Biking Stories This Week - Moose, Innocence, Post Cards, Bike Lanes, Big Leaves

 The moose are out this week.  Tuesday, walking toward Goose Lake we ran into a cow and calf.  Two bikers and a runner had already alerted us, as they were looking for alternate routes.  We got close enough to see them through the trees and walked back.  

Thursday, biking to up Campbell Airstrip Road, I passed a young bull with a nice growing rack.  It was the part of the trail that separates from the road.  Where I'd been warned by a driver a couple of years ago that they'd seen a bear on the trail.  So when I get to this part, I ring my bell a bunch to no one is surprised I'm there.  And down below the trail was the moose.  On the way back, I looked for him down below and there was nothing there.  Then there he was right next to the trail.  Turned back and took the road down.  Where I was able to get this picture.   You can see he's almost on the bike trail.

Then I stopped in the Botanical Garden.  They have a great plant sale.  Well, they sell plants all summer.  There's a good selection of interesting plants - local and not - that do well in Anchorage.  The plant sale is right at the front so I think you can buy plants without paying admission.  But the whole garden is worth some exploration.  And things change in there every week as different flowers start to show.

Here's some Shieldleaf Rogersia at the Garden.   These are very large leaves - the sign says China, Korea.  

They grow in the shade and my yard has lots of shade so I bought one about three years ago.  Bugs have been eating at it each year before it gets real big.  But this year it's looking better.  

Friday I had a couple of stops to make downtown.  First I dropped in at the Alaska Innocence Project.  They help prisoners who claim they were wrongly convicted and have evidence to back their cases.  They helped get the Fairbanks Four freed several years ago.  

I took an Óle course  several years ago, taught by Bill Oberly the (now retired) director and was highly impressed with their work.  

Prisoners don't get a lot of sympathy from the public, and innocent people behind bars is one of the biggest injustices in our society.  Since

Since it was a beautiful day we met in their conference room on the roof.

That's Francisco on the left and Jory on the right.  Here's a short video - under 2 minutes - that I recommend.  It talks about why people are wrongly convicted and how many there are.  

On the way to their office I found the new protected downtown bike lane.  I'd read about it in the Anchorage Daily News, but forgot about it until I came across it.  What an improvement.  No dodging pedestrians on the sidewalk or cars in the street. I could relax and just ride.  But there's not much of it - less than 1/2 mile I'd guess.  And then to get to the office I had to go back to the streets.  It even has its own street light with red and green bikes.  

Next stop was at Tim's to pick up some postcards to mail to voters.  This is probably the least painful way for introverts to be actively working to save Democracy.  [If you think I'm being alarmist, let's talk.  The mainstream media are treating the election as if Trump were a normal candidate.  He's not. Mainstream media only look reasonable in comparison with Fox.  With the Far Right capture of the Supreme Court, a Trump presidency would be the end of democracy in the US.] In this case the Environmental Voters Project combined with the Citizens Climate Lobby.  Tim's in a log cabin downtown, but this one has been modernized a bit.  It even has a touchpad to unlock the door.  

I have some work to do.  

Today was a spectacular day.  I picked up a book that was on hold at the library for me.  I think I requested it six or more months ago - The Sympathizer by Viet Thang Nguyen.  It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the first 15 pages pulled me right in.                                           I'm still working on Many Things Under a Rock - a book about octopuses.                                                           From the library to the post office to get post card stamps and to mail a letter to my grandson who is away at camp.  The post office was closed, but I could mail the letter.                                                        Finally I could bike on.  As I said, it was a beautiful day - our warmest of the year I'm sure.

                                                                                      I doubt  the official temperature,
which is measured at the airport, was 77˚F (26˚C), but it was a nice, nice day.  

I went up Arctic to the Campbell Creek bike trail near Dimond and then back down the  trail past Taku Lake and eventually home.  I've gone, as of today, 475 kilometers, this summer.  (That means since the trails were clear enough of snow to ride.)

We had salmon on the deck this evening - with loud rumbles of thunder in the background.  That's not something we get often in Anchorage - sometimes none in a year or three.  

So keeping it fairly light today.  Happy Fathers' Day to all of you lucky enough to have this awesome responsibility. 

Blogging Block - Mushrooms And Octopuses

I've got a bunch of started posts, but finishing them gets hard.  Don't want to just be another opinion without strong evidence.  Don't want to post simple stuff that has no meat.  Don't want to say what others have already said.  And it's summer - Anchorage is green and the temperature has crept up to cool but comfortable.  The garden's been taking my time up - I do enjoy seeing everything that's popping up.  Seems most of the perennials have survived the winter.  Also have been pulling up dandelions - first, to get them before they go to seed and second to add the greens to the compost pile.  Still have lots of dead leaves and they need to be layered with fresh greens (and the kitchen compost).

Found a couple of morels had popped up yesterday.   

And getting that picture up reflects one of my obstacles - my airdrop to my laptop stops working after a while and I have to shut everything down and reboot to get it to work again.  

I'm reading David Scheel's Many Things Under a Rock:  The Mysteries of Octopuses for our next book club meeting.  I'm enjoying it immensely.  It's a pleasure to read, I'm learning about octopuses - what they prey on, who preys on them, and how they evade their predators, for starters.  

David Sheel teaches at Alaska Pacific University and has accepted our invitation to join us when we discuss his book.

Sheel writes that "many things under a rock" is a translation of the Eyak word for octopus.

Here's a sample:

"The giant Pacific octopus of Port Graham that had defeated the butter clam mentioned earlier ha taken the heavy bivalve in its suckered arms.  But she was to learn the limits of her strength.  With many suckers on multiple arms attached around both halves of the clamshell the octopus no doubt had tried to pull open this armored prey, perhaps with some patience.  The sucker attachment requires no persistent force, but the octopus has to pull continuously with its arms to pry apart the clam halves, while the clam resists, applying opposing force to hold itself closed. 

Watching an octopus apply this pressure can be a quiet affair.  If the clam wins, this may be a motionless tug-of-war.  With small clams, a giant Pacific octopus quickly and smoothly pulls the clamshell open, sometimes with enough force to break one of the clamshells.  The day octopus opens clams and pries loose prey from their holdfasts on the reef with a series of sharp pulls, its who body jerking until, sometimes with an audible crack, something breaks and the inner flesh is accessible.  The day octopus is very fast, often breaking into its prey or moving on within less than a minute, whereas the gist Pacific octopus my spend a few minutes to tens of minutes opening prey by pulling.  

