Mayor's Inauguration Part 2: A Few More Shots

There were a lot of folks at the inaugural the other day.  I did an earlier post of all the past mayors who were there.  Here are some other images to show who some others in attendance. 






























Andrew Halcro, who was third in the original election and then threw his support behind Berkowitz in the runoff was there to watch the new mayor sworn in.















Noah Berkowitz-Kimmel introduced the new mayor. 

Former borough mayor Jack Roderick talking later to Willie Hensley

And there were a few dogs in attendance too.  I guess they want to make sure dog parks are a priority. 

Hairy Woodpecker and Friends At Still Icy Potter Marsh

One more post from last Sunday's outing.  [The other two were Always Looks Different:  Turnagain Arm and McHugh Creek]  We stopped at Potter Marsh on the way home [as we did two weeks before.] 

The only birds we saw this time - and this is not a complaint - were a pair of hairy woodpeckers and a flock of bohemian waxwings. 

The woodpeckers were fun.  Maybe it's my early introduction to Woody as a kid.  Surely the red patch helps, and the tapping noise.  And one of my favorite posts, which still gets hits from weird folks like me, is Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Brain Damage? 









The waxwings too, but they're more common, and we'd recently had a very close view as they came to feast on the Mt. Ash berries in the tree in front of our house.  Here their spectacular colors aren't visible.

This time without such an obvious single food outlet as the Mt. Ash, they were scattered in pairs and small groups around the marsh. 

Here's a typical view of the marsh, though the summer tourists don't get to see it with the ice.

The boardwalk has signs prohibiting, among other things, dogs.  And as we got back to our car, we saw this one waiting patiently in the car for it's servants. 

San Francisco - Dog Sitting and Other Odd Jobs

Dog sitter, laundry, pickup service - our jobs today were to take care of things while they are still waiting to come home from the hospital.  J got to have some baby holding work too.  Here are some shots, mostly from walking the dog.

Here's a San Francisco liquor store.

And the fire escape above it.

Utility workers installing fiber optic cable. 

A typical San Francisco Victorian house, atypically reflecting back the sunshine on a warm day.  It was cooler in the afternoon when the breeze picked up.

















Lavender patch in the dog park.

I'm not sure what Kona knows about the little brother coming home any day now.

View of the city from B's hospital room. 

We also had to stop at a high end baby store to get an insert for a stroller someone had given them.  This is one of those industries spawned by regulation, that conservatives hate so much.  And lots of lives have been saved.  But I also think that in some cases both the industry and parents have gotten a little carried away.  Like the   stroller in the store for over $1000.

 

Dogs, Long Time Frame, Cloudy Descent - Random SF/LA Shots

There are lots and lots of dogs walking their owners around San Francisco.   Lots of shops have water bowls set out for them and most allow dogs in. 
















The Long Now Foundation was closed as we walked by, but they'll be back in a while.  It's an organization founded by Stewart Brand (of the Whole Earth Catalog) and others.  They're building a ten thousand year clock. 

"The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide a counterpoint to today's accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years."

Their website has an essay by Steward Brand, of the Whole Earth Catalog and one of the Long Now founders which says this quote from Dennis Hillis helped start the clock project:

 "When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 02000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 02000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an

ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium."

 For me, 1984 was the year we were moving toward.  Then 2001.

We were at the Long Now because we were headed for greens for dinner.  But they were closed for a private party.




I took this shot as we headed back for the car and another place to eat.

 

Talking about about greens, I thought this Plant Exchange idea was worth posting.  Lots of people have too much of one thing in their yards and not enough of other things.  I'd love to see this happen in Anchorage.  Just a spot to bring extra plants and exchange for ones you'd like. 













Our trip to the Bay area was much too brief, but we got to see my son and his wife and other good friends.  And soon we were back over an overcast LA and slipped down through the thin cloud cover. 



They announced we'd be on the ground in 15 minutes.  I thought we were further away than that, and once we got over the opening of Marina del Rey, we wandered around the LA airspace and finally landed in 20 minutes.  But it took another 20 minutes before we got a place to park. 




Here's one last shot I took as we meandered around LA waiting to be cleared to land.  A freeway interchange. (As you can tell, I used the little camera.  We were cutting down on what we carried on this trip and my bigger camera was on the don't take list.)

I found myself trying to trace all the connections from one direction to another.  I see how you can switch from the vertical freeway to the horizontal freeway and go either direction.  But I only see a way to turn right from the horizontal freeway to the vertical one.  There's a little something above the loop on the right and below the one on the left, but I can't figure out what they're for. Maybe they go down to a street below.   My other camera would have made this all much clearer.  (No I don't even know what interchange this was.  You can see park area below, and there was a lake on the upper left.)

