Studying Chinese in 2012 is a Lot Easier than It Was In 2003

Last night was our last session of the UAA Confucius Institute's community Chinese class until spring.  The teacher, Teng Fei, has been terrific, pushing us more than is comfortable, but not too much more.  Most important is that the two Confucius Institute teachers we've had used a great teaching method - lots of oral repetition, good grammar drills, and almost no English in class.

I'd say that this is pretty elementary stuff - a dialogue about people going to someone's birthday party.
A:  Wang Peng, what are you doing now?
B:  I'm reading.
A:  Today is Gao Xiao Yin's birthday.  This evening we're  going to have a dance party at her place.  Can you come?

But elementary in Chinese is relatively advanced in a lot of other languages.  You've got the tones to learn (what tones are) (hearing the tones)  and more than that, you've got to memorize each character.  Counting through the back of the book's glossary it looks like there's about 350 characters that we're supposed to know now.

How much could you say if you only knew 350 words of English?  [Here's a list of the 300 most common English words to give you an idea of both how much it is and how limited it is.]  Actually, speaking Chinese with just 350 words is probably easier than English because there is no conjugation of verbs for present, past, and future tense.  Some of that gets conveyed with words like today, next week, etc.  And there are some words you stick into the sentence that shows it's happened already or it's happening now.  (The character 呢 at the end of line one of the dialogue in the photo is supposed to show that she's asking about what he's doing right now.  Or you could just say "right now" instead.) So you don't have to fuss with I am, I was, I will be, etc.

But, there's always the characters.  And while there are some basic repeated parts of the characters - radicals - there's no real phonetic way to know how to pronounce each character.  You have to memorize each one.  But, knowing the radicals and their meaning can help in that task.

There is so much more online help today than there was in the past.  Chinese dictionaries are ingenious, but also painfully slow to use.  If you were looking up a character you had two options:


Option 1.  Stroke count.
a.  count the strokes in the character;
b.  then in the front of the dictionary there is a list of characters starting with one stroke, two stroke, three stroke, etc.  If the character you want to look up has five strokes, you go to the five stroke characters.  They're listed in stroke order (there's a set of rules for which stroke comes first, second, etc.)  Or you can just go down the list until you find the one you are looking for. 
c.  find the character you are looking for
d1.  in some dictionaries it then has a page number to go to
d2.  in other dictionaries it has the pinyin (phonetic alphabet) and then you can look it up alphabetically in that dictionary.



On the right is a page from a Chinese dictionary.  First you have one stroke characters.  One is a horizontal line 一 and two is two horizontal
lines 二。You can see there are only two one stroke characters listed and you can find them on pages 1037 and 1049.  Then there are more two stroke characters.  The first stroke in a character is the horizontal line stroke (if there is one).  There are four such two stroke characters listed.  Then the characters that start with the second stroke - the vertical line.  Just one listed, on page 60.  Then a diagonal stroke to the left.  These are just the two stroke characters.  Imagine trying to see the 10 stroke characters.  I often needed a magnifying glass.

As you can imagine, this took a while.  New students don't always count the strokes right.  Then you you have to go through long lists of characters to find the one you are looking for. (There are a lot more three, four, five and more stroke characters than one and two stroke characters.)



Option 2.  Radical
This is similar, but instead of starting with the number of strokes, you start with the main radical in the character, then go down the list of all the characters with that radical.  This assumes you can figure out the radical.

I spent more time thumbing through the dictionary to find the characters in the past attempts to study Chinese than learning the characters.

But now you can look up characters online.  Yellowbridge.com let's you find the character
a.  by writing the English
b.  writing the word in pinyin (the phonetic alphabet)
c.  writing the Chinese character - yes the have a little box (you would click the brush on the real page) where you can make the strokes with your cursor.  But you have to be close enough that the computer can figure out some characters it thinks you made, then you have to pick out your character from the list it gives you.  But that's true of each of these. 

Screenshot from Yellowbridge.comhttp://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinese-dictionary.php

And once you get the character you can listen to the pronunciation, see the etymology, see examples of other words that use the character.  Yellowbridge even has an online flashcard system that uses the vocabulary lists from the most used Chinese textbooks identified by each lesson.  So I could pick my book and chapter and do the flashcards online.  Here you can see the flashcards for the chapter we worked on today in class - this is just the vocabulary for the second dialogue of the chapter.

ArchChinese, which I found looking for the stroke order rules above, also looks like a lot of help.  It says it's been put together by Chinese teachers for K-12 and university student in the US.

So, things are much easier now.  And there are lots of different websites that offer great help.  And there are lots of YouTube videos so you can listen to the sounds.  But none of that substitutes for memorizing the characters and learning the dialogues and the grammar patterns, in writing and orally, which use very different parts of the brain.  It just makes it a little easier.

So, since last night was the last class until the spring, I thought I would recover that part of my life spent preparing each week for Chinese class.  But no.  We got homework to keep us busy until we start again, which, fortunately is not until late February.  (This is a community class, not a credit class.)  But much of what we need to do is review all the vocabulary, dialogues, and grammar that we've covered so far.  But we're also supposed to look ahead to the next six chapters (to the end of this book.)

But, I have to say, while my Chinese is very rudimentary, I am finding myself thinking in the patterns we've been learning and the vocabulary seems to be sticking a little better than in the past.  I think I've laid down enough tracks in my brain that this time it's working. 

Is The Pen/Brush Mightier Than The Keyboard?

Weekend Edition Sunday had an interview with author Philip Hensher and his love of the pen.  He wrote out his book, The Last Art of Handwriting, in longhand and talked about the intimacy people have with their writing instruments.

As I listened to the interview I was reminded of last week's lecture/class with Chinese calligraphist Harrison Xinshi Tu  at UAA presented by the Confucius Institute.     He too talked about the importance, in China, of four items:

the brush
the paper
the ink
the chop

You can see them all in the video below.  As he draws an artistic character and signs it and applies the chop. 

