Upon what meat do these, our legislative potentates, feed? " An Analysis Of A Letter To The Editor

Go ahead and read this letter to the editor that was in the Anchorage Daily News the other day:

The Letter

THE LAST OF A DYING BREED
Upon what meat do these, our legislative potentates, feed? The constant whining, wailing and caterwauling politicians of both stripes, lining up like pigs at the feeding trough of public spending, have gorged themselves for years.
Since Tom Fink, I’d given up all hope of ever seeing another fiscal conservative. To make actual cuts of real substance — ’twas a consummation devoutly to be wished. To take on the biggest governmental fraud, public indoctrination of our youth masquerading as education, requires a strength of courage that was thought never to be seen again.
So-called public education, for approximately 140 years, has produced decade after decade of declining test scores, rewarded in the following decades by increased funding. In the private sector, such a business model would have been diagnosed and terminated 135 years ago as an unmitigated failure. The answer is not more funding, but the fraud’s replacement with charter, private and religious schools that educate.
— Ed Wassell
Anchorage

How to review it?

I feel I need to respond. But who should my audience be?  I should respond to the ADN, but my response is way too long.  Then who?  My first impulse was to respond to people who might be taken in by these words, to help them see between the lines, or below the surface as some might say.  That would be easy to do.

But the real challenge is to address myself directly to the author.  But how?  A human being wrote this, and my intent is not to belittle him, but to try to engage in conversation about what he wrote.  Does he really believe this?  So I thought about how a graded my graduate students' papers.  I had to stay strictly objective.  My point was to help them improve, not to make the drop out of the class.

So let's see what I can do.  Line by line.  

"Upon what meat do these, our legislative potentates, feed?"

Mr. Wassell, I think you'd acknowledge this is not how most people speak today.  I even googled "Upon what meat do these potentates feed?"  I got several close citations.

"Upon what meat do these men feed that we should be their slaves, that they should not pay the same taxes that other people pay?"

This comes from a book called State Republican Legislative Souvenir, 1897, and Political History of Michigan  and recounts a debate over getting railroads to pay their fair share of taxes.  It's not that different from Alaskans asking that the oil industry pay its fair share of taxes.

Here's another example I found:

"Upon what meat do these men feed that they are grown so great?"

This was a harangue against school boards that fought against  teachers unionizing.  It appeared in a 1919 article in "The Public:  A Journal of Democracy.  (p. 396)

So, Mr Wassell what is it about late 19th/early 29th century rhetoric that you feel is so relevant for the opening of your letter?  How does it add to the readers' understanding of the issues you appear to discuss?  I ask in all seriousness.  Perhaps that's how you talk.  Or you want to be a little more poetic than we hear today.  Perhaps you want to impress people with your erudition.  Or perhaps it's a time you would feel more comfortable.  You don't tell us, so I have to guess.

Let's move on.

"The constant whining, wailing and caterwauling politicians of both stripes, lining up like pigs at the feeding trough of public spending, have gorged themselves for years."

The phrase 'legislative potentates' in the first sentence was the only hint of judgment on your part.

Merriam Webster tells us that potentate means:

" RULER, SOVEREIGN
broadly : one who wields great power or sway"

But you're applying it not to sovereigns or rulers, but mere legislators who have to struggle with other legislators.  They really don't have anything near a potentates' power.  But you convey that they are all powerful.   

Then this second sentence slides into anti-government liturgy, like repeating verses of the Bible that everyone takes as a natural truth.  At least members of that political religion.  But it is simply empty rhetoric that attacks the honor of all politicians.  Without any factual evidence.  As though all politicians are equally venal and none are in Juneau because they believe in the serving the public.  It's typical anti-government clichés.  Perhaps you are surrounded like people who talk in those kinds of phrases, but to many of your readers, I'm sure this language will be jarring and hurt your credibility.  

And you seem to condemn both 'potentates' and 'legislators.'  So if you disapprove of authoritarian rulers and you think democratically elected legislators are all hacks, what do you believe in?  I guess no government at all.  Let the natural state of humankind work things out?  Is that what you're saying?  If that's what you believe, why not just say you are opposed to government altogether?   

OK, on to the next sentence.  

"Since Tom Fink, I’d given up all hope of ever seeing another fiscal conservative. To make actual cuts of real substance — ’twas a consummation devoutly to be wished."

Conservapedia tells us:

"Fiscal conservatism is a political position (primarily in the United States) that calls for lower levels of public spending, lower taxes and lower government debt. It is a variety of conservatism concerned with economic rather than social issues. Fiscal conservatives oppose unnecessary government expenditures, deficits, and government debt. They take the perspective of the present and future taxpayers, and worry about the possible burden on them. They support balanced budgets. This should be contrasted with those who believe that lower taxation will stimulate industrial development, even though it causes higher deficits."

But it also says:

"Fiscal conservatism may also support limited periods of higher taxes in order to lower the public debt."

I'm not sure why you thought it useful to lift a phrase from Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be speech.  This time you're reaching back, not 100 years for your style, but 400 years.  What do you mean by this?  Hamlet was referring to death.  And you seem to be referring to cutting the budget.  I guess that's a form of death.  At one time, people might recognize the line, but today I doubt very many would know where it comes from, so it might be helpful to give Will some credit here.

OK, next sentence.

"To take on the biggest governmental fraud, public indoctrination of our youth masquerading as education, requires a strength of courage that was thought never to be seen again."

