Garages gonna be repairing a lot of broken axles pic.twitter.com/SS3mZsCVe2
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Friday, November 10, 2023
My Body Knows I've Been Shoveling Snow and Peace Corps Recruiter
Sunday, August 27, 2023
Despite Blog Post Supply Chain Problems - Here's Hamilton and Irma Vep
This week, for instance, my Peace Corps training roommate from 1966 in DeKalb, Illinois and his wife visitor and we're kept them busy understanding why we still live in Anchorage. But it's not like we haven't seen each other since 1966. We've been in each others lives as much as people separated by a six hour plane ride can be. But it's been a while since they've been in Anchorage. Their kids were just a bit older than their grandkids are now when they were last here.
Hamilton was the first time we've been to a big entertainment event since COVID restrictions. We've been to a few movies, but at times when we were the only ones, or almost the only ones, in the theater. We were all masked Tuesday as were some of the ushers and a small number of other patrons. But we learned a family member (out of town) just had COVID and a 50th wedding event in Anchorage was cancelled because two people had COVID. While I realize that for fully vaccinated people it's not likely to be fatal, a mask is still much less disruptive than being sick for a week.
I'd found the soundtrack of Hamilton at the Internet Archive and listened casually for the previous week on the assumption that musicals are more enjoyable if you know the music. And that rap is easier to understand if you hear it more than once and can read the lyrics.
The ADN had a letter this week noting that a number of Hamilton viewers said they sat next to someone who had memorized the Hamilton sound track and sang along with each song. One member of our group at one end sat next to such a person. As the ADN letter writer wrote, "We didn't pay to listen to you." Maybe they should have a sound proof section for those who want a sing-along experience. You know, like the churches that have glassed off space for people with crying babies.
But we did have a good time and enjoyed the spectacle. While there were four empty seats near us, the place was packed on a Tuesday night. (And I suspect the four empty seats were sold, but the people weren't able to attend.)
The Atwood holds 2056 people. Our seats were not the most expensive at a bit over $100 each. So, just to make the math easier, let's assume an average of
$100 per ticket X 2000 seats X 17 performances = $3,400,000.
So, 34,000 people will have spent $3.4 million for a couple of hours of entertainment in Anchorage. Most of that money, I assume, will go to the actors, stage people, and the touring company, and various ticket sales agencies. Not much of it will stay in Anchorage. Some of the people attending will go more than once. And some will be tourists, like our friends who were here from Chicago.
This was a bit disorienting because Cyrano's has moved from its long time downtown location to the old Out North location which also presented performing artists almost always with an LGBTQ link. I still think I'm at Out North, even though all the plays listed on the wall are Cyrano productions that were presented at the downtown location. It was sort of like being at a friend's house, except they've moved and another friend has moved in with all their furniture.
The play was a little silly - a British murder mystery romp with two actors playing six, maybe seven parts, including a werewolf and a mummy. The Dramaturg's* note in the program said, among other things:
"The script of The Mystery of Irma Web - A Penny Dreadful requires that both actors who are cast be the same sex and is a licensure requirement. Insead of two men, Director Krista M. Schwarting believed that two women could successfully accomplish the same goal."
She also mentioned that the play involves those two actors to make 35 costume changes.
The opening scene takes place in an English manor. For the second scene, the stage was transformed with folding doors into an Egyptian tomb.
While the play itself didn't hold much deep meaning for me, the two actors were excellent, deftly staying in accented character through all those costume changes.
*I didn't really know what a dramaturg was either. The program says she was professionally trained in Dramaturgy. Merriam Webster online says a Dramaturg is a specialist in Dramaturgy. And that Dramaturgy is:
"the art or technique of dramatic composition and theatrical representation"
"A dramaturge or dramaturg (from Ancient Greek δραματουργός dramatourgós) is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programmes (or helps others with these tasks), consults authors, and does public relations work.[1][2][3] Its modern-day function was originated by the innovations of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, an 18th-century German playwright, philosopher, and theatre theorist.[4]"
OK, so that's one post through the canal.
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Made It To Kamphaengphet Saturday In My Summer Anchorage Biking Trek
Back in May I described my itinerary - Chiangmai to Bangkok - 745 kilometers. I'm doing this on the bike trails of Anchorage. The original post gives a bit of background to this way of giving me a reason - beyond the sheer joy of being on a bike whizzing through the woods - for this technique. Knowing how many kilometers I have to cover gets me out on days my body would rather not. But once my feet are pushing pedals, I'm glad I'm out riding. There's also a map showing the distances between key points.