He pointed out they'd been used for 6000 years and still today calligraphy is done with the same materials as then. 






After going through the four elements needed, he then showed us the evolution of Chinese characters by drawing half a dozen or so and showing them changing over the years millennia.

The first three you should be able to figure out.  Basic parts of nature.  So is the fourth.  Stop and think about it a bit.  Actually, you shouldn't think, just relax and let it come to you.

OK, did you get the sun?  And if you didn't get the moon, it's probably hopeless.  Then mountains.  Then river.  Then man.  That's hard, but he's looking to the left with an arm hanging down  The last one is tree.  As Mr. Tu explained, the bottom half is the roots and the top half, the branches.  This row was what characters looked like 5,000-6,000 years ago.  About when the world started according to some of our science challenged fellow citizens.   Next is the chart after he completed it.  You can see how the characters got modified.  The second-to-the-last row are modern, simplified characters - the kind they use in China today.  Below that are the artistic versions of the characters. 

So going across, we have the sun, the moon, mountain, river (actually the modern character is the one for water), man, tree, sheep and fish.    On the far right top are two trees - a forest.  In the box on the right are two hands, which together mean friend.  the character in the lower right is 'you' (pronounced 'yo') or friend.

After he made the chart, he took it down and showed us how to make the six main strokes in Chinese characters.  Then we got a paper with the strokes and how to make them and some paper, a brush, and ink.

And then we made the basic strokes.

Here's one of my classmates from the Confucius Institute (at UAA) Chinese class, practicing the basic strokes.


So, between the two events - the NPR interview with Philip Hensher and the Calligraphy demonstration, I've been thinking about how the keyboard has taken me away from the pen.  There is something more satisfying about holding a pen and not just writing, but consciously creating the letters, beautifully, on the page.  The pen as an extension of my finger, flowing out words.  Words that spill my thoughts onto the paper.

But some of that happens at the keyboard, but my physical connection to the shape and size and heaviness or lightness of the line is gone.  The clues about who I am that Kensher says the handwriting leaves, that personal touch, is missing.  Every letter is so ruthlessly perfect.

Of course, like with most things, the answer, if there is an answer, is to find some balance, and nowadays, for many of us, we are far too heavily tilted to the keyboard.  Maybe I should hand write out some posts, take pictures, and post them.  But images are not readable online to those who can't see well and have to use software that converts the writing to voice. 

There's a part of me that never takes anything for granted.  Perhaps it's the legacy of my parents' world in Germany collapsing and having to flee to the US.  Everything but what  they were able to take with them was gone.  In any case, there's always this part of me that assumes all I have could disappear.  If a Sandy happened to me, it wouldn't be totally unexpected.  And so part of me has never totally trusted all the miracles of the electronic age.  When the electricity goes off, it's the tools of our ancestors that will get us through.  I have no confidence that my grandchildren will ever see this blog unless I make hard copies of it.  And then the video and links will be gone, but something will be left.

And there are others that are concerned about the lost skill of writing.  The SAT's have    added a handwritten essay.  From a 2005 Seattle Times article, 

An estimated 300,000 high-school students across the nation took the new SAT yesterday for the first time. The College Board revised the exam after being faced with the threat of major institutions dropping it as a requirement. The most sweeping change is a new writing section — 35 minutes of multiple-choice questions and the 25-minute essay.

The reverberations were felt yesterday on the third floor of the W Hotel in downtown Seattle, as well. More than 50 Puget Sound-area grade-school teachers were learning how to teach their students handwriting, a skill that some may have thought the computer keyboard rendered obsolete. Some elementary schools no longer teach cursive.

"They stopped training teachers how to teach handwriting in most colleges and universities about 25 years ago," said Jan Olsen, an occupational therapist who developed a handwriting curriculum a decade ago. "But instead of putting something reasonable in place, they just dropped it," she said.

A 2010 NY Times article says, though that only 15% of students choose the handwritten essay.  One professor is quoted:

Richard S. Christen, a professor of education at the University of Portland in Oregon, said, practically, cursive can easily be replaced with printed handwriting or word processing. But he worries that students will lose an artistic skill.

“These kids are losing time where they create beauty every day,” Professor Christen said. “But it’s hard for me to make a practical argument for it. I’m not one who’s mourning it because of that; I’m mourning the beauty, the aesthetics.”

 And when you look at the calligraphy video, you'll see Mr. Tu quickly drawing an artistic character.




 All the electronic devices are fine, IF we don't lose our connection to nature and the natural tools that humans have always used and the skills to use them.  Have you hand written a letter lately?   

Odds and Ends

I've got a backlog of things I want to post.  Here's a preview of what I'm hoping to get up:

Election night I was an observer when they brought the voting machines and materials to election headquarters.  I've got pictures and some video plus comments on how things went.  Generally it seems well organized, but there are lots of places where unscrupulous people could mess with the system if they wanted to.

The Citizens Climate Lobby had its monthly meeting Saturday and heard from Dr Wendy Hill on the health consequences of global climate change.  Then on Thursday I went with CCL Anchorage coordinator Jim Thrall to meet with the news manager and meteorologists at Channel 11 to discuss how they cover climate change issues on the air.  We also had an Alaska climate expert from Fairbanks there by phone.

Chinese class continues to consume lots of time.  I do want to write about some of this.  Particularly how much easier it is to study Chinese in 2012 than it was in just 2003.  Take a look at Yellowbridge.com to see part of the reason. 

I've gotten a new page up on top here for the 2012 Anchorage International Film Festival.  It's a guide to the festival including links to some old posts - FAQ's for the festival and Film Festival for Skeptics.

And Sitemeter is down again.  Not a good sign.  Something is going wrong there and the comments on my recent post about Sitemeter do show that people aren't very tolerant of problems.  It would help if Sitemeter would reach out and let people know what's happening.  They have their users' email addresses.  I'm starting to check with Google Analytics, but I really don't like their layout compared to Sitemeter.  Someone recommended StatCounter in the comments and that looks good.

