How Long Should It Take To Build Or Repair Public Works?

 [A note.  I thought I posted this this morning.  But when I came back, it was not there.  Not even the draft.  That hasn't happened in a long time.  I'm pretty sure I hit publish.  I know for sure I had a complete draft.  I wasn't ready to rewrite it, so I took a walk, hoping it would mysteriously show up.  It hasn't.  Maybe this second attempt will be better than the first.  I had a bunch of links.  Maybe you don't need them.  But I don't like to post half-assed either.  Let's see what happens.  I'm going to save this much.  Shut blogger down.  Turn it back on, then see if the missing post was hiding somewhere and decided to stop messing with me.]

[Note 2:  I shut down all the Blogspot windows and then opened one back up and there was my old post.  Glad I didn't start writing it all over.  I highly recommend taking walks.] 

[Note 3:  I see the problem now.  I wrote this as a "Page" which is what Blogger calls 'tabs'.  So it didn't show up as a Post, but rather as a Tab, which doesn't show up on the main page. You can find the current tabs up on top, below the orange header.]

An article in yesterday's Los Angeles Times reports that a damaged part of a critical freeway (The 10, or the Santa Monica Freeway as I knew it when it was first built) would be completed by Tuesday instead of the original five week estimate.  

"Publicly, state officials stood by that timeline for most of this week, saying the freeway was likely to reopen in December. But behind the scenes, according to a Caltrans engineer familiar with the project, crews were scrambling to hit a more ambitious target and have the overpass ready for Thanksgiving travel.

The work paid off, and on Thursday, Newsom confirmed what the Caltrans crews had been working toward: All lanes in both directions will be open to traffic by Tuesday “at the latest,” he announced, though repair work will be ongoing."

The damage was caused by a large fire under the bridge a week ago Saturday.  If the Tuesday date pans out, then will be 10 days from damage to repair.  

Earlier this year a major bridge in Philadelphia collapsed.  The initial repair time estimates were "weeks or months."

"Workers are beginning to rebuild the collapsed section of Interstate 95 outside Philadelphia. Construction is expected to take weeks or months, and have ramifications up and down the East Coast."

In the end it took just 12 days. 

"Six lanes reopened to motorists at noon on Friday, 12 days after a bridge collapsed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced."

In the case of LA, the quick reopening was credited to  the bridge structure not being as severely damaged as expected.  An unnamed engineer told the LA Times political pressure was also involved::

“'Go faster. The political heat is on.'

There has been 'a dead-heat, crazy push to get this bridge open by Monday or Tuesday,'”

I've been wondering, in recent years, why things like road construction in Anchorage seem to take forever. 

•  Is it because the work can only be done in the summer so contractors take on lots of projects and work on one project for a while, then another, then back to the first ones?  
• Are they just stretching out the work for more pay?  That seems unlikely because the pay should be settled in the contract with bonuses for being early and penalties for being late.  
• Is the Municipality or the State Department of Transportation just not writing good contracts? 
• And why do the same roads seem to need to be redone over and over again? 
• I know there's an unhealthy relationship between the State DOT and the construction industry [a major engineering company has the contract to do public engagement and while the presentations to the public are first class, their financial interests have to bias them toward building every project and I've several projects where the public was overwhelmingly opposed but the state ignored the public]

I don't know the answers to these questions.  I know there are lots of complaints about driving around construction, but I don't know that anyone has undertaken a study to find out why things take so long.  

But these two highway projects that were completed much faster than originally scheduled  (in LA I'm assuming the Tuesday deadline will be met) reminded me of a visit to the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California some years ago.  

They built ships there for World War II and I recalled they were built in phenomenal speed.  So I looked it up again today.  

 "The Liberty ship Robert E. Peary was assembled in less than five days as a part of a competition among shipyards. By 1944, the yard routinely needed only a bit more than two weeks to assemble a Liberty ship.^[3]"  (From Wikipedia) 

A whole ship built in five days!!!!!

That's a model we should have before us at all times.  But also remember the conditions:

• That five day record was part of a competition among shipyards, so competition (in this case I don't think there were rewards other than psychic rewards) played a factor.
• There was the collective will to win a war.
• And women did much if not most of the work  (Need I say more?)