In its battle with this large butter clam, the octopus tired first.  The clam was too strong, and did not yield to the octopus's strength.  So the octopus tried something else.  On the outside of the clamshell were no fewer than I've separate marks, two marks on one have of the clamshell and three marks on the other side.  The marks were small ovals mea by the giant Pacific octopus.   Each of those was an attempt by the octopus to get through the shell.  

These tiny oval perforations are drill marks.  Octopuses have inside their mouths a radula, which is a rising organ used to break up food.  The radula itself is a ribbonlike membrane  that runs between two muscle groups and lies over and between the posters, two muscularhydrostats.  Our human tongue, as well as octopus arms and the elephant's trunk, are muscular hydrostatic - anatomical constructions that use fluid pressure generated by muscle contractions rather than a rigid skeleton to allow movement.  Inside the octopus mouth, the bolsters can direct the pressure of a bend in the radula ribbon.  Along the length of the radula are rows of micro teeth.  Muscles at either end pull the radula back and forth, rasping it over and wearing away the surface against which it is applied.  

The radula begins the work of drilling, and is sufficient itself to make a hole.  But it cannot penetrate too deeply.  Beyond that, the salivary papillae, also tipped with a few rasping teeth must take over.  The salivary glands secrete enzymes that break dow the shell of prey such as crabs or this clam.  The papillae delivers the caustic secretions directly to the drill site, chemically dissolving the shell, and making it easier for the tooth-tipped salivary papillae to rasp away."

If you are having trouble imaging an octopus radula, here's a picture google says is an octopus radula.  Unfortunately, the link resulted in "Page Not Found."   I don't quite see the rest of the octopus so I'm still a bit confused.  But this helps a little.  

Additionally, I'd note, as I have on occasion that I am still posting about the Respiratory Disease Reports from State every week.  There's one more today.  You can find those at the Respiratory Virus Cases tab above (just under the orange banner.)  You can also go there with this link.  But I'd rather you find the tabs so you can check it any time.  This week COVID cases are up significantly while only one RSV case was reported, and the flu cases are down slightly.

So, many things under a block.  

The Street - A 1946 Primer On Structural Racism

 My bookclub is reading The Street by Ann Petry this month.  

It was first published in 1946.  Remember that date.  It says on the cover of the 1976 edition that it has sold over a million copies.  

It's a story of an attractive young Black woman living in Harlem at the end of WW II, struggling to find a path to a better life.  It shifts here and there to the stories of other characters she deals with, but it's basically Lutie Johnso's story.

What I find of most interest is that 

• this book got published in 1946
• that many copies were sold
• that the message seems to have little impact on White understanding

I'm guessing about the last point.  Perhaps it caused a number of White folks to adjust their assessment of Black folk in the United States an to better understand the enormous obstacles they faced.  And maybe I'm just frustrated that it has taken so long to change White thinking,  After all, it was 1953 when James Baldwin's first book - Go Tell It On The Mountain - was published.  But Richard Wright's Native Son was published in 1940.  

A 1992 NYTimes article about the republication of The Street gives us more background about the author and how the book got published and that it was a big hit right away.  

Scattered throughout the book, Lutie Johnson reflects on al the obstacles Black women (and men) faced.  How impossible it was to get ahead, to escape poverty.  How the housing was terrible, paying the rent difficult.  Black men had trouble getting jobs, so the women worked and quickly became single mothers whose kids had no safe, healthy places to go after school until their mom's got home from work.  

Here are a couple of pages to give an example of Lutie's reflections.  This first one is when her husband was laid off and in desperation, Lutie takes a job in Connecticut as a maid.  This leaves her husband home to raise their young son.  

The facing page tells us that her boss' mother has come to visit over Christmas.  The sentence begins on the previous page:  "A tall think woman with ... cold gray eyes..."

And this second passage is much later.  While Lutie was out of Harlem most of the month working for White people in a large house, her husband took up with another woman.  Lutie has quit her job and is back in Harlem in a depressing, small apartment with her son.  

On the previous page she had, walking home,  encountered a woman whose head was bleeding.  

"Yes, she thought, she and Bub [her eight year old son] had to get out of ... 116th Street.  

In the 1992 New York Times article we learn that Ann Petry grew up comfortably in a small town in Connecticut.  

"Mrs. Petry's grandfather was a chemist and her father a pharmacist who owned his own drugstore in town. Her mother was a barber, then a chiropodist and finally started her own linen business. Mrs. Petry graduated from the College of Pharmacy of the University of Connecticut and worked for a time in the family shop. A Comfortable Childhood

Theirs was one of the few black families in this old Connecticut town then, and still is today, but the incidents of prejudice, said Mrs. Petry, have been few. Hers was a childhood of privilege, especially for a black child of those days. Two working parents, family all about, enough money for hair ribbons, new shoes, warm meals and college. Mrs. Petry came to known firsthand the traumas of the street only after she married in 1938 and moved to Harlem."

I'm still puzzled about the impact this book had.  Over a million copies had been sold by the time the 1992 paperback version was published.  Who were those people?  How did they react?  How many did anything to make the lives of Black folks easier?  How many were White?  Black?  

This book wasn't talking about the suffering of Black people in the South.  It was about people in New York City.

The original review of the book, says it was published in February 1946.  A bit of context - Donald Trump was born June 14, 1946.  I'm guessing neither of his parents read this book.  

One other thought:  As I read this book and imagined who might have read the book, I got this image of all the people who had ever read it gathered together for a week to talk about the book and what actions they could take to change things.  To a degree, social media moves us in that direction.  Not all the readers of a book, but a significant number can share the experience.  

Philanthropy, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Defoe

 I'm reading Benjamin Franklin's Last Bet by Michael Meyer.  Since my bookclub discusses Ike's Gamble Monday, this title seemed like a possible follow-up.  

Basically, in his will Franklin left 1000 £ to his two cities - Boston where he was born, and Philadelphia where he moved after leaving Boston.    The money was to be used to make loans to men starting up in the trades.  (Franklin himself had been helped by people when setting up his print shop.)  They had ten years to pay the money back at 5% interest.  He calculated that this money would grow over two hundred years to a much larger sum.  I haven't gotten far enough into the book to know how successful this was.  I do know that after 100 years, the Boston fund had a value closer to what Franklin had calculated than the Philadelphia fund.  But the Boston fund had made fewer and fewer loans. The author also tells us that Franklin hadn't figured on mechanization and industrialization replacing small tradesman with factories.

But that's not what this post is directly about. Rather it's about Franklin's devotion to the idea of charity.  

Inspirations:  Mather and Defoe

"There was also a Book of Defoe's," Franklin remembered in his memoir, "called An Essay on Projects,  and another of Dr. Mather's, call'd Essays to do Good which perhaps gave me a Turn of Thnking that had an Influence on some of the principal future Events of m Life. . . .