Oh yeah, I was at UAA earlier this week and was reminded of all the things going on there - particularly speakers who are available to the public.  Here are some posters - two are already over and two are still coming.










Sorry, this one is over already, but I thought I'd put it up anyway.  Same with the next one.

Sorry, this one is a little small (it's just an 8X11 sheet) but it hints at why it's good to have universities around and people researching different options that can help create new energy options and jobs.

Click any of them to enlarge them a little.

This one is coming a week from Monday.  This is through the Confucius Institute at UAA and our Chinese teacher said he's a really great calligrapher.  

And this one is this coming Monday.  Fallows is one of our (the USA) best journalists.  (The link goes to his Atlantic Monthly blog which is very entertaining and this latest post raises similar thoughts to the ones I raised about the Fiscal Cliff.)  He spent a lot of time in Japan and wrote very insightful articles for the Atlantic.  He's also spent time more recently in China.  I have a book club meeting Monday so I'm going to miss this, but it should be outstanding and it's free to the public (free parking too.) 

Deborah Fallows is here too and they will both be at   the UAA bookstore on Monday at noon.




There was one more that I forgot:

Other things I probably won't post about:

Met with some of my new UAA faculty group over lunch and we'll meet again next week with two faculty union reps.

The Alaskan Apple User Group met Wednesday night.

Reviewing a paper for an academic journal.

Trying to help a few people connect with the right people to get out of their jams.

And there are always the clutter wars here at home, though I've generally neglected them lately.  I did clear this morning's snow from the driveway and sidewalk.  And I'm a little sore from taking a spill on the bike this afternoon.  I guess mountain tires aren't enough.  I need to get studs.



UPDATE:  Thanks to reader DH for the editing help.  Sometimes I do get tired and lazy.

How To Live Your Life And Blog Too

I early on learned that if I blogged what I was doing, I could find time to do all the things I want to do and keep the blog alive.  Writing about things forced me to think about them more, do some research about them, and generally learn a lot more.  And all that helped me remember things.

But blogging seems to be taking a lot more time away these days.  Partly my standards for myself have gotten higher and I spend more time documenting and cleaning up.  Partly, though, I'm involved in more things, plus things show up to interrupt me - lots of things around the house that need attention, etc.

Some things I'm reluctant to burden you with, but we are taking a Chinese class through the UAA Confucius Institute and if I'm going to keep up, I'm going to have to do some sharing here.

I've studied Chinese on and off since about 1989 when I taught in Hong Kong for a year and we took a once a week Cantonese class so we could talk to the vendors in the markets  and things like that.  Then I got involved with a research project in Beijing and decided I needed to study Mandarin just to get a little more sense of what was going on around me.  (Having spent a year as an undergraduate in Germany, I was able to get my German good enough to keep up with my classes and to discover how liberating it was to be able to escape my native language.  Nothing wrong with English, but your language limits you in subtle and not so subtle ways.  [Go here for a post on color in different languages and a link to a post on whether language affects how you think.]

There were a couple of years of serious study.  Then I was distracted by other things for about ten years before getting serious again.  And that lapsed and I spent time in Thailand reviving my old Peace Corps Thai and seemingly painting over the brain cells that stored Chinese words.

I came to believe, through my experiences, that if you ever get to the point where you can speak a language pretty fluently, without thinking about translating from your own language at all, but actually thinking and even dreaming in the other language, then you basically have it for life.  You'll lose a lot of vocabulary if you stop, but most of the stuff you really knew is buried in there and will come back.  Often when you speak, words just pop out of your mouth, that you couldn't have retrieved if you'd have been asked, say,  "What's the Thai word for butterfly?"    That's been the case for German and for Thai for me.  They're there and I just need to get my brain to shift to them and those brain cells slowly start to warm up and get where I can communicate - not like a native - but effectively enough.

But I never got to that point in Chinese.  And so my return visits have been painful exercises of trying to revive weak braincells and creating new ones to replace the ones that have simply died.  Chinese is also harder than German or Thai.

I thought German was hard after junior high Spanish.  The grammar has all sorts of twists and turns to trip you up, but it does use a Latin based alphabet, and there is an enormous overlap between English and German words - swim and schwimmem, house and haus, speak and sprechen, etc.

Thai added a totally new alphabet, few shared words (ie Pepsi) and, even more daunting, tones.  We have tones in English - but they are related to whole sentences, such as questions ending higher pitched than statements.  In Thai, the tones go with the individual syllables and it's better to get the sounds of the consonants and vowels a little off than to mess up the tones if you want someone to understand you.

Chinese has tones like Thai, though slightly different ones, but the killer part of Chinese is that there's no alphabet.  With a phonetic alphabet, you can figure out words you've never seen before.  But not with characters.  Each character represents a word.  Yes, they have created a Western style alphabet - pinyin - but that's to help people struggling to learn the characters.  And yes, the characters aren't all completely unique.  They share different elements that are in other characters, but you do have to remember each character   individually.  And that's been my biggest problem - keeping the characters straight.  Writing them without checking is, for the most part, a futile exercise if you don't do it for several years. 

But it's coming back easier this time.  In part because I went further along in the past and we are going back to almost beginning.  I recognize more characters and after being like the deer in the headlights the first night, my Chinese brain cells are coming back to life.

And the teachers at the Confucius Institute are terrific.  That's partly because they use what I think is the right method for teaching a foreign language, very similar to how the Peace Corps taught us Thai and taught us how to teach English.  Lots of oral repetition and good progression in a class session from the sounds to the vocabulary to the sentences each building on the other.  Here's an example of some of the vocabulary I'm carrying around.  These are from lesson 6 - there were 31 characters in one list, 12 in a second one, and 22 supplementary words.

Character	English	pinyin
给	to; for	gěi
打电话	to make a phone call	dǎ diàn huà
话	speech; talk words	huà
喂	(on phone) Hello, Hey	wèi；wéi
哪	which	nǎ
上午	morning	shàngwǔ

HTML Tables

I've got to run.  I've got a book club meeting tonight and some errands to run and maybe I can get a little time at Powerline Pass before the book club which is meeting on the hillside.

