prices.
Whether the government should approve the mine is one of the most heated political debates in Alaska, a place usually known for its pro-development mindset. The project has raised tough questions that are being asked in many corners of the world, as people struggle to grow new industries and meet rising demand for resources without harming the richest ecosystems on Earth.
Salmon fishing boats set off from fishing towns like Dillingham for about five weeks per year, from the end of June until the last week of July, and cast their nets near the mouths of the Kvichak and Nushagak rivers. These are the two main portals to a vast expanse of lakes and streams that probably hold the world's most active spawning grounds. (Russia's Kamchatka region has some impressive runs too, salmon experts say, though the numbers that come out of Siberia aren't as reliable.)
From canning records dating back to 1893 and a meticulous fish-counting census that has taken place in southwestern Alaska every year since 1956, scientists know that an average of 33.3 million salmon start a spawning pilgrimage each year in Bristol Bay, on the north side of where the Alaska Peninsula juts into the Pacific Ocean.
A few Alaskan salmon stocks were exhausted by the early canneries, because people dammed the rivers and blocked salmon on their way to spawn. Not so with the mighty rivers that ended at Bristol Bay, which were too strong and wide to be barricaded.
"Of the plants at Bristol Bay and other northern points," federal fisheries inspector George Tingle reported to the U.S. Treasury in 1896 after a visit to Alaska, "it may be said that they require less inspection and surveillance than others, for the reason that the natural conditions are such that it is well-nigh impossible to exhaust the streams."
Bristol Bay now produces half the world's harvest of sockeye, a salmon variety with fatty, bright-red flesh that is prized by chefs and sport fishermen, and which comprises the biggest share of the region's $300-million-a-year commercial fishing business.
Commercial fishermen catch other fish in Bristol Bay and farther out in the Bering Sea, but none are as valuable as sockeye.
Carol Ann Woody, a fisheries biologist who spent the past several years surveying the region's salmon populations for the Nature Conservancy, said the vast undeveloped expanses of southwest Alaska are the main reason the salmon have continued to thrive as wild salmon have dwindled elsewhere.
Across the United States, she said during an interview in Anchorage, about one-third of historic wild salmon stocks are extinct and 40 percent are endangered, mainly because of human interference with their habitat.
"It's happened in Europe, the East Coast, and now it's marching up the West Coast," said Woody, a veteran of the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Forest Service who now runs her own research and consulting firm. "Alaska has the last of the best."
Above the Pebble deposit, which is about 120 miles northeast of Bristol Bay and 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, is a salmon spawning stream known as Upper Talarik Creek. The creek winds its way about 20 miles to Lake Iliamna, the largest sockeye spawning site in the world, which can be seen in the saddle of two small mountains from the mine site.
There are no roads and no permanent structures in sight -- just a vast, water-flecked plain, ringed by rolling mountains. The land is dotted with wild blueberry bushes and exploration drilling pads that are served by helicopter alone.
"If things don't work out, it'll be as if they were never there," promised Nance Larsen, a company spokeswoman, as she stood on a windy hill overlooking the drills.
But if things do work out, the hill will soon overlook an open pit perhaps 2 miles wide.
Like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a wilderness on the North Slope of Alaska that holds enough oil to meet perhaps 2 percent of Americans' demand, Bristol Bay is becoming a place that people argue about from halfway around the world. Locals are similarly conflicted, knowing that the Pebble project could decide the future of their region.
June Tracey, who runs a bed and breakfast in the nearby town of Nondalton, told Greenwire she is worried that the mine could harm the pristine land around her home. Though they are more than 100 miles from Bristol Bay, Nondalton and other towns near the mineral deposit are home to people who work for the fishing industry and catch the plentiful salmon for their own use.
The last thing Tracey wants to see is "a big old hole in our backyard," but younger people might see it differently, she said.
They have been raised with television, electricity and cellphones, not to mention the other technologies that have come to Bristol Bay along with what Tracey called "Western ways." She smiled at the phrase, perhaps because you can't go too far west from this corner of Alaska without leaving North America.
"I may not see it when they first break that ground there. I'm a mom, I'm a grandma and I'm a great-grandma," Tracey said. "But this is for the future of our younger generations."