"A bankrupt Daniel Defoe wrote An Essay upon Projects while hiding in Bristol from a London creditor empowered to imprison him.  Published in 1697, two decades before Robinosn Crusoe  brought him fame, Projects laid out Defoe's ideas for social improvement.  These included the education of women, the creation of unemployment benefits, a lottery to benefit charity, fire insurance,  proportional taxation based on income, mortgage interest capped at 4 percent, and a public assistance scheme called the Friendly Society for Widows."  (pp. 124-125)

Franklin Fund Raising Tips

"'I therefore put my self as much as I could out of sight,'  he related in his  autobiography, 'and stated it as a Scheme of a number of Friends, who had requested me to go about and propose it to such as they thought Lovers of Reading. [He was collecting money to build a library.] In this way my Affair went on more smoothly, and I ever after practis'd it on such Occasions and from frequent Successes can heartily recommend it.  The present little Sacrifice of your Vanity will afterwards by amply repaid.'"

"As much as he downplayed his own philanthropy, Franklin came to realize that sometimes the best way to get people to donate to your cause was to publish the names of those who had already contributed."

"By convincing the state assembly to match any amount raised up to £2,000, Franklin secured 'an additional motive to give, since every man's donation would be doubled . . .'"

I guess folks who study philanthropy know this, but I didn't realize such practices went back to Franklin.  I suspect some aspects might be even older than Franklin.  

There are a lot of fascinating tidbits about Franklin, about the beginnings of the nation, and other random ideas.  Here's one quote from the book that made me pause and think:

"In 1800, ten years after Benjamin Franklin's death, only one American in twenty lived in a town of more than 2.500 people.  Four out of five Americans farmed land." (p.107)

Rachel Epstein Book on John Haines - May the Owl Call Again

 Someone left a link to this book in a comment on a totally unrelated post - at least I didn't see any connection.  

But Rachel worked in the University of Alaska Anchorage bookstore for many years and put together many (100?  200?) forums in the bookstore.  Usually there was an author (or two) speaking, but sometimes it was on a topic of current interest.  

They were small intimate affairs where the audience had lots of opportunity to interact with the speakers.  

These soirees were exactly what should be happening on a University campus.  

I'm sure this is a noteworthy book so I'm delighted to let people know about it.  

From the Amazon page.

"Alaskan poet John Haines has been gone for more than a decade now, but his singular voice stays with me—the deep quiet of it and its enchantment, the spareness of his lines—Li Po transposed to the far north. Much else is here to muse on and admire—his charming letters to Rachel Epstein, photos of his homestead in Richardson, transcripts of talks given, memoirs of a vanished Alaska, selected essays, notes on the imagination’s relationship with the natural world, even recollections of his service on a destroyer in the Pacific toward the end of WW II. May the Owl Call Again is a moving and memorable collection, and at its heart is Haines’ haunting poetry.

—Marc Hudson, poet, translator, and an emeritus professor at Wabash College.

His most recent book of poems is East Of Sorrow.

May the Owl Call Again bears witness to the last years of Haines' life—his thoughts, humor, melancholy, a profound awareness of Alaska’s rhythms, and his struggles with engagement in a broken world. But, above all, it is a meditation on friendship and the solace of intimacy that can be found in the handwritten page. It’s a testament to care, the aches of connection and solitude, and the consolation of finding kinship with another. I found myself reading it all at once and walking away with a profound sense of gratitude for Epstein sharing this Haines with all of us. 

—Freya Rohn, poet and founder of Ariadne Archive"

For Anchorage folks I'd recommend calling Writers' Block bookstore ((907) 929-2665) to order it if it's not in.  Buy Alaskan authors writing about Alaskan people from local Alaskan bookstores.  

JB MacKinnon Speaks On His Book "The Day The World Stops Shopping"

Wednesday night my daughter and I went to Bainbridge High School to hear author J.B MacKinnon.  He was interviewed on stage by local Bainbridge resident Becky Rockefeller whose a founder of the Buy Nothing movement.  She was a knowledgeable and perceptive interviewer.  

The discussion was exciting.  Mackinnon's ideas about changing consumerism were realistic - "if we cut back shopping by 25% one day, the economy would collapse" - and there were lots of examples of people who have chosen non-consumer life-styles.  

A key concept for me was the idea of one-world living.  Not sure what your first thought was when you hear that term, but mine was not what he was talking about.

He was talking about how many planet earths were required to sustain a country's level of consumption.  He said the US needed about five or six planet earths to supply the resources for all that we consume of the long haul. (He said he didn't remember the exact number.)  When he was writing the book he looked for countries that were one-world or less.  The most attractive life at the level, at the time, was Ecuador.  

But he also said that 1977 in the US fit that standard too.  I was alive and aware at that time and it wasn't a burdensome life.  

I realize that one reason I'm blogging less frequently is that trying to do it right takes more time than I seem to have.  So I'm going to use a shortcut and offer this YouTube with MacKinnon so you can get a sense of his ideas yourself. 

 

Reading - Demon Copperhead and If I Survive You

Demon Copperhead won a Pulitzer Prize and has had lots of publicity so I won't add much to what's out there, only to note some similarities to If I Survive You.

First I read Demon Copperhead for my bookclub.  A deep dive into being poor in Appalachia.  The hero in this David Copperfield inspired novel struggles to survive in a world shaped by addiction.  Author Barbara Kingsolver makes it clear that the addiction is the fault of the pharmaceutical companies whose owners and operators profit off of getting as many people addicted to opioids as possible.  Anyone who comes in contact with the health field and has some insurance of agency to subsidize their habit - foster kids, vets, the elderly, those employed with health insurance in any level job is fair game.  But Damon (Demon) has David’s (Copperfield) pluck and resilience as he bobs up and down in rural western Virginia, mostly.  (Thought I'd blogged about this one already, but I only mentioned it in passing.)

[As I move to If I Survive You, I'd say the main characters share struggling to make ends meet, being part of groups that are discriminated against (in Copperhead it's being from rural Appalachia) though Demon knows well who his cultural people are, just not his birth family.  Both are trying to overcome their own self doubts, though Demon seems more successful.  In some ways not having family may have given him an advantage over Trelawny who is in a constant fight with his father and brother.]

[I started this yesterday, but I'm adding a few notes today (Oct 3) but I'll leave what I wrote yesterday in the present tense.]

Now I’m on my second plane today and I’ve finished If I Survive You.  This book, by Jonathan Escoffery, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.  It was among five and this one was at Loussac Library and available just before we left.  