Campbell Creek Flooding Demonstrates Why Title 21 Is So Important

The white line is approximately where the shoreline is normally.   This is one of the first houses as Campbell Creek moves into populated area, so there are no artificial constrictions above stream that would raise the water higher here. 

I'm on the bike trail, the white line is about normal shoreline.

As developers try to push back the set back distance from creeks proposed in the Title 21 provisionally approved, this recent flooding gives a good example of why other cities have much stricter setbacks than Anchorage.






You can see the white line again over by the posts and the sign at the normal shoreline where the creek is supposed to go under the bridge.

 

And below is Campbell Creek just after crossing under Lake Otis.  It's been constrained by the concrete barriers under the road right here and it has fairly steep banks, so it's kept relatively close within its banks.  But even so you can see the difference between Thursday and Friday. (Note:  We were already at flood levels on Thursday.) The little white lines on each photo show the water line for Friday and the same place on Thursday. The vertical white line in the upper right just shows the distance from the base of the tree to the water.

And most telling of all, the pipe in the lower right is completely covered on Friday. 

And as I continued on the bike trail, I could see that the creek strayed far beyond its normal banks.   At the point in the picture below, there are houses between the trail and the creek. 


I decided to go off the trail and find a relatively dry pathway through the woods on the right.  It had some elevation.  But then I got out of the woods and to the soccer fields at Waldron Park.

In the above picture I'm looking back to where I came out of the woods onto the soccer fields.  There was a long, narrow body of water bordering the fields.  As I went down toward the field from the woods, I knew the ground would be soggy but I was hoping I could jump to the grassy island.  Well, both shoes were soaked by the time I leapt to the little grass patch, which wobbled like a water bed under me.  I think it was floating. 

This is Waldron Lake, on the edge of the soccer fields.  This area was saved this year by a bill in the legislature which bought the property to preserve it as a park.  This year the governor didn't veto the appropriation like he did last year.  As I looked at the lake, it seemed that this big open body of water was better equipped to absorb some of the flooding.   Nah, don't you think they should drain the lake and put in condos?  We need to get tax dollars from this land.  Well, what we get is a natural flooding abatement and water filtration plant that would cost the city hundreds of millions to match if this lake and the creek and the green belt around the creek weren't here.

Then I wandered on down to the Seward Highway and the project begun this summer to raise the four bridges to allow a real bike trail under the highway instead of the dirt and rock obstacle course that's been the way to get past the highway all these years.

This picture shows my bike under the first bridge in August 2008, negotiating the rocks and the dirt.  You can see the second bridge in the background (and then there are two more) and the normal water level.

Here's pretty much that same spot earlier this summer after they closed it off for the construction.  

And here it was Friday morning. (You can click on the picture to get it bigger and clearer. The bottom of the fence is in the water which was about three and a half feet below the bottom of the bridge.  The trail was completely obliterated.  You can compare the water levels to the first of these three pictures. 

If I've understood correctly (it's hard to keep current with the many changes), the builders in town have gotten the Planning and Zoning Commission to shrink the setback from creeks and waterways for new development.  I understand that people want to build on as much land as possible.  But this week's flooding along the creeks shows why those setbacks are necessary.  Are floods like this normal?  Not really. But there has been speculation that the shrinking polar ice cap is having an effect on our weather patterns.  If that's true, this may be the new normal.

This storm and the flooding highlight the problems of having developers be the main lobbyists to roll back the changes on Title 21. (Not counting those who have been to meetings to explain that Title 21 is directly related to UN resolution 21 on global climate change and is an international conspiracy to take over the world.)  They want to make as much money as they can developing land and while I'm sure the vast majority of the developers do not want to have their projects flooded - even after they've collected their money and gone - I am sure that they simply discount the safety, health, and aesthetic goals set into the Title 21 process by citizens panels over the years.  The creek set back is one of the more visible problems with the changes they are proposing.  There are many, many more that will have long term negative effects on Anchorage as a livable city.

The Anchorage Citizens Coalition has a lot more detailed information of what's going on.  They'll need people to contact their Assembly members right away. 

Romney's Cotton Candy Acceptance Speech

Reading through Romney's acceptance speech again, a few days later, it's cotton candy.  It's soft, sugary, fluffy, and full of air.  There's absolutely no substance.  When you try to sink your teeth into it, it simply evaporates.

It has the signs of being designed by the marketing department - based on focus group feedback about what words and phrases push people's emotional buttons and then written to push them.  Neither reality nor honesty is a factor.  Tell them what they want to hear.  But since there are almost no facts, it's safe from the fact checkers.   It's the same stuff as glossy magazine ads - empty promises that Americans, individually and collective, can be an impossibly and perfectly beautiful people.

It's guys in the back room poring through the data and coming up with a formula to grab the audience.   But unfortunately for Romney, it's based on data, not on a caring or even intuitive sense of the people behind the data.


Note:  When I got to the end of this post, without having covered that much of Romney's acceptance speech, I asked myself why I was doing this?  Who cares?  Does it matter?

It only matters if people think this is more than just marketing, if people actually believe that there is something here.  So for that reason alone, it makes sense to go through the speech.  My approach is to try to pull out of it the key parts and to try to get at what the speech is about.   And to show there isn't any meat.  It's basically empty words.

Going through the speech, these are the themes that I see.  They aren't necessarily in order in the speech, but rather are scattered about and sometimes they overlap:  

• Trying to show different constituencies that the Romney's presidency would care about them.
• To outline what Romney believes the USA is all about.
• To outline why Obama should be replaced by Romney. (And why people who had hoped that Obama would do great things, should now abandon him for Romney.)
• To show that Romney has both the personal and professional skills necessary to fix the problems Obama hasn't fixed.

In this post I'm just going to focus on the first theme, showing the different constituencies Romney tries to touch.  Or more realistically, those marketing guys in the back room saying, "We need to get various demographics."