Kamphaengphet is kilometer 445, so I'm over half way. That's good, because biking season is also half over. ( I have an old bike with studded tires for winter, but I don't do long bike rides when there is snow and ice)
This stop is particularly special because I spent two years in Kamphaengphet teaching English as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s. Below are some pictures from that time - a world much more closely connected to the past than it's connected to the present.
These are from an album I put together while I was there. Black and white photos I could get developed at the local photographer shop. The place where people could get portraits done. But Kodak and Fuji slides had to be sent to Hong Kong or Australia to be developed. That was minimally a two week process. I think of my grandkids who probably don't even know about film and are used to seeing the picture the instant it's taken. (I checked with my oldest and she did not know.)
About the kid with the bare feet. No, it wasn't that he didn't have shoes. Thais just take their shoes off before they go inside. So outside the classroom would be lots of shoes.
Today I did another 16.5 km so I'm on my way to Nakorn Sawan. This is the longer between stops and I remember the dusty red dirt road in the last three hours of my trips back from Bangkok. Lots of rice and mountains that looked like growths on the mostly flat landscape. I'd note that all these roads have long since been paved.
Friday, July 03, 2020
Short Takes - RPCV Joins Alaska SC, Maxwell Arrest, Racism Like Apple Pie, Russian Bounty
Note: Another big COVID increase today. Click COVID tab above for daily updates on state case counts |
1. Alaska's newly appointed Supreme Court justice Dario Borghesan is an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) who served in Togo.
2. Just hearing her name on the news for being involved with Jeffrey Epstein doesn't give you a sense of Ghislaine* Maxwell's role in the Jeffrey Epstein world. The Netflix series Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich brings their crimes clearly into the light. And how well connected rich people can get away with things on a scale 'normal' folks would never even imagine. Well worth watching.
3.
“Racism is so American that when you protest it, people think you’re protesting America.”— romy🦋 (@romyreiner) July 2, 2020
This says it all. But for many people it makes no sense at all. Which proves the point.**
4. Did Russia pay the Taliban bounties to kill US troops? Of course. Just like we armed and paid the Mujahideen to do the same in Afghanistan when the Soviet Union took over there. But since Afghanistan bordered the Soviet Union** and the US is half a world away - it's much easier for Russia to do. But even with the geographic advantage, the Soviet Union was forced out of Afghanistan.
*Throughout the Netflix series the pronunciation of her name was in serious conflict with my natural visual bent. I'd have done better had I never seen it written. But this is irrelevant. She's a seriously evil person and her arrest may bring some comfort to her many victims.
**I realize this is a bit enigmatic for those who don't think of racism as being like apple pie. If this leaves you scratching your head, just leave a (civil) comment and we can talk about it.
***Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were then part of the Soviet Union. Today they are independent countries and are between Russia and Afghanistan.
Thursday, March 26, 2020
Peace Corps Volunteers Fired, Brought Back Home Without Insurance [Updated]
Peace Corps Volunteers don't get paid much anyway so keeping on salary for a few months wouldn't have been a big deal.
Glassdoor says the average monthly pay is $314 for Peace Corps Volunteers. Their total pay is higher because an amount is set aside as a cash payment when they return to the United States. There also may be other variables such as pay for housing, but that depends on each country's situation.
These are folks who have been representing the United States as teachers, sanitation engineers, forestry experts, and a wide variety of similar jobs. They range in age from early 20s to 60s and 70s. Bringing them back and just cutting them off like that in the middle of a pandemic just seems mean spirited.
Here's more from Talking Points Memo - with a detailed report of evacuation from Peru.
[I got this update today that there's money in the emergency stimulus bill for Peace Corps evacuees.
"Late Wednesday (March 25), the U.S. Senate passed an emergency stimulus bill that includes $88 million for Peace Corps. The legislation now heads to the House of Representative for a vote expected Friday (March 27). That’s just the first step in a long-term effort to keep Peace Corps funding strong and support evacuees. That is why we are issuing a challenge to our community to send 100,000 messages to Congress. Learn more
Peace Corps volunteers come into country after learning the local language and training to improve their skills to do serious work in country. The 'victories' of volunteers are the people they help to improve their lives or the health of their communities or the economic strength of a community. The statistics are in the hearts of the people whose lives they touched, only occasionally being articulated."]
At the 45th Anniversary celebration of Peace Corp Thailand the Foreign Minister of Thailand told the group that his life as a poor Northeaster village kid was transformed by a Peace Corps volunteer who taught him English in school and got him into the AFS program which had him live with a US family for a year. I had a former student come to me - someone whose life I thought I'd messed up by getting him into a Bangkok school where I figured later, he'd just be a misfit - to say it had transformed his life and enabled him to live a much richer life than he ever could have had I not been there. The director of Peace Corps in Thailand at that time (45th Anniversary) and the US Ambassador to Thailand (both former Thai Peace Corps volunteers) each told stories of returning to their villages and finding out that they were still remembered fondly because of projects that had greatly improved the villages.
