Travel Day As I'm Getting Better Acquainted With Judge Matthews' Redistricting Decision

We got up early enough to watch the sun rise from the ferry from Bainbridge Island to downtown Seattle.

SeaTac has a program where you can reserve a time to go through security. Last time we did that, there was no one in line anyway.  This time there were more people, but not too crowded, but our line sent us directly to the front.  

We are spending the night with friends just south of San Francisco - good friends that go back to when some students from my public administration class in Hong Kong went on a study tour with me to Beijing.  It was May 1990 - a year after Tiananmen.  We went in May so that we wouldn't be there on the one year anniversary.  Even so, one of my students couldn't go because his parents were worried about what might happen to him.  D is now a professor of marketing and dean of his department here in the South Bay.  

This tree was across the street from the community center where his son was taking a video class.  We'll go into San Francisco tomorrow and stay with an old Peace Corps Thailand friend.  The impetus of the trip was visiting our grandkids, the youngest one turned five yesterday and got her first COVID vaccination.  

Meanwhile I'm working my way through the 171 page ruling Judge Matthews wrote on the Redistricting Board trial.  

Near the end of the trial, the Board's attorney was giving his closing argument.  I raised some issues I had with what he said and in other appearances earlier in the trial.  In his closing, after about five or ten minutes he said something like, "Well that's pretty much what I wanted to say, but I'm a lawyer, so I'll keep on talking."  As I listened I thought about the old saying - "Better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to speak and prove it."  Singer isn't a fool, but he just kept talking and I thought he was being pretty loose and that he wasn't doing himself any good.  

The judge wasn't amused.  I'd like to give you specific quotes, but the PDF isn't searchable, and while someone told me there are tools to make it searchable, I haven't found them.  

Singer did tell the Redistricting Board, at their meeting yesterday (Wed) that the judge had "made new law" and that was the reason that the Board needed to appeal, to make sure the Supreme Court could rule on this "new law."  

One of my goals in reading the case is to find what Snger calls 'new law."  Here's my list of possibilities so far:

The Proclamation Plan offered 30 days after the Census data arrive should include Senate pairings as well as house pairings. (I missed the part where the Board claimed they had Senate districts because the third party plans had them.  In any case, the Board didn’t know the third party plans would have Senate pairings when they adopted their Proclamation Plan

• Importance of public voices - Board members don’t have “discretion to make decisions based on personal preference when that preference is directly contrary to the overwhelming majority of public testimony” “Board must make a good-faith effort to incorporate the clear weight of public testimony.”   Need to take “a hard look and [make] a good faith effort to incorporate public testimony into its decisions.”
• Need to have senate pairings in the proposed plan in 30 days

I'm not sure that the Judge made 'new law' as much as enforced the Constitution here. The Constition requires the Board to take their proposed redistricting plan to the public to get comments for six weeks.  The Board flew all over the state for twenty some odd meetings.

If the Board doesn't take their comments seriously, what is the point of gathering their opinion?  I don't think this is new law, so much as it's law that hasn't actually been tested in court and Matthews is saying that requiring public testimony means the Board must pay attention to the public testimony it gets.  

On the other point he's also clarifying that when the Constitution tells the Board to make a draft plan, it includes Senate pairings as well as the house districts.  Why does the judge think this?  Because the constitution doesn't mention either House districts or Senate districts when it talks about the draft plan.  But when it talks about the final play, it includes both.  

And, if the public is going to meaningfully testify on the Senate pairings, they have to see them.  

I'm tired.  It's getting late.  And all this is initial thinking about what I'm reading.  Below is the Table of Contents of the Judge's decision.  There's time to read it fully.

Our friends have an old cat

I.  Introduction

II.  History of Legislative Reapportionment

III.  HISTORY OF THE BOARD'S WORK

        A.  Make up of the Board

         B.  Board Meetings 

[In history of Board Meetings, doesn't mention the public outcry over v1 SE maps plucking incumbents out of their districts

p.14 Sept 20 Meeting "It was at this meeting that the Board contends it adopted proposed senate pairings through the AFFER proposed plan.122