Romney's a product and this is an attempt to interest consumers into buying the product.  [Mind you I don't expect much different at the Democratic convention, but I suspect the marketing team will do a better job of connecting with the prospective consumers.]

My quotes come from NPR's transcript of the speech.

The Independent Voters and maybe some Democrats:

"Four years ago, I know that many Americans felt a fresh excitement about the possibilities of a new president. That president was not the choice of our party but Americans always come together after elections. We are a good and generous people who are united by so much more than what divides us. . .

But today, four years from the excitement of the last election, for the first time, the majority of Americans now doubt that our children will have a better future.

It is not what we were promised."

Parents, Small Business Owners, Students:

"Every family in America wanted this to be a time when they could get ahead a little more, put aside a little more for college, do more for their elderly mom who's living alone now or give a little more to their church or charity.

Every small business wanted these to be their best years ever, when they could hire more, do more for those who had stuck with them through the hard times, open a new store or sponsor that Little League team.

Every new college graduate thought they'd have a good job by now, a place of their own, and that they could start paying back some of their loans and build for the future."

Norman Rockwell miniatures of the perfect America.

And those struggling to get by:

"You deserved it because during these years, you worked harder than ever before. You deserved it because when it cost more to fill up your car, you cut out movie nights and put in longer hours. Or when you lost that job that paid $22.50 an hour with benefits, you took two jobs at 9 bucks an hour and fewer benefits. You did it because your family depended on you. You did it because you're an American and you don't quit. You did it because it was what you had to do.

But driving home late from that second job, or standing there watching the gas pump hit 50 dollars and still going, when the realtor told you that to sell your house you'd have to take a big loss, in those moments you knew that this just wasn't right."

Immigrants:

"When every new wave of immigrants looked up and saw the Statue of Liberty, or knelt down and kissed the shores of freedom just ninety miles from Castro's tyranny, these new Americans surely had many questions. But none doubted that here in America they could build a better life, that in America their children would be more blessed than they."

Well, at least the white European immigrants coming through Ellis Island and those escaping communism in Cuba.  Those coming from non-communist Central or South America or from Asia aren't as directly recognized.

Even astronauts:

"God bless Neil Armstrong."

Will this blessing be backed with cuts to NASA's budget?  Maybe a fire sale of NASA assets to private companies?

And women.  Oh yes, he didn't forget women:

"Those days were toughest on Ann, of course. She was heroic. . . I knew that her job as a mom was harder than mine. And I knew without question, that her job as a mom was a lot more important than mine. . . Ann would have succeeded at anything she wanted to.  . .

When my mom ran for the Senate [she lost by a huge margin], my dad was there for her every step of the way. I can still hear her saying in her beautiful voice, "Why should women have any less say than men, about the great decisions facing our nation?"

I wish she could have been here at the convention and heard leaders like Governor Mary Fallin, Governor Nikki Haley, Governor Susana Martinez, Senator Kelly Ayotte and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

As Governor of Massachusetts, I chose a woman Lt. Governor, a woman chief of staff, half of my cabinet and senior officials were women, and in business, I mentored and supported great women leaders who went on to run great companies.  [But he didn't choose a woman as his running mate.]

Of course, the PR guys writing this don't seem to realize that this next quote could just wipe out all their other attempts to win women voters:

"He [Dad, George Romney] convinced my mom, a beautiful young actress, to give up Hollywood to marry him. He moved to Detroit, led a great automobile company and became Governor of the Great State of Michigan."

 Maybe the guys will be impressed that Papa Romney got a beautiful young actress, but women aren't going to be excited about him talking her out of her Hollywood career to move to, yeah, Detroit.

And, of course, a coded wink to the religious conservatives:

"As president, I will protect the sanctity of life. I will honor the institution of marriage. And I will guarantee America's first liberty: the freedom of religion."

Even though he didn't say it explicitly, they knew he meant - fight abortions, fight gay marriage, and support such evangelical goals as getting prayer back into public spaces.



How much time should I actually spend going through this speech?  Did anyone actually expect him to say anything?  It's really a pretty cynical speech.  To me, these mentions of the various constituencies are just that - mentions.  They don't reflect a deep understanding of who these constituencies are.  They don't hone in on the issues that might resonate with them - except the religious conservatives.  Rather they are a marketer's attempt to convert focus group data into some votes.

More telling is that there is no substance.  It's simply various ways of saying "Obama failed, but I'll deliver" with nothing that offers how he's going to do it.  Well, yes, his 5 point plan is going to create 12 million new jobs by cutting regulations and taxes and giving parents school choice, and cutting the deficit.  How he's going to cut taxes and the deficit without pretty much shutting down the government he didn't explain.

It's a speech that needed to cover certain things, and I guess it did, but without grace or wit or, as I've said already, substance.

Ethiopian Children with hula hoops and other Google Searches

I think this has been hanging around as a draft long enough.  Here are search terms that people used to get here.  Some got exactly what they were looking for, some google (most are google, but sometimes another search engine

ethiopian children with hula hoops - No Ethiopian kids, but there were some hula hoops at the post they got.

what do egyptian people look like  - The was from a computer at the Egleston's Children's Hospital in Atlanta, so let's assume it was someone young asking this question.  They got to a post with some pictures of Egyptian statues in the Berlin Museum.




things to know about alaskan backyards -  This Kiwi got to a post on moose in the backyard.  Alaska's a big place and some places, like Juneau, don't have moose.  But it's certainly something to know about Anchorage backyards. 



how do you make teotihuacan mask from egypt - It's not easy, since Teotihuacan is in Mexico. They did get to some Egyptian mummy masks in Berlin's Neues Museum.

as an artist, diego rivera related the concerns of, a.) the u.s., b.) the government, c.) workers, d.) women-  Sure looks like a test question.  The answer's on the post about the Detroit Institute of Art's Rivera room, but he or she'll will have to figure it out. 


how big does a glacier have to be - To qualify as a glacier and not an ice cube?  To not melt in the next 50 years?  Wonder what the person wanted to know?  Google did the best it could and got him He got to the post How big is big?  Child's Glacier


