We Made It To Seattle

We made it by bus to the airport without it raining on us.

I want to say thanks to Theresa at Alaska Airlines for changing our ticket because she was sure we wouldn't make our connection in Seattle.  (We'd changed our flight that was supposed to stop in Portland to one stopping in Seattle because of the weather.  Alaska lets you change flights when there are big weather issues without having to pay the flight change or change in cost of the ticket.)  We learned another big advantage of being MVP on Alaska.  You get a leg up on the waiting list.  I have issues about this airline class system, but if it exists, I'm glad we were on the right side and I apologize to anyone who might have not gotten on because of us.

We got our ticket and you can see the view through the window above as we waited to take off.

The landscape around Portland was pretty white as we flew by Mt. Hood.



But as we got further north, things were looking better and we landed in the sun in Seattle.

Our gate has been changed from C11 to D1 and my wife is waiting for me to finish this so I will. Be back in Anchorage soon if all goes well.

In LAX Travel Chaos Hoping to Get On This Flight -Updated

Our original flight to Seattle was delayed and the checkin person didn't think we'd make our connection to Anchorage, so she put us on the earlier 11:45 am flight which is overbooked, but she thought we might be able to get on when they upgrade people to First Class.

This one is also delayed.  Passengers are just getting off the plane now.  It's 12 noon.

We've been lucky to avoid this sort of mess most of the time.  I do have an appointment in Anchorage at 1pm tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.


UPDATE  12:12 pm -  we now have boarding passes with seats.   On to Seattle with plenty of time to connect to the Anchorage flight.

UPDATE:  4:40pm the follow up to this post is here.  We made it to Seattle.

Recycled Piano And Other Seattle Shots

Just outside the Bainbridge Island post office, there's an old piano for folks to play.  Above are some close ups.  Below is the whole piano along with the keyboard painted bench.  My granddaughter's fingers discovered many ways to make music.

Sunrise this morning.  At that point I wasn't sure if it was clear or cloudy.  It was cloudy.  After taking my son and his family to the airport for their trip home, we went for lunch at the houseboat of an old friend from Anchorage.

Anthony Dickerson - Life Amongst The Resistance

Last week I encouraged folks to support artists by going to their performances, buying their works, and letting them know you had their backs.  So as I walked out of the Elliott Bay Book Company today, and this man asked if I liked poetry, I realized that this was one of the moments I was talking about.

What I didn't realize was how powerful his recital would be.  He asked for a word.  I gave him 'resistance.'   So here's Anthony Dickerson live on the curb outside the Elliott Bay Book Company at 1521 10th Ave Capitol Hill Seattle.

Mt. Rainier Portraits

We left Anchorage at 7am and made it to the Seattle Art Museum a little after noon where we met our daughter and granddaughter for some play time and then some Indian lunch.  The came with us on the train back to the airport before saying good bye.

These are some pictures of Mt. Rainer as we left Seattle.  They're each from somewhat different angles.  But overall it's like looking at one side of the moon as we flew by on the west, from the north.

This last one show the southern side.

We just walked into my mom's house.  We haven't been here in about six months.  When we last left we worked in a frenzy trying to get it clean and empty of things that had real importance to us.  There's enough furniture that people can stay here and we've had some friends use it during the time.  And the woman who cleaned the house so well for my mom still comes by regularly.

All that is a preface to the pleasant surprise we got when we got the alarm turned off and walked in.  It looks good.  I know that tomorrow when we look in the garage we'll find a lot of stuff still to do, but in the house things look better than I expected.  And when it's light out tomorrow I can see how the garden has fared.  And then I'll make a list of things to do while we're here.

From The Air

I've got a million posts in my head and not much time, but I suspect most folks would rather look at a few decent pictures than read a long post.  We walked our grandson to day care this morning, then left San Francisco at 1pm for Seattle.

Seattle had been  clouded when we landed, but the clouds seemed to have gathered over by Mt. Rainer as we took off, leaving downtown Seattle in bright sunshine. (Click the pics to see them sharper.)