IV. Legal Proceedings

    A.  Parties in the Case

    B.  Pre-Trial Proceedings

    C.  The Record Before the Court

    D.  Trial Proceedings

V.  JURISDICTION AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

VI.  APPLICABLE LAW

    A.  District Boundaries (Alaska Const. art. VI §6)

    B.  Public Hearings Requirement (Alaska Const. art. VI, § 10)

    C.  Equal Protection (Alaska Const. art.I § 1;  U.S. Const. amend.14)

    D.  Due Process (Alaska Const. art. I, § 7)

    E.  The Hickel Process

    F.  Voting Rights Act

    G.  Open Meetings Act (AS 44.62.310-19)

VII. PRACTICAL LIMITATIONS

VIII.  THE EAST ANCHORAGE CHALLENGES - Senate District K

    A.  Article VI Section 6

    B.  Article VI Section 10 - East Anchorage

    C.  Equal Protection

IX.  THE HOUSE DISTRICT CHALLENGES

    A.  Mat-Su and Valdez Districts 20, 30 and 36

    B.  Calista Redistricting Challenge

    C.  Skagway's Redistricting Challenge

X.  HICKEL PROCESS

XI.  PROCEDURAL CHALLENGES - Due Process and Article VI, Section 10

    A.  Applicable Legal Standard

    B.  This court looks to the debates from the Alaska Constitutional Convention to ascertain the goals of redistricting

    C.  Legislative history from 1998 amendments likewise informs this Court's view of the Board's intended role and the purpose of public hearings

    D.  Federal case law applying the Administrative Procedure Act to formal agency rule making is instructive on the question of what it means for an agency to take a "hard look" when public hearings are required

    E.  Precedent, reason and policy considerations for interpreting "reasonableness" in light of the Article VI, Section 10 "public hearings" requirement and other changes from the 1998 amendments

    F.  Regional Applications

    G.  Constitutional Deadlines in Article VI, Section 10

    H.  Other Due Process Issues

XII.  OPEN MEETINGS ACT

    A.  The Open Meetings Act

    B.  The Redistricting Board's use of Executive Sessions

    C.  Vague Motions Relating to Executive Sessions

    D.  Due Process/OMA Challenge by East Anchorage

    E.  Open Meetings and Attorney-Client Privilege

XIII.  SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Birds and Cats: Hairy Woodpeckers Are Much Bigger Than Downey's - Someone's Missing Their Cat

Whenever we spot a woodpecker in the backyard, it looks a lot like this one.  The bird books identify this as either a Downey or a hairy woodpecker.  We've decided, in the past, it's been a Downey, because the beak was short.

Well, the other day this giant woodpecker was in the back.  After some uncertainty, we finally figured out it was a Hairy woodpecker.  There is just no mistaking one from the other because of the size.  Of course, you can't always be sure how big a bird is off in the distance.  But clearly this one was significantly larger than the other ones we've seen.  And if you look closely the beak is almost as long as the rest of his head.

The magpies that have been upturning leaves in the yard as the snow melts, and hop about the branches in the trees were there too.  And while they watched the woodpecker, they kept a safe social distance for the 15 minutes or so the woodpecker was there.

Here's a Downey that visited last September.  He's much closer to me than the Hairy, and significantly smaller.  (The book says Downey's are about 6 inches and Hairy's are about 9 inches)

I saw this ad the other day in the newspaper.  It's just another ad for a lost cat.  Until you see the date.  Five years is a long time.

I did try to call to find out the story but I got a recording saying the person wasn't accepting calls at this time.

Buenos Aires Tour With Small Start Up

Our host when we first came to Buenos Aires, Carolina, and her friend Belen have a small business for helping people who visit Buenos Aires and Argentina.  I wouldn’t call it a travel agency or a tour company - it’s more personal than that.  It’s like having a friend in Buenos Aires who will do what is necessary to help you make your trip perfect - even if you don’t even know what you want to do.  

And when we left Buenos Aires a couple of weeks ago, we agreed on a tour of some places we’d missed earlier.  

For yesterday’s tour we jumped into the car and drove to La Boca, one of the oldest parts of Buenos Aires.  

La Boca is the home of La Bombonera stadium, the home of Buenos Aires’ football (soccer) team - Boca Juniors.  This was, and still is, a poor neighborhood.  Lots of port workers lived and worked here.          

 These are low rise living space  compared to the more affluent neighborhoods.  This was the neighborhood that the tango was created in the brothels.






 



And this is part of the famous stadium.  Part of the scoreboard is on the upper right.

And you can see the shape of the stadium better here on the left.  There’s a line for people waiting to tour the museum and stadium.  

There are also lots of tourist shops here.  

Then we walked down to the key streets that lure tourists to La Boca and to the museum created by the famous artist Benito Quelquena Martìn.  

This sign was pointed out as an example of the kind of script that dominated this area in the past.  And then I started noticing it everywhere.

 This one below shows the building above in the past.  The date on it says 1959.  Well before it became a tourist destination.   The picture was in the artist Martín’s museum

    

Martin’s home is at the top of the museum with great views of the port - where he did a lot of his paintings - as well as of Buenos Aires. 

  

These two photos go together.  They’re from the roof of the museum and show the area.  (You can see the colorful  narrow house in the upper right of the picture above and then going to the left of the picture you get to the port.  That loop in the water is made up of recycled plastic bottles and is being used for some sort of water recovery program, but I didn’t get the details.  There are some water plants growing on the right side.

Benito Quinquela Martin is in this picture - I assumed he’s the one on the left.  The picture is from 1909.