There's also another aspect that needs to be considered.  From the Rosie The Riveter Park site:

"Working conditions on the Home Front were difficult and dangerous. Between the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 and the D-Day Invasion of Europe in June of 1944, there were more Home Front industrial casualties than military casualties." (emphasis added) (from the National Park Service)

And there were some unanticipated benefits as well:  

"This high number of industrial casualties would lead to improved workplace safety and regulations, as well as better access to affordable health care. 

Another challenge faced by working women on the Home Front was childcare, as mothers comprised a significant portion of the work force. This led to the establishment of child development centers and the professional field of early childhood development."

Given the state of child care in the US today, I'd say these were short lived benefits, since after the war, when soldiers returned home, the women lost their jobs and were expected to go back to being housewives.  

I'd also note than when I wrote about Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park ten years ago, Bill Butler pointed out in the comments that the ships weren't meant to last long and they had lots and lots of workers putting together modular ships.  

I do hope though that we start getting reporters looking into the title question - how long should public projects take?  Why do they take so long?  When and how can they be sped up if necessary?  

And it's not just public projects.  Alaska Communications (ACS) started putting fiber optic into my neighborhood last June or July.  The door to door salesman said the new high speed internet would be ready in three to four weeks.  The confirmation email from ACS said 12-14 weeks.  Then at the end of summer,  a new email said something like, "Well, you know, construction doesn't always go as planned. This project won't be ready until next year." 

We saw signs of work - bright orange cables lying around - and sometimes we even saw workers digging trenches.  But it seemed like there was far more work to do than workers to do it.  Meanwhile ACS has my (and how many others') payment for the high speed internet we were supposed to be enjoying as of several months ago, but haven't gotten yet.  

 

Rosie The Riveter Has A National Park

The National Park Service has an Historical Park honoring Rosie the Riveter.  I'm going to do this in two parts.  This one shows a plant next to the museum.


It seems that today they use it for events.

 From Wikipedia:

"To ensure that America prepared for total war by mobilizing all the industrial might of the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt banned the production of civilian automobiles during WWII. The Richmond Ford Assembly Plant switched to assembling jeeps and to putting the finishing touches on tanks, half-tracked armored personnel carriers, armored cars and other military vehicles destined for the Pacific Theater. By July 1942, military combat vehicles began flowing into the Richmond Ford plant to get final processing before being transported out the deep-water channel to the war zones. The "Richmond Tank Depot" (only one of three tank depots in the country) as the Ford plant was then called, helped keep American fighting men supplied with up-to-the-minute improvements in their battle equipment. Approximately 49,000 jeeps were assembled and 91,000 other military vehicles were processed here.
In mobilizing the wartime production effort to its full potential, Federal military authorities and private industry began to work closely together on a scale never seen before in American history. This laid the groundwork for what became known as the "military-industrial complex" during the Cold War years.^[2] This Assembly Plant was one cog in the mobilization of the "Arsenal of Democracy" and a historic part of what is today's industrial culture of the United States."

And here is a photo they had when it was being used to build tanks.











Next to it was the engine room that today has been converted into a restaurant.  I first looked in from the main room into the kitchen.

Then in the dining area, which wasn't open, but they let us in.

 

The museum was next door and I'll try to get some stuff up on that later.  It's actually a temporary exhibit until the new design is finished and the permanent exhibit goes in. 

Here's a followup post on some of the women who worked here.

AIFF 2017: Shorts In Competition - The Robbery, Temporary, Must Kill Karl, Iron, Whoever Was Using This Bed, Game, Cold Storage, Temporary, Couples Night, Brain Storm, 8 A.M.

Shorts are fiction 10 - 55 minutes.  In competition means they were selected to be eligible for a festival award. Super Shorts are under 10 minutes.

Shorts are generally shown in groups, called programs.  The shorts in competition this year fall neatly into two programs.  The first is "Shorts on the Edge"  but it's also called "Opening Night Soirée."
The second program is called "Love and Pain."  I've color coded them to make it even easier.

BUT,  I've combined the shorts and super shorts on the chart below, since they are showing together in the programs.  The super shorts have an * after them.

To make it easy for you to figure out when and where to see these films, I've divided the list of shorts in competition into two groups so you can see what program they're in, and when and where each program is shown.

[NOTE: I try to be completely accurate here, but there's a lot of details and I can make a mistake.  To be safe, double check the times and locations before you go. If you see an error please let me know in the comments or via email - in right column above blog archive.]

