Inspection Run And OutNorth Revival Meeting Tonight

I  took advantage of the sunny (if breezy) weather to get a run in and see how the neighborhood fared the storm. Except for this one cottonwood that was covering most of the street nearby, things seemed to be ok.  Oh, the traffic light at MacInnes and 36th was still not working.  There did appear to be some trees down in the woods along the bike trail too, but they could have been like that awhile.

Thursday

[UPDATE  Friday, next day:  Here's what's left of the tree:

Friday]

There is termination dust* on the mountains. 

 

And the Chester Creek bike trail was still beautiful. 

*Termination dust, the first snow on the mountains, marks the end of summer for folks in Anchorage.

Also, want to remind people that OutNorth is having a fundraiser tonight.  It's $40 a person at the door which sounds steep except it includes food and drinks. (Well I expect they might charge for the alcoholic drinks.  It is a fund raiser.)

OutNorth continues to bring Anchorage the most interesting and often the most edgy performances by local and Outside performers and artists.  Really incredible stuff and sometimes things that don't quite work, but are interesting attempts.  So $40 including food isn't that much to help keep this theater/arts non-profit alive and well. 

Their website says 

Includes Midnight Sun beer, wine, food, edification, salvation, entertainment, and remarkable deals on art, objects, services, experiences and upcoming shows.

It starts at 5:30pm and will give you a chance to chat with artists from the many community groups affiliated with them - from Hmong high schoolers learning to play their traditional bamboo flute, to actors, musicians, dancers, visual artists.  You can get a sense of the eclectic mix at their radio station which went on the air this year KONR (KOutNorthRadio) at 106.1 FM.  They're doing a special program to coincide with the Revival.  From their website:

"Anchorage Augmented
On September 6th, KONR Out North Art House Radio will host an augmented reality mix tape of Anchorage featuring the recorded works of local musicians, poets and performers as augmented reality works of art. If you are a local artist, musician, poet or performer with recorded works of art that you would like included in this project please email them to us in mp3 format. Anchorage Augmented will be taking place as part of Out North's Season 28 Revival, festivities will begin at 5:30 at Out North Contemporary Art House."

Do I have vested interest in OutNorth? Yeah I do. I want to see the kinds of performers they bring to Anchorage and I want to see them using those performers to help our local performers - including kids - stretch their imaginations and talents and contacts. So getting the word out to get more people there increases the likelihood they'll survive and thrive. That's my vested interest. A dumb thing on my part was that I didn't start labeling posts about OutNorth events until recently, but you can look at some of the old posts about their events by clicking here.

Ethiopian Children with hula hoops and other Google Searches

I think this has been hanging around as a draft long enough.  Here are search terms that people used to get here.  Some got exactly what they were looking for, some google (most are google, but sometimes another search engine

ethiopian children with hula hoops - No Ethiopian kids, but there were some hula hoops at the post they got.

what do egyptian people look like  - The was from a computer at the Egleston's Children's Hospital in Atlanta, so let's assume it was someone young asking this question.  They got to a post with some pictures of Egyptian statues in the Berlin Museum.




things to know about alaskan backyards -  This Kiwi got to a post on moose in the backyard.  Alaska's a big place and some places, like Juneau, don't have moose.  But it's certainly something to know about Anchorage backyards. 



how do you make teotihuacan mask from egypt - It's not easy, since Teotihuacan is in Mexico. They did get to some Egyptian mummy masks in Berlin's Neues Museum.

as an artist, diego rivera related the concerns of, a.) the u.s., b.) the government, c.) workers, d.) women-  Sure looks like a test question.  The answer's on the post about the Detroit Institute of Art's Rivera room, but he or she'll will have to figure it out. 


how big does a glacier have to be - To qualify as a glacier and not an ice cube?  To not melt in the next 50 years?  Wonder what the person wanted to know?  Google did the best it could and got him He got to the post How big is big?  Child's Glacier


2zghx ch`ด' - This was a Babylon search and it showed me what the person got:

What Do I Know?: November 2008
Nov 30, 2008 ... Lévi-Strauss, in Myth and Meaning ponders in a chapter called "When ... The ones in this chapter are particularly relevant to Alaskan since they ...whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html - 379k - Similar pages