The Pebble Partnership, a joint venture between Anglo American and Northern Dynasty Minerals, vows that it will do everything in its power to protect the environment.
Yet many commercial fishermen and locals who fish for sustenance are skeptical that the project can be done without a grave risk to the salmon. U.S. EPA has agreed to study that question, saying that officials will use Parkin's watershed assessment to decide whether to block a key permit for the project.
Pebble has enlisted 500 scientists, spent $120 million on research of its own and is close to releasing a 25,000-page baseline environmental assessment with an eye toward applying for permits around the end of 2012. It is the largest research project ever done for a mining project, Pebble CEO and former Alaska Department of Natural Resources Commissioner John Shively said in October at a conference organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"If you look at the sensitivity of the project, if you look at where we are, it was absolutely required that we do this," Shively told the people gathered in the gymnasium of Dillingham's combined middle and high school, the home of the Wolverines. "This is something that we didn't do just to impress people."
Alaskans conflicted
It was early fall, and state accountants had just sent out the annual checks from the Alaska Permanent Fund, which gives every man, woman and child a share of the state's oil revenues. Retailers in Alaska's metropolis of Anchorage took to the airwaves to convince people to spend their $1,174 windfall on an all-terrain vehicle, airline tickets or the down payment on a car.
As they waited for their share of the wealth, Alaskans could also flick on the television or the radio and hear the latest round of dueling advertisements on mining in Bristol Bay.
"One pebble," one recent television spot opposing the mine begins, as a stone falls slowly into a pool of water, "and 'boom.'" The familiar mushroom cloud of a nuclear blast fills the screen. "In Bristol Bay," the advertisement finishes, "why would we even contemplate such craziness?"
A similar advertisement about oil drilling in ANWR probably wouldn't get much traction. Most polls show the U.S. population is evenly split on drilling in the wildlife refuge, with Republicans mostly in favor and Democrats mostly opposed, but polls in Alaska show that support hovers around 80 percent.
Pebble has Alaskans much more divided.
It has been decades since a sitting governor, senator or congressman from Alaska has opposed drilling in ANWR, but over the past few years, the Pebble project has been opposed by prominent Alaska politicians such as the late Sen. Ted Stevens (R), former Gov. Tony Knowles (D) and former Gov. Jay Hammond (R). Current elected officials have generally treaded lightly on the issue or made it into an issue of states' rights, saying they want to let the project move through the permitting process so Alaska regulators can decide if the risks to the environment outweigh the value of extracting the minerals.
"Any effort by the [EPA] to block responsible development before a project has even been proposed would be unprecedented and would have a chilling effect on the state's economy," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said this summer (Greenwire, July 21).
The man behind most of the anti-Pebble advertisements is Art Hackney, an Anchorage-based political consultant who had spent most of his career campaigning and making advertisements for Republicans. On his office walls, signed photographs show the smiling faces of Sen. Stevens, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) and former President George W. Bush.
During an interview, Hackney pointed to the photographs on his wall and insisted that Pebble is not a "greenie" issue. "You can be anti-Pebble and still be pro-development," he insisted.
His client this time is the billionaire Republican investor Bob Gillam, who has spent millions of dollars trying to block the mine. He has often mentioned his support for ANWR to show he is not against development of Alaska's resources.
"Our position is 'ANWR, yes -- Pebble, no,'" Hackney said.
Another of the project's most vocal critics is Rick Halford, a former president of the Alaska State Senate who lives near the fishing hub of Dillingham. He is a classic establishment Republican -- in her autobiography, "Going Rogue," the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says it was Halford who first urged her to run for Alaska governor.
Halford is a pilot, and for years, he would fly near the site of the Pebble deposit to show off wildlife to his passengers.
One of Alaska's largest caribou populations, known as the Mulchatna herd, has historically moved through the valley that contains the Pebble deposit. Halford would fly low over the snow-capped peaks nearby, which is where passengers could see caribou lying down in the snow to get away from the insects at lower altitudes.
He hadn't thought much about the project until Gov. Hammond's widow, Bella Hammond, asked him to look into the project.
Halford was always a staunch supporter of developing Alaska's rich resources, and he still thinks ANWR should not be closed to drilling, but he soon became convinced there is nothing Pebble can do to protect the fish in the Bristol Bay watershed.