The first program is:

Opening Night Soiree

Fri Dec 1  Bear Tooth  7 pm

Shorts on the Edge

Sat Dec 9  AK Exp Sm  9 pm

Shorts In Competition	Director	Country	Length
Cold Storage*	Thomas Freundlich	Finland	9 min
Game	Jeannie Donohoe	USA	15 min
Whoever Was Using This Bed	Andrew Kotatko	Australia	20 min
Iron	Gabriel Gonda	USA	17 min
Must Kill Karl	Joe Kick	Canada	12 min
The Robbery	Jim Cummings	USA	15 min
8:AM*	Emily Pando	USA	5 min
Brain Storm*	Christophe Clin	Belgium	6 min
Couples Night*	Russell & Robert Summers	USA	4 min
Temporary	Milena Govich	USA	12 min

Remember, the blue ones are in the program called:

Love and Pain

Which shows: 

Sat Dec 2 AK Exp Large  12 pm

Fri Dec 8 AK Exp Small  7pm

* means it's a Super Short.


###############################################


This first group of shorts in competition all are part of the Opening Night Soirée which repeats as the program "Shorts on the Edge."  I've done it this way to help you identify which films are shown together so you can easily find when and where to see them.  

If they are in red, they are together in this program.  

Also, both Shorts and Super Shorts* are together in the same programs, but they are eligible for separate awards.  The * marks the Super Shorts.  These are films under 10 minutes long.

Opening Night Soirée

  Fri  Dec 1 Bear Tooth  7pm

Shorts on the Edge

Sat Dec 9 Ak Exp Small 9pm

**********************************************

Cold Storage* (*Super Short)

Thomas Freundlich

Finland

9 min

This one should appeal to all Alaskans, especially ice fishers, glacial archeologists, and dancers.

From the film's webpage:

"Thomas Freundlich is one of the leading practitioners in Finland’s vibrantly growing independent dance film scene. Mr. Freundlich’s work ranges from dance shorts, documentary work, performance videography and 3D projects to music videos and projection design for the stage. His work has been seen at dozens of film festivals worldwide as well as broadcast TV both in Finland and internationally. From 2012 to 2014, Mr. Freundlich was the co-artistic director of Finland’s Loikka dance film festival."

Cold Storage :: Trailer from Thomas Freundlich on Vimeo.

**********************************************

Game

Jeannie Donohoe

USA

15 min

This story takes place during tryouts for the high school basketball team.  It's a very well made film.  To add a little moral crunch to all this, the Weinstein Company was involved with this film.  Just yesterday (Nov 20), I read an article from the Paris Review, "What Do We Do With The Art Of Monstrous Men?"  I suspect that the Weinstein Company, particularly Harvey Weinstein had little to do with the making of this film.  But it's something to think about as you watch this gem of a film.  I know this film is good because you can watch it online, and I did.   Below is a trailer.  I'd note, watching it online probably won't take anything from the experience of seeing it on the big screen opening night of the festival.  There's lots I'm sure I missed the first time.

**********************************************

Whoever Was Using This Bed

Andrew Kotatko

Australia

20 min

Go to the the film's website.  Scroll through the credits and connections of the cast and the director and others.  This is NOT a film by new faces showing what they can do in hopes of making it.  But the fact that these aren't newcomers to the film industry tells us something about the competitiveness of the world of film-making.




**********************************************

Iron

Gabriel Gonda

USA

17 min

From Iron's Facebook page

"Iron is a short period drama set in the Pacific NorthWest inspired by the true stories of women railroad workers during the early 1900’s.  

Lily Cohen escapes the the crowded tenements of New York to take on a demanding railway job. Determined to work on a steam engine, a position not traditionally held by women, Lilly faces the hostility of her fellow railroad workers while finding her own inner strength. 

While America is very familiar with the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter, the women laborers of the First World War are mostly forgotten by history. The American railroad represented freedom and adventure in a time when most women had very little opportunity for either. These opportunities disappeared when the soldiers returned home."

Iron - Crowdfunding Main from Lautaro Gabriel Gonda on Vimeo.

**********************************************

Must Kill Karl

Joe Kick

Canada

12 min

I haven't seen the whole movie, but the trailer . . .   judge for yourself.  I had it up here for a day or two as I worked on the rest of the films.  I decided to take it down because I thought the thumbnail was gross and I didn't see any redeeming features that would make it worth keeping up.  I'm not censoring it - you can go watch it here.  Remember, the programmers thought it was worth being 'in competition'.  I'm waiting to be pleasantly surprised.

