Stardust Ball
Dear Editor: Raven Radio’s 2016 Stardust Ball and Lip Sync Extravaganza was a complete success.
The 600 party-goers in amazing costumes and over-the-top lip sync made for a spectacular Stardust. Thanks are in order to many people; apologies if you were left out.
First, thanks ALPS Federal Credit Union and Petro Marine Services for their sponsorship. Thanks to Nervis Rex from Anchorage for keeping the party hoppin’. The energy was incredible and filled Harrigan Centennial Hall with dancers until the wee hours. Thanks also to the Fly-In Fish Inn for housing the band, the House of Liquor for supplies for the band, and Adam Litten and the Sitka Hotel for donating a portion of the bar proceeds to Raven Radio. Thanks to J Bradley and Dan Littlefield for providing sound, and Belly Meat, Colin Herforth and all those who provided instruments and equipment for the show. Thanks also to Dana and Bryan Howey for the awesome decorating, and Sitka Ready Mix and Megan Pasternak for special Stardust decorations. Christine Davenport took excellent photos, which are now available for viewing at xtinepix.com. Thanks to lip sync judges Kasey Davis, Hillary Seeland and Phil Burdick and costume contest judges Monica Eastham, Kelsie Barbour and Rafi Bildner, and Golden Ticket givers Katherine Rose, Emily Russell, Dan Gunn and Ashia Lane, and Jackie and Michael LaGuire, your judgment is sound given the amazing creativity of the participants. Thanks to all the volunteers who helped before, during and cleaning up after the dance – we couldn’t do it without you. Thanks to Old Harbor Books for selling tickets. A big special thank you to the Harrigan Centennial Hall crew for the excellent service they provide, and for going above and beyond this year. And finally, Thank YOU for attending and helping to make the Stardust Ball a blast! See you next year!
Raven Radio Staff and Board
Ruling Elite
Dear Editor: Just like 9/11 was, 11/9 is, for America and indeed, the entire planet, “... the end of the world as we know it.”
Also like 9/11, while everything’s different, nothing has actually, really changed. At least today; at least not yet. If and when, and then how it does change, remains to be seen.
Because: the people who in most precise point of fact run this country, i.e., those who buy and sell, own and operate, and handle and control all the elected politicians, the career civilian and military bureaucrats, and the anointed political appointees – Mr. Trump’s “ruling elite” – have not changed in the slightest. This is evident from the re-election success rates of incumbents to Congress.
In a year that has already given us Brexit and the Chicago Cubs, a lot can happen in the two months between now and Inauguration Day, Jan. 20: when a Trump jumps up on the world stage to join a Putin, a Xi Jinping, a Kim Jong-un, a Netanyahu, an al-Assad, and et al; to say nothing of a resurgent European nationalistic socialism, and what’s left of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in what’s left of the Middle East. And, a lot can happen on Wall Street, and in the cybersphere, or during the holiday-flu season, as well.
Two-hundred-forty years after the First American Revolution, and 150 years after the First American Civil War, a lot can happen indeed. And during this period of transitional regime change, America and the world will begin to see just exactly how much - and to what degree – of an “outsider” Mr. Trump actually, really is and/or is not from that very same military-industrial, petro-financial, techno-media, surveillance-security complex to which Mrs. Clinton, like everybody else in Washington, pledges allegiance.
While, until early this morning, there was every legitimate reason to suspect that Donald Trump was the patsie in a conspiracy to put Hillary Clinton in the White House, seems to have turned out to be just exactly the opposite case: that The Hillary was a ploy in the plot to ensconse The Donald. “The Onion” headlines notwithstanding (“Nation Elects First Black-Hearted President” and “Nation Throws Off Tyrannical Yoke Of Moderate Respect For Women”), it wasn’t that America wasn’t ready for a woman to be president; it is simply that America wasn’t ready for that particular woman to be president.
It’s just not exactly clear right now exactly who among the oligarchy wanted, or at least probationarily assented to, Trump in the White House in the first place. By the time these next 10 weeks are up, chances are pretty good that we will all at least begin to have a pretty good idea.
J.G. Moebus, Sitka