Then we veered over Puget Sound.

Then I got some work done, read my book, and before I knew it we were over Prince William Sound with Denali and Foraker silhouetted in the sunset glow.

Minutes later we were passing Anchorage from the south so we could loop around over Cook Inlet to land.

(Sorry about the stray light coming in as they turned on the cabin lights.)

We spent a good amount of time at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art yesterday and I have so many pictures I have no idea how I'm going to tackle posting about that.  I do like modern art museums because I see work that lots if not most people would dismiss, that I love.  And I don't feel as all alone in my weird tastes. Which reminds me I still have a follow up post from the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

Brandon Lentz

I was sitting in Terminal 9 at SEATAC last week eating my yakisoba across from a striking young individual who was working on posters with another woman.

Blogging gives me the excuse to say hello and ask what the posters were about.  (I shouldn't need an excuse, but I'm basically pretty shy.)

So meet Brandon Lentz.


Brandon's putting on a show June 3 at GRC  (Green River College.)




Here's some of Brandon's music from Sound Cloud.  I like it.

All Genders Restroom

Here's the door to one of the restrooms at the Seattle Aquarium.







We'd been able to book our flight home from LA with a six hour layover in Seattle and we were meeting our daughter and granddaughter at the aquarium.

  We looped around over downtown Seattle and could see the aquarium, but they wouldn't let us out until they landed a few minutes south at the airport.

Since my granddaughter started walking, it's been a minor dilemma when she and I were out together and one of us had to pee.  I obviously couldn't take her into the women's room, but should I take her into the men's room?

If I had to go, there was no choice.  I wasn't going to leave her outside the restroom where I couldn't see her.  She came into the men's room.  And as she got older and knew when she had to go, I still have had to take her into the men's room.

No one got excited.  No one ever made a fuss about her presence in the men's room.  I wasn't totally comfortable.  While I believe in openness and that we should be able to talk about anything that a kid raises, I also feel it important to let her mother be the guide on this.  And we haven't talked about this.  And what if my granddaughter doesn't raise questions, out loud?  But sometimes you have to make a decision on the spot.

I also understand that it's different when an adult male goes into a women's restroom, especially when a woman is alone in the restroom, especially if she's ever been sexually abused.  But that could happen any time, any where.  With or without laws about transgender access to restrooms.

As I see this issue there are several key points.  But the absolutely most important is simply understanding the fluidity of gender.  And for the current situation - what a transgender identity is about.  I'm certainly no expert on this, but I seem to know a lot more than the folks freaking out over transgender rights and bathrooms.

Understanding transgender.    From the moment of birth, we are segregated into boy or girl. Pink or blue.  I wrote about my experiences on this with my granddaughter at the playground two years ago.  We know there is more than black or white, good or bad, open or closed, up or down, smart or dumb, and every other pair of opposites.  There are shades of gray.  A person  can be good at some things and bad at others.  A car can be good at one time and bad at another.  But male or female, to many people, are absolutes.  Penis or no penis.

But it's not that simple.  Every year, about 2000 babies are born with "ambiguous genitals."

Ambiguous genitals refer to the uncertain appearance of a baby's external sexual features. Sometimes a female foetus is born with ovaries but male-like external genitals (female pseudo-hermaphroditism). A male may be born with testicles (which have yet to descend from the pelvis) but with female-like external genitalia (male pseudo-hermaphroditism). Rarely, newborns may even have both ovaries and testicles and ambiguous genitals (true hermaphroditism). In addition, there may be other congenital defects present in these newborns, such as hypospadias in males. This is a condition in which the urethral (urinary) opening is not in its normal position on the tip of a penis but is on the underside.  [From Gender Centre]

So what happens when babies are born with ambiguous genitals?