"It's like the high school kid who says: 'We can do this, and you won't get pregnant,'" Halford said. "It's the lie of all of history -- that you can have both. That you can have it all."
These days, Halford has made fighting the mine into his life's work, though his wife wishes he would spend more time at home.
Halford could have retired to a career as a high-paid lobbyist after leaving the Alaska Senate, he said. Instead, he flies researchers around, landing on lakes near the site of the Pebble deposit so they can study the local ecosystem, and guesses what the mining company is planning to do by studying the layout of its exploration sites.
"My friends would say, 'You finally found a mine you don't like,'" Halford said into a headset as he flew his turbocharged floatplane through a series of banked turns to point out Pebble's network of drilling rigs. "Well, I guess I did."
The latest campaign
Gillam has allied himself with advocacy groups such as Trout Unlimited and Earthworks that have actively fought Pebble for years now. Those groups have lined up a star-studded roster of opponents that includes celebrity chefs and Hollywood icons, including the actor and environmental activist Robert Redford.
Alaska's wild fish have long been a potent symbol for environmental groups, said Mark Van Putten, a former president of the National Wildlife Federation who is now a consultant on conservation policy.
"Salmon is something a lot of people can relate to, because they eat it," Van Putten said. "People are a little more sophisticated about salmon than they are with some of the other fish species."
He remembers when the National Wildlife Federation worked to raise the profile of Copper River salmon among chefs, hoping to rally support for a campaign to protect that area of Alaska from development. In this case, he said, Pebble presents an obvious coalition of the sort that would be needed to block the project, because the mine could butt up against the commercial interests of anglers, commercial fishermen and subsistence fishermen.
Groups fighting the mine have also assembled jewelers -- including Zale Corp., Tiffany & Co. and Helzberg Diamonds -- that have promised not to buy gold that comes from Pebble.
"We have no doubt that they would do everything possible to develop that mine as responsibly as they possibly can. And I'm going to presume that the state of Alaska will do everything possible to make certain that happens if the mine goes forward," said Michael Kowalski, the CEO of Tiffany & Co., in an interview published this month on Natural Resources Defense Council's OnEarth blog. "That said, we have reached the conclusion ... that the risk is simply too great. Despite the best of intentions, the location of this mine is so inherently problematic that it is simply not worth the risk of a catastrophic event."
Pebble has spent millions of dollars on advertising buys of its own over the past several years, hoping to counter what it has described as misinformation about the project.
The company's project has drawn more attention beyond Alaska since EPA got involved, but it was already a cause célèbre several years ago, when Jason Brune, the executive director of a pro-mining advocacy group in Alaska, told the Anchorage Daily News that "people see Pebble as the next ANWR."
"ANWR was a polarizing project that was being used as a rallying point for the environmental community, and Pebble was similarly being used," said Brune, who is now a government relations manager at Anglo American, in a recent interview. "It was true then and even more so today."
Gillam bought an airplane for the most recent campaign, which was held in the Lake and Peninsula Borough that surrounds the mineral deposit. In the run-up to the election, the plane did nothing but fly from town to town. Campaign staffers would hop off in places such as Kokhanok, population 146, and walk door-to-door, registering voters and swaying them on Pebble.
The campaign cost Gillam several hundred thousand dollars. That would not be much for a statewide race, but consider this: In the previous borough election, 384 votes were cast. The initiative this fall passed, 280-246.
When all was said and done, the "Save Our Salmon" initiative and the competing "Defend Your Rights" campaign had received at least $790,000 combined, disclosure records showed -- $1,500 for every vote cast.
By comparison, the 2008 U.S. presidential election, which cost a record $1.8 billion and led to talk of runaway spending on political races, broke down to $14 per voter.
In high demand
The oil beneath ANWR has been locked away since the Jimmy Carter administration, when the decision to create the wildlife refuge had people in Fairbanks burning the president in effigy.
Carter did some soul-searching not too long ago during a visit to the refuge he created. While in Alaska, the avid fisherman also visited Bristol Bay and caught grayling, arctic char and salmon. Most proudly, using a fly that he tied himself, Carter landed a 12-pound rainbow trout on the Copper River near where it drains into Iliamna Lake.