It started out being about a youth, Trelawny, trying to figure out who he was.  Not personally, though, of course, that’s always there, but who did he belong to/with.  His parents and brother were born in Jamaica, but he was born in Miami and people keep reminding him that he speaks white which alienates him from the family and pretty much everyone else.  The Hispanics take him in at school, thinking he’s one of them and they pity him because his parents don’t speak Spanish. When they find out he’s Jamaican, they drop him.  “Am I black?” is a question he gets varying answers to until he gets to a midwestern college where everyone assumes, yes, he is.  

But then the book veers into many other directions.  The father/son and sibling relationships are painful to him and the reader.  It’s not clear to me to whom the “YOU” in the title refers - his father?  His brother?  The family?  Himself?  The world?  

The book took me around south Florida and introduced me to a lot of folks struggling with different ways to keep a roof overhead - musicians, an arborist, a boat captain for rent, school teachers, a nursing home flunky, and in the end a very wealthy couple with their own devils to overcome.  

It feels like this is more a collection of stories than a novel; the same characters run through most of the stories.  The one that haunts me most is “Splashdown.”  In it we see Trelawny's cousin finally meeting the father who he's never met.  But the nursing home chapter ("Independent Living") is a mini expose of that industry.  and the final chapter ("If I Survive You") is equally gripping and kinkier.  They all explore how the need for money causes people to do things they probably wouldn't and definitely shouldn't.  The last one adds a more direct example of privilege folks using a poor man for their own (apparent) gratification and that cause him conflicts between his moral standards, personal dignity, and money.  It essentially asks, how much money will it take to get you to do X?  When the money is small change to the offering party but significant to Trelawny.  

I don’t regret reading this book, but at the end I am haunted by the characters and their struggles. 

This is the United States we live in today, where there are a few people who have managed to vacuum obscene amounts of wealth out of everyone else.  Then there are others who would appear to live quite comfortably.  But over the last three or four decades, the rules of engagement have changed enough that more and more people are sliding out of the comfortable faction into the world of economic (not to mention psychic) struggle the characters in this book deal with daily.  

    

Thinking about this book as I reread what I've written - first on the plane when I finished the book and now as I add and edit - I know this is a book that I won't forget.  The scenes are so real that I almost feel like I was there.  

Unchecked Reporting From A Source Who Hadn't Yet Figured Things Out

This is a tale about a journalist who writes an article based on what a friend with a new high level job in DC told her.  She pretty much writes what he says.  But it turns out his story is wishful thinking.  I just offer this as an example of bad reporting in case anyone is collecting such stories.

[Aug 31, 2023 - I've made some minor edits that, at most clarify, but don't change anything substantive.]

Miles Taylor writes in  Blowback about having arrived at the Department of Homeland Security to be "John Kelly's top intelligence and counter-threats advisor."  Taylor came into this position having worked as a Congressional staffer and in the W. Bush administration.  He'd been warned against taking a job in the Trump administration, but was pleased that someone like John Kelly would be in a high level position where he could help keep Trump in check.  

And, in fact, he was told early on that Kelly and allies had already kept Trump from doing some crazy shit.  [Sorry, that's not my style, but it seems like the most appropriate way to say it. "Prevented him from taking dangerous actions" just seems too tame.]

So barely a month on the job Taylor meets with a journalist friend.*

"Not long after starting, I caught up with a reporter friend.  We sat outside drinking cocktails not far from the White House, enjoying unseasonably warm April weather.  I confidently told her there was an "Axis of Adults" emerging inside the Trump administration - comprised of Kelly, Mattis, Tillerson, and others - who were keeping it on track.  She pushed back gently.

"They know what they're up against?"  she asked.

"They realize this is a tumultuous White House," I explained, "and they were serving as a leveling influence over fractious personalities . . .protecting the country from enemies both foreign and domestic." (pp.53-54)

Let's be clear here.  Taylor's been there a month or less in April 2017.  

"The reporter ran a story in the Daily Beast --"New Power in Trumpland: The Axis of Adults" - and asked to use the quote.  I agreed, hoping others would take comfort in knowing it wasn't all chaos in Trumpland." (p. 54)

Let me also say that Taylor has turned out to be one of the most consistent Republican voices against Trump.  He was the guy behind the Anonymous letter to the New York Times, while he was still in the government. The letter that alerted the world to how bad things were in the Oval Office.  I give him credit for sharing his early-on-the-job naïveté.  He goes on:

"In hindsight, I was probably sending the message to a few particular people - like the mentor who'd reached out to warn me against going into the administration.  And maybe, I was still trying to convince myself." (p. 54)

He closes that section with:

"I fell asleep easily in the early days knowing I'd made the right decision.  The Trump administration was starting to function, thanks to capable deputies who knew how to run the government. 

Like most bedtime stories, this turned out to be fiction." (p. 54)

So I googled Daily Beast "New Power in Trumpland: The Axis of Adults" and there it was.  As a blogger I have some sense of the dynamics of getting stories.  But since my blog is a hobby, not a job, I don't have the pressure to impress anyone or to get lots of hits.  The times that's happened it was simply because I managed to get an idea or story that took off.  

But I've read criticisms of reporters getting cozy with sources and then being used as conduits to publish an administration's story the way the administration wants it told. Or covering the strategy of the elections instead of the issues. (See for example Jay Rosen's "The savvy turn in political journalism.") I'm guessing this story would fit into savvy, but wrong.  So here's part of that Daily Beast story.

"There’s a new band in town that’s guiding national security by quietly tutoring the most powerful man in America. Never-Trump Republicans who’d been apprehensive about President Donald Trump are celebrating the trio’s influence, calling Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Homeland Secretary John Kelly the “Axis of Adults.”

Through near daily contact with the trio, as well as Trump’s National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster and CIA director Mike Pompeo, Trump’s world view appears to be morphing more closely to match hawkish conservatives of the Bush administration.

They point to the men’s influence in the Tomahawk strike in Syria—in contrast to Trump’s isolationist slogans on the campaign trail; the outreach to China, compared to Trump’s threats to launch a trade war; a possible escalation of the war in Afghanistan; and Trump’s hardening stance toward Russia.

None of these key national security chiefs were part of the Trump campaign, or movement. They are seen by those who work most closely with them as loyal to the office of the president but still getting to know the man himself, said a senior administration official, speaking anonymously to describe the interactions just 11 weeks into the fledgling presidency."

That's Miles Taylor, the "senior administrative official speaking anonymously." 

So, the reporter meets a friend for drinks (she didn't mention that part) and he relates his early impressions of the new administration.  Things he's been told.  And which he tells us, a few years later in his book. he soon realized were fiction.