And this doesn't count all the RPCV's who return to the US speaking languages from all over the world, with a close understanding of the countries where they volunteered. They bring this knowledge back and it transform how they do their jobs when they get back home and how they inform public debates on local as well as international issues.
Just had to make sure this was noted.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Gramping, Comparing Earthquakes, And Lunching With An Old Friend
I wanted to do a redo of their earthquake reenactment room. I'd been there with him before. I didn't
Earthquake Simulation Room Cal Academy |
So I wanted to go back and compare it to our recent quake. Well, it did shake about as much as the quake we were in. But it doesn't give you a sense of a real earthquake. It's a small room like in a house, but there are hand rails to hold onto all around. You know what's going to happen. There are other people in the room with you. It shook back and forth mimicking the 1989 quake, and then the 1906 quake.
But this was more like the entertainment of an amusement park ride. You go there to experience it. It is different when it arrives announced in your own house or office or elsewhere in your environment and starts up and you have no idea how much bigger it's going to get or how long it's going to last and whether your house is going to hold together.
So, yes, physically, you get a sense of an earthquake in this room. But psychically, not at all. We went on to watch the Foucault Pendulum knock over a couple of pegs and then to the rain forest.
There's the several story netted rainforest with lots of tropical butterflies and there are smaller exhibits along the path that winds up to the top. Like the one that held this bright green lizard.
Then at the top, you take an elevator down and you end up below the water at the bottom of the rainforest.
It was great to be on an adventure with my grandson, just the two of us. And there were plenty of other grandparent/grand child visitors there too.
Today, after dropping him off at his pre-school we stopped at a great little hardware store in Japan Town, but they didn't have the Chinese picture hanger I was looking for. But they have so many interesting things.
A bit later we went for lunch with PK who was in my Peace Corps group. In fact he was the closest volunteer to my town. Except that there were no roads between his town and mine. You had to wander by motorcycle through the rice paddies to connect.
We passed this bear gargoyle on the way to meeting him and his partner.
P was in the hotel business in San Francisco for many years so he took us to a couple places we never would have found. First, to eat at Belden Place.
From Wikipedia
"Belden Place itself is a one-lane, one block long street running south from Pine Street to Bush Street, parallel to and in between Montgomery and Kearny streets, immediately south of the Bank of America tower. It is roughly between Chinatown and the Financial District.
In 1990, restaurateurs Olivier Azancot and Eric Klein opened Cafe Bastille, the mainstay that set the modern tone for the area. The French, Italian, and Catalan establishments are popular with locals, tourists, and office workers, and are generally considered on par with the city's best casual full-service European restaurants.[3] Notable restaurants in the alley itself include Sam's Grill, Cafe Bastille, Cafe Tiramisu, Plouf, B44, Belden Taverna, and Brindisi Cucina di Mare. Nearby are Café de la Presse (though modest and unassuming, a favorite hangout of the city's political and social elite) and Le Central. Also nearby are the Alliance Française, the French consulate, and the Notre-Dame-des-Victoires Church (where mass is still celebrated in French) and an affiliated elementary school. In the vicinity are several other restaurants, cafes, hotels and other French-related institutions along Bush Street and Claude Lane, another nearby alley.[2]"
In summer the canopies are gone, but it was a nice day and we sat under the canopy and had a delicious Italian lunch at Tiramisu. (After the yellow tarps.)
Then to see the courtyard at the Palace Hotel.
From the Garden Court Restaurant website:
"When the Palace Hotel opened its doors in 1875, the Garden Court was the carriage entrance to this grand hotel. A parade of famous guests visited San Francisco's Palace and stood in awe of its magnificence.P and I first met at Peace Corps training in DeKalb, Illinois in 1966. We don't see each other often, but it's great when we do.
In 1906, following the earthquake, the Palace closed its doors for the first restoration. Three years later, the carriage entrance was transformed and The Garden Court was unveiled. Since its debut in 1909, The Garden Court has been recognized as one of the world's most beautiful public spaces
With its incredible architecture, dome stained glass ceiling and Austrian crystal chandeliers, The Garden Court became the site for some of the nation's most prestigious events. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson hosted two luncheons in support of the Versailles Treaty which ended World War I. In 1945, the official banquet honoring the opening session of the United Nations was held in The Garden Court."