**********************************************

The Robbery

Jim Cummings

USA

15 min

Cummings won the best Short Award last year at AIFF with his film "Thunder Road."  It also won at Sundance which led to a slew of opportunities which are described in this IndieWire article.  The article also includes a full version of of The Robbery.  I don't recommend seeing it now if you plan to see it at the festival.  I'm not sure how much it offers with additional viewings.

It's about a robbery that goes badly.  It's well made.  It spoofs our national (global?) cell phone addiction among other things.

###############################################

This second group of shorts in competition all are part of the program "Love and Pain."  I've done it this way to help you identify which films are shown together so you can easily find when and where to see them.  

If they are in blue, they are together in this program  Also, both Shorts and Super Shorts* are together in the same programs, but they are eligible for separate awards.  

The * marks the Super Shorts.  These are films under 10 minutes long.  

In this group, all but "Temporary" are Super Shorts.

Love and Pain

Sat Dec, 2  12pm AK Exp Large

Frit Dec 8  AK Exp Small 7pm

**********************************************

8:AM*

Emily Pando

USA

5 min

Can't find much on this film, though it was at the festival in August 2016, the Cleveland International Film Festival and the Seattle International Film Festival's Shorts Fest this year if I'm reading the Facebook page right.  

**********************************************

Brain Storm* (Remue-Meninges)

Christophe Clin

Belgium

6 min

(Also Showing at Martini Matinee - Friday December 8, 2017 2:00pm - 4:00pm)

Another film that's got few internet footprints.  From Augohr:

"What happens in our heads when we are about to meet someone on the street? Anguish, prejudice, expectation, surprise, disappointment … These few very brief moments are the nest of a real brainstorm!"

I had to look much harder to find Christophe's Vimeo page. (His Youtube page was blank. You really don't need a link to a blank Youtube channel.)  But it was worth the effort.  (Actually, if you only google his name, there's more, mostly in French.)

This is one of the most tantalizing trailers I've seen. It could be a super short all its own.

 
REMUE MENINGES (2017) - TRAILER from Christophe Clin on Vimeo.

**********************************************

Couples Night*

Russell & Robert Summers

USA

4 min

This is a four minute movie.  What do you want?  A ten second trailer?  Christophe Clin found a way to do a trailer for a six minute movie (above) but . . . And why would you want a description?  This is part of a program of other shorts.  Just sit back and watch it.  I can give you one hint - it's been in some horror movie festivals.  

**********************************************

Temporary

Milena Govich
USA
12 Min

The first few minutes of this probably tells you what you need to know about this film.  It comes from her Kickstarter page and I found the embed code at Vimeo.

  

Temporary - A film by Milena Govich from Troy Foreman on Vimeo.

**********************************************

I'd also note there are other Shorts programs.  Global Village has a series of international shorts.
There are Made In Alaska shorts.  And Martini Matinee will play a mix of narrative shorts, short docs, and animation.  I'm not totally caught up (and probably will never be) with all these programs but I did want to give you an alert that the narrative shorts and super shorts in competition aren't the only shorts.

Ludie Mitchell, Ollie Hawkins, and Ruth Powers - Three Rosies

Rosie the Riveter was the symbol of the women who worked to support the military effort in World War II.  The Historic National Park honoring these women, and the other workers, is full of information and I'm going to just offer a bit over several posts.  I don't want to load people down so you skip things.  These are personal stories that tell a lot more than the facts.  But I'll give a few facts too.

Sorry, it's too small to read.  Here's a bit from this description of Ollie Hawkins who was born in 1913 and would be celebrating her 100th birthday this year:

"Ollie felt the urge to help out during the war, which is one of the reasons why she came from out of state (Flagstaff, Arizona) as many others did, to work in the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond.  She recalls that it was really hard for women alone to find a place to stay.  Sometime, one woman would sleep in a bunk during the day and at night another woman would take her place.  It was a problem on their days off!  She went to the Housing Bureau and insisted on her own place, threatening to go back home if she didn’t get one and, of course, she got one.  By the time the war ended she had become a journeyman welder.  The welding lines weighed about 200 pounds each -- a person had to have lots of strength and endurance."

Ruth Powers worked at day care centers for the men and women working at the shipyards.

“Being strong-willed, Mrs. Ludie Mitchel told us of the pride she felt while working in the war effort.  “Like all learning,” she said, “welding was difficult.”  and she cried often when she was unable to do it correctly.  Eventually she mastered the craft and was allowed to work on high corners and main joints.”