Why I Live Here - Walking Over To Catch iditarod

After a Citizens' Climate Lobby meeting this morning at UAA, I walked over to Goose Lake to catch a bit of the Iditarod's ceremonial start.  There were a lot of long tongues hanging out. 

#19 Allen Moore's dogs

I brought my 'good' camera for this, but I wasn't prepared for how hard shooting the moving dogs would be.  The camera let me pull out a few reasonably focused shots. 

#22 Robert Sorlie

#20  Scott Janssen's dogs

#25 Norman Schroeder coming over the Northern Lights bridge at Goose Lake

Names are based on the ADN list of mushers and their numbers which I'd link to, but I can't find online.

Anchorage to Seattle Day 6: Lac La Hache to Bainbridge Island

He was comfortably resting by the porch when I showed up, then ambled up to the picket fence where he just wanted to be petted and get some attention.  This was on the main street of Clinton, BC, which happens to be the highway.  We stopped here for gas and it seemed so much less spoiled by strip malls and chain stores that we walked around.  I'm going to do a whole photo portrait of Clinton.  This is just a preview.

We began after breakfast at the Provincial campground at Lac La Hache.  We're clearly getting into civilizations.  The campground bathrooms had flush toilets and and granite counter tops.

Compared to three years ago, Thursday (Day 5) and Friday (Day 6) went much faster because there was less traffic and almost no interruption due to construction.  And this last day was mostly sunny and warm - about 20˚C I would guess.

The landscape was getting more arid.  We were passing what almost looked like semi-desert, with these bunches of yellow flowers topping gray-green foliage.  I don't know what they are, but they were everywhere. 

And then we got to the Fraser River and Canyon.  We followed this passage for several hours.  The train seemed endless and was there whenever we looked.  One side of the canyon was dry and the other side lush with evergreens. 

At this point we're closer to the water.  We couldn't see the end of the train in either direction. 

And there were lots of tunnels along this route.  Most, so well lit up, I didn't need to take off my sunglasses. 

Along this route we got to Devil's Gate, where we had lunch and took a short hike in the beautiful weather, which I'll do a separate post on. 

Eventually we got out of the canyon and onto a freeway - Canada Highway 1.  At Abbotsford we got off the freeway and headed south a couple of miles to the US border.  I just checked now and found there's a cam at the border you can check online to see how crowded the customs line is. 

Crossing into the US here was easier than when we crossed into Canada in the relatively remote Beaver Creek crossing into the Yukon.  Then we were back on small rural road heading west and then south into Bellingham where we caught the I-5 to Seattle.  It was here, in the middle of five lanes of southbound traffic, as it was getting dark, that it started pouring.  But by the time we got to the ferry terminal, the rain had ended.  Below is a view of some of the Seattle skyline as the ferry took off for Bainbridge Island. 

This is a great road trip and I wish we had more time to poke around, hike, and just enjoy the beautiful country.  Driving through Canada does require us to think differently - the signs are in kilometers and the gas comes in litres.  The dollars are pretty close to equal so that's relatively easy.  It's generally good when the things we take for granted get skewed a bit and we have to think about them and realize our world is not the only possible world.  (Just not too much at once.)


Our grand daughter has grown a lot, is crawling and pulling herself up to a standing position, and picking up bits of food and stuffing them into her mouth.  She's also a lot more cautious about straying far from Mama. 

Chasing My Tail

This is sort of how I feel this week.  I'm supposed to send in my paper (for the PATNET conference in San Francisco at the end of May) by next week.  I've got several blog posts - including one on Begich's press memo on his vote against universal background checks - that need more work.  I've got some work to do with the Citizens Climate Lobby local group today and tomorrow, and tomorrow I'm doing a workshop with Warren Jones at the YWCA on "Why is it so difficult to talk about racism?"  (It's from noon to 1:30 with a suggested $5 donation to cover costs if you want to come.) 

Also, I finally broke down and bought a new camera that I'm hoping will let me take better distance shots.  Like this dog next door.   He was barking a lot yesterday, but they were so sweet about it when I asked them to take him in. 


I've been looking at cameras for a couple of years now as I pass the cameras at Costco and this seemed like the right combination of features and price.  (Though it cost more than my first car.)  I did notice right away that the manual focus is a lot less smooth than my old film Pentax.  And the instruction book is over 300 pages.  I wanted a Canon on the grounds that there might be some overlap between how my Powershot works and this one does. 

Wag It, Then Go Kaleidoscopic

Caught this sticker on the back of a car at the Little Su hike parking lot.  I want one of these.  It says it all. 


Not only that, but this post offers you another treat.  Trust me - go to this link and let your inner child play a little.  (Or let your outer child play if you have one around.) 