Approximately 10 times a year in Houston, at the birth of a certain type of baby, a special crisis team at Texas Children's Hospital springs into action. Assembled in 2001, the unusual team includes a psychologist, urologist, geneticist, endocrinologist, and ethicist. Its mission: to counsel parents of infants sometimes referred to as "intersex" babies—that is, babies of indeterminate physical gender. That such a team exists—and that it often counsels deferring surgery for infants who are otherwise healthy—reflects a radical new thinking among doctors about gender identity and outside efforts to shape it. Instead of surgically "fixing" such children to make them (visually, at least) either male or female, a handful of U.S. specialists now argue that such infants should be left alone and eventually be allowed to choose their gender identity. The approach challenges decades of conventional wisdom about what to do with infants whose genitalia don't conform to the "norm." Until very recently, such children were automatically altered with surgery, often with tragic consequences. Each year, about one in 2,000 children is born with ambiguous-looking genitalia.

One in 2000 children a year.  In 2014 there were 3,988,076 babies born in the US, so that comes to just under 2000 babies who weren't physically classifiable as clearly a boy or a girl. One in 2,000 is a tiny fraction of the population, but it's still 2000 people a year.  For Anchorage, assuming a random distribution, with a population of about 300,000, given one in 2000,  there should be 150 transgender folks.  That's a tiny minority.  So it's reasonable that most people don't know anyone who is transgender, especially since it isn't something people tell you when they meet you.  But it's not reasonable to stay ignorant, given the attention in this issue, and to treat these folks poorly.

Given the importance our society attaches to whether someone is male or female - remember, it's the first thing we ask when a new baby is born - being of ambiguous gender has to be one of the most difficult identity issues one can imagine. Especially when everyone assumes that you have to be either a boy or a girl. What do these 2000 people a year have to deal with every day of their lives?

For me, the first serious introduction to these questions came in Jeffrey Eugenides' book Middlesex, which tells three generations of familial history of Calliope Stephanides, a Greek American girl who doesn't feel like a girl.  It won a Pulitzer Prize and I recommend it - not only for what one can learn about intersex people, but because it's a wonderful novel.

Closing Thoughts

We're having this debate about transgender bathrooms because people are ignorant.  That's not a judgmental statement, merely descriptive.  People really don't understand about intersex or transgender or ambiguous genitalia.  They don't understand it because they don't even know it exists. We've been taught that you're either male or female.

Some people are naturally ignorant.  That is they have been taught people are male or female and their life experiences match what they've been taught.  Gays and lesbians have given them some cognitive dissonance, but even gay folk are still identified as male or female.

Some people are willfully ignorant.  They refuse to seek information that challenges what they 'know.'

Some people, in this election year, see this as an issue that could help the Republican Party overcome what looks like a hopeless presidential race for them.  Wedge issues have been a big part of the party's strategy over the years.  For a more academic approach on this click here.  I'm sure there were Republicans clapping with glee when the Obama administration announced it was suing North Carolina.  But I'm guessing there will be a lot of education in the next six months.  Not only on transgender issues, but also on the other aspects of North Carolina's HB 2 which attacks things like minimum wage and the right to sue over employment discrimination.

When my granddaughter had to go potty (her language, not mine) we weren't near the all genders  restroom and I took her into the men's room.  There were stalls as well as urinals.  We used a stall and no one's privacy was disturbed.

[Yes, Feedburner problems continue. I'm reposting what I put up earlier.  Finding a better RSS feed is on my todo list.  Anyone with suggestions let me know.]

The Long Day Coming Home

Got to take my granddaughter to the playground this morning before leaving.  We had a long discussion about schools - there's elementary school, middle school, and high school, then college I told her.  She told me she goes to pre-school, but when she's older she'll go to elementary school.

Then we walked her to pre-school and went on to catch the ferry.  I always marvel at the mental distance the 35 minute ferry ride takes me.

Bainbridge is heavily wooded and semi rural - though lots of houses are hidden behind the trees.  A fake wilderness.  But this was the view from the ferry leaving the island.

Half an hour later, the weather was different and we were pulling into downtown Seattle with its big buildings and homeless street people.

