On The Edge Of Snow - And OLÉ Classes Continue

It was in the mid 30s when I went to Pecha Kucha class yesterday, but the streets were good, so I biked.  My presentation was ok, people said nice things afterward.  Here's the first of the 20 slides.

and I tried to make the case for how learning another languages let's you escape the confines of English (or whatever your first language is) as you learn that the words and grammar of one language reflect the world differently from other languages.  This shows most concretely in the fact that words of one language don't translate exactly into the words of the other language.  Even concrete objects might not translate right.  Banana would seem an easy translation, but in Thailand there are about 20 kinds of bananas that regularly show up in the market and many people there pick bananas off trees in their garden.   And that, say, a black cat, has meanings in one culture that it might not have in another.  And words that describe relationships get even trickier.

The Thai words closest to brother and sister really focus on the older/younger relationship more than the gender relationship, or even the blood relationship

People without any blood connection use the terms for older and younger about each other all the time. (And it's different from the more recent US use of 'Bro'.)  At one point I asked somebody, after he'd introduced me to his sixth or seventh 'brother', how many brothers did he have.  Oh, they aren't that kind of brother, he said.

The class liked the blue and red circles I used to show how much the English and German or Thai words overlapped.  I didn't think of that until I was finishing the last slide, the night before the presentation.  Then I went back and put in circles for the different slides that compared English and German or English and Thai words.  Good thing I did.  I argued that when the words don't overlap completely (usually the case) is when you learn what your own language doesn't capture about the world.  And the less the words overlap, the more you learn about yourself and the world.

It was just starting to rain when I returned yesterday.  It was more a light drizzle, and the drops were tiny specks of hail.  Much better than raindrops, not as good as snow.  I could feel them on my face.  But I got home fine, but I was expecting snow on the ground this morning.

There wasn't any and the street in front of our house was wet, but not icy.  And large chunks of sky were blue.   So I biked.  For the most part it was ok but then I saw a police car's lights flashing ahead and this car on the side of the road.

The culprit seems to have been a piece of light brick colored cement at the intersection.  While all the other surfaces were fine, that piece of cement was really slick.  Was there a second car involved?  I don't know.  A stop sign had been flattened.  (I thought I took a picture, but it's not on my phone.)  I walked the bike around the debris and down the hill.  Back on the flat I rode carefully to the church where today's OLÉ classes were held.

By 2:30 when I came back, the sun was out and any ice or frost that had been there was either a puddle or dry pavement.  But I did have two voices in my head this morning.  One said:  "Don't be such a wimp.  You can't let a little weather threat keep you off the bike."  The other said, "A broken arm would really be a pain.  Don't be stupid."  Stupid beat wimp today, but I know I should be more careful.

The classes today were good.  The Innocence Project class was a continuation of last week's list of reasons innocent people are convicted.  I'll put that into another post.  It's interesting.  And this class is a great one after seeing "When They See Us" the Netflix series on the Central Park Five case.  Everything they talk about in the class happens in the series.

The afternoon class was on Pebble Mine.   We've had a representative from Pebble. A person from the Army Corps of Engineers, whose in charge of the Environmental Impact Statement, and today, was someone from Bristol Bay Native Corporation who are strongly opposed to the mine.

The Sun's Been With Us All Day

After several days of rain, the sun finally came out, and stayed out all day.

Went to the monthly Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL)  meeting.  This is the first time I remember that the main speaker was an Alaskan - from Ketchikan - Kiera O'Brien.    She's also a Harvard grad who was head of the Harvard Republicans, and she's organized a national group called Students for Carbon Dividends.

You can watch to the video of the national call here, and see the CCL website here. Kiera was on a delayed flight, so one of her co-workers Alexander Posner also participated.  He did an excellent job as well.

Now that most people accept the reality of Climate Change, it's important to know that there are things that can be done to reduce the impacts.   The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act is CCL's main focus.  It's  been called the most effective single act that can be done to reduce carbon.  You can learn more about that here.  If you feel you want to do something about climate change, I urge you to check the link and then call your members of Congress and tell them you want them to pass the Act.

Then a stop at the library to pick up a  book and then a short loop on the bike trail to enjoy the sunny - if chilly - morning.

