Anchorage Elections - Cemeteries and Alcohol Taxes Going Down

Everything else seems to be going as expected.  See the results here.   Since this is an all mail-in ballot, there will be some time for more ballots to arrive.  But both the cemetery bond and the alcohol tax are losing by about 2000 votes so far, unless the rest of the votes are from tee-totalers or the dead, I'm guessing things will stand.

Here's what it says about the $5 million in Prop 3:

PROP 3:  AREAWIDE FACILITIES AND CEMETERY CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROJECTBONDS

For the purpose of providing areawide facilities and cemetery capital improvements within the Municipality of Anchorage, including roof replacements, HVAC, safety and code improvements, elevator modernization and bathroom renovations to public facilities, and lawn marker, fence and landscaping renovations at the Anchorage Memorial Cemetery, and other capital improvements, as provided in AO 2019-4, shall Anchorage borrow money and issue up to $5,513,000 in principal amount of general obligation bonds?

Chrystal Kennedy is beating  Oliver Schiess in the Eagle River  (#2) Assembly race.
Kameron Perez-Verdia is beating Liz Vazquez in District 3.
Meg Zalatel is beating Christine Hill and Ron Alleva in District 4.
Forrest Dunbar and John Weddleton are running unopposed in Districts 5 and 6.

Margo Bellamy and Starr Marsett are winning their races comfortably for School Board.

School bonds have a big majority.
Transit improvements, which often have problems with voters, won easily, maybe because it was bundled with some safety fixes.
Parks bonds won easily, roads and water passed easily.
Fire and Police won.
Changes to allow lease to own by the Muni passed and a change to allow someone other than police to remove junk cars passed.


I understand why the alcohol tax lost - there was high powered opposition from the liquor industry.
But cemetery improvements?  I don't get that one.

While Death Penalty Executions Have Gone Down, Police Still Meting Out Death Penalty On The Streets

California's new governor, Gavin Newsom, has imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in California.

However, the death penalty is being meted out by police officers around the country.  And while convicted murderers and rapists are spared the death penalty, often innocent citizens are not.

2019
Killed By Police* lists 197 people who have been killed by police in the US this year (and we're only in the middle of March.)

Death Penalty Info lists 3 people killed so far this year as a result of death penalty executions.

2018
The Root tells us 2165 people were killed by police in 2018.
Mapping Police Violence puts the number at 2166 people killed by police in 2018.  They also have a lot of related information and graphics - including comparisons between cities, crime rates, and other factors which show huge differences.
The Washington Post lists only 998 people killed by police in 2018.   (Including 7 in Alaska.)  These are only people shot and killed by police.  The others include all deaths caused by police.

Death Penalty Info lists 25 people dying by state sanctioned death penalty executions in 2018.  (Of that number, 11 are identified as Black or Latino.  13 (more than half) were in Texas.)

	Killed By Police	Killed By Execution
2018	2166	25
2019	197	3

When police shoot and kill 'suspects' - the victim gets no  presumption of innocence, no trial, no jury. No appeal.  And police shooters almost never get prosecuted, let alone convicted.


OK.  Let's acknowledge that police have a difficult job.  They meet most of their 'customers' at some of the worst times in their lives.  They're asked to intervene in crimes being committed, often, by people with guns and other weapons.  They have to make fast decisions.   Most of us don't want to do these jobs.

Chart from PEW Research

Does It Have To Be This Way?

But when we look at the numbers, only a relatively small percent (less than 1/3) of police officers ever report firing their gun while on duty!  From the  Pew Research article (and reflected in the chart):

"To start, male officers, white officers, those working in larger cities and those who are military veterans are more likely than female officers, racial and ethnic minorities, those in smaller communities and non-veterans to have ever fired their service weapon while on duty. Each relationship is significant after controlling for other factors that could be associated with firing a service weapon." 

The article points out that there is no cause and effect relationship proven between these characteristics.

My main point for using the data is to show that the vast majority of police NEVER even fire their guns in the line of duty.

In a 2000 Associated Press article we get this quote:

"Well over 95 percent never shoot their weapons here," said New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir.

But we don't know if that's because they aren't ever in situations where they apprehend armed suspects or because they handle those situations differently from officers who do shoot.  (Well maybe someone does, but this study didn't make any such claims.)

But the data do suggest that shooting suspects is NOT necessary in most cases.

Are there ways to reduce the number of police caused deaths?

I would also suggest that officers who do kill suspects are also victims of systems that make that option more likely.  They see innumerable shootings on television, in movies, and in video games they participate in the shootings.  They are nearly all given guns, which makes shooting (rather than other options, like talking, like waiting, like non-lethal weapons) an easy option.  (We tend to use the tools we have to solve most problems.**)  They don't necessarily get adequate training for dealing with the mentally ill.  Internalized racism (again, television and movies play a big part here) will make many if not most officers more likely to assume the worst for suspects of color.  (And officers of color are also the victims of internalized racism so when they are the shooters it's not proof that racism wasn't involved.)

Use of Force Project offers specific systemic actions that reduce deaths by police.  (In this list the wording is reversed - what departments DON"T do that they should.  There's a lot of info on this site, including a long list of police departments (including Anchorage) and which of these these standards they meet.)