2zghx ch`ด' - This was a Babylon search and it showed me what the person got:

What Do I Know?: November 2008
Nov 30, 2008 ... Lévi-Strauss, in Myth and Meaning ponders in a chapter called "When ... The ones in this chapter are particularly relevant to Alaskan since they ...whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html - 379k - Similar pages

 I checked the archive page this was on.  I have no idea why my page showed up.  There are other posts which have Thai script on them including the letter 'ด' but I couldn't find one on this page.  This Lévi-Strauss post does mention Thailand.  The searcher was from Chile.

baskin robbins halal certificates -Sometimes even I am surprised at what all is on my blog.  This person in Malaysia found a photo of the IFANCA (Islamic Food And Nutrition Council of America) certificate in a Baskin Robbins shop in Klang, Malaysia in this post.

woodpecker shoes pakistan - Lots of thoughts went through my head.  Can't be woodpeckers wearing shoes. . . . Until finally the most logical would be really pointy toed shoes, like a woodpecker's beak.  But who knows?  They didn't get either, but they got to this inspiring story:  Pakistani Official Tends Sikh Shoes and Toilets To Atone Muslim Killing Of Sikh.

Mimas tiliae

Mimas tiliae - Sometimes this blog is like a little bookstore that has obscure titles hidden away, just waiting for the one person who will want that particular book. It's been two years since I posted this one and finally someone from Denmark came looking for it: Instead of a real post - here's Mimas tiliae 


what is interim plan - I recognize that I sometimes report on things that have a lot of jargon.  I have explained more than once, say, terms used by the Redistricting Board, knowing that many readers haven't read the previous posts.  But I didn't think I needed to explain 'interim.'  I can't help but say to myself, "Get a dictionary."  But google does serve that function too.  And bloggers can't be choosers.  I should be saying thanks to the  several people  who got to this Redistricting Board post where I mention the interim plan and I say the Board adopted an Amended Plan and "an Interim plan in case the Amended plan doesn't get all the approvals it needs in time for the June 1 candidate filing deadline."  Do you think that's enough context for them to figure it out? 

rubber ring blender on top or bottom of blade - There's a long colonoscopy post which includes having to buy a new osterizer and then finding out all I needed was the rubber ring.
Maybe the picture helped this person answer the question.


a five column chart for nectarines using your five senses - This was an image search. Something about a chart I had up distracted them from nectarines. They got to a chart on Reported Rates of Voting and Registration: 1996 - 2008 post on Senate candidate Scott McAdams 

yhgujniolmpw - This person, from the Philippines with a US-English language computer, got to an archive page that had a story about an Anchorage man we know who was back from Afghanistan.  It had a word with 'yh' in it. Was this just random typing?

He was in a FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Iskandiriayh most of the time.

That's my best guess why they got to this blog.

batman in arabic -  Another direct hit.  This person got this picture from a post on a hot day in Chicago.   If you enlarge the picture enough and you know Arabic, I think you can see it.


anybody record if i sex with my wife through skype? - I'm not sure if this guy is worried that someone might record them or is looking for someone to record them. I suspect the former. He got to my post on Call Recorder which lets you record skype conversations and video. Your own conversations only.  But he's right to be concerned.  I could tell from his footprint here that he was checking from Vancouver, Canada and his computer is set up to use Indian English.

english mass nouns two gallon gasoline - It took me a bit to figure this one out. But it makes sense and this searcher got to a post on countable vs. mass nouns called "amount of people employed as an architect" 

kosti nohy - 
ayak kemikleri -  I've learned (with the help of online translation websites) that kosti nohy is foot bones in Czech and ayak kemikieri is foot bones in Turkish.  For some reason, I get hits at my post on J's broken foot in Czech and Turkish (and English), but not other languages.



can i copy verbatim from a press release? -Hmmm.  Is this from a newspaper writer?  A blogger?  Got to my follow up post on this exact practice.

what are those cotton like things floating in anchorage - And this person got to a post which answers the question - cottonwood seeds.

porno beauti - First, how does Google offer an image titled 'looking up cactus" to someone seeking 'porno beauti'? Second, why would a porn seeker choose that image over the others that come up? This is definitely a kink I've never heard of before. But once I actually looked at the image I realized it does have some phallic qualities, but really . . .




a travel club of musicians,poets,dancers all come together have a art festival - I had no idea where that might have gone, but the Spenard jazz festival poetry and dance turned out to be related to the search.

only chinese people like kenny g - This is terrible, but I have to admit I laughed. It got to a post on Pat Metheny's view on kenny g. Actually, this almost calls for a whole post to discuss. Let's say I think this person makes kenny g seem better than he is and Chinese people worse than they are.






what is the term for vampire arousal -  We should have a contest to answer this.  It got to my post on Thanksgiving Neckrophelia. I thought maybe I'm just behind the times so I googled "vampire arousal" and looked at the first to sites that popped up:  Vampire Seduction Guide  and Vampire Sexual Secrets.  Neither seemed to have a special term for vampire arousal.

Bicyclists Getting A Little More Respect This Year From DOT

Last Saturday when I biked over to the Japanese Summer Festival, I noticed that for once, the Department of Transportation was thinking about cyclists and even gave us some benefits cars didn't get.  I knew there was construction on the Campbell Creek trail under the Seward Highway and at Dowling and I decided to take surface streets to avoid that.  But going south on C Street from Tudor, I saw there was a detour at Potter.

BUT, while cars were forced to go right or left because C Street was closed, the bike path on the west side of C Street was open, allowing me to keep to my route.  And it was marked too.  This is something that didn't use to happen.  But clearly someone had to have thought about this and said, "Well, we can leave the bike trail open."  Hey, humor me, I measure progress in very small increments.

On the way home, without having to worry about time, I picked up the Campbell Creek trail at its terminus near Dimond High School. 