Reflecting on ANWR during a speech last January at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, W.Va., he quoted the Wilderness Society's former president, Olaus Murie, who spent decades campaigning for the creation of the refuge and famously described it as "a little portion of our planet left alone."
"I hope it can stay that way," Carter said.
That won't happen without a fight. With each new Congress, and each new administration since Ronald Reagan's, oil companies and Alaska lawmakers have tried again to allow for drilling on the refuge's coastal plain.
The calls for drilling in ANWR, which have so far been fended off by environmentalists and their Democratic allies in Congress, get louder every time gasoline prices rise.
There is no reason to think Bristol Bay will be any different. The developers have sometimes been heckled when they have come to fishing towns such as Dillingham, but the allure of the minerals in the ground is strong -- and getting stronger.
Gold is trading at more than $1,300 an ounce, mainly because it is seen as a safe investment at a time of economic turmoil, but also because the amount of new gold pulled from the ground has dropped by 10 percent over the last decade. Precious metals are becoming harder to find and more expensive to extract as miners go after the most profitable deposits.
Copper and molybdenum are starting to arouse that kind of attention because of their use in electronics and high-tech products favored by environmentalists, as the mine's supporters like to point out. Making an ordinary car takes about 50 pounds of copper, but battery-powered electric vehicles such as the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf need about three times as much. It can take four tons of copper to build a one-megawatt solar panel or wind turbine.
"Our demand for the resources that come from these projects is not going away," said Anglo American's Brune. "We have a choice: Do we develop the resources here in Alaska, or do we develop them in other parts of the world that don't have the same environmental oversight? To me, it's obvious -- you do it here."
Without large new sources of copper, prices will skyrocket, analysts at Vancouver-based Oren Inc. said this February in a typical memo to investors. That would eventually hit the average consumer in the pocketbook, making large deposits like Pebble too valuable to ignore, the company said.
"We fail to see how the small junior projects, which we do love, can produce enough supply to keep up with demand," the memo said. "We're through with the Lindsay Lohans; we're going to need Julia Roberts-style, expensive, ultra-deep mines. They're deposits everyone will want to drill."
Several of the mine's local critics said they are trying to remain hopeful about the years ahead, even if stopping Pebble today might only be buying them some time. Rick Delkittie Sr., a 55-year-old Nondalton native who has been a plaintiff in lawsuits to block the Pebble mine, said this fall's ballot initiative would do the trick, though it has been challenged in court.
"I think we're going to stop them," he said.
'Broader than just Pebble'
The deposit is only one of more than a half-dozen active mining claims in an 800-square-mile parcel of state land zoned for mining. By all indications, more riches are yet to be found.
Other mineral deposits are not as far along in the development process as Pebble, reflecting the huge cost of getting started in the remote wilderness of southwest Alaska. But the surrounding area could become a full-fledged mining district if the Pebble mine builds the needed infrastructure, said Jason Metrokin, the president of the influential Bristol Bay Native Corp.
Bringing the minerals from the Pebble deposit to market would require a power plant, a port facility and more than 100 miles of roads and pipelines, employing a staggering 2,000 workers in a borough of 8,000 people that would be the second-most sparsely populated county in the United States.
Because the Pebble deposit is on state land, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources is the main permitting authority, but the federal government also has control over a number of permits. Dennis McLerran, the administrator of EPA's Seattle-based Region 10 office, said in an interview that the agency won't decide whether to intervene until next summer at the earliest.
"Some of the other mining claims may be similar in scale. From our point of view, it is broader than just Pebble," McLerran said.
Metrokin's company, a congressionally chartered native corporation with annual revenue of $1.7 billion, publicly came out against the Pebble project in 2009 after taking a neutral stance for years. Despite the chance of competing for lucrative contracts from Pebble, BBNC decided that the project's size, type and location are particularly ill-suited to coexist with the region's fishery, he said during an interview at the company's Anchorage headquarters.
BBNC got out of the fish-processing business years ago. The company now focuses on construction and fuel services. But many of its shareholders are commercial fishermen; a survey released this fall showed that 81 percent of them oppose Pebble. On the floor of his building's lobby was the company logo: a salmon.