1. "Failing to require officers to de-escalate situations, where possible, by communicating with subjects, maintaining distance, and otherwise eliminating the need to use force
2. Allowing officers to choke or strangle civilians, in many cases where less lethal force could be used instead, resulting in the unnecessary death or serious injury of civilians
3. Failing to require officers to intervene and stop excessive force used by other officers and report these incidents immediately to a supervisor 
4. Failing to restrict officers from shooting at moving vehicles, which is regarded as a particularly dangerous and ineffective tactic
5. Failing to develop a Force Continuum that limits the types of force and/or weapons that can be used to respond to specific types of resistance
6. Failing to require officers to exhaust all other reasonable means before resorting to deadly force
7. Failing to require officers to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at a civilian
8. Failing to require officers to report each time they use force or threaten to use force against civilians"

I think it's important as fewer Americans die because of death penalty executions, to remember that in essence, police who kill suspects are, de facto, applying the death penalty.


Notes:

*Killed By Police lists a cumulative number for 2019 (197), but they don't for 2018.  Each page is a month, and so I looked for other sources rather than try to count each specific death they list.  The sources I used for 2018 did not have (at least I couldn't find) 2019 data.

**I learned about The Law of The Instrument long ago in a research methodology book  It goes something like this:  If you give a a child a hammer, it will find that most things need to be pounded.

We Pay More Attention To Stories We Connect With - The Ethiopian Max 8 Plane Crash

The crash of the Ethiopian Airlines plane taking off from Addis Ababa for Nairobi first caught my attention because long ago, I flew from Addis to Nairobi on an Ethiopian Airlines plane.  It was part of flight from New Delhi that eventually got me to Kampala, Uganda.  (I was taking the long way home from Peace Corps Thailand to visit a friend who was teaching in Uganda.)

And my son-in-law just got back from a trip to Nairobi - though not through Addis.

And I've been thinking about how that long ago adventure caused my brain and body to linger on this story.  Human minds steer  us in so many strange ways.

But later I started wondering about whether Alaska Airlines flies 737 MAX planes.

Alaska Airlines website has a page listing all their aircraft.  They say they have 162 Boeing 737 aircraft, but the pictures they have up of 737s are of 737-900ER, 737-900, 737-800, and 737-700 models only.  No 737 MAX planes.


However, according to Airways Magazine in a Feb 19, 2019 article:

As revealed by RoutesOnline, Alaska Airlines has outlined the start of its Boeing 737 MAX 9 network operations, scheduled to begin in July 2019. . .
The carrier converted 15 of its 737 MAX 8s it had on order to the larger MAX 9 variant back in May 2018, bringing the total commitment to 32.
Deliveries are to commence this year through to 2023, according to Boeing and Alaska Airlines.

So if I've got this right, they have some 737 MAX models scheduled to come on line in July this year.  And they changed all their 737 MAX 8 orders to MAX 9s.

So, what's the difference between MAX 8 and MAX 9?

This discussion from Motley Fool - Feb 2018 really focuses on the business aspects - the bigger ones are selling better:

The 737 MAX 7 attracted little interest from airlines, as its relatively small size means unit costs are higher. Boeing eventually changed the MAX 7's specifications to add 12 more seats, while increasing its commonalities with the 737 MAX 8 to reduce development costs.
Demand for the 737 MAX 9 was a little better, but still underwhelming. Boeing doesn't provide an official breakdown of its 737 MAX orders by variant, but one third-party analysis pegged the number of MAX 9 orders at approximately 410 as of a year ago. For comparison, Airbus currently has 1,920 orders for its competing (but somewhat larger) A321neo.
Stuck in the middle
At last year's Paris Air Show, Boeing launched the 737 MAX 10, a model that can fit 12 more seats than the MAX 9. The MAX 10 has roughly the same capacity as Airbus' A321neo, and will likely have similar unit costs.
Not surprisingly, airlines and aircraft leasing companies responded much more positively to the 737 MAX 10 than to the MAX 9. Boeing garnered 361 orders and commitments for the 737 MAX 10 in the span of a week during the air show.

Boeing has specs for all four varieties here. 

But we're still early on here.  We don't know for certain whether the crash in Addis Ababa was due to the same reason as the earlier crash in Indonesia.

From The Points Guy on a post today about flying on a 737Max :

"These two incidents have many passengers and crew asking whether the 737 MAX is safe to fly. A Miami-based flight attendant who wished to remain anonymous told TPG that she “no longer feels safe on the 737 MAX” and that she no longer “trusts” the aircraft. The Chinese and Indonesian governments have ordered their airlines to ground 737 MAXs, and Ethiopian Airlines, Royal Air Maroc and Cayman Airways have also suspended 737 MAX operations.
It’s important to note that the 737 MAX represents a small subset of the overall 737 family. Since the first Boeing 737 was delivered to Lufthansa in 1967, Boeing has delivered more than 10,000 737 aircraft and has approximately 5,000 more orders on the books. Of these, only 350 (or 3.5% of all deliveries) are of the 737 MAX variant. Still, if you’re trying to avoid traveling on a 737 MAX until an investigation into the Ethiopian crash is complete, here’s how you can identify on which 737 variant you’re flying."

Image from The Points Guy

 You should go to the site because he has lots of pictures, but two key things you can see on the Max planes are:

1. The engine casing is visibly serrated
2. The wing tips split (though Alaska Airlines shows 737-800s and 900s with split wing tips too.)