And below is one of his pictures of workers in the port.  First a close-up, and then you can see the whole picture below it.   You can learn more about him at this Wikipedia page.  He was an orphan and adopted when he was 8.

 

I was going crazy with my camera - everything was begging to be photographed.  

I  think this is getting to be a very long post, so I’ll end here and  break up the day into two posts.  But here’s a link to ChoiceBuenosAires - the website Carolina and Belin are working on to help publicize their business.  As you can see, it’s a work in progress still.  But we can vouch for these two women’s ability help visitors to Buenos Aires make the best use of their time here.  

How To Talk To Your Cat About Gun Safety And Other Books At Elliott Bay Book Company

There was a book I couldn't get in LA, San Francisco, or Anchorage.  But Elliott Bay Book Company said they had a copy when I called.  It's a surprise for a relative, so nothing here yet.  

But here are some other books I saw on the shelves.  Remember books?  

HOW TO TALK TO YOUR CAT ABOUT GUN SAFETY -  Zachary Auburn

From the Preface:

"My fellow purrtiots,
You hold in your hands the only book in print today with the courage to tell it like it is.  To stand up to the idolaters, the liberals, the international bankers, and the secret kings of Europe who want to destroy America and replace it with their one-world government.  To bring about our downfall, these villains have targeted what is surely our greatest national resource:  our cats.  They know that no other cats in the world are as cute as ours.  American cats have the softest bellies, the fluffiest tails, and the loudest purrs.  We are the greatest country in the history of the world, and we have the cats to match.  Our enemies know they have no chance of defeating us while we stand tall with our cats by our sides, and so for years these scoundrels have worked in the shadows, trying to weaken us and our cats.  Stripping from ur cats their Second Amendment right to bear arms!  Undermining the faith of our kittens by teaching them the lie of evolution!  Addicting out feline friends to the scourge of catnip!  The cats of America are under siege . . ."

BLANKETS,  Craig Thomson

From DrawnandQuarterly:

"This groundbreaking graphic novel, winner of two Eisner and three Harvey Awards, is an eloquent portrait of adolescent yearning; first love (and first heartache); faith in crisis; and the process of moving beyond all of that. Beautifully rendered in pen and ink, Thompson has created a love story that lasts."

RAD WOMEN WORLDWIDE  - Kate Schatz

From Advocate:

Rad Women Worldwide tells fresh, engaging, and inspiring tales of perseverance and radical success by pairing well researched and riveting biographies with powerful and expressive cut-paper portraits. Covering the time from 430 B.C.E. to 2016, spanning 31 countries around the world, the book features an array of diverse figures, including Hatshepsut (the great female king who ruled Egypt peacefully for two decades), Malala Yousafzi (the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize), Poly Styrene (legendary teenage punk and lead singer of X-Ray Spex), and Liv Arnesen and Ann Bancroft (polar explorers and the first women to cross Antarctica). This progressive and visually arresting book is a compelling addition to works on women’s history. 

WE CAME TO AMERICA - Faith Ginggold

From Kirkus:

"Known for her trademark folkloric spreads, Caldecott Honoree Ringgold showcases the arrival of people immigrating to America. By way of luscious colors and powerful illustrations, readers embark upon a journey toward togetherness, though it’s not without its hardships: “Some of us were already here / Before the others came,” reads an image with Native Americans clad in ornate jewelry and patterned robes. The following spread continues, “And some of us were brought in chains, / Losing our freedom and our names.” Depicted on juxtaposing pages are three bound, enslaved Africans and an African family unchained, free. The naïve-style acrylic paintings feature bold colors and ethnic diversity—Jewish families, Europeans, Asian, and South Asian groups all come to their new home. Muslims and Latinos clearly recognizable as such are absent, and Ringgold’s decision to portray smiling, chained slaves is sure to raise questions (indeed, all figures throughout display small smiles). Despite these stumbling blocks, the book’s primary, communal message, affirmed in its oft-repeated refrain, is a welcome one: “We came to America, / Every color, race, and religion, / From every country in the world.” Preceding the story, Ringgold dedicates the book 'to all the children who come to America….May we welcome them….'”

THE BATTLE FOR HOME - Marwa Al-Sabouoni


From The Guardian.