 I checked the archive page this was on.  I have no idea why my page showed up.  There are other posts which have Thai script on them including the letter 'ด' but I couldn't find one on this page.  This Lévi-Strauss post does mention Thailand.  The searcher was from Chile.

baskin robbins halal certificates -Sometimes even I am surprised at what all is on my blog.  This person in Malaysia found a photo of the IFANCA (Islamic Food And Nutrition Council of America) certificate in a Baskin Robbins shop in Klang, Malaysia in this post.

woodpecker shoes pakistan - Lots of thoughts went through my head.  Can't be woodpeckers wearing shoes. . . . Until finally the most logical would be really pointy toed shoes, like a woodpecker's beak.  But who knows?  They didn't get either, but they got to this inspiring story:  Pakistani Official Tends Sikh Shoes and Toilets To Atone Muslim Killing Of Sikh.

Mimas tiliae

Mimas tiliae - Sometimes this blog is like a little bookstore that has obscure titles hidden away, just waiting for the one person who will want that particular book. It's been two years since I posted this one and finally someone from Denmark came looking for it: Instead of a real post - here's Mimas tiliae 


what is interim plan - I recognize that I sometimes report on things that have a lot of jargon.  I have explained more than once, say, terms used by the Redistricting Board, knowing that many readers haven't read the previous posts.  But I didn't think I needed to explain 'interim.'  I can't help but say to myself, "Get a dictionary."  But google does serve that function too.  And bloggers can't be choosers.  I should be saying thanks to the  several people  who got to this Redistricting Board post where I mention the interim plan and I say the Board adopted an Amended Plan and "an Interim plan in case the Amended plan doesn't get all the approvals it needs in time for the June 1 candidate filing deadline."  Do you think that's enough context for them to figure it out? 

rubber ring blender on top or bottom of blade - There's a long colonoscopy post which includes having to buy a new osterizer and then finding out all I needed was the rubber ring.
Maybe the picture helped this person answer the question.


a five column chart for nectarines using your five senses - This was an image search. Something about a chart I had up distracted them from nectarines. They got to a chart on Reported Rates of Voting and Registration: 1996 - 2008 post on Senate candidate Scott McAdams 

yhgujniolmpw - This person, from the Philippines with a US-English language computer, got to an archive page that had a story about an Anchorage man we know who was back from Afghanistan.  It had a word with 'yh' in it. Was this just random typing?

He was in a FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Iskandiriayh most of the time.

That's my best guess why they got to this blog.

batman in arabic -  Another direct hit.  This person got this picture from a post on a hot day in Chicago.   If you enlarge the picture enough and you know Arabic, I think you can see it.


anybody record if i sex with my wife through skype? - I'm not sure if this guy is worried that someone might record them or is looking for someone to record them. I suspect the former. He got to my post on Call Recorder which lets you record skype conversations and video. Your own conversations only.  But he's right to be concerned.  I could tell from his footprint here that he was checking from Vancouver, Canada and his computer is set up to use Indian English.

english mass nouns two gallon gasoline - It took me a bit to figure this one out. But it makes sense and this searcher got to a post on countable vs. mass nouns called "amount of people employed as an architect" 

kosti nohy - 
ayak kemikleri -  I've learned (with the help of online translation websites) that kosti nohy is foot bones in Czech and ayak kemikieri is foot bones in Turkish.  For some reason, I get hits at my post on J's broken foot in Czech and Turkish (and English), but not other languages.



can i copy verbatim from a press release? -Hmmm.  Is this from a newspaper writer?  A blogger?  Got to my follow up post on this exact practice.

what are those cotton like things floating in anchorage - And this person got to a post which answers the question - cottonwood seeds.

porno beauti - First, how does Google offer an image titled 'looking up cactus" to someone seeking 'porno beauti'? Second, why would a porn seeker choose that image over the others that come up? This is definitely a kink I've never heard of before. But once I actually looked at the image I realized it does have some phallic qualities, but really . . .




a travel club of musicians,poets,dancers all come together have a art festival - I had no idea where that might have gone, but the Spenard jazz festival poetry and dance turned out to be related to the search.

only chinese people like kenny g - This is terrible, but I have to admit I laughed. It got to a post on Pat Metheny's view on kenny g. Actually, this almost calls for a whole post to discuss. Let's say I think this person makes kenny g seem better than he is and Chinese people worse than they are.






what is the term for vampire arousal -  We should have a contest to answer this.  It got to my post on Thanksgiving Neckrophelia. I thought maybe I'm just behind the times so I googled "vampire arousal" and looked at the first to sites that popped up:  Vampire Seduction Guide  and Vampire Sexual Secrets.  Neither seemed to have a special term for vampire arousal.