It also says she went on to appear in

“many television commercials and was an extra in the Clint Eastwood film True Crime.”

I think this info plaque gives a sense of the impact of the war on women working.

I'll add more in a later post.  There are also stories about Blacks working in the war effort.  And the high death rate among defense workers - they said more died at home in the war effort than in battle!

Here's another post on this National Historic Park.

WW II Shipbuilders Put Out Ships In A Week, Why Nine Months Plus For Tustumena Repairs?

The Department of Transportation put out a press release with the following headline:

Tustumena Return to Service Delayed Indefinitely,
Schedule to be Reconfigured to Meet Community Needs

The Tustumena has been in repair since November 2012.  We're four months shy of a year now.  

All this brought to mind our visit to the Rosie The Riveter National Park in Richmond, California earlier this year.  It's a Historical Park in honor of the World War II ship builders  who put together whole ships in a week or less sometimes!
 
From a long essay at a National Park Service site on WWII ship building practices, we learn: 

"During World War I, steel shipbuilding followed tradition, calling for riveted hulls with each vessel custom built on site, a labor intensive, relatively slow process. In 1917, for example, a typical steel vessel took 12 to 14 months from keel-laying to delivery. At the peak of production in World War II, the work could be accomplished in four to six days." (emphasis added)

 From another Park Service page: 

The Liberty Ship Robert E. Perry was assembled in less than five days as a part of a special competition among shipyards; but by 1944 it was only taking the astonishingly brief time of a little over two weeks to assemble a Liberty ship by standard methods. Henry Kaiser and his workers applied mass assembly line techniques to building the ships. This production line technique, bringing pre-made parts together, moving them into place with huge cranes and having them welded together by "Rosies" (actually "Wendy the Welders" here in the shipyards), allowed unskilled laborers to do repetitive jobs requiring relatively little training to accomplish. This not only increased the speed of construction, but also the size of the mobilization effort, and in doing so, opened up jobs to women and minorities.

I understand that regulations for the ships and for the workers were a lot less stringent in those days, but if they could build a whole ship in five days, they ought to be able to repair one in less than a year.  

Is it because this administration is lax in oversight of its contractors?  Is Seward Ship’s Drydock just not competent for a job like this?  Or that ferry service is a low priority?  Or perhaps maintenance was delayed so long that there were lots of unexpected problems as the Fairbanks News Miner reported earlier this year:

"The 50-year-old ship went in for maintenance in November, and it turned out to be in worse shape than thought. It will now be in the shipyard until June, the Kodiak Daily Mirror reported. "

I'm sure there are other possibilities and probably more than just one applies.

I'm using the WW II shipbuilding times just to give this situation some perspective.  If the right people really cared, this could have been done a long time ago.  Meanwhile the people out on the Aleutian Chain are still waiting for their ferry service. 

1913 Cadillac, Lazy Geese, And Other Lake Merritt Run Encounters

We're staying with friends in Oakland and I ran down from their house around Lake Merritt and back.  It's a beautiful day and here are a few shots.

Oaktown Art says:

"This is actually Alameda County’s Fifth Courthouse. The fourth was a real stunner, built in the Parisian Second Empire Style with a domed central tower and four miniature corner towers… see historical photo below. It was opened in 1875, located between 4th and 5th Streets at Broadway, and for over 50 years served “as a powerful symbol of the importance and wealth of what was then California’s fourth most populous county.” Sadly, it fell out of favor before the modern historic preservation movement and was ultimately replaced and eventually demolished. (Courthouse historical placard)" [The link has a picture of the demolished court house.  It was pretty spectacular.]

 

Guitarist embraced by eucalyptus tree

I couldn't help thinking that these Canada Geese were a bit lazy, hanging out here in Oakland instead of going on to Alaska with the others.  But, we're probably better off without all of them coming our way.  

I'm afraid my shot of the Scottish Rites Temple was too bright to see all the carvings and even the name.  And I'm getting hints to get off of here so we can go on our afternoon sightseeing to the Rosie the Riveter Visitor Center.  Here's a link to the Scottish Rites Temple Oakland website.

This picture is for my friend Des who comes from Hunan originally.

I took the wrong turn going back and asked for directions from this gentleman who was working on his 1913 Cadillac (yes, that makes it 100 years old) in his garage.