The snow is much lower on the mountains that before the rain.  This is from the Alaska Native Medical Center campus.

Here are some late grasses shining in the morning sun.  As we go toward winter, the sun gets lower and lower on the horizon during the day.

There was ice on most of the puddles on the trail.

And here's a picture from yesterday.  Not sure where else to put it.  It's dinner at the Queen of Sheba Ethiopian restaurant last night.

I planted most of the leftover daffodil bulbs.  I've had mixed results in the past, but I'm going to be optimistic.  I hope I can post pictures of yellow flowers in the spring.

Solstice Is Past And It's Fall In Anchorage

There's more termination dust.





Ravens Roost had an apple festival the other night.

There were clouds in   Goose Lake.

Trees are getting yellow and losing their leaves.

I got some radishes on the last day of the Muldoon Farmers Market for this year.

And this woodpecker visited our yard today.  

Sept 5, 2019: Warm And Sunny; Recall Dunleavy Delivers 49K signatures; 329,574,686 People Did NOT Die In USA Today

Today began with a vain attempt to see the Northern Lights that @AuroraNotify was reporting on Twitter.  It was cloudy in Anchorage.  But they were cool clouds.

It was so nice that after completing my errands, I headed for the Campbell Creek trail heading south.  I wish, when people ask me how I can live in Alaska, that I could get them on this or any of the other greenbelt trails in Anchorage.  Right through the middle of urban neighborhoods these bike trails are like going through a magic door into the woods.  Here's a bit of beginning fall foliage as I cross a bridge just past Minnesota.

On the way back I stopped to watch some ducks at Taku Lake.

Meanwhile, the Recall Dunleavy campaign had delivered 49,006 signatures to the Division of Elections.  They needed 28,000 or so to qualify for verification of 28,000 valid signatures and then review by the Lt. Governor's office (Lt. Gov is in charge of elections), to be sure it meets the grounds for a recall petition.  Given the various lawyers who scrutinized the language - including the person who has written the Department of Law posted opinions on what you need to qualify for a recall petition (and who was fired by Dunleavy in the first day or two he was in office), I'm confident it meets the letter of the law.  Not all that confident the Lt. Governor's office will see it that way, but if it doesn't, I still trust the Alaska Supreme Court to rule based on the law.

Once the recall petition is approved a new petition will need some 70,000 plus signatures to get it on the ballot.  A record warm and dry summer made it pretty easy to get signatures the first time round.  Doing the same will take a little more grit when (someone suggested 'if') the weather gets more bracing.  But 49,000 signatures in just over a month was way more and way faster than has ever been done in Alaska.  All those folks need to sign again for the next petition and then another 30,000 or 40,000 (to insure enough valid signatures) and it's ready for the ballot.

Unlike Wisconsin and Kansas where the Koch brothers (someone suggested Koch brothers is like a brand that doesn't need to be adjusted to reflect David's passing) have installed their puppets to destroy those state governments, most of Alaska's Republican legislators did NOT go along with the attempted cuts.  And those attempted, and the less drastic, but still nasty cuts affected so many people that everyone has a reason to get rid of Dunleavy.  There will be an expensive Outside Koch funded campaign to keep the governor.  The Republican Governor's Association made this totally perfunctory and bullshit (sorry, I can't sugar coat this) statement:

"WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Republican Governors Association released the following statement from Executive Director Dave Rexrode in response to the recall effort launched against Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy:
'Since taking office, Governor Dunleavy has served as the People’s Governor, fighting for a better future for all Alaskans and taking on the special interests. Under his leadership unemployment is at its lowest level in years and he continues to work to attract jobs and economic development to the state. The RGA stands behind Governor Dunleavy against this recall effort by partisan special interests seeking to halt Alaska’s tremendous progress.'”

This is all generalities which can't be backed up by facts.  Expect more of this and others' propaganda to get much better focused on pushing Alaskan buttons once it's clear the recall will be on the ballot.  Here's a look at some of their media buys.  $58 million to Target Enterprises.  And we know that Alaskans for Prosperity, Koch's Alaska chapter of the Americans for Prosperity, will pander hard.