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
The Road to Sleeping Dragon
Meyer went to a rural Sichuan province as a Peace Corps English teacher in the 1995. I'd gone to rural Thailand as a Peace Corps English teacher in 1967. I'd first gone to Beijing from a year teaching in Hong Kong, twice in spring 1990, with a followup month of research in 1991, and a again a couple of years later when I taught a class on Chinese Civil Service Reform, which included taking the class for ten days to Hong Kong and Beijing. In 2004 I taught three months in Beijing, which gave me some opportunities to visit Xian and Shandong provinces as well.
So there are lots of reasons for me to enjoy this book, which modestly (and reasonably) states early on that it's not even a
"book of reportage but rather of mostly chronological impressions, of lessons learned over time. Although my understanding of China has deepened over twenty years, I can't pretend to be a "foreign expert," as my work permit alleged."My first choice as a Peace Corps volunteer was China - but there were no Peace Corps volunteers there until much, much later. Americans were not even allowed to travel there back then. Thailand was a much easier place to serve. Meyer falls in love with a Chinese woman which helped his Chinese greatly, I'm sure, and gave him continuing ties to China.
I've enjoyed comparing his insights to my own impressions. (We both despaired at the decisions to tear down whole neighborhoods completely and replace them with high rise apartments. Particularly the hutongs.) He filled in details about other things. (That the son of Hitler's architect Albert Speer Jr. played a role in the designing of the new Beijing. The author's role in lobbying for the World Wildlife Foundation for a more natural Panda preservation area. And I enjoyed the short description of his meeting with artist Ai Wei Wei.)
Much of the book feels like it was taken from articles he's written over the years about China. While following a basic chronological path through his life in China, it does jump around a bit. But it does hang together.
And I'm also reminded of the wonders of traveling to places unknown, facing daily situations where you have to try new things, take chances. You have no choice. And as you do, you discover inner strengths you didn't know you had. And you expand your known world.
Sunday, July 15, 2018
From Early Airport Run To World Cup To China
From the airport to home, unsuccessful attempt to get a couple hours more sleep before heading with my daughter to the Bear Tooth to watch Croatia play well in their final loss to France. When I watched Croatia beat Russia, it was easy to root for the small country over Putin's team. We say sports transcends politics, but not really. In international events people get very nationalistic - US media seem more interested, say, in the medal count than in the events.
Then Croatia beat England. They were now my team. For a while. The political backdrop then interfered as I realized Croatia was an all-white team and France had a mix of colors. Should this matter? If everyone were equal, and race and immigration weren't tearing countries apart (and I don't doubt Putin, once again, has had his hand in this in Europe as well as in the divisive social media campaign in the US), it wouldn't be a factor. But if Croatia won, I knew that the white supremacists would be touting how racial purity (and I have no idea exactly what that is supposed to mean and which tests of such purity the Croatian player would pass or fail) had won. And if France won, those championing the humanity of the those fleeing political and economic oppression would use their victory as proof that immigration made a country stronger.
My compromise was to root for the individual players of Croatia and the French team.
The Bear Tooth was packed this time and when Croatia scored it was clear they were the crowd favorites. They played hard and seemed to possess the ball much more than France. They just couldn't maneuver the ball into the net. France's first goal was a free kick with a boost from a Croatian head that seemed to put it just out of the reach of the goalie. Croatia came back with a penalty kick goal. Then the French got another gift - the ball hit a Croatian hand in front of the French goal. In the second half the French got two more solid shots into the goal. Croatia managed another goal by charging the goal keeper in what should have been a routine ball retrieval on the goalie's part. Sports Illustrated has the highlights. All in all, I left the game satisfied. Croatia played well and France won.
And when I checked Twitter when I got home, the first Tweet I saw was already claiming the victory by the multi-colored French team repudiated Trump's nasty London comment about immigration ruining European culture.
Home for some brief interaction with my granddaughter who then went with her mom to visit mom's old Anchorage friends. I napped and then enjoyed the luxury of just lying in bed reading. I'd picked up The Road To Sleeping Dragon by Michael Meyer at the library when we took Little J there. I'll do more on the book in another post.
Saturday, May 19, 2018
Tom Wolfe (1930 - 2018)
See Note About the Cover Below* |
From Thailand I flew to Hilo, Hawaii to work at the training program for the next group of Peace Corps teachers - Thai 30.
Early on, I encountered a new trainee with a book called Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. The title caught my attention. When I checked it out - I don't remember now if it was on the back cover or just reading the first couple of pages - I realized the book was about Ken Kesey. This book was going to answer the burning questions that Cuckoo's Nest had ignited in me.