But she got her story for the Daily Beast, a story that simply reported Taylor's fantasy about how the adults were taming Trump.  She accepted her friend's (an anonymous senior administrative official) story as true.  And the Daily Beast ran with it as true.  And it was true in the sense that a senior administrative official said it.

I guess I'd also call into question a story that outs those adults - it likely put them on a Trump watchlist as people who thought they were smarter than he was.  

How did this "Axis of Adults" fare?

Wikipedia says that as head of Homeland Security Kelly 

According to the New Yorker, 

Kelly left the DHS with a reputation as one of the most aggressive enforcers of immigration law in recent American history. His record belies the short length of his tenure. In six months, Kelly eliminated guidelines that governed federal immigration agents' work; vastly expanded the categories of immigrants being targeted for deportation; threatened to abandon the Obama-era program that grants legal status to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children; and has even broached the idea of splitting up mothers and children at the border to "deter" people from coming to the U.S.[39]

The DHS under Kelly "became one of the few branches of the federal government that has been both willing and able to execute Trump's policy priorities."[39] Unlike other agency heads, Kelly did not clash with Trump.[38]

Who bent whom to his ways? Seems he was bent enough to be asked to be Trump's Chief of Staff, but that's when things went south..  

"On December 7, 2018, CNN and others reported that Kelly and Trump were no longer on speaking terms and that Kelly was expected to resign in the coming days.[55] On December 8, Trump announced that Kelly would be leaving at the end of the year.[56]"

Tillerson and Mattis tried hard to be the adults, but it didn't work out.  From the Atlantic

"Now [December 2018] Mattis was becoming more and more isolated in the administration, especially since the defenestration of his closest Cabinet ally, the former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, several months earlier. Mattis and Tillerson had together smothered some of Trump’s more extreme and imprudent ideas. But now Mattis was operating without cover. Trump was turning on him publicly; two months earlier, he had speculated that Mattis might be a Democrat and said, in reference to NATO, “I think I know more about it than he does.” (Mattis, as a Marine general, once served as the supreme allied commander in charge of NATO transformation.)"

But then a lot of people thought they could be the adult who could check Trump's impulses.  

That's all.  I just wanted to highlight this one example of an anonymous source who didn't really know what he was talking about getting reported as truth, with apparently no further fact checking.  

*He calls her a 'reporter friend.'  Reporter is probably the better word.  But it's also a bit ambiguous whether she is a friend who is a reporter or a reporter who became a friend.  I'm guessing that she was a friend first, but that's not clear. 

"There lies the main difference between childish imaginings and imaginative literature."

 

From Ursula LeGuin's No Time To Spare, a book of essays that chews on topics from old age to writing.  In "It Doesn't Have to Be the Way It Is"(June 2022) she muses about what liberties storytellers can take with reality before losing their readers.  

"The fantastic tale may suspend the laws of physics - carpets fly; cats fade into invisibility, leaving only a smile - and of probability - the younger of three brothers wins the bride, the infant in the box cast upon the waters survives unharmed - but it carries its revolt against reality no further.  Mathematical order is unquestioned.  Two and one make three, in Koschei's castle and Alice's Wonderland (especially in Wonderland), Euclid's geometry - or possibly Riemann's - somebody's geometry, anyhow - governs the layout.  Otherwise incoherence would invade and paralyze the narrative.  

There lies the main difference between childish imaginings and imaginative literature.  The chid "telling a story" roams about among the imaginary and the half-understood without knowing the difference, content with the sound of language and the pure play of fantasy with no particular end, and that's the charm of it.  But fantasies, whether folktales or sophisticated literature, are stories in the adult,  demanding sense.  They can ignore certain laws of physics but not of causality.  They start here and go there (or back here), and though the mode of travel may be unusual and here and there may be wildly exotic and unfamiliar places, yet they must have both a location on the map of that world and a relationship to the map of our world.  If not, the hearer or reader of the tale will be set adrift in a sea of inconsequential inconsistencies, or, worse yet, left drowning in the shallow puddle of the author's wishful thinking."

I don't know how many of you, reading this, were spurred to think about how childish Trump's stories are.  What's charming in children's stories definitely doesn't age well when told by adults.  

And what does this tell us by Trump's audience?  

"The hearer . . . of the tale will be set adrift in a sea of inconsequential inconsistencies, or worse yet, left drowning in the shallow puddle of the author's wishful thinking."

To be fair, LeGuin does distinguish between oral and written story telling.   In the previous essay, "The Narrative Gift as a Moral Conundrum" (May 2022) she writes:

"Storytelling is clearly a gift, a talent, a specific ability.  Some people just don't have it - they rush or drone, jumble the order of events, skip essentials, dwell on inessentials, and the muff the climax.  Don't we all have a relative who we pray won't launch into a joke or a bit of family history because the history will bore us and the joke will bomb?  But we may also have a relative who can take the stupidest, nothingest little event and make it into what copywriters call a gut-wrenchingly brilliant thriller and laugh riot."

While Trump does have a presence, I'm not sure he fits this description of story teller either.  It's more like he embodies the misery of his followers and allows them to act out their frustrations and blame their problems on anyone but themselves.  Trump was, up to a point, the successful version, or their own angry selves.  

 

". . .the spoken word is no more than breath."

 In No Time To Spare Ursula LeGuin writes about her fascination with words.  

"When asked to talk about what I do, I've often compared writing with handicrafts - weaving, pot-making, woodworking.  I see my fascination with the word as very like, say the fascination with wood common to carvers, carpenters, cabinetmakers - people who find a fine piece of old chestnut with delight, and study it, and learn the grain of it, and handle it with sensuous pleasure, and consider what's been done with chestnut and what you can do with it, loving the wood itself, the mere material, the stuff of their craft.  

"Woodworkers, potters, weavers engage with real materials, and the beautify of their work is profoundly and splendidly bodily.  Writing is so immaterial, so mental an activity!  In its origin, it's merely artful speech, and the spoken word is no more than breath.  To write or otherwise record the word is to embody it, make it durable, and calligraphy and typesetting are material crafts that achieve great beauty.  I appreciate them.  But in fact they have little more to do with what I o than weaving or pot-making or woodworking does.  It's grand to see one's poem beautifully printed, but the important thing to the poet, or anyhow to this poet, is merely to see it printed, however, wherever - so that readers can read it.  So it can go from mind to mind."

I put my Ukrainian English learner through the opening charges of Jack Smith's indictment this morning. His English isn't good enough to do that alone, but he can grasp the key points of this historic document with the help of a guide. There are words he should know, and I'm trying to connect him to the fact that he is living when we are facing the most important trial in US history. 