He also shows how to figure out what kind of plane you'll fly on when you're booking a flight.  

Here's a bit more from The Points Guy post about the 737 Max planes, that gets into why some suspect - from the fact that both the Indonesia and Ethiopia flights crashed right after take-off - this is related to the 737 MAX:  

While we don’t yet know the cause of the Ethiopian crash, and the Lion Air one is still being investigated as well, there’s an important distinction from a safety perspective. Only the MAX models have the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), software that automatically pitches down the nose of the plane to prevent a stall, which likely played a part in the Lion Air accident. [emphasis added]

Again, from today's Gizmodo article:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not ordered anyone to stop using the Boeing 737 Max-8, but customers are understandably concerned. Some people are even taking to social media to tell Southwest and American that they’ll be cancelling their flights because they want to avoid that particular aircraft.

From what I can tell Southwest and American are the two airlines that are currently flying the 737-MAX-8.

But if all the MAX models use MCAS software, it would seem (but then nothing is what it seems) that it wouldn't matter if it was a 737 MAX -8, -9, of -10.

Note:  This is not an area I know much about.  I'm relying on what others have written, so look at this as notes to use as a starting point.  Verify anything that is important.  

 

Call From 424 277 2647 - The Dead? Time Travel Message? Momo?

We've been watching The Umbrella Academy on Netflix.  It's entertaining in a bizarre way involving time travel, special powers, and a weird rich family.  It also features time traveling assassins whose job it is to keep people from messing with the space-time continuum.  We had just watched a scene where many (all?) of the people killed by these two assassins were in the room with a current torture victim (and the two assassins, who can't see or hear the ghosts) telling the torture victim - in many different languages - how they had been tortured and killed.

Not long after that scene our phone rang.  It was late and we don't answer the land line anyway if we don't know who it is.  They don't usually leave a message but this time there were two.  As I was listening to the first message, a a third call came in.

My immediate reaction while listening to the messages was - it's from one of the assassins' victims.  Or maybe someone from a different time is leaving a message for a time traveler.  Here, you can listen yourself:




I looked up the number - 424 - 277 2647 - but didn't find much about it online.

Screen Shot from Who Called Me?

It's hard to read, but the first comment is:  "this is momo number"

I looked that up.  It's probably even creepier than my theory.  You can look up momo here.

It's probably a fairly mundane message in some language I can't identify or understand.  Maybe she's just saying numbers.  If anyone knows the language, please leave a comment explaining what is being said.

Killers Of The Flower Moon - Chilling Story Of Power, Collusion, Racism, That's Relevant Still Today [UPDATED]

David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon tells the chilling and disgusting story of how white men in

power murdered scores, maybe more, Osage Indians in the 1920s, to get their 'headrights' which was their right to their share of the oil wealth. The headlights couldn't be sold, but they could be inherited.

Grann's interviewed children and grandchildren of murdered Osage.  He reviewed archival documents in libraries and agencies, What he found reveals a much bigger impact than others had.  The FBI quit investigating when the got convictions of two key people, but Grann suggests a lot more people were involved in the murders - both as perpetrators and as victims.

Basically, most ofl the important white men in Osage territory were involved.  The Osage had chosen what they thought was relatively desolate land in Oklahoma on the belief that whites would take over any decent land, as had happened to them previously.  But they did have a good attorney and they reserved the underground rights to all their territory.  When oil was discovered, they became rich.  That in itself was a problem because whites derided the idea of rich Indians living in nice house with fancy cars and clothes.  And the idea that Indians had whites working for them in their houses.

The law also had problems with the idea of rich Indians.

"The law mandated that guardians be assigned to any American Indians whom the Department of the Interior deemed "incompetent"  In practice, the decision to appoint a guardian - to render an American Indian, in effect, a half citizen - was nearly always based on the quantum of Indian food in the property holder, or what a state supreme court justice referred to as "racial weakness." (p. 78)

So the headright owners had to have a white guardians watch over their money.  This position gave the guardians many opportunities to syphon off money for their own uses.   But this wasn't enough for the white power structure of the area.  They began a long and relentless crusade to murder Osage headright owners to gain control of the money.  They used guns, they used poison, they even blew up someone's house.

They got away with this because all the key people - the mayor, the private investigators the families of Osage hired, the doctors who did autopsies, the undertakers, the various attorneys, the judges, the bankers, the juries, when there was one, were all involved.  All benefited financially.

It's a horrible story that should be highlighted in American history books, but isn't.  The FBI got involved because they'd already been embarrassed by an earlier case involving the Osage.  Hoover wanted to establish his new agency's credibility.  An upright Texas ranger who'd joined the FBI took over the case and managed to get witnesses to testify who hadn't before.  But when they got a few men convicted - notably William Hale and his nephew Ernest Burkhart -  they stopped there, not investigating the many other suspicious deaths.  Both these men were not given the death sentence for killing Indians, and were out of prison after serving relatively short terms.

Here's a bit of a summary from near the end of the book.