". . . With so much of the country destroyed, what will the future look like? People close their eyes, and they wonder: is it even possible to imagine such a thing?
Marwa al-Sabouni believes it is – and her eyes are wide open. A 34-year-old architect and mother of two, Sabouni was born and grew up in Homs, scene of some of the most vicious fighting. Unlike many, however, she did not leave Syria – or even Homs itself – during the war. The practice she and her husband still (in theory) run together on the old town’s main square was shut up almost immediately: this part of the city quickly became a no-go area. But her home nearby somehow survived intact, and her family safe inside it.
“I’m lucky,” she says. “I didn’t have to leave my home. We were stuck there, as if we were in prison; we didn’t see the moon for two years. But apart from broken windows there was no other damage.” She laughs, relishing my astonishment at this (we’re talking on Skype, which feels so strange, the cars in her street honking normality – or a version of it – with their horns). . . "

ATLAS OBSCURA: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders - Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, Ella Morton

This book is divided by continents and then countries.  I randomly opened to a page to a 'hidden wonder' I'd actually been to.  On India's northwest border with Pakistan, outside Amritsar, there's a bizarre, but uplifting ceremony held each sundown when the flag is powered at the border called the
Wagah border ceremony.  A couple pages later was another choice Indian attraction we had visited - Jantar Mantar, an observatory built in 1728, in Jaipur.  The Alaska entries are less compelling.  The Eklutha cemetery and the Adak National Forest sign are definitely unique, but not quite of the same magnitude as those Indian entries.






NEIN - Eric Jarosinski

From Publishers Weekly:

". . . Nein is not no. Nein is not yes. Nein is nein," he explains. The slim manifesto is divided into digestible, tweet-length aphorisms (each on its own page) with a hashtag for a title. "#TechRevolution/ Turn on./ Log in./ Unsubscribe./ Log out." Jarosinski also includes a hilarious glossary of Nein-ish words and phrases. Performance art, for instance, is defined as "six doppelgangers in search of a selfie." Technology particularly draws his ire. He calls Instagram a "marketplace in which pictures of your cat are exchanged for a thousand unspoken words of derision." There are gems on nearly every page. The book might seem tongue-in-cheek, but Jarosinski's cynical aphorisms about philosophy, art, language, and literature hold plenty of truth. . . "

"Did you realize that 'gnu-dung' is a palindrome?" Or Hyenas' Bum Rap

I'm about halfway through Robert Sapolsky's A Primate's Memoirs. Nearby where Sapolsky's studying baboons in southwestern Kenya, Laurence of the Hyenas is studying hyenas.  At first Sapolsky

"had given him wide berth, as I was terrified of him.  He was a large hulking man with a tendency to sequester himself in his tent at length to bellow hideous stark Scottish folk dirges.  Even more unsettling, when perturbed or irritated, he had the unconscious habit of thrusting his chin and heavy dark beard at bothersome males in a manner than any primatologist instantly recognizes as a very legit dominance display." (p. 121)

But eventually, in the midst of thousands of migrating wildebeests* at Sapolsky's camp, Laurence appears with the gnu-dung question.  Sapolsky goes on,

"In fact, I had not.  The ice was broken.  In the twenty years since, he has taught me to bellow Scottish folk songs, made futile attempts to chip away at my ignorance about car engines, tended me during times of malarial attacks and failed experiments and homesickness.  He's the nearest thing I have to a big brother, and he's been damn good at it."  (p. 121)

It's a reminder that we shouldn't project personalities onto people we don't really know.  There are enough people in my life whom I've made wrong assumptions about at first, but eventually, we connected, they turned out to be different from what I assumed,  and we became good friends.  And a few weren't the good folks I thought they were.  But  I've learned that under whatever facade I'm seeing, there's a real human being and if I can connect to that person, things will be fine.  But that also includes no ulterior motives on my part and my willingness to give to that person as much as I get from them.

With Laurence and Robert, gnu-dung broke the ice.

Hyena screenshot from Marlin Perkins' Wild Kingdom

But I really wanted to get to the hyenas.

Another case of changing one's view of, in this case, a species.  This blog is about knowing and recognizing that we know a lot less than we think.  And a lot of what we know is just wrong, as in this example.   (Of course, we should take the new information with a grain of salt too.)

"Hyenas are neither canines nor felines and have doleful beautiful eyes, wet noses, and jaws that can snap off your arm in a second.  They also have gotten an utterly bum rap in the media.  We know all about hyenas:  it's dawn on the savanna, there's something big and dead with a lion feeding on it, and Marlin Perkins is up to his elbows in the gore, filming the scene.  You know the score.  Ol' Marlin is waxing poetic about the noble lion and his predatory skills, said king of the jungle, covered with his usual array of flies, is munching away at somebody's innards, and the camera will occasionally tear itself away from this tableau of carnivory to pan the edges.  And there they are, skulky, cowardly, dirty, snively, skeevy, no-account hyenas lurking at the periphery, trying to grab a piece of the vittles.  Marlin practically invites us to heap our contempt on the hyenas:  scavengers.  Now, it's not entirely clear to me why we laud the predators so much and so disdain the scavengers, since most of us are hardening our arteries wolfing down carcasses that someone else killed, but that is our bias.  Lions get lionized, while hyenas never get to vocalize at the beginning of MGM movies. (p. 122)

(He's having his fun with Perkins, but in the video from which I got the screenshot above Perkins says the hyena is a formidable hunter.)