Reading Wolfe is like talking to someone who never pauses - there's no place to interrupt, to say you have to leave; there's just a steady stream of uninterruptible words. You end up just reading until the end. Or at least I did. I probably violated my position as a trainer when I asked the trainee if I could borrow the book. I don't think I even asked, I think I told him I HAD to read this book.
Here's from pages two and three of the book (online here):
ABOUT ALL I KNEW ABOUT KESEY AT THAT POINT WAS THAT HE was a highly regarded 31-year-old novelist and in a lot of trouble over drugs. He wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), which was made into a play in 1963, and Sometimes a Great Notion (1964). He was always included with Philip Roth and Joseph Heller and Bruce Jay Friedman and a couple of others as one of the young novelists who might go all the way. Then he was arrested twice for possession of marijuana, in April of 1965 and January of 1966, and fled to Mexico rather than risk a stiff sentence. It looked like as much as five years, as a second offender. One day I happened to get hold of some letters Kesey wrote from Mexico to his friend Larry McMurtry, who wrote Horseman, Pass By, from which the movie Hud was made. They were wild and ironic, written like a cross between William Burroughs and George Ade, telling of hideouts, disguises, paranoia, fleeing from cops, smoking joints and seeking satori in the Rat lands of Mexico. There was one passage written George Ade—fashion in the third person as a parody of what the straight world back there in the U.S.A. must think of him now:I think I gave the trainee his book back the next morning, so my abuse of power was short-lived. (Whoever I borrowed it from, thank you for having it and letting me read it.)
"In short, this young, handsome, successful, happily-married-three-lovely-children father was a fear-crazed dope fiend in flight to avoid prosecution on three felonies and god knows how many misdemeanors and seeking at the same time to sculpt a new satori from an old surf—in even shorter, mad as a hatter.
"Once an athlete so valued he had been given the job of calling signals from the line and risen into contention for the nationwide amateur wrestling crown, now he didn't know if he could do a dozen pushups. Once possessor of a phenomenal bank account and money waving from every hand, now it was all his poor wife could do to scrape together eight dollars to send as getaway money to Mexico. But a few years previous he had been listed in Who's Who and asked to speak at such auspicious gatherings as the Wellesley Club in Dah-la and now they wouldn't even allow him to speak at a VDC [Vietnam Day Committee] gathering. What was it that had brought a man so high of promise to so low a state in so short a time? Well, the answer can be found in just one short word, my friends, in just one all-well-used syllable:
"Dope!
"And while it may be claimed by some of the addled advocates of these chemicals that our hero is known to have indulged in drugs before his literary success, we must point out that there was evidence of his literary prowess well before the advent of the so-called psychedelic into his life but no evidence at all of any of the lunatic thinking that we find thereafter ! "
From Acid Test I went on to Radical-Chic and Mau-Mawing the Flak Catcher. I suspect that The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby was next and then The Right Stuff, then Bonfire of the Vanities and I think the last one I read was A Man In Full.
So, Tom Wolfe, thank you for giving me great reading pleasure over the years and for shaking up the worlds of journalism and novel writing. Here's a recollection by Paul Elie from The New Yorker of editing A Man In Full.
*The image is from Bookazon. It's a much later edition than the one I read because it mentions The Right Stuff which didn't come out until 1978. I know I ran across my own copy recently, but with all the mess here (the workers finished up today, but there's still plenty of stuff piled up in the downstairs bedroom. I'm hoping much of it leaves the house rather than coming back upstairs), I couldn't find it. Besides, it might well be on a book shelf in my mom's house in LA. Or maybe it was really The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby that I saw.
Thursday, January 04, 2018
Trump Nominates Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Jody Olsen To Be New Peace Corps Director
"President Trump has nominated Josephine "Jody" Olsen to become the next Peace Corps Director.
If confirmed by the Senate, Olsen would become the 20th person to lead the agency.Olsen served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia from 1966 - 1968 and was Togo Country Director from 1979 - 1981. She was nominated by President George W. Bush to serve as Deputy Director of the agency and later served as Acting Director.
“We applaud President Trump for nominating Dr. Jody Olsen to lead the Peace Corps,” said National Peace Corps Association President and CEO Glenn Blumhorst. “As a returned volunteer, country director, acting director for the agency—and highly engaged member in the Peace Corps community—Jody knows the Peace Corps experience and the people who have served as well as anyone. Jody's commitment to education and social work and her decades of leadership are a perfect match for a 21st-century Peace Corps poised to grow and improve. We encourage Chairman Corker and his Senate colleagues to move swiftly to confirm Jody as next director. America and the world need the Peace Corps now more than ever. We're excited Jody has the opportunity to lead it."