But Alaska is small enough and  enough people have seen behind the curtain of the Wizard of Wasilla, that I think the recall will prevail.  This is a bi-partisan effort.  Hey Trump, you want another Alaskan governor from Wasilla to replace Pence?  He should be available by late Spring 2020.

Sorry Alaskans, you know all this already.  It's for people Outside.

I didn't realize I was going to write so much, so I'd planned one more item about today.

329,574,686 People Did NOT Die In USA Today  

Of course I can't know precisely.  I used the Current US Population which monitors the US population second by second, and The United States Death Clock which does the same with deaths and says 7,453 people, on average die each day.  So those are averages.  But it's good enough to come up with a reasonably close number to remind everyone that most people in the US did NOT die today.  Despite the headlines we see and hear everyday in the media, a tiny, tiny fraction of 1% of the US population dies in a day.

Yes, let's try to lower the number of unnecessary deaths like:

• gun deaths per year (36,383)
• homeless deaths (921 last year in LA County alone)
• unintentional injury deaths (169,963)

But let's also remember that death is part of life.  Don't let the media's focus on the unusual distort your sense of how safe or unsafe you are.  I believe that every story about death in the news should include the number of people who did NOT die, to help people keep things in perspective.

And to close this off - when you bike, you see things drivers miss, like this poster.

I didn't even know there were 905 channels (maybe not all have programming) in Anchorage.  The best I could find on this was not quite a year ago in the ADN.

More Wind, More Gramping Bike Time

Not much to say today.  Mi nieta* is amazing.  After she showed how comfortable she is on the bike trail yesterday, we tried something a little trickier.  No problem.

Here we encountered a tree branch that fell victim to the wind.

Then into the sanctuary.

This tree trunk has been on the ground a while.

If you click on this photo above, you might be able to see a blur of blue through the grass where the trail turns to the right.  I don't think this violates the no pictures of the nietos rule.

And here she's zoomed along the boardwalk before I could catch her in the distance.  It's so neat to see her go from determined but really careful last summer, to comfortable,  this summer, even on challenging trails.


She loves riding the bike and we have much better biking and closer trails in Anchorage than she has at home.


Tomorrow morning we go birding.

* couldn't link to the google translate page that showed mi nieta means my granddaughter.

"You haven't got the disqualifications. . ." Plus Carrots Radishes And The Bike Trail

I'm reading Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis for my bookclub.  I don't consider myself Lucky Steve for having to read it.  It's a 1950s British.  It's supposed to be an academic comedy I guess.  The cover says, "No one has been so funny in this vein since Eveyln Waugh was at his best."  It also says, "$1.45."

But I did find a redeeming quote today.  The feckless main character has just given a disastrous lecture to the whole academic and local elite community and lost his job as a professor.  But he gets a phone call offering him a new job.

"I think you'll do the job all right, Dixon.  It's not that you've got the qualifications, for this or any other work, but there are plenty who have.  You haven't got the disqualifications, though, and that's much rarer."

I'm not quite sure what that means, but I suspect that it's the unspoken reason many people do get jobs.  If anyone has some examples, I'd love to hear them.

Meanwhile mi nieta (Spanish does granddaughter so much better than English) is here with her parents.  We went to the Muldoon Saturday market at Chanshtnu Muldoon Park (Muldoon at the end of Debarr.)  This market has a mix of fresh veggies, baked goods, and hadn't  [hand-]made items from knits to lego earrings.



The produce was beautiful  Look at those radishes and carrots!

These are Somali baked goods.  Here's the ingredients of Kac Kac:

Z took this and the next picture.  These are squash.








And this is one of the Nepali farmers.

Just look at these onions.  I guess we're so used to food that's taken a week to get to Anchorage from Outside, that when we get fresh locally grown crops, they look sooo good.










After we got back, we took out the bike that Z learned to ride last summer.  We'd gone to a nearby empty parking lot and she got the hang of it.  Then I told her the second most important thing you need to know is how to use the brakes.  But when she left last summer, she was riding a bike.