Leaks and accidents are almost inevitable with a project so large, Metrokin said, and "if there were to be a failure or a spill, what could that do to the demand for Bristol Bay salmon?"
Groups closer to the fishing industry have also turned their backs on Pebble.
The Pacific Seafood Processors Association (PSPA), a trade group with offices in Seattle, Juneau, Alaska, and McLean, Va., came out last month against the project, changing course from the group's previous stance that Pebble should be allowed to work toward its permits. PSPA had never before taken a stand against a specific development project, and "doing so now is not a decision our association takes lightly," the group wrote.
Offshore drilling also poses a risk. President Obama decided last year under pressure from fishermen and conservationists to leave Bristol Bay out of a federal offshore drilling plan that runs through 2017. In what was seen as a compromise, he allowed oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell PLC and ConocoPhillips Corp. to drill in the Arctic Ocean, off Alaska's North Slope.
Pebble would need dozens of permits to start construction, including a dredge-and-fill permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to comply with the Clean Water Act. If it so chooses, EPA could veto the permit.
The company's supporters say a single mine, no matter how large, could not possibly devastate a fishery relying on a watershed that stretches across an area the size of Maryland and New Jersey combined. But experts say salmon are highly dependent on genetic diversity for survival and would suffer from the loss of even a few spawning populations.
"The emerging understanding of biodiversity has really undercut our confidence that we can have our copper and molybdenum and eat our salmon, too," Van Putten said.
Debate moves to Capitol Hill
EPA scientists studying Bristol Bay are mainly based in Seattle, but their work has unleashed a wave of lobbying on Capitol Hill and turned Pebble into the subject of a national political debate.
Earlier this year, Anglo American CEO Cynthia Carroll met with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who was also booked to speak about her agency's study at an anti-Pebble reception hosted by Sandra Day O'Connor, the former Supreme Court justice. That same week, dozens of chefs gathered at an upscale Washington, D.C., restaurant to serve Alaskan salmon and decry the mining project.
Shively, the CEO of the Pebble Partnership, was in Washington, D.C., at the same time. One of his stops was at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, where he gave a speech that was provocatively titled: "United States of America: A Second-World Country?"
He argued that the United States is being sapped of its economic vitality because it has become so difficult to extract resources. The Red Dog mine in remote northwest Alaska, which is responsible for 80 percent of U.S. zinc production and 5 percent of the world's supply, has a water pollution permit that requires water pumped into nearby streams to be cleaner than mineral water, which naturally contains trace amounts of metals and salts, Shively said.
At that point, he picked up a trash can, and into it, he poured a full bottle of imported Perrier water that was waiting for him at the podium. It was a prop he had used before during speeches in Alaska.
"The reason I'm doing this job is because I think if we can do it well, we'll change people's lives, and we'll change it for the better," Shively told the audience. "I don't want to do a project that kills all the fish and changes our lives for the worse. That's not my goal."
His speech resonated with Joe Reddan, a legislative affairs specialist at the U.S. Forest Service, who mourned the way Americans today think about natural resources. "I think we've met the enemy, and it is us," he told Shively during the event, paraphrasing the comic strip "Pogo."
That line was made famous by "Pogo" cartoonist Walt Kelly on a poster promoting the first Earth Day in 1970. It bore an image of the strip's main character standing in a swamp filled with trash, turning his face to the viewer with a look of despair.
Kelly meant people were consuming with reckless abandon and in the process had started taking the environment for granted. Reddan, a veteran forest ranger with an agency pin on his lapel, meant that the pendulum has swung too far the opposite way.
"Now, people think wood comes from Home Depot, and water comes from the faucet," Reddan said.
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subset: commoncrawl


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I was hanging out with people that hated me.. I have to make sure in the future how not to do that.
I never knew; its freaky to look back on it now.. I walked into a den of black widows and never knew it. I even tried to rescue some of the black widows. I must have been crazy. They weren't my people. I was out of my league. I was out of my head. I was living in fantasy land. I was legally delusional.
I need to understand what happened and make sure it never happens again. I have to make sure I don't get seduced by money, or big houses or boats or big names again. I really got seduced and caught up in the big name thing. The families with the big names, families that had money. I thought I was worth it. I didn't have anything, and it would be made very clear and very abruptly that I had nothing, and that it was time for me to leave. That my heart had no value, or its love for anyone from these families. it was a horror show for me. I don't ever want that to happen again. I valued myself with someone else's outsides. I cannot allow that to happen again.!