We examined words like defendant and prosecutor.  "Claim falsely" made sense when I pulled him back from his wrong turn ("falsely is like waterfall?", no, false is the opposite of true) and after several attempts to explain 'claim' he realized he knew the term from 'baggage claim.'  I started the lesson with a slice of bagel and a gob of raspberry jam, which I spread with a knife.  So I could use the image when we came to 'the Defendant spread lies . . .'  

Smith's indictment is amazingly clear for a legal document.  He (and his associates) knew it had to be understandable to the average American adult.  It's not dumbed down, but rather most of the legal jargon is couched as tangibly as possible with sentences as grammatically simple as possible.  Not the long convoluted sentence encrusted with Latin terms you often see in legal documents.

'The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.' [Link to the indictment]

OK, 'outcome-determinative' is not an everyday term, but 'outcome' of an election is not hard to get. 'Determinative' is clearly related to 'determine' which is fairly common and not to hard to make clear.  I talked to a lawyer friend and asked if perhaps that term 'outcome-determinative' was a translation from the Latin.  He said, "No" but suggested it was probably a legal term of art that has been an important phrase in other cases. That led me to Google and I found this sentence in 

"An "outcome-determinative" test was set forth, the essence of which was that if the determination of an issue would have a decisive influence on the outcome of the case, then that issue was one of "substance." [from a 1965 North Caroline Law Review article]

 While in the indictment sample above says the defendant has the right to publicly say falsely there was 'outcome-determinative' fraud and even to say he actually won, the indictment uses this term eight more times later on to demonstrate that Trump knew his attempts to overturn the election were based on lies about election fraud and lies that he had won.  The term is used in a list of presidential advisors who told him there was no evidence of 'outcome-determinative' fraud, starting with:

"The Defendant's Vice President-who personally stood to gain by remaining in office as part of the Defendant's ticket and whom the Defendant asked to study fraud allegations-told the Defendant that he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud."

Earlier in a previous LeGuin chapter "Readers' Questions," the author writes that it is relatively easy and interesting to respond to vary specific questions of 'imaginary fact,' like one about her use of the name Sparrowhawk.  

"Is this the New World sparrow hawk, Falco sparverius, or one of the Old World kestrels . . .?"

But that more general questions are much harder to respond to - questions like, 'why do you write?" and the most vexing questions are about meaning.

"Meaning - this is perhaps the common note, the bane I m seeking.  What is the Meaning of this book, this event in the book, this story . . .?  Tell me what it Means.

But that's not my job, honey.  That's your job. . .

"Meaning in art isn't the same as meaning in science.  The meaning of the second law of thermodynamics, so long as the words are understood, isn't changed by who reads it, or when, or where.  The meaning of Huckleberry Finn is."

I imagine law fits in somewhere between fiction and science.  Ideally, much closer to science, but the current Supreme Court majority has moved it much closer to fiction.  And legislation in some Republican dominated states to change how history is taught, or medicine is practiced, are also attempts to create fiction - an alternative reality.  

Terms  like 'outcome-determinative' come to have specific meanings in law, in an attempt to make it more science-like and less interpretive than fiction.  But even science articles are only attempts to capture reality in words.  Sometimes they are successful, over even close.  Other times new discoveries prove the old writings inaccurate.  

For those of you concerned about why I chose the title of this post, I can only say it was the most poetic phrase I found in LeGuin's paragraph on words.  But my brain took this post in other directions.  But it's still the most poetic phrase.  Would you rather I title this Outcome-Determinative?  Even 'outcome-determinative' when spoken is no more than breath.

"It's been two months since I blogged. Considering that I am . . ."

From Ursula LeGuin's No Time To Spare:

"It's been two months since I blogged.  Considering that I am on the eve of my eighty-fifth birthday, and that anyone over seven-five who isn't continuously and conspicuously active is able to be considered dead, I thought I should make some signs of life.  Wave from the grave, as it were.  Hello, out there!  How are things in the Land of Youth?  Here in the Land of Age they are rather weird."

While for me, it's only been four days, and I still have daylight between now and 85, I am over 75 and don't want to be considered dead yet.  

For years and years I blogged pretty much daily.  And when I'm engaged in an important story (say Redistricting) blogging does take front and center in my life still.  But I've also given myself permission to take days off.  But don't want to have too many blank pages here.

So here's a list of other distractions:

1.  Technical - Getting photos from my phone to my laptop stopped working

I thought I'd conquered this, but the AirDrop stopped working again and the original fix didn't stick. Photos are an important part of this blog (at least for me).  Monday, when we went for a hike, I took along my bigger Canon so I could use the memory card to get the pictures onto my MacBook.  After two photos the battery stopped working.  

So I reverted back to the phone.  I'd find a way.  I figured I could upload the pictures to Blogspot (the blog site I'm using) on my phone. Easy Peasy.  But I couldn't.  I googled.  Here's what I found on google support::  (Google bought Blogspot long ago as well as other independent apps I've used for the blog)

"If your photo is on your phone, it is probably in Apple Photos. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no direct upload from Photos to Blogger. You must therefore export the image to your phone as a jpg. Then you can upload it into Blogger using the "from device" option in the Blogger post editor.

I do not know how to export the image to your phone as a jpg. But once you copy it into Blogger, you can delete the jpg file."

Or on Apple discussions

"iPhoto pictures no longer upload to Blogger with Mojave 10.14.6 update installed"

I've been thinking I might need to get a more current iPhone and even upgrade my laptop (it's about nine years old and the letters on six keys are no longer readable), but I have pulled out my old Canon Powershot and I'll use that until then.  It has a memory card I can insert into my laptop.  But as I think about it, I'm sure the newer laptops no longer have a spot to insert a memory card.  

2.  Other things - Reading online

Twitter and Spoutible - Despite everything, Twitter still alerts me to important items of (I hate to use this term because it's so overused) 'breaking' news, particularly Anchorage and Alaska related things.  Mainly because I've been careful to pick who I follow, I don't get a lot of garbage tweets. But as Twitter goes X-tinct,  Spoutible is getting more 'useful' Spouters (useful here meaning people who put up things I want to hear about) but I'm still getting too many "Hope you all are doing great this morning!" Spouts.  There's nothing wrong with them, but that's not why I'm on Spoutible.  

Spoutible also got its Android app up and then a couple of weeks later the IOS app was ready.  I downloaded it, but I couldn't type in the login info.  My keyboard didn't work.  Their announcements had said that the iPhone 7 still had some problems, so I deleted it.  When I downloaded it again a few days ago, I could log in.  But the keyboard doesn't work when I try to reply or to Spout.  