"I remembered the Shouns.  They were the doctors who had claimed that the bullet that had killed Anna Brown had disappeared  The doctors who had initially concealed that Bill Smith had given a last statement incriminating Hale and who had arrange it so that one of them became the administrator of Rita Smith's invaluable estate.  The doctors whom investigators suspected of giving Mollie Burkhart poison instead of insulin.  Many of the cases seemed bound by a web of silent conspirators  Mathis, the Big Hill Trading Company owner and the guardian of Anna Brown and her mother, was a member of the inquest into Brown's murder that failed to turn up the bullet.  He also manage, on behalf of Mollies' family, the team of private eyes that conspicuously never cracked any of the cases.  A witness had told the bureau that after Henry Roan's murder, Hale was eager to get the corpse away from one undertaker and delivered to the funeral home at the Big Hill Trading Company.    The murder plots depended upon doctors who falsified death certificates and upon undertakers who quickly and quietly buried bodies.  The guardian who McAuliffe suspected of killing his grandmother was a prominent attorney working for the tribe who never interfered with the criminal networks operating under his nose.  Nor did the bankers, including the apparent murderer Burt, who were profiting from the criminal "Indian business."  Nor did the venal mayor of Fairfax - an ally of Hale's who also served as a guardian.  Nor did countless lawmen and prosecutors and judges who had a hand in the blood money.  In 1926, the Osage leader Bacon Rind remarked, "There are men amongst the whites, honest men, but they are might scarce."  Garrick Bailey, a leading anthropologist on Osage culture, said to me, "If Hale had told what he knew, a high percent of the county's leading citizens would have been in prison"  Indeed virtually every element of society was complicit in the urderous system.  Which is why just about any member of this society right have been responsible for the murder of McBride, in Washington:  he threatened to bring down not only Hale but a vast criminal operation that was reaping millions and millions of dollars." (pp. 590-91)

In the background, we learn a little about the development of police departments in the US and some about J. Edgar Hoover's beginnings at the FBI.  We learn about private detective companies like Pinkerton and the William J Burns International Detective Agency.   And we learn about how greed and prejudice trumped justice.

Often the web of connections that enable the well-to-do to commit crimes in impunity is invisible to those on the outside.  This book shows those connections and how insidious they can be.  This is a valuable lesson as Mueller unravels the connections that Trump had with Russia.  And, of course, Trump had in New York that allowed him to swindle and scam clients, contractors, and the public through connections with New York high society and lawyers who would buy off any potential threats with a binding non-disclosure agreement.

It's also a reminder that reading well researched and written books can offer us a much better overview of a situation than the daily snatches of news that pop up and disappear, leaving us with a temporary outrage, but no context to put it in or to help us remember the details.

[UPDATE Feb 21, 2019:  As an exclamation mark to my comments about how this is relevant still today, here's a Miami Herald story about a judge ruling. 

"A judge ruled Thursday that federal prosecutors — among them, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta — broke federal law when they signed a plea agreement with a wealthy, politically connected sex trafficker and concealed it from more than 30 of his underage victims.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra, in a 33-page opinion, said that the evidence he reviewed showed that Jeffrey Epstein had been operating an international sex operation in which he and others recruited underage girls — not only in Florida — but from overseas, in violation of federal law.
'Epstein used paid employees to find and bring minor girls to him.,’’ wrote Marra, who is based in Palm Beach County. “Epstein worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others.'’’

This is exactly the kind of thing that happened in Oklahoma around the Osage killings.  Judges, prosecutors, attorneys, and the wealthy worked out deals that they hid from the victims.    In this case, the prosecutor then is now Trump's US Secretary of Labor.  And in the researching I've done in the last few years, I've run across stories saying that Trump was one of the people who enjoyed going to Epstein's parties and the young girls he provided.  From Think Progress:

"Trump told New York Magazine about his relationship with Epstein in 2002.
'I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump said at the time. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it: Jeffrey enjoys his social life.'”

Bill Clinton and many others were also party-going friends of Epstein according to this article.

My point is not to indulge in gossip here, but to make the bigger point:  That white men (particularly) in power take care of each other to cover up their illegal and often despicable actions.  And it's still happening today.  Epstein's out of prison after a short stint, Trump is president, and Acosta is his Secretary of Labor.  The victims still have gotten no real justice.  Exactly like the Osage Killings.

Nancy Wilson Was The Soundtrack Of My Life

I'm not sure exactly when Nancy Wilson came into my life.  Maybe the end of high school or the beginning of college.  I was even in an elevator with her before a concert at UCLA once. I couldn't say a word.  Her albums lifted me out of whatever problems I was facing.

They still transport me to another world, even if I have to move the arm when the needle his a scratch in my 50 year old vinyls.

It's hard to believe that golden voice has been silenced.  This is just a sampling of a few vocal jewels.



Here's more factual stuff from the LA Times.

Some Morning Biking Pictures As I Get Ready For This Morning's Ride

The Pilani Highway, that goes from near the airport to Kihei, has a separate bike path - there's a painted path, grass, then a paved path, well away from the cars.  And I can just ride off for 30 minutes no real interruptions and then turn around.









 So that's my route now.  Yesterday it felt so good after 40 minutes I didn't want to turn even.  But I did.

But Friday, my ride was interrupted.  I had a serious flat - a couple of big thorns.

Calls to the rental place.  I had to drive there, get a bike rack, go home and get the bike, take it in, switch out to a new bike.

But now I'm back in the groove.  Some shots from yesterday.

The West Maui mountains from the bike trail.



This car was parked here on Thursday with the emergency lights blinking.  I didn't get this far on Friday before the flat.