Anchorage Shots - Grey Summer Days

Glass Sky

Most days this summer seem to be cloudy, so here are a few leftover photos.


This building has Nana Worley Parsons and Alyeska Pipeline signs near the roof.

Cottonwood Cotton

Cottonwood has been in full-fluff for a while now.

I think this was a black-capped chickadee.

Wild Rose

Arctic Slope Building

The Yamato Ya restaurant doesn't seem to have the same traffic it did when it was part of the Sagaya complex up the street on Old Seward. 

This was at a 4th of July barbecue. 

A Mercury Comet. 

June Ends, July Begins - Cottonwood, Construction, Contentment

 A breeze blew the cottonwood seeds from our big tree in the afternoon.  Fortunately, we don't have cottonwood allergies.  (For a lot more on cottonwood, here's an old post on this untapped Alaska resource.)

Later we went got onto the Seward Highway at Tudor.  The highway is being widened and the four bridges over Campbell Creek are going to be raised and a real bike trail constructed under the roads (including the frontage roads on each side.)
This is the on-ramp merging into the highway.

We had dinner with old friends who moved to New Zealand but are back in town visiting.  They are staying above Potter Marsh and the time flew as we talked about many things.  It was after midnight as we went home and I stopped for this view of Turnagain Arm, Potter Marsh, and Mt. Susitna.

Taku Lake Beaver and Campbell Creek Bike Trail Improvements

Riding home on the Campbell Creek bike trail from last night's book club meeting near Campbell Lake, I saw a big brown lump swimming through the water of Taku Lake carrying a good sized piece of wood in its mouth.








It was clear that he had been busy for a while.  There were quite a few of these chewed off tree stumps. 






A couple of big cottonwoods showed the early chewing of a beaver, but someone had put wire around the trunk before it got too far.

The beaver disappeared under the water where the chewed tree goes into the water.

The Campbell Creek trail ends (for me, begins for others) in the southwest near Victor and Dimond.  It's a great diagonal commuting trail for anyone going from that area - Dimond High is near that end too - to the Alaska Native Medical Center on Tudor past Elmore or spots in-between.  From Dimond to ANMC it's through the woods with occasional views of houses or businesses and there are only three spots where the trail abruptly ends to cross a street - Dowling, Seward Highway, and Lake Otis. 

They've already begun work at Dowling.  According to a Department of Transportation document   they will "replace Campbell Creek Bridge, install a new traffic signal at C Street, re-align the Campbell Creek Trail to go under the new bridge. . ." 


The picture is of the trail yesterday, from north of Dowling.  A new trail goes up to the left.  I think it will go to the new trail along Dowling, and the old trail will go under the new bridge and no longer cross the street.  The orange fencing on the right of the picture is where they are re-aligning the creek.






The infamous 'gap' under the New Seward Highway where you had to carefully maneuver you bike under four bridges of rocky trail (I see that some of the pictures have vanished from that post, I'll try to recover them soon) and sometimes high water, is now being changed into official bike trail.  They are going to raise each of the four bridges (north and south parts of the highway and the frontage roads).  Here's a shot from the east side of the Seward Highway from last week.    The project engineer told me that the September 2014 completion date will be for landscaping, but the trail should be complete by September 2013.




They've blocked it with a big chain link fence.

The only place you'll have to cross a street is at Lake Otis.  Either a few side streets to get to the tunnel or if you go directly, Lake Otis itself. 

The Seward Highway is less than 1/4 mile west of this map.


For now, the best option (going southwest) seems to be to go to Tudor and back up Old Seward Highway to the Peanut Farm or Arctic Roadrunner to pick up the trail again. 