Camera Repairs

The door to the battery and sound card on my Canon Powershot is, well, shot.  First the part of the door that you latch closed so the camera will work, got cracked.  I managed to tape it so it stayed together.  But a short time ago, when I opened the door, it came off completely.  To be clear, there's an inside part of the latch too that's still attached. 


So I bit the bullet and took it to the Camera Repair Service shop.

I don't usually write plugs for businesses, but this is a place where I've been able to go over the years and get straight advice and help with my camera. It's a true "small business" that provides a service that the national franchise places just can't quite give. And it's easy to pass the little mall it's in on 15th, just east of C Street, and miss it completely.

(And I'm sure there's an interesting story behind the 'Norway Alaska' name of this building.)


So I asked Michael, the owner, if he wanted to say a few words about the shop.  There's a neat array of used cameras, including a Hasselblad for sale that you can see in the video.



 And here's his partner at the shop.

I'm keeping the camera until the part comes in.  I still manage to make it close enough that I can turn on the camera.  

I've Been Canoeing Through Katrina Flooded New Orleans . . .

 . . . with Abdulrahmen Zeitoun, who stayed behind while his wife and four kids drove to her sister's place in Baton Rouge.  Born in Syria, Zeitoun made it to the US as a sailor and met Kathy, who had converted to Islam before she met Zeitoun, and married and settled in New Orleans where they started a house painting business and eventually bought rental properties.

As Katrina neared, his shipping captain brother in Spain, who'd been following the Florida storm online, kept calling him telling him to get out.  At first it was good that he stayed.  He was able to move some of their possessions to the second floor, saving books and the TV and the DVD, food from the refrigerator, and family photos. and the kids' games.  He had long ago bought a used canoe and now used it to explore the neighborhood, locating and getting help for stranded neighbors.

Meanwhile his wife, after her sister's place gets too crowded, packs up and drives to her best friend's place in Phoenix.  By now Zeitoun's cell phone battery is dead, but there is a working phone at one of his rental properties on Claiborne Street and he calls every day at noon. 

The water that at first was fresh and clear is now oily and contaminated with who knows what plus floating debris including one dead body.  The military in town are proving less than helpful, treating him like a looter and potential danger.  He keeps resisting pleas from his brother and his wife to get out.  He's been placed here by God to help the people and dogs trapped in their houses that he's been feeding.  He's ok.  The violence they see and hear about on the news is downtown, not near him.   Then he returns to the Claiborne house with the phone and sees a strange boat tied to the porch.  Some guy named Ronnie saw the phone box above the waterline and had come to use the phone.  His friend, Nasser, whom he'd found with his canoe one day and is now was staying with him said he thought Ronnie was ok.  They discover that the water is running in the bathroom and they take showers.  It's nine days after Katrina first hit.  Seven days since Zeitoun woke up to discover the levees had broken and everything had flooded.  Zeitoun comes out of the shower and is about to call his wife when he hears Nasser talking to people outside.

"Zeitoun!"  Nasser called.
"What?"  Zeitoun said.
"Come Here,"  Nasser said.  "These guys want to know if we need water."
Zeitoun assumed it was more men like himself and Nasser  - people with boats who were roaming around, trying to help.
When he put the phone down and looked toward the front porch, he saw a group of men, all of them armed, bursting into the house.  Zeitoun hung up the phone and walked toward the door.

So, with the help of writer Dave Eggers,  I've been elsewhere all morning.  I stopped here, on page 180 of Zeitoun.   It took 20 pages or so before I got sucked completely into this book for my next book club meeting a week from tomorrow.  I decided this time I wanted to finish the book before the afternoon of the meeting.   That won't be a problem.

So this is my way of keeping the blog moving as I also try to do other things I need to get done. 

Taking the Dogs Up Perseverance Trail

Paul goes for regular runs and hikes and picks up his friends' dogs to go with him.  It's nice to be able to walk into the woods - no car - from your house in downtown Juneau.  The evening (last Thursday) was warm - mid to high 50s - and soon we'd passed all the houses and were at the wooden planking part of the road.  But the road was closed to vehicles while they were completely redoing it.  Two years ago when we spent the legislative session here, they'd replaced some of the planks, but it was nothing this extensive. Here's a March 2010 post  about the trail.  

There was a huge avalanche across the trail.  I'd been warned about avalanches in 2010, but there was a lot less snow that year. 

Paul seemed to think we were more likely to be killed by falling rocks than snow sliding down the mountain.

The sign says bikes should yield to runners and hikers.  We didn't see any bikes.


The video shows the second avalanche area and Paul and the dogs coming back from the trail to the waterfall. Apollo, the young black dog, has so much energy which you can see as a carries a stick longer than he is.











And here we are on the way back, climbing down from the first avalanche.

And here we're back in town, almost home.