Saturday the gas tank fall was gone, and presumably the gas, and someone seems to have gone through the contents inside and scattered a lot of the papers outside the car.



 Near the National Guard are these 'billboards' for Motocross.

And there's this memorial, but I couldn't find a name.  

So I'm off now for today's ride, before it gets too hot.

If They Tell You To Evacuate Before Florence Hits, Do It! Lessons From The Johnstown Flood 1889

My book club's book for this month is David McCollough's The Johnstown Flood.  We've got two The Great Earthquake, which I've already read and posted about.  
disaster books in a row.  Next month is Henry Fountain's

As Florence bears down on the mid-Atlantic, the harrowing scenes I've been reading about seem appropriate.  The Johnstown flood wasn't because of a hurricane, though it did rain for days and those rains brought water higher into the towns along the river than ever before.

But the real horror was the bursting of a damn about 15 miles up the river.  The scenes described by McCullough remind me of the most over-the-top disaster movies.

While some people had concerns about the dam, there had been false alarms about possible dam failure in the past.  (Though it had burst once many years before, but had more recently been rebuilt.)  People were concerned about the rain swollen river, but not too many were concerned about the dam.  But then it burst and a huge wave of water, and increasingly, as it moved along the narrow passage way, trees and houses and train cars.

Here are some accounts from the book, as reminders to those in the path of the hurricane, that it's better to be safe than sorry.

"And these boards were jagged . . . and I looked at my aunt, and they didn't say a word then.  All the praying stopped, and they gasped, and looked down like this, and were gone, immediately gone."
She felt herself falling and reaching out for something to grab on to and trying as best she could to stay afloat.
"I kept paddling and grabbing and spitting and spitting and trying to keep the sticks and dirt and this horrible water out of my mouth."
Somehow she managed to crawl out of a hole in the roof or wall, she never knew which.  All she saw was a glimmer of light, and she scrambled with all her strength to get to it, up what must have been the lath on part of the house underneath one of the gables.  She got through the opening, never knowing what had become of her aunt, Libby, or her baby cousin.  Within seconds the whole house was gone and everyone in it.
The next thing she knew, Gertrude [she was a 6 years old at the time] was whirling about on top of a muddy mattress that was being buoyed up by debris but that kept tilting back and forth as she struggled to get her balance.  She screamed for help.  Then a dead horse slammed against her raft, pitching one end of it up into the air and nearly knocking her off.  She hung on for dear life, until a tree swung by, snagging the horse in its branches before it plunged off with the current in another direction, the dead animal bobbing up and down, up and down, in and out of the water, like a gigantic, gruesome rocking horse.
Weak and shivering with cold, she lay down on the mattress, realizing for the first time that all her clothes had been torn off except for her underwear.  Night was coming on and she was terribly frightened.  She started praying in German, which was the only way she had been taught to pray.
A small white house went sailing by, almost running her down.  She called out to the one man who was riding on top, straddling the peak of the roof and hugging the chimney with both arms.  But he ignored her, or perhaps never heard her, and passed right by.
"You terrible man," she shouted after him.  "I'll never help you."
Then a long roof, which may have been what was left of theArcade Building, came plowing toward her, looking as big as a steamboat and loaded down with perhaps twenty people.  She called out to them, begging someone to save her.  One man started up, but the others seemed determined to stop him.  They held on to him and there was an endless moment of talk back and forth between them as he kept pulling to get free.
Then he pushed loose and jumped into the current.  His head bobbed up, then went under again.  Several times more he came up and went under.  Gertrude kept screaming for him to swim to her.  Then he was heaving himself over the side of her raft, and the two of them headed off downstream, Gertrude nearly strangling him as she clung to his neck.
The big roof in the meantime had gone careening on until it hit what must have been a whirlpool in the current and began spinning round and round.  Then, quite suddenly, it struck something and went down, carrying at least half its passengers with it."

The book doesn't really give good footnotes to document this account.  But we can imagine a six year old (I think of my 5 year old grand daughter) retelling this event, and we know McCullough must have filled in a lot of details here.  Or, if Gertrude retold this many years later, the story must have taken on a life of its own in all the retellings.  Nevertheless, it was a horrible scene as the houses that weren't totally destroyed when the wave hit, floated in the current with people in or on them hurtling toward likely death.

William Tice, who owned a drugstore on Portage street, described what he saw soon after he ha been fished out of the water near the bridge.
"I went on the embankment and looked across the bridge which was filled full of debris, and on it were thousands of men, women, and children, who were screaming and yelling for help as at this time the debris was on fire, and after each crash, there was a moment of silence, and those voices would again be heard crying in vain for the help that came not.  At each crash hundreds were forced under and slain.
"I saw hundreds of them as the flames approached throw up their hands and fall backward into the fire, and those who had escaped drowning were reserved for the more horrible fate of being burned to death.  At last I could endure it no longer, an had to leave, as I could see no more."

The fires in the piles of debris, it was speculated, were caused by fuel in train cars and fires in wood stoves of houses swept away.

The Johnstown Flood was a horrible disaster.  McCullough lists 2, 209 victims of the Johnstown Flood.   Whether it's a dam burst tsunami or merely rising rain waters, if you are caught in it, it is equally terrifying.  I'm sure that survivors like  Mr. Tice, quoted above, had nightmares for the rest of their lives.