Sustainable Home Heating (Wood) at Bioneers

I'm at the bioneers conference in Anchorage.  Valerie Barber and Meg Burgett from the Cooperative Extension are doing this workshop.  I went to the Alaska Food Challenge workshop first, but didn't pull out the computer.  I have pictures and notes though and will put it up later.   [I'm not going to proof this carefully so I can get it up and go to the next session, sorry.]

Meg Burgett

This one is on how to be sustainable with a wood stove.  

Natural gas prices make natural gas the cheapest way to heat, but it's a finite resource.
Fairbanks is using a lot of wood, but they also have air quality issues.

When is Wood Cost Effective?  Oil about $37/MBTU .  Gas is about 4/15/MBTU
Wood about $15/MBTU, Electricity about $44/MBTU

Other factors to consider
1.  The stove and cost to pay back
2.  Size and quality of insulation in home
3.  Wood fuel availability
4.  Costs, including transportation
5.  Storage space for wood - needs to be stored properly, needs a cover but open on the side to dry out properly

More costs than $ - exercise


Cost comparisons - (gas on chart 2X the chart)  but gas still much cheaper.

Rich Siefert chart -

Availability and costs of wood fuel options
Cords,  chips, pellets - Fairbanks has a factory, most in Anchorage coming from Georgia or Canada?

Why Burn wood:
Can be cost/efficient
Reduces use of fossil-nonrenewable fuels
Supports local jobs and local economy
Reduces impacts from green house gases
Personal choice more independence for you and family - especially off the grid
Enjoy activities


Best Practices
Choose the right applicance for you and your home

Understand how to properly use your appliance
Properly locate and install appliance
Use only high quality food
Clean and maintain your appliance regularly - if using <20% moisture, burns much cleaner

Choose the right appliance
Pre 1991 before regulations
EPA certified non-catalytic
EPA ertified catalytic
Wood/biomass
Masonry stores

Old stoves - less than 20% efficient, safety hazard.  Post 1991, required to meet EPA standards.  All certified stoves labeled.

Catalytic Wood stoves - Large, well insulated fireboxes
Costs more to start - $2200- $5000  - only can burn wood.  maintenance costs up, have to replace every 2 or 3 years, tho less if more efficient.







Non-catalytic - $1800 , not counting the pipe - hot short fires, nice flame for watching, most efficiently with short hot fires.
Wood or Biomass Pellet - good, but you do need electricity.  Extremely efficient @ 90%.  About $2-3000.  No local pellets, yet in Anchorage.  Fairbanks and Delta have them.

Outdooor Woodburners, least efficient, but lower fire risk to burn house.  Buring hot for long periods, large logs, but people burn garbage.  Surrounded by water that goes to house.  Low efficiency.  Up to 12 cords a year and can produce a lot of smoke.  Neighbors not happy at all.  Not good for dense urban areas.

Masonry stoves - hold and radiate heat for a long time.  Massive heavy structures, best to plan building new home and plan house around the stove.  $5-15,000 for the cores and not made here.  Can use brick, cement, tiles, etc.

Locating your stove
Put as close to center of space to heat.
Account for space between stove and walls and traffic patterns
Maximizing the Heat - best against an interior wall with masonry around it.
Avoid exterior walls
Avoid external chimneys, straight up,
Proper installation
Insurance costs more.

High Quality Wood
SCentral - cords most available.
Support local wood collected within 50 miles from harvest
Right moisture content <20%

Cordwood Primer
128 Cubic Feet (not counting spaces in between)  4'X4'X8'  - standard pickup holds 1/2 a cord

Moisture meter

Moisture content - there's a moisture meter - internet - $40, maybe a stove store has one
Split into 6" pieces, stacked off the ground, not rotting bottom.  Cover, tarp isn't great.
In Anchorage about 6 months to get green wood to 20%.  Away from structures - rodents and insects into the wood.

Valerie Barber

Look at wood - lighter in color, feels lighter and should have cracks and splits
Distinctive clank, not a thud when you hit it
Not all trees the same
Best is birch, worst aspen and cottonwoods.  Works ok if dry and in masonry stove.
How Wood Burns in your Wood Stove
1.  All the water in the wood heats up and evaporates off
2.  Wood begins to burn or 'break-down" at around 400˚F and release....