We learn that a carnivology revolution occurred when the army unloaded some early generation night goggles on zoologists and they could now watch what happened at night.

"Redemption for the hyenas.  It turns out that they are fabulous hunters, working cooperatively, taking down beasties ten times** their size.  They have one of the highest percentages of successful hunts of any big carnivore.  And you know who has one of the worst?  Lions.  They're big, conspicuous, relatively slow.  It's much easier for them just to key in on cheetahs and hyenas and rip them off.  That's why all those hyenas are lurking around at dawn looking mealy and unphotogenic - they just spent the whole night hunting the damn thing and who's eating breakfast now?"   (p. 122)

*from National Geographic:   

The ungainly gnu earned the Afrikaans name wildebeest, or "wild beast," for the menacing appearance presented by its large head, shaggy mane, pointed beard, and sharp, curved horns. In fact, the wildebeest is better described as a reliable source of food for the truly menacing predators of the African savanna: lions, cheetahs, wild dogs, and hyenas.

**Ten times their size?  Well I checked.  Adult hyenas weigh about 150-180 pounds (Wikipeda  and National Geographic differ.) An adult giraffe weighs 1800 (female) to 2600 (males) pounds.  But can a hyena kill a giraffe?  Yes, but only young ones says What Eats?  However, I did find a video and some posts that said hyena packs can kill cape buffalo and they weigh up to 1900 pounds. 

[This post, like the previous one seems to be having Feedburner problems.  I thought these had been overcome, but they are back.] 

Happy Halloween California Style

Some of my mom's neighbors seem to really get into Halloween decorations.  Most of these are from one yard, though many others had decorations. There were some in San Francisco as well.  As the day ends, here are some pictures. 

Click any of these pictures to see them clearer

 

This is a small car sized cat whose head moves back and forth every now and then.

These two (above and below) are from San Francisco.

Fluffy White Cat

Xiongxiong is our friends' senior catizen. A Chinese immigrant to the US.

You Can't Have Another Planet Until You Take Care Of Your Own

"In 1925, Nikolai Baikov calculated that roughly a hundred tigers were being taken out of greater Manchuria annually . . . virtually all of them bound for the Chinese market. . . Between trophy hunters, tiger catchers, gun traps, pit traps, snares, and bait laced with strychnine and bite-sensitive bombs, these animals were being besieged from all sides.  Even as Baikov's monograph was going to press, his "Manchurian tiger" was in imminent danger of joining the woolly mammoth and the cave bear in the past tense.  Midway through the 1930's, a handful of men saw this coming, and began to wonder just what it was they stood to lose." [From The Tiger, p. 96]

Image from Time

 Another side effect of the market system* is the extinction of species.  Will the market for tiger parts in Asia, for land in tiger country. and the lack of protection of habitat for wild tigers, doom the tiger?

I remember reading pessimistic stories about the ultimate demise of wild tigers back in the 1990's like this 1994 Time Magazine  cover story.

It seems people just gave up.  Accepted that it was inevitable!

The same people who could fly to the moon and Mars, couldn't save their own planet from being plundered.  If there were a god, I think it would say, with an eye to the Mars rover, "You can't have another planet until you take care of your own."


I'm reading The Tiger: True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant for next Sunday's book club meeting.

I thought I'd share some excerpts.

During the winters of 1939 and 1940, [Lev Kaplanov] logged close to a thousand miles crisscrossing the Sikhote-Alin range as he tracked tigers through blizzards and paralyzing cold, sleeping rough, and feeding himself from tiger kills.  His findings were alarming:  along with two forest guards who helped him with tracking, estimates and interviews with hunters across Primorye, Kaplanov concluded that no more than thirty Amur tigers remained in Russian Manchuria.  In the Bikin valley, he found no tigers at all. With barely a dozen breeding females left in Russia, the subspecies now known as Panthera tigris altaica  was a handful of bullets and a few hard winters away from extinction.

Despite the fact that local opinion and state ideology were weighted heavily against tigers at the time, these men understood that tigers were an integral part of the taiga picture, regardless of whether Marxists saw a role for them in the transformation of society.  Given the mood of the time, this was an almost treasonous line of thinking, and it is what makes this collaborative effort so remarkable:  as dangerous as it was to be a tiger, it had become just as dangerous to be a Russian.  [pp. 98-99]

. . . In 1943, at the age of thirty-three, Lev Kaplanov was murdered by poachers in southern Primorye where he had recently been promoted to director of the small but important Lazovski Zapovednik. [p. 102]

 Primorye is where The Tiger is focused.  It starts on December 5, 1997 with an unusual, almost murder, of a hunter named Markov, by a huge tiger. I say murder, because this cat seems to have taken vengeance on this particular man.  It was not a simple case of opportunistic hunting by a starving tiger.   The book follows Yuri Trush, a member of a government team of game wardens - The Tigers - that protects tigers in the Primorye.