The death toll for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico is said to be 1427.  There's a reason that floods are one of the  major biblical catastrophes.

So, people of the mid-Atlantic being told to evacuate.  Do it.  If you want some adventure, read the Johnstown Flood.  It's horrific enough in a book.  You don't need to experience it live.

Which Parts Of A Man's Life Matter? Good Bye John McCain

It was only 2008 and when John McCain plucked Sarah Palin out of relative obscurity and opened the way for the totally unprepared to run for president.
He's also known to have been something of a womanizer when he was younger.  And the privileged son and grandson of an Navy admirals.  From NYT books:

"As far back as he could remember, Johnny McCain knew he was going to Annapolis, knew it with such unshakable finality that he never really thought twice about it, at least not seriously. It was part of the air he breathed, the ether through which he moved, the single immutable element in his life. He also knew that if he said what he thought — hold it, screw Annapolis, the place sucks — shock waves would reverberate through countless generations of McCains, shaking a military tradition that could both inspire and bully."

Roberta gave birth to Johnny at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone on August 29, 1936. The timing was auspicious. The base commander was his grandfather, who earlier that month, at the advanced age of fifty-two, had earned his wings as a naval aviator. Johnny's father was stationed nearby, at a small submarine facility. Jack McCain was transferred to New London a few months later, but for that brief period Panama became the epicenter of three generations of a family whose distinguished naval service would eventually span the great national upheavals of the twentieth century, from World War I through Vietnam and its still murky aftermath.
Johnny's father and grandfather may have made history, but nobody ignored his mother, the spunky, occasionally ditzy Auntie Mame of Navy wives. Though the family lived on Jack's salary, Roberta Wright McCain was born to wealth. Her father struck oil in the Southwest as a young man, made his fortune, and retired at forty, soon after Roberta and her identical twin, Rowena, were born. 

His time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, no doubt, played a huge role in his calling out 'enhanced interrogation' as torture.  His last years he became a hero to the left as he stood up to Trump and voted to save Obama-care.

I recount all this on the evening of McCain's death - to ponder why some men are brought down by actions that other men can weather.   Some of it's timing - in the #metoo era, Sen. Franken left the Senate for behavior that was relatively mild compared to what other men got no penalty for.

I suspect in McCain's case, he was given a lot of passes due to being a prisoner-of-war in terrible circumstances.  And while he was sometimes impulsive - choosing Palin, for example - people tended to trust his sincerity and willingness to stand up for his principles.

I do think, though, that we ought to be discussing how we evaluate a person's life - how we balance the good and the bad.  Who gets passes and who doesn't.

Anchorage Garden Tour 2018

The last Sunday of July is the Anchorage Garden Club's Garden Tour.  The newspaper used to feature the houses on the tour, but I think they were getting way too many people traipsing through their yards.  So notice is more discrete nowadays.  We've gone on lots of these tours and they are always inspiring - introducing new plants, ideas making gardening easier or more productive.

There have been overwhelming gardens that someone has spent a small fortune on and then there are much more modest ones, with ideas I can imagine duplicating in my own garden.

This year all the gardens fit in the more modest category.  I've decided to put up the pictures by categories rather than by the gardens they were in.  I also got pictures of all but one of the six hosting gardeners.

Ideas

This garden featured flower beds growing out of bales of hay.  Karen said she just dug out a hole and planted and things did really well.  There was something about adding nitrogen.  She suggested looking online for more details - so here's a link I found.

This gardener used a mail box token her hand tools in.  She also lined her flower beds with beer bottles.

This garden was billed as an example of 'upcycling.'   And there were lots of odds and ends all over the yard, like this giant pail with small waterfall.  Most of it was not the sort of thing that appeals to me during our decluttering phase.  These possible second uses of things are precisely the logic my mom used for not giving or throwing things away.




But I did like this use of an old bed post to put a new spin on the idea of a flower bed.

Some new ideas come in the way of plants I don't know, but do well in an Anchorage garden.  I did know that people have tried hydrangeas, with difficulty.  But this Hydrangea Annabelle has been doing well for nearly ten years she said.  It has a mint green flower that then turns white.  It is against a south facing house wall, which helps.  

And I didn't know about these orchid primroses.  

And this nine bark diablo was another.






Pretty Flowers 

Of course one of the delights of a garden tour is to see some beautiful flowers.  And I'm a sucker for the deep blues of delphiniums












And these white lilies in the same garden were exquisite.

The Gardeners

Karen Gonne-Harrell was the gardener with the straw bales.  These beds were from last year's straw beds with wood put around them.  She added some dirt on top. But she said the carrots weren't doing well - here she pulled up a couple to show me.  

Rona Spaar had the most 'perfect' garden - everything was in place, lots of beautiful flowers everywhere, not spots that weren't green or full of blooming flowers.

Rathe Rasmussen's garden had lots of ideas in it - like the beer bottle borders.  This was a fun and lush garden.

I thought I recognized Marti Black's Spenard garden from a previous tour - five years ago she said.  (It's the first one in this 2013 post.  The porch was added on since then.)

And yes, in all these cases the gardeners were women.  Though Lester Black was also here and showing people around.

This was the part that was a beautiful garden in the most traditional sense, including the apple tree.

The other side of the house had Lester's junk pile.