Click here to read the White House announcement on this nomination.
A co-founder of the NPCA affiliate Women of Peace Corps Legacy, Olsen was a featured contributor in the Winter 2017 issue of WorldView magazine, writing about the rise of women in leadership roles in the agency and in international development.
"Today 62 percent of Peace Corps’ 7,300 volunteers are women," Olsen wrote. "Over the years, each group of female volunteers has motivated the next group, and each generation to the next. This extraordinary group of approximately 125,000 females spanning 56 years of service are giving back to families, communities, states, and nations in ways not possible without the Peace Corps experience, one contribution at a time.
"Today, women’s roles are stronger than ever, particularly here in the United States. Is there a need for further attention of Peace Corps women on behalf of women and girls? Yes. The issues faced by women and girls still need our support…Some of the issues might look overwhelming, but the Peace Corps experience has taught us to work with whatever situation we find, a person, a family, or community."
Click here to see the list of all previous Peace Corps Directors."
Wednesday, April 05, 2017
While Dutch Men Protest Gay Couple Attack Hand-in-Hand, Anchorage Protests By Electing Two Gay Men To Assembly
He won yesterday, but he wasn't exactly right. Because another openly gay candidate, Felix Rivera, in mid-town, won a seat as well. Here's the video I took of Chris last summer. You can see he's not coming onto the Assembly without experience and knowledge about the neighborhoods he will represent.
I took some liberty with the headline. I doubt any Anchorage voters even knew about the Dutch hand-holding protest when they voted. I'm guessing that most people who voted for Christopher Constant or Felix Rivera didn't even knew they were gay. It didn't really come up in the election until the very end when one of Rivera's opponents sent out a last minute attack ad, and even that used coded language rather than say he was gay. And Rivera got 46% of the vote in a four way race. The next highest opponent got 29%.
No, Anchorage elected two gay men, not because they were gay (though perhaps some voted against them for that reason) but because they were the strongest candidates in their races.
As understated as gender was in the race, it is a big deal in Anchorage. After years and years of fierce opposition from an evangelical pastor, Anchorage finally added LGBTQ to its anti-discrimination ordinance in 2015. There was an attempt to put an initiative on yesterday's ballot to block parts of the 2015 change, but it didn't meet the legal requirements for an initiative. Mayor Ethan Berkowitz won his mayoral race in 2015 by a landslide supporting gay rights against a rabidly anti-gay opponent.
Felix Rivera at candidate forum March 2017 |
And here's Felix Rivera at the AFACT candidate forum a couple of weeks ago.
Dutch Hand Holding Protest
While there was no direct connection between the Anchorage election, and the Dutch protest, there are a lot of indirect connections. The article says that after the attack on the married couple who were walking home holding hands, the prime minister condemned the attack. But two lawmakers took it a step further.
"Alexander Pechtold, who is the leader of the Democrats 66 (D66) party, arrived hand in hand with his party’s financial specialist, Wouter Koolmees, in support of Vernes-Sewratan and Sewratan-Vernes. “We think it is quite normal in the Netherlands to express who you are,” Pechtold said, according to People."Then lots of Dutch men posted pictures of themselves holding hands in support of the couple. One picture in the article shows a group of men who work at the Dutch embassy in London walking along the street holding hands.
Jay Brause, Gene Dugan, and Out North
Which gives me a bridge to mention Jay (Jacob) Brause and Gene (Eugene) Dugan, a gay Anchorage couple who sued the state of Alaska when they weren't allowed to get married here way back in 1994. They won their case! But then the state (led by that pastor) amended the constitution to define marriage to involve a man and a woman only.
Jay and Gene ran Out North, a small theater/art space that regularly brought acts that challenged conventional thinking. They played a huge role in giving Anchorage a space in which to stretch its mind and continue to reexamine long held assumptions. I'm sure Out North played a role in preparing Anchorage for this day, when two openly gay men have been elected to the Assembly in a race where their sexual preference was almost completely a non-issue. For those of you who think I've gone off in a totally different tangent, Jay and Gene now live in London where those Dutch Embassy colleagues held hands. Jay and Gene they got fed up living in a state that vigorously denied their right to get married and moved to UK. But they did come back to Anchorage to get married here after that became possible.
Holding Hands In Thailand
I'd like to make one more connection to the idea of men holding hands. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, one of the American values that was deeply embedded in me was that men do NOT hold hands.