Today we got out the bike to see how she was doing a year later as a 6 year old.  The alley near our house was paved this summer and it's perfect - a couple hundred yards, no traffic.  Well two other girls showed up on their bikes.  It's slightly downhill from our end, but she had no trouble, including looping around and coming back.  So later we went to Campbell Creek and rode the bike trail.  After about a mile and a half, I mentioned that however far we go, we have to go back.  She decided it was time to turn around. I didn't know how far she'd last so I didn't push to go further.
But the trail through the woods is beautiful and she was going up and down the small hills like a trooper.  Family pictures are not allowed on here.  Not sure how long she can avoid being captured by the online data vultures, but for now trying to keep her free.

However, I did take a short video of the grasses dancing in the wind on the bike ride.


(The wind apparently was responsible for knocking out the power in the area around our house too today.)

Wonderful day.

More Cordoba and French Bike Riders

Here are some more Cordoba shots from the Free Tour as well as a few others.

The building in the middle was pointed out as the narrowest building in South America -  3 meters at the widest.  It had to do with land issues.  It’s got some businesses and apartments.

These folks were standing there, but the tour moved on before I could find out exactly who they were and why they were there.  Are these Anonymous supporters?  Don’t know.

The cabildo is the government building.  It was in a back section of this building wh ere the  detention and torture center was located.

This is the Museo de Marques de Sobremonte. It’s an old building you can find out more (with video) here.

This is a much newer apartment (I think) building we passed a few times.

This is  Paseo de Buen Pastor and  was once, as  described by Lonely Planet  ‘a combined chapel, monastery, and women’s prison.’  That sounds like a strange and suspicious combination of institutions.  Today, though it is a community center with lots of activities for people of all ages.


Below are the leftovers of the tour who had lunch together at the place the tour guide recommended.  It turned out to be us two US folks and four French folks.  The two on the right were wrapping up a year long bike trip that started in Calgary and took them to LA down the west coast.  From there they flew to Ecuador and biked down to Argentina.  They were on their last leg - to Buenos Aires.  They met the two French women, who are studying civil (I think) engineering in Argentina for five months., on the tour.

  

 That’s enough for now.  We’re in the Cordoba airport waiting for our last inside Argentina flight - to Buenos Aires.  We were supposed to leave at 5;m, but the flight is delayed to 6:35pm now.   We’ll have three more full days in Argentina, then we fly back to LA for a couple of days before finally making it home.  I’m ready for an Alaskan vacation.  When we left I told people that while I hated to leave Alaska in the summer, I didn’t wish them rain or a bad summer at all.  But I certainly wasn’t wishing them the record high temperatures and fire  smoke, or the failed veto override.

Though reading the Alaskan complaints about the heat reminded me of how Alaskans scoff at Outsiders who complain about the cold.  True Alaskans should be able to handle heat as well as cold without whining.  (I know, easy for me to say, I wasn’t there.).

A Wandering Post About Blogging And Travel And Local Computer Repair Stores And Flowers And Freedom of The Press

A friend suggested that when we head south next week, that I just not blog for a month.  That was in the context of my looking for an alternative to taking my laptop with all the stuff that's on it.  We were talking about my visiting little locally owned computer/telephone repair shops that sell used equipment too.  I already posted about High Frequency where I bought my wife's phone and more recently my on upgrade from having to text using a phone keyboard and not being able to see the whole conversation.  Just the most recent text.  High Frequency has moved from Gamble and 15th (with a hard to get into parking lot) to 36th and Old Seward.  Much more convenient for me.  

But I also learned about Device Pitstop over at Arctic and 36th next to Jens.  Chris, in the picture, didn't have quite what I was looking for.  He had another option for a higher price, but then asked if I had any layovers on the trip.  

I mentioned LA and he was on the phone trying to find me cheaper options there.  

I'm really impressed with these smaller stores.  They all had much more personal service than the national chain stores.  I also visited Computer Renaissance on King and Dimond.  They didn't have any Apple products, and it seemed easier to stay with what I know.  Today I went to where I should have gone - the Mac Store.  This is the closest place and it's Mac.  But he didn't have anything either - though it's nice to know he's there for repairs and help and he's a registered Apple repair service.  That store used to be off Dimond between New and Old Seward on the north.  But he did tell me about an iPad for sale at Walmart.  But I don't want to shop at Walmart.  No problem, he said.  Best Buy will match competitors' prices.  