This is Vicki Russell - the upcycling gardener who also had a number of plants I hadn't seen before.


Other Thoughts

We parked at Spruce Park near one of the houses.  The sign on this white bicycle says:

In memory of Jeff Dusenbury
11-29-62
7 -19-14
Beloved husband, father, friend, and avid cyclist.
Killed here on July 19, 2014

 As someone who bikes a lot, this is a somber reminder of the dangers.  The link tells more about what happened.

This sign at one of the gardens reminded me that gardening is one of those activities that transcends political leanings.  Passionate gardeners come in all ideologies.  Gardening is a neutral ground for those of different views to remember they are all human beings with more similarities than differences.




I wasn't exactly where this picture of the elephant fountain fit, so here it is to close this post.

LA Loses Gold - Their Venerable Food Critic Who Knew Good Food And How To Write About It

Jonathan Gold was my guide to eating out in LA.  As a food critic, he wasn't snobby.  As Sunday's LA Times article tells us:

"Food criticism before him — and even during his time — focused on the austere, the high-end, the Michelin stars. Gold redefined the genre, drawn more to hole-in-the-wall joints, street food, mom-and-pop shops and ethnic restaurants than he was to haute cuisine. Although he appreciated and wrote beautifully about fine dining, he revered the taco truck more than the tasting menu. . ."

“Jonathan understood that food could be a power for bringing a community together, for understanding other people,” said Ruth Reichl, who edited Gold at The Times and at Gourmet. “In the early ’80s, no one else was there. He was a trailblazer and he really did change the way that we all write about food.”

"Gold was mission-driven as a critic, hoping his food adventures through the city’s many immigrant enclaves would help break down barriers among Angelenos wary of venturing outside their comfort zones. In the process, he made L.A.’s enormousness and diversity feel accessible and became one of the city’s most insightful cultural commentators.
“I am trying to democratize food and trying to get people to live in the entire city of Los Angeles,” he said in a 2015 interview with Vice. “I’m trying to get people to be less afraid of their neighbors.”
In 2007, when he was writing for L.A. Weekly, Gold became the first restaurant critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. "

His death at 57 is a great loss not only to LA, but to the art of writing about food.  So it is with sadness, I post about him today.

And I've had a draft post up for nearly a year now because I was so taken by one of his reviews last year.  It was over-the-top, but then the restaurant itself was beyond that even.  Was the chef a true artist who sculpted not only the food, but the whole dining experience and, with Gold's help, found people to pay for his art? (Dinner for two was $1000.) Or was he spoofing restaurants who gave people a square plate with couple of artfully placed asparagus and dribbles of colorful sauce for $40?

I never posted about that review, but it seems appropriate now.   Especially because today's article tells us:

"Gold was protective of Los Angeles and how it was portrayed. For years, when the Los Angeles food scene was overlooked by critics who preferred dining in New York and San Francisco, Gold was quick to defend and champion it.
After New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells disparaged the Oakland location of Locol, a fast-food chain that originated in Watts, Gold penned an impassioned essay in response.
“Locol is less a replacement for a fast-food restaurant than a better version of it,” he wrote. “Someday, if he’ll allow me, I’d like to take Mr. Wells to Watts.”
Perhaps to make a point, when it came time to pick his first Restaurant of the Year recipient three months later, Gold chose Locol."

Verspertine is about as far from the the Southern India spot in the Culver City strip mall or the food truck anywhere.  His review begins:

If you were looking for the oddest dish being served in an American restaurant right now, you should probably start with the fish course at Jordan Kahn's new Vespertine, a dish that nudges the idea of culinary abstraction dangerously close to the singularity. It doesn't look like fish, for one thing — it looks rather like an empty bowl, coarse and pebbly inside and out, of a blackness deep enough to suck up all light, your dreams and your soul.
If this were Coi or Alinea, to name two modernist temples, your server would instruct you on how to eat the dish, or at least on where you might direct your spoon. At Vespertine, the server, wearing a severe frock like something out of "The Handmaid's Tale," does not. If you prompt her, she may whisper the word hirame, which in a sushi bar can mean either flounder or halibut. She will leave before you discover that the flounder has been pounded thin, crusted with charred-onion powder, and pressed into the bowl over a kind of porridge studded with minced shallot, perfumy bits of pickled Japanese plum, and bright, crunchy bursts of acid that could either be finger-lime vesicles or chopped stems of the wildflower oxalis. You are not sure exactly what you are eating. You are not meant to know. You have traveled from darkness into light, and that is enough.

The link here is worth it just for the pictures, but also for his words.  Gold knows that few of his readers will ever go to Vespertine:

I would say that a meal at Vespertine is mandatory for a certain kind of diner, but mandatory in the way that the James Turrell show at LACMA a couple of years ago was mandatory, or Berg's "Wozzeck," or the current season of "Twin Peaks." It's not dinner; it's Gesamtkunstwerk.

But for most of us, reading Gold's description (it's way beyond a review) of the Vespertine experience makes me, at least, feel like I was there with him.  Vespertine was his Restaurant of the Year for 2017.  I imagine he saw it not as a spoof, but the work of great artist, and like a Lamborghini, something to admire, but something only a few would experience.

May Anchorage's food critics read Jonathan Gold's old reviews and set their sights much higher.