I've put Twitter and Spoutible under Reading.  I spend way too much time on these apps.  They were supposed to give me tips for blog posts (and they do) as well as back up information I can use to support my arguments on the blog.  But they are also addictive.  It's like fishing or slot machines, you're always hoping the next one will be good, and enough are, that you keep casting or putting more money in, when you should just walk away.  

3.  Other things - Reading books

I've got the following three books that I'm actively working on:

Boy, I didn't realize how relatively poor the images are on the Canon Powershot compared to my phone.  Demon Copperhead is for my September book club meeting (but I thought it was for August so I started it because it's long). No Time to Spare is the August book.  It's essays Le Guin wrote late in life (as the quote at the beginning of this post suggests) and so far it's focusing on being old.  She's not sugar-coating things.  Blowback is by Miles Taylor, a Republican who worked as a high level Homeland Security appointee in the Trump administration and is using the book to warn people about how crazy Trump is and the kinds of things to be expected in a second Trump administration.  Because Trump wanted to do them (and in some cases did) during his presidency.  But this time, Taylor warns, Trump and the conservative interests that back him, are better organized to make them happen.  Basically like establishing a Fascist regime supporting the wealthy and making life harder for everyone else, particularly those who aren't white, Christian, heterosexual men.  

As I figure out ways I can contribute to protecting democracy in the 2024 election, books like this give me facts to convince non-voters why they need to vote. Non-voters are the key.  But I'm not giving up on Trumpers either though that's time spent doing more work for smaller gains.  

But while people say the hard core Trump supporters are a cult, immune to reason and reality, I know that people leave cults all the time.  Cult-Escape is just one of many websites (not necessarily the best) for people thinking about getting out.  I also know that the Trump cult is reinforced by trolls who spew out misinformation at high volume, whether they do it on their own, for money, or with the support of foreign governments.  They exaggerate the number of people who support the Trump world of lies.  

There are several other books, newspapers that tempt me away from the blog (all in the guise of keeping me informed and giving me material for the blog.)

3.  Other things - local events

I listened in on the Alaska Board of Education hearings on a policy to ban transgender girls from girls sports. (You can find the written testimony here, here, here, here, and here.) While I have lots to say, the anti-ban crowd made many good arguments I don't have to duplicate.  

But what no one mentioned (while I listened in anyway) was the fact that the Board began the meeting with a Christian prayer that ended with "in Jesus' name."  

Here's a government board, holding a public hearing on a policy that is being heavily pushed by Christian Nationalists (and other Christians who would legitimately reject the Nationalist part) and beginning with a Christian prayer, that excludes those who are agnostic or atheists, and members of religions that do not worship Jesus Christ.  I can only think of two reasons for this:

1. To show their power to add their religion into their governmental function - that they can get away with this
2. Because they are so sheltered from the non-Christian world that they don't realize how offensive this is to people who don't see the world the way they do.  

(A PEW Trust study copyrighted in 2021 found that 37% of Alaskans identify as in religions other than Christianity or no religion. That's more than 1/3.  Under 

"Frequency of participation in prayer, scripture study or religious education groups among adults in Alaska"

fully 69% responded "seldom or never.")

If the Board is so out of touch with people who are not devout Christians that they can open this public meeting with a Christian prayer, imagine how out of touch they are with transgender youth!  This is not a representative body of Alaskans making this decision.  Even the Alaska legislature rejected this and the Governor has now asked a body that he's (mostly) personally appointed to do what the people's elected representatives wouldn't do.  

OK, so that by itself is a synopsis of a blog post I've been thinking about.  

There was also Juneteenth and Gay Pride which I didn't post about because I couldn't easily get my photos up.  

4.  Other things - biking and the garden

I took my bike in for a service yesterday.  There's a regular clank sound every time my right pedal is forward. It's been about four years and I've ridden it a lot (for an old man anyway) each summer. As of yesterday I've biked 762 km (473 miles) since April.  Last year my goal was 1000km which I passed and I'm well on my way to doing the same this summer.  I put it down here only because it takes up about five or six hours a week.  But mentally the biking is good for my blogging.  

Reviewing this before posting I realize I left out the gardening part.  I'll just say my favorite gardening book is No Work Garden.  Much of the hill in our backyard is natural - birch, alder, high bush cranberry and other local fauna.  We've focused on perennials which come back on their own. And the front lawn, much to the chagrin of our neighbors (though they've come to accept it over the years) is clover right now along with rock garden perennials along the sidewalk.  Gardening enthusiasm is highest in the spring when the snow is gone and things start poking out of the earth.  I have put in hours of weeding and thinning, and I do just enjoy wandering the yard to see all the daily surprises.  

5.  Other things - Netflix

We're currently juggling The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, Suits, Friday Night Lights, and random other movies or short series that some variety.  After watching several seasons of Suits I've concluded we would all be much better off if we had script writers to help us with our day-to-day interactions.  

Netflix takes a toll in my blog writing time.  

6.  Other things - Tutoring English

One of the more delightful activities this spring and summer has been tutoring a Ukrainian refugee in Ketchikan in English.  His English is good enough to communicate what he needs to say, but we're adding vocabulary, pronunciation (both sounds and sentence rhythms), grammar, and cultural nuances.  We were paired by Catholic Social Services' Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service (RAIS) and it's a great match, pedagogically and personally.  We tend to have a good time even though I work him hard.  Planning lessons and actually doing the lessons take up four to eight hours a week, depending on if we meet once or twice a week.  Twice a week is the norm.  

There are other things as well - the general maintenance people have to do in their lives, paying bills, getting things cleaned and repaired, getting and preparing food (fortunately, my wife has done the lion's share of this in recent years in part because she's not that excited about my cooking), and I'm sure you can add to the list.  

But I'm committed to writing here on important topics.  But I must say, that the local political and legal events I spent so much time on in previous years are being better covered by others now.  Twitter has been a big addition there as well as more local reporters covering events.  That just wasn't the case back in 2006 when I started blogging.  And it took me a while to jump from more mundane blogging to more public affairs blogging.  

Have a good weekend.  We're having more sun and warmth than we did earlier this summer.  But compared to much of the world, the weather has been very comfortable and the air quality good.  

Paracelsus - A Remarkable Man In His Day

Mildred Bevel is the wife of very rich Andrew Bevel.  Her body has been weakening and she's now in the same Swiss health spa and sanitarium in a rural mountain location that her father was once in.  We're in the fourth and final book of Hernan Diaz' Pulitzer Prize winning novel Trust which I wrote about earlier. 

Ida Partenza, who is listed as the author of the third part of this novel, was hired by Andrew Bevel, to help him write his autobiography after Mildred has died. Ida's appearance in the story begins in 1938.   Basically Andrew is trying to get Ida to take dictation and portray himself and Mildred in the most favorable way to himself.  