So I biked over today - such great biking weather.  Big thunderheads rising up from the mountains.  Thunder is pretty rare in Anchorage  

And now I have a new iPad for a decent price.  And I suspect when we get back, it will be what I use when I go out of the house and need my computer.  It weighs much less even with the keyboard/case I bought with it.  And Best Buy gave a discount on that too.  I hate buying new tech stuff and took my time.  Actually I hate buying new stuff.  We (people in general) have too much stuff. 

Tomorrow our house sitter comes over for lunch.  OK, the trip.  I'm excited, but I have mixed feelings.  I hate to leave Alaska in the summer and this week eating three meals a day out on the deck has been like a little paradise.  After 32 years, the old deck was starting to have some structural issues.  Moss had made the holes between the boards large enough in places for things to fall through.  Some of the steps were not rotting out.  So we had it rebuilt and with years of experience, we added a little more so that we could follow the sun.  That took a lot of time - we had a builder, but still there was some disruption.  Even though the builder put down plywood every night so we could use the deck the whole time.  

So the trip.  My daughter got us into this.  I'll leave it at that.  But she wanted to go to Argentina this summer to see the total solar eclipse in early July.  We were invited.  My granddaughter was involved, so we said yes. But we decided if we were going that far, we should stay a little longer and see more of the country.  So we'll only overlap a little bit with them.  But I've never been further south than Guatemala in the Western Hemisphere.  But I wanted to travel lighter and without all the data that's on my computer.  I was reading stories on line of people being robbed.  And even though I've taken my computer a lot of places, I decided it was time to think about this more.  Identity theft is a bigger issue these days.  So with a much cheaper model, without much personal info on it, there should be less risk.  And I can still keep you posted about what we see.  

I've been thinking about how to introduce the trip and so now I have.  Our front yard flowers have started their annual show.  

The phlox are my favorite (well at the moment).  There are several clumps like this of bright pink.  And the individual flowers are tiny, but beautiful.  Here's a 2008 post with closeups of the phlox and the forget-me-nots.

And earlier this spring, a moose chomped on the leaves of these lilies.  But apparently it wasn't tasty and the buds hadn't started pushing up yet.  Because there are lots of buds.  

OK, here's one more picture I don't know where else to put.  Saw it biking yesterday along 40th. They were on every 2nd or 3rd pole.  I have mixed feelings about Assange.  I don't think I'd like him as a person, but enough people I respect - like Daniel Ellsberg - feel prosecuting him is a serious attack on the First Amendment.  






Just to be fair here, I googled "why Assange should be prosecuted."  The first two pages were all about why he should NOT be.  Or at best, stories about Assange.  The closest I got to what I was searching for was:  The debate over what Julian Assange's arrest means for freedom of the press, explained.


I can't help feeling that this is more about the anger against leaks in general.  Under Obama it was embarrassing to have so much diplomatic gossip go public and as I've pointed out in earlier posts, no one has identified anyone who died because of the leaks.  But they argue that he endangered many lives.  Under Trump, anything Trump doesn't like published, he'd censor if he could.

Campbell Creek - Still Some Snow

Biked over to Campbell Creek yesterday to see if the snow was gone from the trail as it is from the Chester Creek trail from UAA to Goose Lake and on around to Alaska Native Medical Health Consortium (ANMHC).  It's close, but there are still snowy/icy/slushy spots like this one.

I made it through on several of these patches, but decided I'll wait another week to see if my regular run up to Campbell Airstrip is ice free.  But the views of the creek from the various bridges is, as always, wonderful.

Ice On Lake, But Not On Trail

After the monthly Citizens Climate Lobby meeting this morning, I biked to Goose Lake and then down the path parallel to Northern Lights and back around past APU and then west along University Lake and on home.  The trail has practically no snow at all.  Here and there some along the edge of the trail.  A few spots still have easily avoided remnants of winter.


Monday I had checked the Campbell Creek trail east of Lake Otis and it was still covered with snow and ice.  I should check it out tomorrow.    As you can see in the picture, Goose Lake still is covered with ice.

But not the bike trail.

And the biker enjoyed his ride.