Primorye  . . . is about the size of Washington state.  Tucked into the southeast corner of Russia by the Sea of Japan, it is a thickly forested and mountainous region that combines the backwoods claustrophobia of Appalachia with the frontier roughness of the Yukon.  Industry here is of the crudest kind:  logging, mining, fishing, and hunting, all of which are complicated by poor wages, corrupt offiials, thriving black markets - and some of the world's largest cats. [p. 8]

Vaillant uses this death to explore Primorye (an incredible biologically unique piece of geography where subarctic and tropic flora and fauna mix), the history of tigers protection in Russia, the relationships between indigenous peoples living in big cat country and their big cat neighbors, and the possibility of saving wild tigers.  I like the combination of murder mystery and tiger history, though Vaillant has a chamber of commerce way of  making descriptions into dramatic declaratory statements.

Trush's physicality is intense and often barely suppressed.  He is a grabber, a hugger, and a roughhouser, but the hands initiating - and controlling - these games are thinly disguised weapons.  His fists are knuckled mallets, and he can break bricks with them.  

This reminds me of all the New Yorkers I've met who only went to the best doctor in the city, sent their kids to the best schools, and shopped at the best market in Manhattan.  I was impressed at first, but then it seemed everyone I met did the same thing.  I don't doubt  that Trush is an amazing man, but he almost sounds like a comic book character in descriptions like this.  


But that's a minor criticism.  And I'm only a third of the way through the book.  Here's a bit more on Russia's contradictory place in world animal conservation.

There is a famous quote:  "You can't understand Russia with your mind," and the zapovednik is a case in point.  In spite of the contemptuous attitude the Soviets had toward nature, they also allowed for some of the most stringent conservation practices in the world.  A zapovednik is a wildlife refuge into which no one but guards and scientists are allowed - period.  The only exceptions are guests - typically fellow scientists - with written permission from the zapovednik's director.  There are scores of these reserves scattered across Russia, ranging in size from more than sixteen thousand square miles down to a dozen square miles.  The Sikhote-Alin Zapovednik was established in 1935 to promote the restoration of the sable population, which had nearly been wiped out in the Kremlin's eagerness to capitalize on the formerly booming U.S. market.  Since then, the role of this and other zapovedniks has expanded to include the preservation of noncommercial animals and plants.

This holistic approach to conservation has coexisted in the Russian scientific consciousness alongside more utilitarian views of nature since it was first imported from the West in the 1860's.  At its root is a deceptively simple idea:  don't just preserve the species, preserve the entire system in which the species occurs, and do so by sealing it off from human interference and allowing nature to do its work.  It is, essentially, a federal policy of enforced non-management directly contradicting the communist notion that nature is an outmoded machine in neeed of a total overhaul.  Paradoxically, the idea not only survived but, in some cases, flourished under the Soviets:  by the late 1970's, nearly 80 percent of the zapovednik sites originally recommended by the Russian Geographical Society's permanent conservation commission in 1917 had been protected (though many have been redued in size over the years.) [pp. 97-98]

If it were merely hunting and habitat destruction that threatened the tiger and the polar bear and the rhinoceros and the countless other smaller species, I would say that it was possible for humans to save them.  Possible, but not necessarily likely.  But given the  global climate change, another collective by product of how humans treat their planet, I have grave doubts.  But we shouldn't give up.

Today, "The Tiger in the Sikhote-Alin" [Nikolai Baikov's 1925 monograph] remains a milestone in the field of tiger researh, and was a first step in the pivotal transformation of the Amur tiger - and the species as a whole - from trophy-vermin to celebrated icon.  In 1947, Russia became the first country in the world to recognize the tiger as a protected species.  However, active protection was sporadic at best and poaching and live capture continued.  In spite of this, the Amur tiger population has rebounded to a sustainable level over the past sixty years, a recovery unmatched by any other subspecies of tiger.  Even with the upsurge in poaching over the past fifteen years, the Amur tiger has, for now, been able to hold its own. 

A telling side-effect of the crash prior to this recovery, one caused in part by trophy hunters, is that today's Amur tiger is not as big as the older ones were.  With a lesson that Alaskans should pay attention to, Vaillant writes:

It wouldn't be the first time this kind of anthropogenic selection has occurred:  the moose of eastern North America went through a similar process of "trophy engineering" at roughly the same time.  Sport hunters wanted bull moose with big antlers, and local guides were eager to accommodate them.  Thus, the moose with the biggest racks were systematically removed from the gene pool while the smaller-antlered bulls were left to pass on their more modest genes, year after year.