I felt that my worth was weighed in gold. real Gold!, I was a quick entertainment to these high echelons. The real me had no value to anyone. I was the biggest laughing-stalk. I did know I was being made a fool of.
Im going to have to rethink what I judge has important and what is not important. Iv'e learned that high economic are something I don't have, therefore its better to stay away. To many people are turncoats.
I went to each person for friendship. They never sought me out. Not one. I promoted myself. It was never attraction.. Ive learned the difference.
I thought I found nice people. None are nice!.. I have to learn what discernment is...!
Some of these relationships went on for months and years, all false. I was being used, I was being hated at the time and didnt know it.
I will talk it over with my therapist!!


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Born: 1923, Riga, Latvia
Describes massacre in the Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia [Interview: 1990]
The Germans occupied Riga in 1941, and confined the Jews to a ghetto. In late 1941, about 28,000 Jews from the ghetto were massacred at the Rumbula forest, near Riga. Steven and his brother were sent to a small ghetto for able-bodied men. In 1943 Steven was deported to the Kaiserwald camp and sent to a nearby work camp. In 1944 he was transferred to Stutthof and forced to work in a shipbuilding firm. in 1945, Steven and his brother survived a death march and were liberated by Soviet forces.
Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC


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Photographer's Note
This is a view of a section of the enormous wadi Ein Avdat, near the ancient Nabatean city of Avdat, now a UNESCO heritage site. The wadi hosts many different bird species, and ibex browse here. This view is taken looking more or less south towards the end of the wadi - there is a walking track that ends in a climb on stairs cut into the end of the wadi to the plateau at the top. The entrance is at Midreshet Ben Gurion, near Kibbutz Sde Boker. Its about 1 1/2 hours drive south of Beersheva.
Even in summer there is water in the pools, which of course fill up much more if there is rain in the region in winter.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Avdat for more information
Critiques | Translate
ikeharel (105090) 2013-08-20 5:09
Hello Alan,
Last time when I was in this fabulous canyon was in 1998, see here my pic. from back than.
The place had not change in the last millions of years, has a unique charm and your pic. well conveys this feeling.
Good depth, colors and bright daylight manegement.
Best regards,
jemaflor (134096) 2013-08-20 12:00
Hi Alan,
Nice cliffs and great depth effect with all these lines, well captured, the exposure is perfect, tfs.
Photo Information
- Copyright: Alan Kolnik (Alan_Kolnik) (620)
- Genre: Places
- Medium: Color
- Date Taken: 2013-08-06
- Categories: Nature
- Camera: Nikon D7000, Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC HSM
- Exposure: f/8, 1/250 seconds
- Photo Version: Original Version
- Date Submitted: 2013-08-20 4:11
- To ikeharel: Great picutre of Ein Avdat (1)
by Alan_Kolnik, last updated 2013-08-20 06:18


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Paulownia are planted primarily for timber production. The decoratively grained timber is soft and easy to work, but strong for its weight and does not easily warp or split. Paulownia timber air dries well, thus eliminating or reducing the expense of kiln drying. As it is a pale timber, plantation grown Paulownia can be stained to imitate a wide range of other timber types and can be used to replace tropical rainforest timbers. Uses include doors, window frames and other interior fittings as well as furniture and anywhere light but relatively strong and visually attractive timber panels are required, such as boats and aircraft.
Paulownia trees are also useful for various biomass applications, fodder, shade, protection for crops, prevention of land degradation through erosion or salinity, honey production during the spring and their outstanding value as a fast growing landscape and feature tree. They are also very effective as a sink for waste water with the ability to rapidly convert nutrient rich effluent into useful wood and biomass. Their fast growth and large leaf area also make Paulownia highly efficient in the sequestration of carbon, thus helping to combat global warming.
Paulownia have a natural distribution ranging from latitude 22° to 40° in China (tropical to cool temperate) with P. fortunei also extending into Vietnam and Laos. Paulownia tomentosa also grows in Korea and Japan. Paulownia taiwaniana, P. kawakamii and P. fortunei are indigenous to Taiwan.