Clean and maintain yearly

Wood's renewable, but only when trees replanted and regeneration is encouraged.

Problems here because of climate change - the warmer it gets the less some of the trees grow.  Related to drought stress.  We can produce new trees, but not natural gas and oil.

We're watching a Canadian movie now on the best way to burn wood in your stove.  The content's really good (did you ever make a knotted piece of newspaper?), but the actors are awful. 

Need to do homework before buying - check emissions to see efficiency.  Lower the emissions, higher the efficiencies.  Catalytic stoves not designed for long fires.  Hot and quick. 

Here's a website they recommended.

Why some people hate cottonwood

[UPDATE June 8, 2020: There was a picture of seeds flying but it's no longer working, so I took it down.  I'll see if I can get another in July this year when this is happening again.]






They make summer snow.














Eventualy, the whole seed pod drops down to litter.

But I don't hate cottonwoods.  They're the biggest trees we have in the Anchorage area, they provide lots of green, noise muffling, air cleaning leaves.  Everything good comes with a cost.  Cars get us places fast, but endanger us - quickly through collisions and gradually  through pollution.  Chocolate makes our pants tighter.  The companionship of pets, requires care in exchange.

And I believe there is great potential in cottonwood cotton, the right person just hasn't focused on how to make it profitable.  Here's an earlier post exploring what people have already  done with cottonwood cotton and catkins. 

It all depends if you see a problem or a potential.

Back - Chicago to Anchorage Brings Us Home

It's day 40 in my little pocket notebook of our trip and we're back in warm, sunny Anchorage. 

Wednesday was hot in Chicago according to the Fifth Third Bank.  But Thursday it was much more comfortable. 





On the way to the airport we passed the original Mars Candy factory.






And a little later the Radio Flier factory.

Coming into Anchorage on a clear day is always spectacular and today was no exception. 

Our backyard thermometer says 72˚F (22˚C) and the narcissus are blooming and everything smells sweet from cottonwood. 

I had thought that the American flight we were booked on was really partnering on the Alaska Airlines non-stop from Chicago.  It turns out there are two non-stops from Chicago leaving withing half an hour of each other.   Market efficiency isn't always that efficient I guess. 

Cottonwood Request

Since not too many of you are going to go back and read the old post on possible uses for cottonwood cotton, I'm posting the comment that was put on that post today by Tobin.

Does anyone have any cottonwood cotton saved up for some reason or another? I'm looking to use it in a study to protect cooling equipment from contamination via cotton.

Contact me at tomck at vestas.com

If this works, Alaska  would have another renewable harvestable resource.   Tobin, if you don't get what you need now, come next summer you can get more than you need just from my backyard.  

[UPDATE:  Tobin emailed me and I misread the intent of his research.  It won't use cottonwood, it's to prevent contamination from cottonwood.  So we're still lookiing for people to find a use for all the cottonwood cotton.]

November/December 2009 Google Searches

Once again I post some of the search terms people used and what they got to list some interesting search terms and to see how google works.


Bullseye

santa monica trapeze school - this was an image search that got to a post on the Santa Monica pier with a photo of the trapeze school.

rockin dentist - I actually have a post called 'Rockin Dentist'. I got scheduled once with another dentist in my dentist's office and it turned out he has a second amateur career as a rock guitarist.

how do you get prickly pears outta your skin - I had the answer to that at the bottom of a post on eating prickly pear. (Duct tape)

unfuck the world, the song -  This got to an audio clip of the song from Kathryn Blume's play Boycott when she performed it here in Anchorage.  But the most interesting part of this was that the computer seeking this came from the World Bank.  Does this mean they finally have defined the problem they're working on? 


black members of congress -  I take a certain amount of pleasure when someone at
the ISP "Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives" comes to a blog in Alaska to get information about Congress.  


fruit flies fungus gnats difference - Got to  Tiny Black Bugs - Fruit Fly or Fungus Gnat?  The visitor, from Boston, probably had fruit flies, because the outclick was to the Oklahoma State University page on fruit flies, not the Colorado link on fungus gnats. 


pantalla en negro snow leopard - Ah, even in Spanish they get to  snow leopard black screen disease. 