The cow parsnip was in full bloom along the path.  This picture of the creek along the trail should give you a sense why I was willing to add a mile to my (now seven mile) trip back to be on the trail instead of the city streets. 

Under Minnesota the creek had flooded and the trail was covered in mud and water.  Fortunately there were some drier spots (on the left.)







But then it was beautiful again.

At Taku Lake  (I posted a video of the beaver I saw there already), there was also this duck dock right near the trail. So much nicer that navigating the sidewalks and intersections. 








But soon I was nearing Dowling and getting curious how I was going to get past the construction.  I needn't have worried.  There was a big sign blocking the path, but pointing out a detour.  In the past, there just would have been a sign blocking the path with no help for the cyclist to navigate around the blockage.  But this detour led to the construction site (Dowling Road) where a flagger got me and a pedestrian past the heavy equipment and around to another flagger who directed me to more signs that led me easily back to the bike path.

At Old Seward Highway, after the Arctic Road Runner near the Peanut Farm, the signs aren't quite as helpful.  There they say the trail is blocked at Seward Highway and direct you to take Tudor or Dowling.  There, you really have to know how to find the bike trail yourself.  You have to wander through the neighborhoods to pick it up after the creek crosses under the New Seward Highway, where they are widening the road and raising the bridges over the creek and where, by the end of next summer they say, there will be a real bike trail under the highway.  Now, from Tudor, looking south, the construction looks like this.

When the trail goes under Dowling and New Seward when this construction is done, you'll be able to bike from Dimond and Northwood to University Lake between APU and the Native Hospital (about 7.5 miles) with only having to cross one street (Lake Otis).  It mostly follows Campbell Creek going under or over bridges at other roads.   And I found this cool 2009 video by MijelRiak that takes you on the trail from New Seward Highway to Dimond and Northwood.  (Where the video crosses the street is Dowliing, where the construction is now.)

June Ends, July Begins - Cottonwood, Construction, Contentment

 A breeze blew the cottonwood seeds from our big tree in the afternoon.  Fortunately, we don't have cottonwood allergies.  (For a lot more on cottonwood, here's an old post on this untapped Alaska resource.)

Later we went got onto the Seward Highway at Tudor.  The highway is being widened and the four bridges over Campbell Creek are going to be raised and a real bike trail constructed under the roads (including the frontage roads on each side.)
This is the on-ramp merging into the highway.

We had dinner with old friends who moved to New Zealand but are back in town visiting.  They are staying above Potter Marsh and the time flew as we talked about many things.  It was after midnight as we went home and I stopped for this view of Turnagain Arm, Potter Marsh, and Mt. Susitna.

Taku Lake Beaver and Campbell Creek Bike Trail Improvements

Riding home on the Campbell Creek bike trail from last night's book club meeting near Campbell Lake, I saw a big brown lump swimming through the water of Taku Lake carrying a good sized piece of wood in its mouth.








It was clear that he had been busy for a while.  There were quite a few of these chewed off tree stumps. 






A couple of big cottonwoods showed the early chewing of a beaver, but someone had put wire around the trunk before it got too far.

The beaver disappeared under the water where the chewed tree goes into the water.

The Campbell Creek trail ends (for me, begins for others) in the southwest near Victor and Dimond.  It's a great diagonal commuting trail for anyone going from that area - Dimond High is near that end too - to the Alaska Native Medical Center on Tudor past Elmore or spots in-between.  From Dimond to ANMC it's through the woods with occasional views of houses or businesses and there are only three spots where the trail abruptly ends to cross a street - Dowling, Seward Highway, and Lake Otis. 

They've already begun work at Dowling.  According to a Department of Transportation document   they will "replace Campbell Creek Bridge, install a new traffic signal at C Street, re-align the Campbell Creek Trail to go under the new bridge. . ." 


The picture is of the trail yesterday, from north of Dowling.  A new trail goes up to the left.  I think it will go to the new trail along Dowling, and the old trail will go under the new bridge and no longer cross the street.  The orange fencing on the right of the picture is where they are re-aligning the creek.






The infamous 'gap' under the New Seward Highway where you had to carefully maneuver you bike under four bridges of rocky trail (I see that some of the pictures have vanished from that post, I'll try to recover them soon) and sometimes high water, is now being changed into official bike trail.  They are going to raise each of the four bridges (north and south parts of the highway and the frontage roads).  Here's a shot from the east side of the Seward Highway from last week.    The project engineer told me that the September 2014 completion date will be for landscaping, but the trail should be complete by September 2013.




They've blocked it with a big chain link fence.

The only place you'll have to cross a street is at Lake Otis.  Either a few side streets to get to the tunnel or if you go directly, Lake Otis itself. 

The Seward Highway is less than 1/4 mile west of this map.


For now, the best option (going southwest) seems to be to go to Tudor and back up Old Seward Highway to the Peanut Farm or Arctic Roadrunner to pick up the trail again. 

New Seward Repairs and Campbell Creek Bike Trail Start Today for Two Years

Between Tudor and International Airport Road

First Southbound - Starting May 2 - the frontage road will be closed.  They're getting it ready to take the Seward Highway traffic for when it gets closed down, later.

Then they'll do the same Northbound.  From DOT (with some reformatting): 

The Department of Transportation, in partnership with QAP, is working to improve the New Seward Highway, from Dowling Road to Tudor Road. Improvements will include

• added lanes, 
• resurfacing and 
• Campbell Creek bridge replacement.  

The Homer Drive and Brayton Drive frontage roads will also be improved with

• resurfacing and 
• the addition of multi-use trails. 

We will do our best to keep you informed as work continues, and appreciate your patience and cooperation during construction. This project is scheduled to be complete by June 2014.

In addition to the highway work - the bike trail along Campbell Creek under the Seward Highway is scheduled to be completed.  Here's a picture from 2007.  You have to walk your bike and duck low.   They also say they will have trails along the frontage roads when they are done.


There will be a public hearing Thursday night at Dimond High

A PUBLIC OPEN HOUSE will be held at the Dimond Center Hotel (700 E. Dimond Boulevard), on Thursday May 3, from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. Project teams will be available to review the scope of work and provide detailed information about the project. 