The most important requirements to consider when choosing a site for Paulownia are very well draining soil, summer rainfall or availability of irrigation water, sunny aspect, ease of access for planting and harvesting and proximity to the target market or a port. The latter is not quite as important with Paulownia as with most timber trees as the light weight and high value of the timber makes longer distance transportation more viable.
The soil must be well drained because any more than three or four days of waterlogging is enough to cause fatal root rot - especially in winter when the trees are dormant. They perform best in deep soils with a water table at least 1.5m deep. Paulownia are tolerant of a wide range of pH from 5 to 8 and research comparing soil and foliage analysis on various soils indicate Paulownia can selectively absorb calcium and magnesium from the soil. Paulownia are indigenous to zones that receive summer rainfall, therefore in drier areas artificial irrigation is required.
TGG Headstarters™ can be planted almost all year round in tropical zones, avoiding the driest and wettest periods (although if irrigation is provided they can be planted during the dry). In other climates they can be planted from spring (after the last frost) to mid autumn, although it is usually best to avoid planting out in the hottest part of the year - if you must plant in hot weather the results are usually very good as long as you avoid planting during extremely hot or windy days, make sure the soil is moist before planting and water them in immediately after planting.


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Building Table, High / 3.095 dkk
Designed by Bicolter
Building Table is a multifunctional table available in two sizes which are easy to combine and 'build' in various creative ways. The table is angular and designed with a geometric line that highlights the space in the box-alike form.Perfect next to your bed or couch.
- Details
- Oak / Dark blue
FSC Mix
LxWxH: 40x40x49 cm
Item no. 1490005
- Packaging
- WxDxH: 42x42x52 cm
Weight: 18,5 kg
- Material and care
Proper usage and maintenance
Proper usage and maintenance is vital for getting the most out of the valuable resources we have. Our designs are made to last for generations, but just like everything else, they need a little care to get there.
Painted Oak
Oak grows in most temperate zones. The Skagerak oak comes from European forests and is either 100% FSC certified or FSC mix certified, harvested under sustainable forest management. The selection of the wood is extremely careful and all processing is by hand, so that only the best and most durable pieces of wood are used in production.
Oak is a sturdy and hardwearing type of wood containing natural tannins that will protect against bacterial growth. As an open grain wood, Oak absorbs colour really well and leaves graphic traces of the natural texture visible on the surface.
When painted, your product requires no maintenance other than cleaning with a damp cloth. The best result is obtained by wiping over with a dry cloth afterwards. Ordinary cleaning products may be used to remove stubborn dirt.
About the designer / Bicolter
"Our approach is to go further into the quality of shape and sensibility for proportions. To combine elements with a pinch of storytelling. To bring warmth and passion through objects". Bicolter is a Spanish design studio made up by Olivia Salcedo and Saulo Santana. They met each other in the Catalan capital of Barcelona while studying Product Design and set up the studio in 2012 right after graduation. They mainly find their inspiration from daily work around shapes and materials – but also through research on culture and the consciousness of object's meaning and perceived functionality.


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Biography Cultureel Jongerencentrum P3
Albums | Singles | Compilations | Other | Guestperformance
In the discography you will find all recordings that have been released listed chronologically. We restrict ourselves to the title, the type of audio, year of publication or recording, label, list of guest musicians, plus any comments on the issue.
Audio/Video Cultureel Jongerencentrum P3
No audio- or video material is yet available.
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GOP's $4.6T 'fiscal cliff' counterproposal rebuffed
- The House plan is likely to be opposed by Democrats
- Democrats insist on higher taxes for the wealthy
- Republicans want to close tax loopholes and cap deductions
WASHINGTON — House Republicans sent a counterproposal to avert the "fiscal cliff" to the White House on Monday outlining a $4.6 trillion deficit reduction proposal without raising tax rates.
President Obama and Senate Democrats have said that without a deal to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans there is no path forward to avert the fiscal cliff at the end of the year when George W. Bush-era tax rates expire and $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years are triggered.
The Republicans' proposal is based on a framework outlined last year by former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, who co-chaired Obama's debt commission, and included an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare benefits. Republicans did not offer specific language on raising the age in their proposal, but Bowles has supported raising the age to 67. Boehner called it a "la-la land offer" on Monday.
Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, also discussed gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 during their unsuccessful talks on deficit reduction in 2011.
"What we're putting forth is a credible plan that deserves serious consideration by the White House and I would hope that they would respond in a timely and responsible way," Boehner told reporters.
The GOP offer is in response to a White House plan presented to congressional leaders last week by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, which was dismissed by GOP leaders who said its $1.6 trillion request for new tax revenue without comparable spending cuts or entitlement changes was an unserious proposal.
The House GOP plan received a similar reception Monday from White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, who said the Republican plan "does not meet the test of balance. In fact, it actually promises to lower rates for the wealthy and sticks the middle class with the bill. Their plan includes nothing new and provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve. Independent analysts who have looked at plans like this one have concluded that middle class taxes will have to go up to pay for lower rates for millionaires and billionaires."
Bowles also took issue with the House plan.
"While I'm flattered the Speaker would call something 'the Bowles plan,' the approach outlined in the letter Speaker Boehner sent to the president does not represent the Simpson-Bowles plan, nor is it the Bowles plan," Bowles said in a statement released Monday afternoon.
"Every offer put forward brings us closer to a deal, but to reach an agreement, it will be necessary for both sides to move beyond their opening positions and reach agreement on a comprehensive plan which avoids the fiscal cliff and puts the debt on a clear downward path relative to the economy," Bowles' statement said.
At Monday's briefing at the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said: "What the president believes is that you cannot mathematically achieve the kinds of revenue that are necessary for that balanced approach through any other means. So rates have to rise. And the Republicans need to acknowledge ... that's the only way to get from here to there."
The House Republicans' proposal was short on specifics but calls for $800 billion in new revenue achieved through closing loopholes and capping deductions; $900 billion in health care and other mandatory spending cuts; $300 billion in spending cuts for discretionary spending, which includes social programs such as food stamps; and $200 billion gained by changing the way the government calculates cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and Medicare.
The GOP plan achieves enough in deficit reduction to turn off the $1.2 trillion automatic spending cuts at the end of the year to resolve that component of the "fiscal cliff," two senior GOP congressional aides said. They spoke anonymously because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the details of the proposal.
The GOP plan does not include any proposal on how to raise the debt ceiling, which is another non-starter for the White House which wants to use the fiscal cliff negotiations to include an agreement to raise the debt ceiling in February when the U.S. is expected to hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit. The president wants to avoid another debt limit fight with congressional Republicans like the one that rattled Wall Street in the summer of 2011.
Boehner will attend a holiday reception at the White House tonight. Asked if he would discuss his proposal with the president he quipped: "I might run in to him."


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Starchy leftovers taking up valuable refrigerator space? Turn them into something delicious!
On the Paleo diet or watching carbs? Cauliflower "rice" will thrill your palate.
Make delicious and frugal rice even more delicious with a few additions — many of which you already have in your pantry.
You know rice and beans are healthy and delicious. But did you know there are as many ways to prepare rice and beans as there are beans in the bag? Here're 35 to get you started.
Did you know that there are over 140,000 varieties of cultivated rice? Besides being a delicious and versatile cooking grain, it has some other very unusual uses.
In the Philippines, they're threatening life sentences for people hoarding rice. In the United States, grocers need to put limits on rice purchases just to keep their shelves
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has set a vote for Wednesday on a bipartisan plan for expanding background checks to more gun buyers, with supporters facing an uphill path to victory.
The agreement ensures a showdown over the cornerstone of an effort by gun control supporters to tighten firearms laws after December's killings of 26 students and aides at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
The Senate planned to vote on eight other amendments as well to a Democratic gun control bill that expands background checks, tightens laws against gun trafficking and boosts school safety aid.
They included Democratic proposals to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips, a Republican proposal requiring states to honor other states' permits allowing concealed weapons and a broad GOP substitute for the measure.


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I want one! This is awesome!…as long as you are in clear water, that is! This will not work at all on the Mississippi River where I live! – John Loeffler, Fountain City, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
44.131908 -91.718763
Posted by John Loeffler | Filed under boats, designs, engineering, Photos, submarine boats, submarines, Technology, underwater boats