Humans, when they believe something is unfair and wrong, can do amazing things.  The fact that there are still Siberian tigers, and that their population is healthier than it was, is an example.  Those who know, now need to convince those who still doubt, and we can save many of the species otherwise destined for extinction.

There are many, many people working to save the tiger and other species.  We aren't helpless.  You aren't powerless.  You can help save endangered species.  For inspiration and ways you can help, check out

• Save the tiger crusader Steve Galster
• The Wildlife Alliance
• The New York Times says the US has no system for tracking the 5000 captive tigers in the US
• Pantera

And here's a video from the World Wildlife Foundation:





*The market is an important and valuable part of human economy, but it isn't the panacea for all problems some proclaim.  (The world is too complex for panaceas.)  Milton Friedman himself listed market failures that need to be regulated by government.  One, he called "neighborhood effects" and others renamed 'externalities.'  These are the costs to society that the producer doesn't pay - the pollution and other environmental damage for example that isn't factored into the price of the product because the manufacturer doesn't have to pay for it.  Destruction of habitat to the extent that species are endangered is another externality as is the extinction caused by over hunting - as nearly happened to sea otters and sable and whales.  Government regulation is necessary to counteract market failures.  (I know, there are those who say the regulations are worse than the problem, but killing off the remaining big (and small animals) is not the price we should have to pay to let entrepreneurs make money. Plus, such an externality isn't an efficient use of our resources which it is why market economists label externalities market failures.)

This Is The Third Friday The 13th This Year

The other two this year were in January and April.  Next year (2013) there will only be two (September and December).  Last year there was only one (May). 

So, is three a lot?  According to Paul Lutus at Arachnoid:

• The probability that there will be a Friday the 13th during any given month is equal to the reciprocal of the number of weekdays: 1/7 or 14.1%.
• The average number of Friday the 13ths in a year is equal to the number of months divided by the number of weekdays: 12/7 or 1.71.

So, almost 2 per year.  But according to Jim Loy, who figured the 1/7 figure as well,

It turns out that this is not quite true. It was shown by Brown (I don't know his first name) in 1933 that the Gregorian Calendar (which we use) repeats itself exactly, every 400 years. In that time, there are 4800 months and 4800 13ths. Of those 4800 13ths, 688 occur on Friday. So the probability of a Friday the 13th is 688/4800 which is .143333..., which is slightly greater than 1/7. In fact, Friday is the most likely 13th, slightly. Of the 4800 13ths, Sunday is the 13th 687 times, Monday 685, Tuesday 685, Wednesday 687, Thursday 684, Friday 688, and Saturday 684.

Kitty Litter Technology - Who Knew?

This last week in Juneau my hosts have been out of town and I'm house and cat sitting. I like cats including this one. My son's allergic to cats, so I really have been out of touch with the cat world.




So among my chores here - besides picking up the mail and the Full Circle Farm box today - is to feed Nori in the morning and empty the litter box at night.






The feeding part is pretty easy - though it means I don't sleep too late because someone is hungry.

But what were these huge flat burger like things in the litter box? And so many? I've taken care of my son's dog and know she doesn't poop that much or nearly that big. What gives?

Consider what a good cat litter should do: It should suppress odors, absorb, be biodegradable, nontoxic, and inexpensive. If you have more than one cat, both should be willing to use it. It shouldn't stick to paws, or between claws; yet it should clump enough to localize waste. And it's nice if it's flushable. But none of these features matters if your cat doesn't want to use it.

Now writer Curt Wohleber traces the design evolution of the stuff. Litter boxes existed before 1947. Owners had simply lined them with sand, sawdust, or torn-up newspapers. Then one of those moments -- like Newton's Apple or Goodyear's spilled chemicals:

Edward Lowe, back from the army was working in his father's supply store when a next door neighbor asked him if he had any sawdust for her litter box. [You can read the rest of this history at  John H. Lienhard's Engines of Our Ingenuity Episode 2103 or you can get the audio here.]

It took me a while to figure out that modern science now gives us kitty litter that soaks up the urine into these patties.

While I've been watching electronic technology, kitty litter technology took off.

Conversation With a Brigittine Monk

This past Wednesday, I got to visit a Brigittine Monastery, the Priory of Our Lady of Consolation in Amity, Oregon. I really didn't know what to expect, but drove out through the brown February rural landscape. There were patches of blue after the mostly rainy Tuesday.








The monastery is back off the main roads and secondary roads amidst farm lands.













The parking lot was empty and it was quiet as  I walked the short path to the priory church.

 I sat in the empty church and read what I thought was the Monastery newsletter - The Rosary Light & Life - which had a long story by Father Reginald Martin about going to Lourdes.  As I look at it now, that turns out to be from the Rosary Center in Portland.  But the Monastery's newsletter is online.


Then I walked over to the main entrance and rang the doorbell and entered into a small shop where the chocolate made at the Monastery is sold.