Way Too Busy With AQR, Press Club, Confucius Institute, and More Redistricting Stuff

Wednesday night I went to the 30th Anniversary Celebration of the Alaska Quarterly Review.  The new volume includes a remembrance of the two stellar photojournalists who died in Libya Tim Hetherington, and Chris Hondros almost exactly one year ago.  Anchorage raised photographer Benjamin Spatz coordinated the collection of photos representing With Liberty and Justice for All from 68 outstanding photographers who knew the two men.  At the event at the Anchorage Museum were two of the photographers who submitted photos, original Good Morning America host Dave Hartman and two time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Barbara Davidson.  This event deserves a longer post of its own, but it's late and so I'm just putting up these two photos of Hartman and Davidson with the photos they submitted.  You can get a copy of the 30th Anniversary issue of the AQR - truly a nationally and internationally recognized literary journal published right here in Anchorage - here.  Or try some local bookstores. Or a good out of state bookstore.  They sold all the copies they brought Wednesday night. 

Then Thursday I went to the radio day of the Alaska Press Club.  I finally decided I should join this organization and go to their conference so I could learn something about what I'm doing here and how to do it better.

Not sure how much I'll improve, but it won't be from lack of great discussion from masters of radio.  OK, I don't do radio, but much of the wisdom imparted can easily be adapted to video.  It was good timing for me because I've been thinking about my rather raw style and why I think it's appropriate here.  While I'm not backing off, I did get some good ideas to at least modify my ideas and maybe improve my technique.

Neal Conan

First there was Jason LeRose from NPR West.






And then came Neal Conan.  It was quite eerie when he opened his mouth and this voice floated out - a voice I know so well from Talk of the Nation and other shows he's done on NPR.  And now it was attached, so to speak, to an actual physical human being.   I'll post more about this later, but just want to explain why I've been so busy.


I'll get back to this.  But I was a bit confused and went to hear Howard Weaver in the bookstore.  It turns out he'll be there at 4pm on Friday.  But Thursday there was a talk by Chinese Fulbright Scholar Wei Jaijiang on A Contrastive Study of Chinese and English Emotional Metaphors.  I have to go to bed now, it's after 2am and there is more Press Club starting about 9am.  So I won't get into details of the talk.  But I got to meet the director of the Confucius Institute and the instructors and I may have committed myself to try to pick up on where I left off in Chinese.  There's quite a bit in my brain, but it has a great deal of difficulty getting out of my brain via my tongue these days.  Possibly I can dislodge some of that vocabulary and syntax, not to mention the characters.

I just want you to know I'm not goofing off here.   Oh yes, the Redistricting Board put up the responses to their latest submission.  I only barely opened one and haven't had time to read it yet.  Here are the documents:

OBJECTIONS 
Fairbanks North Star Borough
Aleutians East Borough
City of Petersburg
Calista Corporation
Bristol Bay Native Corporation
RIGHTS Coalition
Riley Plaintiffs

RESPONSE
Alaska Redistricting Board

Here's what's scheduled tomorrow at the press club:

9 – 10:15 a.m.
Telling stories through photography
 Barbara Davidson will discuss long-form photo storytelling and ways to use narrative and storytelling in shorter-form daily journalism. Rasmuson Hall 101

Carolyn Ryan critique
Carolyn Ryan, metro editor at the New York Times, critiques stories written on deadline. Three works will be reviewed. Stories with multi-media components will be given priority. Rasmuson Hall 111

One-on-one coaching (radio)
With NPR’s Jason DeRose, APRN’s Lori Townsend and Annie Feidt, CoastAlaska’s Ed Schoenfeld, UAA’s Elizabeth Arnold and others. Rasmuson Hall 316

10:30 – 11:45 a.m.
Covering religion
The nuts and bolts of covering religious issues and institutions, from sex-abuse scandals to denominational conflicts to involvement in local politics. With Jason DeRose, NPR Western Bureau chief and former religion reporting instructor at DePaul University and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He also holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Rasmuson Hall 101
Personal photojournalism u u Richard Murphy, long-time photo editor at the Anchorage Daily News and Atwood Chair at UAA, will show recent work made with an iPhone and talk about what he’s discovered about the tool in a reprise of his popular lecture

“Professional photojournalism to personal photojournalism or how my cell phone set me free.” Rasmuson Hall 111
Polling the pollsters: It’s all in the numbers
We’ve all seen pre-election numbers, approval surveys and other statistics offering public opinion information. But where do they come from and how do they work? How can two polls sometimes offer such different results? Get the lowdown on polling and information research— and find out how to best use these numbers in your reporting — at this panel featuring some of Alaska’s top specialists: Jean Craciun is CEO of Craciun Research, where she helps businesses and organizations deal with changing environments and reforming industry sectors. David L. Dittman (Dittman Research and Communications Corporation) is widely recognized as Alaska’s senior public opinion analyst. Ivan Moore, Ivan Moore Research, is a public opinion pollster based in Anchorage who works with both Democratic and Republican candidates. Moderated by UAF Journalism Professor Lynne Lott. Rasmuson Hall 316

1:15 – 2:30 p.m.
Covering the military from the home front
Kimberly Dozier shares the lessons she learned the hard way when covering the military – how to learn how troops see the world, and the media, how to win their trust – and most importantly, represent both them and the U.S. public in reporting that pulls no punches. Rasmuson Hall 101

Simple videos for websites

Shooting and editing simple videos that can be easily used on media websites. This session is for reporters with limited background in video production. With Ted S. Warren, Associated Press. Rasmuson Hall 111

Notebook to page u KTUU’s Jason Lamb, ADN’s Kyle Hopkins and APRN’s Annie Feidt share tips and tricks for writing accurate, compelling stories quickly. Moderated by Julia O’Malley. Rasmuson 316

Sorry the formatting got messed up, but I really have to go to bed or I'll sleep through all this.