But in Thailand they do. It's no big deal. It happens all the time. Dealing with my own visceral response when men wanted to hold hands with me in Thailand, helped me understand the idea of biases that our cultures teach us without us even knowing that they are biases. Instead we think that they are 'truths' about nature. In this case, that it is unnatural for men to hold hands. But in Thai culture it isn't and a gradually became comfortable when someone took my hand as we walked somewhere.
The Other Winning Assembly Candidates
Here are some pictures of the other winners last night.
Suzanne LaFrance at the AFACT candidate forum March 12. She's won the south Anchorage seat 6 that tends to be conservative. But not always. Janice Shamberg held this seat. Suzanne LaFrance was supported by Berkowitz. In fact all the winners were except Dyson.
Fred Dyson Introducing Joe Miller 2010 |
Tim Steele also missed the March 12 forum and I don't seem to have a picture of him in my files.
I realize this post seems to wander all over the place, but society is complicated. Lots of things are interrelated and if we look at everything as an isolated event suitable for a Tweet, then we don't get all that interconnectedness.
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Structural Difference Between US and 1930's Germany That Makes It Harder For Trump
In Thailand, everything was centralized in Bangkok. There were provincial and local governments but they were controlled by Bangkok. All government professional positions - in schools, hospitals, police departments, courts, etc. - were controlled by Bangkok.
This means if you run afoul of your employer in one province, you're screwed in every province.
If someone had issues - i.e. disagreed with the actions of the headmaster of the school she was teaching at - they couldn't just go to another school district and apply for a job. There was, essentially, just one school district, administered in Bangkok. If you vocalized your disagreement and irritated your boss enough, you might find yourself transferred to a distant part of Thailand while your spouse, say a doctor in the hospital, was not transferred there (and couldn't get a job there without official sanction.) An indirect, but very effective way of keeping employees in line.
My mother was 17 when she escaped Nazi Germany. On more than one occasion told me that "the same thing could happen in the US," I have always wondered about that.
In Thailand I began to understand that the US structure, with powers divided between the states and federal government, would make it harder for an autocrat to seize control of the US.
Yes, local schools and police departments get federal funding, and Washington can threaten to withhold that funding. But, a local police department is independent of the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies. They can tell them to go to hell if they find an order distasteful or out of sync with local values.
So the other day when I heard the police chief of Santa Cruz declare their department would
take a long hard look on whether to cooperate with Homeland Security in the future, I thought about this structural benefit of our government.
In Hitler's Germany, Berlin was similar to Bangkok. All power was centralized there. But here, the Santa Cruz police chief can tell Homeland Security to go to hell without losing his job.
As we figure out how to deal with the reality of most divisive and abusive president in American history, I can take some solace in this division of power between the feds and the states.
Thursday, November 17, 2016
The Anchorage Assembly Has As Many Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) As The Next Congress
"With the retirement of Congressman Sam Farr (D-CA) in January, and the defeat of Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA) on Tuesday night, just two RPCVs are left in Congress, the lowest level of representation in almost 40 years. More Peace Corps champions are needed—let's enlist them."
In comparison, the 12 member Anchorage Assembly has two volunteers as well - Forrest Dunbar in Kazakhstan and Pete Petersen, who served in the Dominican Republic.
We probably shouldn't be surprised. As noted in a previous post, Alaska is tied as the state with the third highest number of returned Peace Corps volunteers in the country.
[Regular readers: I have eight drafts in my blogspot list of posts just since November 11. These are posts I started but weren't finished. They are thoughts I want to pursue, but need to do more work on, but I didn't want to forget. Some will get completed. Others will probably never get posted. There are a dozen more still in my head. Yesterday was a travel day and getting an enthusiastic greeting from my granddaughter reminds me of my priorities. My grandson and his family arrive in a few days. So some of my posts my be shorter - like this one and the last two. Just a brief observation. And I suspect for many readers, short posts will be a relief.]
Thursday, October 13, 2016
Goodbye To The King of Thailand
The King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, was a daily part of my life for three years, when I taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer. His picture was in every classroom, in every restaurant, in every house, in every shop, at the end of every movie when the audience stood up to a picture of the King and the national anthem. I guess that could be a little creepy, except that everyone* revered the King and he was constantly visiting people all over the country, often opening hospitals for the poor, or agricultural projects in hill tribe villages.
Memory is a tricky thing. The only time I consciously remember seeing him in person was at a royal ploughing ceremony at Sanaam Luang (the open space in front of the King's palace in Bangkok). The slides are dated June 1969, but it took several weeks for slides to come back from Australia or Hong Kong where I had to send them for developing then, so I'm guessing this was in May.