It was there that I met Brother Francis, who's been a Brigittine monk for 32 years.  I told him I'd heard the monastery was here, but didn't know what I'd find, but I did know they had chocolate.

He said, unfortunately, that was what most people knew about it.

I said that I was more interested in learning about what life was like here.  But no, to his question, I wasn't interested into looking into the possibility of entering the monastery.

We talked for about 20 minutes.  First he told me some of the basics of the order - things I'd read online already.

The Order of The Most Holy Savior, popularly known as Brigittine, was founded in the year 1370 by St. Birgitta of Sweden to give praise and honor to God. Elements which characterize the Brigittine Order include a deep love of Christ, especially in remembrance of His sufferings, the fullness of liturgical worship, a respect for learning and authentic devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the holy Mother of God, all incorporated into a simple monastic life style.

The Brigittine Order exists at present with thirteen monasteries of contemplative nuns and a congregation of contemplative -apostolic sisters whose mother-house is located in Rome, in the actual former dwelling of St. Birgitta.

The Brigittine Monks existed from the fourteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, when they were dispersed, largely due to the European wars. (In 1970, a Brigittine Monk, Richard Reynolds, martyr, was declared a saint.)

. . . In March of 1976 Brother Benedict Kirby founded a new branch of the Brigittine Monks. This monastery has the canonical status of a Priory "Sui Iuris."

Then he told me their schedule, which is also online. 

4:45 am Rising

5:05 am Office of Readings, Lauds

6:00 am Solitude

7:45 am Mid-morning Prayer

8:00 am Conventual Mass

8:45 am Conference/Work

12:00 nn Mid-day Prayer

1:oo pm Solitude

3:00 pm Mid-afternoon Prayer

3:30 pm Work

6:00 Evening Prayer

6:30 pm Collation

7:00 pm Recreation

8:00 pm Rosary, Night Prayer

 They basically live, work, and stay at the monastery which is about ten acres - plus they have an agreement with local farmers to be able to walk around on the farms neighboring the monastery.  They have a day off every year when all the monks go on an outing.  They've been to the coast, to Mt. Hood, Crater Lake, and I think Brother Francis said they'd been to Portland.  They can leave the monastery for doctor and dentist visits. 

I was interested in how they kept contact with the world.  The prior of the monastery gets email, a major way they get requests for prayers, which the prior passes on to the other monks.  Prayers can't tell God to do anything, they have to be conditioned - God willing.

They don't watch television (I didn't ask about radio), they have magazine subscriptions, and his favorites were the Smithsonian and National Geographic.  They also get a number of Catholic journals.

Silence was not a part of this order, if I remember correctly, though it is part of some meditations

Originally, the monastery was just south of San Francisco, but they knew it was a temporary location and was too noisy right next to a busy street.  They eventually found this spot in rural Oregon, well off the main road and some minor road until you get to the dirt road Monastery Lane.


New Advent tells us about St. Bridget of Sweden:

The most celebrated saint of the Northern kingdoms, born about 1303; died 23 July, 1373.

. . . Her father was one of the wealthiest landholders of the country, and, like her mother, distinguished by deep piety. St. Ingrid, whose death had occurred about twenty years before Bridget's birth, was a near relative of the family. Birger's daughter received a careful religious training, and from her seventh year showed signs of extraordinary religious impressions and illuminations . . .

In 1316, at the age of thirteen, she was united in marriage to Ulf Gudmarsson, who was then eighteen. She acquired great influence over her noble and pious husband, and the happy marriage was blessed with eight children, among them St. Catherine of Sweden. The saintly life and the great charity of Bridget soon made her name known far and wide. She was acquainted with several learned and pious theologians, among them Nicolaus Hermanni, later Bishop of Linköping, Matthias, canon of Linköping, her confessor, Peter, Prior of Alvastrâ, and Peter Magister, her confessor after Matthias. She was later at the court of King Magnus Eriksson, over whom she gradually acquired great influence.

 Her husband died in 1349.

Bridget now devoted herself entirely to practices of religion and asceticism, and to religious undertakings. The visions which she believed herself to have had from her early childhood now became more frequent and definite. She believed that Christ Himself appeared to her, and she wrote down the revelations she then received, which were in great repute during the Middle Ages. They were translated into Latin by Matthias Magister and Prior Peter.

St. Bridget now founded a new religious congregation, the Brigittines, or Order of St. Saviour, whose chief monastery, at Vadstena, was richly endowed by King Magnus and his queen (1346). To obtain confirmation for her institute, and at the same time to seek a larger sphere of activity for her mission, which was the moral uplifting of the period, she journeyed to Rome in 1349, and remained there until her death, except while absent on pilgrimages, among them one to the Holy Land in 1373.

It was an interesting and peaceful morning.   (I could take pictures, but not of the monks, who wear grey robes.)