Ida has learned that Mildred kept diaries all her life, but either they no longer exist or they've been intentionally withheld from her.  But 40 some years after Andrew has also died, and his old house has been made into the Bevel museum, Ida discovers the notebook that Mildred wrote while she was in the sanitarium, 'wedged into the middle section of the ledger.'  

Most of the entries are brief.  The headings are basically AM, PM, and EVE.  This one entry caught my attention.  

"EVE 

Wolf quotes Barrett letter to Browning:  'You are paracelsus, and I am a recluse, with nerves that have been broken on the rack, and now hang loosely, quivering at a step and breath.' Why all the Paracelsus suddenly?'"

What or who is paracelsus?  In today's world, such mental itches can be scratched instantly with the help of Google.  Which took me to Wikipedia.  

"Paracelsus (/ˌpærəˈsɛlsəs/; German: [paʁaˈtsɛlzʊs]; c. 1493[1] – 24 September 1541), born Theophrastus von Hohenheim (full name Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim[11][12]), was a Swiss[13] physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance.[14][15]

He was a pioneer in several aspects of the "medical revolution" of the Renaissance, emphasizing the value of observation in combination with received wisdom. He is credited as the "father of toxicology".[16] Paracelsus also had a substantial influence as a prophet or diviner, his "Prognostications" being studied by Rosicrucians in the 1600s. Paracelsianism is the early modern medical movement inspired by the study of his works.[17]"

"Paracelsus sought a universal knowledge[27] that was not found in books or faculties" thus, between 1517 and 1524, he embarked on a series of extensive travels around Europe.[27][28] His wanderings led him from Italy,[27][29] France,[27] to Spain,[27] Portugal,[27] to England,[27][29] Germany,[27] Scandinavia,[27] Poland,[27] Russia,[27][29] Hungary,[27][29] Croatia,[27] to Rhodes,[27] Constantinople,[27][29] and possibly even Egypt.[27][28][29] During this period of travel, Paracelsus enlisted as an army surgeon and was involved in the wars waged by Venice,[27] Holland,[27] Denmark,[27] and the Tartars.[27][29] Then Paracelsus returned home from his travels in 1524.[27][28][29] 

It's hard for me from the Wikipedia entry to abstract his main contributions.  He's a curious combination of old and new ways of thinking. 

"As a physician of the early 16th century, Paracelsus held a natural affinity with the Hermetic, Neoplatonic, and Pythagorean philosophies central to the Renaissance, a world-view exemplified by Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola.[citation needed] Astrology was a very important part of Paracelsus's medicine and he was a practising astrologer – as were many of the university-trained physicians working at that time in Europe. Paracelsus devoted several sections in his writings to the construction of astrological talismans for curing disease.[citation needed] He largely rejected the philosophies of Aristotle and Galen, as well as the theory of humours. Although he did accept the concept of the four elements as water, air, fire, and earth, he saw them merely as a foundation for other properties on which to build.[46]"

He carried on a 'letter dialogue [with Erasmus] on medical and theological subjects.' (I'm old enough to remember when you communicated long distance by letter, while I know that is hard for younger readers, used to instant communication, to fathom how that could work.  I'm sure this epistolary dialogue was far weightier than most online debates.)

"Paracelsus's approach to science was heavily influenced by his religious beliefs. He believed that science and religion were inseparable, and scientific discoveries were direct messages from God. Thus, he believed it was mankind's divine duty to uncover and understand all of His message.[48] Paracelsus also believed that the virtues that make up natural objects are not natural, but supernatural, and existed in God before the creation of the universe. Because of this, when the Earth and the Heavens eventually dissipate, the virtues of all natural objects will continue to exist and simply return to God.[48] His philosophy about the true nature of the virtues is reminiscent of Aristotle's idea of the natural place of elements. To Paracelsus, the purpose of science is not only to learn more about the world around us, but also to search for divine signs and potentially understand the nature of God.[48] If a person who doesn't believe in God became a physician, they would not have a better standing in God's eyes and will not succeed in their work because they don't practice in his name. Becoming an effective physician requires faith in God.[49] Paracelsus saw medicine as more than just a perfunctory practice. To him, medicine was a divine mission and good character combined with devotion to God was more important than personal skill. He encouraged physicians to practice self-improvement and humility along with studying philosophy to gain new experiences.[50]"

Practice was a key focus for him. 

"During his time as a professor at the University of Basel, he invited barber-surgeons, alchemists, apothecaries, and others lacking academic background to serve as examples of his belief that only those who practised an art knew it: 'The patients are your textbook, the sickbed is your study.'[31]"

 "Paracelsus was one of the first medical professors to recognize that physicians required a solid academic knowledge in the natural sciences, especially chemistry. Paracelsus pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine."

"Because everything in the universe was interrelated, beneficial medical substances could be found in herbs, minerals, and various chemical combinations thereof. Paracelsus viewed the universe as one coherent organism that is pervaded by a uniting life giving spirit, and this in its entirety, humans included, was 'God'. His beliefs put him at odds with the Catholic Church, for which there necessarily had to be a difference between the creator and the created.[60] Therefore, some have considered him to be a Protestant.[61][62][63][64]"

"Paracelsus is frequently credited with reintroducing opium to Western Europe during the German Renaissance. He extolled the benefits of opium, and of a pill he called laudanum, which has frequently been asserted by others to have been an opium tincture. Paracelsus did not leave a complete recipe, and the known ingredients differ considerably from 17th-century laudanum.[67]

Paracelsus invented, or at least named a sort of liniment, opodeldoc, a mixture of soap in alcohol, to which camphor and sometimes a number of herbal essences, most notably wormwood, were added. Paracelsus's recipe forms the basis for most later versions of liniment.[68]

His work Die große Wundarzney is a forerunner of antisepsis. This specific empirical knowledge originated from his personal experiences as an army physician in the Venetian wars. Paracelsus demanded that the application of cow dung, feathers and other noxious concoctions to wounds be surrendered in favor of keeping the wounds clean, stating, 'If you prevent infection, Nature will heal the wound all by herself.'" 

Thank you Wikipedia for letting me find this and share it here. [Yes, I do donate to Wikipedia annually.]

It's hard to free oneself from the 'common wisdom' of the day.  It appears - and my expertise on Paracelsus is limited to the Wikipedia entry - that perhaps his theoretical understanding was still clinging to the old, while his practical knowledge was pushing forward to new, more scientific answers.  

So why is Paracelcus mentioned in passing in Mildred's diary.  Because, I assume, he spent time in Switzerland, he believed in massage and the healing properties of mineral waters, both of which are part of her treatment.