This is the only picture I know of that I took of the King. My sense is that I was present at other times when the King was in public, but nothing specific comes to mind. The King is in the middle watching the ceremonial oxen passing him.
Wikipedia offers some history of the ceremony:
"In Thailand, the common name of the ceremony is Raek Na Khwan (แรกนาขวัญ) which literally means the "auspicious beginning of the rice growing season". The royal ceremony is called Phra Ratcha Phithi Charot Phra Nangkhan Raek Na Khwan (พระราชพิธีจรดพระนังคัลแรกนาขวัญ) which literally means the "royal ploughing ceremony marking the auspicious beginning of the rice growing season".[2]
This Raek Na Khwan ceremony is of Hindu origin. Thailand also observes another Buddhist ceremony called Phuetcha Mongkhon (พืชมงคล) which literally means "prosperity for plantation". The royal ceremony is called Phra Ratcha Phithi Phuetcha Mongkhon (พระราชพิธีพืชมงคล).[3] The official translation of Phuetcha Mongkhon is "Harvest Festival".[4]
King Mongkut combined both the Buddhist and Hindu ceremonies into a single royal ceremony called Phra Ratcha Phithi Phuetcha Mongkhon Charot Phra Nangkhan Raek Na Khwan (พระราชพิธีพืชมงคลจรดพระนังคัลแรกนาขวัญ). The Buddhist part is conducted in the Grand Palace first and is followed by the Hindu part held at Sanam Luang, Bangkok.[5]"
Here are a couple more pictures from that day.
I had taught English for two years in Kamphaengphet, a wonderful quiet upcountry province. In 1969 I was serving a third year as a primary school supervisor for English teachers. I was living in a room at an elementary school - Wat Rakhang - across the river from the King's palace and Sanam Luang.
Here's the ferry I took to get from the Bangkok side of the river to the Thonburi side where I lived. In those days the weekend market - now at Chatuchak - was also located at Sanam Luang. It was a much smaller enterprise. While much of Bangkok has been totally transformed, the area around the King's palace and right across the river in what was then Thonburi, is comparatively unchanged.
There's much to say about Thailand now and the potential turmoil that has been expected to follow the King's death - he's been living in a hospital, not far from where I lived for several years now. The Crown Prince has had a very public playboy life while his sister has been the one who has followed in the spirit of King Bhumipol and visited villages and helped promote the well being of Thais around the Kingdom, particularly the poor. She greeted returned Peace Corps volunteers at the 45th anniversary of Peace Corps Thailand. The King was 88 and was the longest serving monarch in the world. I think that title now transfers to Queen Elizabeth.
I haven't kept close watch on Thai politics, but with King Bhumibol now gone, all sorts of forces are unleashed. Here's New Mandela's article What Now? And here's Asian Correspondent's story on the succession, coincidently, it includes a picture of the Crown Prince at the Ploughing Ceremony last May.
Here's a link to a post I did in 2009 when I ran into a picture of the King (in a coffee shop) with Elvis Presley.
*Not quite everyone. In the south of Thailand the Muslim population was less enamored. And I remember how shocked I was at the end of a movie in the south when people just walked out ignoring the national anthem.
I'd finally note that I was rather lucky finding these slides amongst the many stashed away and only vaguely sorted. I was also able to find a little slide viewer which I used to take pictures of the slides.
Friday, August 05, 2016
Four Years Later, Becky's Back From Mexico
Had a good time sharing thoughts with volunteers from places like Nepal and the Philippines.
And then there was Becky, who is technically still a volunteer, into her fourth year in Mexico. Yes, that is a long time. The normal assignment is two years. Well, she's finishing up, maybe this month.
What makes Becky particularly relevant to this blog is that I met her four years ago here in Anchorage just as she was about to first leave for her assignment. It was send off dinner for new volunteers. Here's the link to that post. And a picture of her in May 2012 before she left for Mexico.
And this was Thursday evening. I should have checked the picture after I took it. It's the only one I have. We were talking quickly at the end of the BBQ and someone suggested she get in front of the Peace Corps emblem for the picture.
Four years ago she only knew the general area she was going into - Environmental Education.
Her town was just outside El Chico National Park and some of her recent projects were connected with the park. Like developing an activity book for primary school kids that helps to introduce them to the National Park. She helped set up an environmental book section in the local library. She's also been doing community based workshops on a variety of topics including organic pesticides and bio-fertilizers. There was also the book published by the kids in the community using their drawings and photos showing a kids' eye view of the community and the environment. You can see the whole book here.
This was just a quickie overview of things she was working on recently. But it seemed like a good idea to do a follow up of the four year old post.