But crossing water is almost always good for the soul.

We scooted our suitcases up the hill to the train to the airport where we spent more time than we expected.  Our plane was an hour late leaving.  Our plane came into Seattle from San Francisco 45 minutes after we were supposed to take off.  Our flight out of San Francisco last week to Seattle was an hour late too.

But it was about five Seattle time when we took off and circled back over Puget Sound.

It was cloudy much of the way and I had stuff to work on.  But I looked out and big white mountains were peeking through the clouds.

It kept getting clearer.  This is a massive glacier with icebergs floating in the waterway in the middle.  If you click on the picture it will enlarge and focus.  I think this is the Malaspina glacier.   The Jet Propulsion Lab says

"Malaspina Glacier in southeastern Alaska is considered the classic example of a piedmont glacier. Piedmont glaciers occur where valley glaciers exit a mountain range onto broad lowlands, are no longer laterally confined, and spread to become wide lobes. Malaspina Glacier is actually a compound glacier, formed by the merger of several valley glaciers, the most prominent of which seen here are Agassiz Glacier (left) and Seward Glacier (right). In total, Malaspina Glacier is up to 65 kilometers (40 miles) wide and extends up to 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the mountain front nearly to the sea."

The picture they have shows it from further north (left).  In my picture you can't see the Seward glacier on the right

And finally the mudflats at low tide as we approach the Anchorage airport with the sun penetrating the veils of clouds.

The tug of home pulls one way and  the tug of our granddaughter (and grandson who we also got see on this trip) another.

Play Day In Seattle, Including Otter and Sturgeon

We ferried into Seattle yesterday and then bused to Volunteer Park.  First some playground time, then the conservatory.  (My camera battery was mostly dead, but came to life if I left it off, but only for a picture or two.  So no conservatory pics.)  An old high school friend met us for lunch, then we bused back downtown and to the aquarium before getting the ferry back to the island.  We had sun, rain, and in-between.  A good adventure with our granddaughter.  She's keeping us busy, so this will be short and sweet.

From the aquarium where the otters were active and close.

And in the underwater room where you have to trust the power of glass between you and the water all around you, including above, we sat and watched the sturgeon.



From the World Wildlife Fund site:

One of the oldest families of bony fish in existence, they are native to subtropical, temperate and sub-Arctic rivers, lakes and coastlines of Eurasia and North America. They are distinctive for their elongated bodies, lack of scales, and occasional great size: Sturgeons ranging from 7–12 feet (2-3½ m) in length are common, and some species grow up to 18 feet (5.5 m). Most sturgeons are anadromous bottom-feeders, spawning upstream and feeding in river deltas and estuaries. While some are entirely freshwater, very few venture into the open ocean beyond near coastal areas. 

A threatened species 

Some species of sturgeon are harvested for their roe, which is made into caviar. The late sexual maturity of sturgeon (6-25 years) makes them more vulnerable to overfishing. It is estimated that the number of sturgeon in major basins has declined by 70% over the last century. During the 1990s, the total catch was dramatically increased by unprecedented illegal harvest. Poaching activity in the Volga-Caspian basin alone is estimated to be 10-12 times over the legal limits. Further problems are caused by water pollution, damming, destruction and fragmentation of natural watercourses and habitats which affects migration routes and feeding and breeding grounds.

Driftwood

Yesterday we got in some beach time before it started raining again.  We did then go across to the Bainbridge Island Japanese Exclusion Memorial as the rain began.  I thought I'd posted about this memorial before but I can't find such a post.  It's very powerful, reminding us about the dangers and injustices of condemning whole groups of people.

From the beach walk, here are some images of the driftwood someone little walked across.

[This post and the last had  Feedburner problem again. So I'm reposting.]

Gramping Cramping Blogging

My granddaughter and I made oatmeal.  We ate strawberries.   We did some juggling.  Lots of giggling. We even made a video and used the slow motion to see better how to throw and catch the juggling balls.  She's working on juggling one ball right now.  We Walked, ran, hopped, skipped, sashayed, and piggybacked to the paper store.  Where we met J.