A Story Recalling Meandering, And the Flaneur

This all started out fairly early Tuesday as I went along with my daughter and granddaughter to watch the little one bounce for a couple of hours.

But to be an observer I had to fill out an online waiver.  I understand.  Trampolining can be dangerous.  Someone I know broke his neck at a place like this (maybe even this one.)  He was lucky and after painful, scary months and months we was pretty much back to normal.  But there's a lot of liability with a place like this.

But I was only there to observe.  And the online form there asks for dribbles of information.  A paper form you can see what they're asking for all at once and decide if you want to share it all.  So I asked - how much more are they going to ask?
She didn't really hear me and said, "everyone has to fill one out."
Me;  "But I'm only observing."
She:  "Observers can be injured too."  [Isn't this the time people should leave?]
She:  "They don't use the information."
Me:  "Then why are they collecting it?  [I was being snarky.  I understood what she meant - that it's only in case of an accident.]  But even if they don't, someone can hack the computers."

Out of principle - that way too much information is collected about all of us - I decided I would not stay.  Besides I really didn't want to see my granddaughter risking her neck.

So I decided instead to walk around this South Anchorage neighborhood - between Old and New Seward Highways -

I'd only driven by on occasion, but had never really looked at carefully.  It's a funky sort of place with all sorts of housing and yards.

[I'd note the meandering reference in the title beckons back to a long ago post about meandering that comes from Charles Dickens opening to David Copperfield.  It's also a good description of how I often write.  The Flaneur references a post I did about a book by that title that I read while we were in Paris and is about just wandering with no goal through neighborhoods.]

This sign below the mailboxes - click to enlarge so you can read it - was the first that suggested people weren't cleaning up after their dogs.  "Attention Humans:  Please Pick Up After Your Dogs, Thank you."  Then it addresses the dogs.

There were big houses with big yards and gardens.  This one was next to a lot with a  double wide trailer.















Here's another inviting tree filled green yard that reminded me more of the mid-west than Anchorage.









Near another lot that reminded me of old Spenard.

And there were lots of trees and green.

But there also were dozens of zero lot line condos (presumably) scattered in the neighborhood.  Some had more green space around them than others.












If you look closely, Spyglass Hill is a private street, so I didn't go there.  As I wandered around I only saw one other pedestrian.  A woman with a walker and a tiny dog that took his job as her protector seriously.  She was laboring up the steepest hill in the neighborhood.

But I did wonder whether people might not be alerting NextDoor  (I think you may have to sign in to get to the link.) or the police if I had been black or worse dressed than I was.    Especially since I was taking pictures of people's property.

After wandering streets and alleys a while, I got to a bike path that started green and shady, but after about a quarter mile I ended in an industrial area.

It came out near a school district complex.













Past the student nutrition area was a nursery I had never seen before.

I wandered around outside, excited by this find.  (It turned out everything was outside.) But when I saw this item, I realized why all the rocks in my garden were picked up along highway construction sites.  A cubic yard of 'angular boulders"  was $195.  Gravel was only $95.  A cubic yard of gravel is a lot of gravel, but I suspect a cubic yard of the boulders has lots of empty spaces.



There were also also lots of different kinds of trees at serious prices as well.  I quickly deduced this was more for professional landscapers, but homeowners can buy here as well.


Lots of ways to spend your money on things I didn't know I needed.

This natural stone table (and stools) was only  $2786.

Rows of critters of all sorts.

I can see possible uses for these planters.

This dragon was certainly the most interesting item. I didn't check the price tag.



It's interesting to know this is in town in case I ever need something like this.







But then I made my way back out and got to a small strip mall.  I don't know what they do at this place, but it doesn't sound like a place I would ever want to need.

Then as I got back to Old Seward Highway. . .

First I saw the cross. Then I saw the sign.


I checked on line to find out who Justin was.






From his ADN obituary:

Justin Grey Ashley was killed in a tragic motorcycle accident Monday evening, July 8,

2013.
Justin was born on July 9, 1992 in Fremont, California to Brian and Charise Ashley. He grew up playing soccer and baseball and loved to ride his bike with his two childhood friends, Josh and Alex. He was a Cub Scout and bridged over to become a Boy Scout.
Justin moved to Alaska with his family when he was 12. He quickly made friends. . .

So yesterday was just a few days past the fifth anniversary of his death.   My sympathies to his family.  My brother was two years older when he died, so I have a sense of their terrible loss.

As I passed Judy's Cafe it reminded me of the place where they charged me an extra $.50 to NOT have cheese in my omelette.  I checked with K who was with me at the time and he said it was not Judy's.














I was getting close to full circle back to pick up the jumpers, when this car with a Begich sign pulled up onto the sidewalk in front of me.  He got out and struggled to get some sandbags that
were at the curb into the car.  I did mention to him that it didn't reflect well on his candidate to be driving on the sidewalk, though parking in the street wasn't a good idea either and he clearly couldn't move the sandbags very far.


At a dog kennel nearby, a woman pulled up and parked right in front of a No Parking sign and went in.





Almost back and I passed what looked like a single family home, but it had four mailboxes in front of it.


I got back just in time to get into the car and open the newspaper before my bouncing family members came out.  I'd had my adventure too.

I thought of the year we lived in Hong Kong when we decided that we could take urban hikes - and just walk three or more miles as we would in a more wild setting.  And there we could catch public transportation home from wherever we ended up.