Close


picture of seven mangoes -  This image search got a picture labeled "six mangoes in plastic."

famous people who was born in pansilvania that start with the letter c - First, I need to say this person was from Pennsylvania.  Google did manage to get him to the post on famous people born in 1909, and two - David Riesman and Joseph L. Mankiewicz - were born in Pennsylvania, but as you can see there was only one c between them and it wasn't at the beginning.


difference between a clique and a colloquialism - Never thought about a connection between those two words, but I can see how this Dutch searcher might have. Unfortuantely, I don't have anything on that and google sent him to Difference between a Cyclone and a Hurricane. (I probably jumped to the wrong conclusion on the nationality. It was from Holland, but Schiphol, which is the Amsterdam airport and the computer uses US English.)

a yellow egg with a tan spot. the moment you look away from it, it moves to another space - got to a picture of a yellow egg I did in photo shop in class last year..

Not even close.


2.employee bloggers sometimes use pseudonyms. under what conditions might the blogging service be forced to provide the real identity of the blogger? - This one got to a post that at least touches the issues here, The Right to Privacy, Bloggers and Privacy. This post discusses privacy in general and specifically the outing of Alaska's most read blogger at Mudflats. It doesn't quite get into the question sought though.

gender butterfly abdomen - When I stopped to think about it, it seemed to be about how to tell the gender of a butterfly.  If it was, it got a pretty picture of a white butterfly with brown markings in the foothills in Northern Thailand, but nothing on determining gender.  This one got me wondering. If you're interested, Clay shows how to identify a Monarch's gender when it's still a chrysalis.  Dragonfly power gives a more thorough explanation.  Scroll down to Part 1.

do flies know when they're full - Interesting query.  I'm not even sure where this one landed. I certainly didn't have the answer. 



do humans live in alaska -  This one came from a computer that is set for Arabic from Jordan.  So at least we can say some people in that part of the world are as ignorant of us as we are of them.  Google sent them to the post "To Live and Die in Wales Alaska"  He did get the answer, that yes we do. 

do hipsters go skiing -   I wrote about the movie Hipsters and I mention skiing now and then in my posts, but there's nothing that answers the question.  Google took them to a post on the Russian movie Hipsters that won the Anchorage International Film Festival Best Feature.

Missed the target even.

if you don't know when you were born how old are you -  This is a legitimate question. Got to famous people born in 1909.

how to get lover out of house  - got them to "cat lovers should check out this house" 

racket tailed drongo sound clip - There actually is video with a racket tailed drongo calling, but Google took this person to a post in the same month on Burma and bio fuels policy.  If the searcher had been persistent, he might have followed my search instructions in the upper right hand corner.  If he had searched for the word drongo on that page he would have found the link to the post with what he was after.  But the Sitemeter data suggests that he didn't get to it.  He was so close to exactly what he wanted, but Google should have put him on the right page. 

how much does it cost to get into amber in nature the mueseum in warsaw??tell me now!!! i need this for homework!!! - Despite the fact that my blog can't even come close to answering the question, What Do I Know came up first out of 1340 hits.  Why?  Because google uses robots, not people to find the hits.  They found a page with enough posts to match six of the words in his search command.  (It does sound like some bratty kid doesn't it?)  But there are no two words together even.  If mine was the number 1 hit, can you imagine how useless the others were?  And if there were some that got him to the museum in warsaw, why was mine number 1?  Does google think it's better to give lots of wrong answers than to say, "Sorry, we can't find anything useful"?  Here's the google link he found:

What Do I know?: July 2009

You can get the whole letter at the Warsaw Gazette.] ...... There's so much to tell...... I don't need to do my homework, the college guys like me just the way I am. ...... Seward Highway that is now a bike trail to Girdwood, I found this nature lesson - on cottonwoods. ...
whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html - Cached -

Google Sense of Humor

politicians laughing - This image search got to a picture of a white crested laughing thrush. Why not? Unfortunately, it wasn't even a good picture.