I'm not allowed to post images of her (not a bad rule in the age of face recognition and massive data gathering and sharing).  If I did, you'd all melt and understand my affliction.    So, I have to find other ways to convey how much fun we have together.










It's really wonderful to have someone else who is willing to spend so much time looking at cracks in the sidewalk, feeling the bark on the trees,  and examining and touching and smelling the camellias.

I'd note there was one area with a bunch of camellias bushes, but only one bush was blooming.

She also pondered with me the flies that seemed to be taking advantage of the sunshine that broke up the days of Seattle area rains.

We could feel and hear the wind.  We couldn't actually see it, but we could see the branches and her curls moving in the wind.  And I only consciously considered  today the fact that we can feel with more of our body than we can hear or see or taste or smell.  And my sunshine first touched the edges of the camellia leaves with her fingers, but then tried it on her forehead, and it worked there too.  She's so lost in concentration, and then she giggles.

And we've been watching the daffodil buds for the last few days and I've been predicting they would open soon.  And here's the first one we saw.  We had to look and touch and smell.





Later, after I wrote a long overdue letter on one of the cards I bought, then put a photo on the cover, we walked down to the post office.  $1.20 to Japan. The clerk pulled out a beautiful swallowtail butterfly stamp - $.71.  I wondered out loud what you could do with a $.71 stamp and she said they had stamps of all sorts of amounts.  She added a $.39 stamp.  Then to the market next door because someone wanted some strawberries.  Then off to another nearby park where there was lots of time on the slides and swings and other interesting ways to climb and move.

Finally, she climbed back into the stroller, clipped herself into the safety harness, put on her gloves, and we started home.  She stayed awake about 3/4 of a mile.  Then just as we got almost home her neck muscles relaxed and her head nodded down.


You'd think I could gramp and blog.  But blogging requires time to think, time to write, time to reconsider.  Gramping requires paying attention to a little human, not to the computer screen.   She's pulled my fingers away from the keyboard and closed the laptop a few times and closed my book while I was reading so we could explore together.   And I know that before too long, she'll have lots of friends and other things to do, and she won't have time to spend all day with grandpa.

A Bit of Exercise

The sun's been finding big holes in the clouds that dumped a couple of inches of rain yesterday here on Bainbridge Island, so I grabbed my daughter's bike and moved my legs.  I stopped at Manitou Beach, a tiny stretch of rocks and shells and driftwood with a mirage of downtown Seattle floating out in the distance.

Looking closer to in.

A driftwood shellf.

A stray rain cloud blew by while I was stopped at the beach so I decided to head back.  But the sun was out again on the way home.  It's setting now, still light, but the temp has dropped about 20 degrees since earlier this afternoon.  

Anchorage Seattle LA Plane Views

The landscapes always change and always are magnificent in different ways.

We've taken off over the icy inlet and are looking back at Anchorage at close to the shortest day of the year.  It's almost 11 am with a heavy cloud cover.

Our plane was delayed about 45 minutes for some mechanical issue.  We weren't concerned because we had 90 minutes between flights, but the lady behind us had only an hour to catch her flight Reykjavik and now was down to 15 minutes and we hadn't left yet.  And there was a group of people trying to catch a flight to Denver.



Here we're looking down at the pattern of snow and trees in the Pt. McKenzie area.  All these pictures are much sharper if you click on them.












And now, after seeing nothing below us but clouds all the way, we see the Olympic Range as we near Seattle.

We made a long southern loop over Tacoma and came back to land from the south.  Here's part of the Sound at about 3pm.

And no matter how many times you see Mt. Rainer, it's stunning.  Even on a cloudy day.

In the end, we made up time in the air, and I think everyone was ok, though we got to our connection as it was boarding.

And then we watched the sun set for a while as we neared LA.  That's part of the wing in the foreground.


Watching the world from the air makes me understand it much differently than I do when I'm on the ground.