Again, rather flowery language, but that's a stylistic issue I won't quibble with other than to ask you what purpose you think it serves here?  But embedded in this sentence is another mantra of the anti-government, anti-public school movement.   Here are a couple of examples of this wording Google found for me:

From the Montana Standard

" the socialist liberal progressive, politically correct liberal idiot-logical indoctrination camps that masquerade as public schools inculcating our youth instead of instructing them on what they need to know to be productive and responsible citizens."

A bit over the top I'd say.

From the New American:

"Global citizenship education is also a frequent topic in the report and all throughout the UN's global indoctrination efforts masquerading as education."

Can't you make your point using your own words?

Let's move on.

"So-called public education, for approximately 140 years, has produced decade after decade of declining test scores, rewarded in the following decades by increased funding."

Finally, there is something factual we can actually debate.  By factual, I don't mean it's actually true, but rather it talks in terms of facts that we can look up.  And so I did.  It's not easy to find such statistics.  Here's 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Report, but I don't see anything on testing.  Here's a history of standardized testing.  It's hard to tease out anything like your numbers.   OK, you'll probably say these are liberal and biased reports.  So please give me your statistics - but make sure they are objective and not conservative biased stats.

School testing was just an idea a few people  had 140 years or so ago.  The idea was to test kids to see how much they learned.  But it took a while for such testing to be implemented. Then there was a huge market for tests. But there were no national tests where schools were tested on a regular basis using the same test with scores traced and monitored until very recently.  So, the idea that scores declined decade after decade for 140 years has absolutely no basis in fact.

And if such declining test scores did exist over that time period, I think it would say more about the inaccuracy of the tests than the abilities of the students.  This was a time when the United States became the leading nation in the world, built on ingenuity, scientific discoveries, inventions, industrial technology.  Countless great Americans graduated from public high schools -
Jonas Salk, Steve Jobs, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Google co-founder Larry Page, Spike Lee, Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Warren Buffet, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Elvis Presley, and Bob Dylan - just to name a few.

There certainly are problems with public schools. But there are also problems with private schools.  And private schools have the luxury of expelling students who don't fit in well.  Public schools can't do that.  So they have all the more labor intensive (and costly)  students - from behavior problems, cognitive problems, etc.  .

Your claim of 140 years of decade by decade declines in test scores is hard to swallow.  You would be much more persuasive if you included some data to support your claim.  I doubt it exists.


Moving on to the next sentence.

" In the private sector, such a business model would have been diagnosed and terminated 135 years ago as an unmitigated failure."

First, businesses live or die based on making money, not test scores.  Businesses can be run very sloppily and make money in the right place and right time.  And they can be run well, but suffer from a bad economy - what I expect will happen to many businesses in Alaska if Dunleavy's budget were to pass.  Public schools are not businesses, because many of their students simply could not afford to go to school if they had to pay.

Second, the sentence is seems contradictory.  You just said that schools have had declining test scores 'decade after decade" for 140 years.  So, 135 years ago - had there actually been any testing - it would still be five years before the first decade was up.  So, even in your fantasy scenario, nothing would have been closed down.  I point that out because I think it's reflective of the lack of rigorous thinking throughout the letter.  Nearly all the sentences are cliché filled opinion.  There's nothing of substance there.  So the conclusion in your last sentence doesn't really follow from what you've written up to that point.

"The answer is not more funding, but the fraud’s replacement with charter, private and religious schools that educate."

I don't follow how you got to this conclusion.  You've offered us fact-free tirades against public schools.  You've not given us any data that shows - for educating all kids in the US - private schools are any better.  Yet that's your conclusion.

In addition, early on you talked about indoctrination.  While there are many good religious private schools in the United States, the very reason most people send their kids to private religious schools is to 'indoctrinate' them in the values and beliefs of that religion.  For example, here's the mission statement from Holy Rosary Academy:

"Holy Rosary Academy seeks to complete what the attentive parent has begun by forming students in faith, reason, and virtue through a classical education in the Roman Catholic Tradition."

Public schools indoctrinate kids in belief in the greatness of the United States.  Good public schools expose kids to many different ideas and ways of seeing the world.

Closing

This post could go on and on.  But I think I've made my key points.  And I'm afraid I've failed to do it in a way that might cause Mr. Wassell to even pause a bit.

After I wrote a first draft,  I couldn't help wondering who had written this letter for ADN readers, so I  googled and learned a bit that helps explain where some of this comes from.  I'm not certain it's the same Ed Wassell, but it seems likely.

Here's the key thing - in terms of understanding this letter - I found out.  An Ed Wassell from Anchorage got an award from the Acton Institute:

 "Best thing Going: “What you do is still far and away one of the best things going for Catholic Education in the United States.” Ed Wassell, Executive Director, Holy Rosary Academy, Anchorage, AK. 4-time honoree."

There are several other links to Ed Wassell being involved with Catholic affairs in Anchorage, but the school link probably tells us a lot.

What will happen if public school funding is drastically cut?  Class sizes will get much bigger, teachers will get overworked, and parents who can afford it will start looking for private schools.  And I would be surprised if Dunleavy didn't push, next go around, to use public money to give parents vouchers to private schools, even private religious schools, which I understand to be unconstitutional in Alaska.

I also found a video of a Holy Rosary teacher who won a national award as teacher of the week.  [Video is at the bottom of the page on the right]  She sounds like a great teacher.  What I found striking is that they showed her in her fourth grade class.  There were nine students.  Imagine what public school teachers could do with classes that size.

One last note.  Tom Fink, who Wassell mentions in the letter, is the chair of the board at Holy Rosary Academy.

There's nothing wrong with Mr. Wassell's involvement with Holy Rosary Academy, though it would be nice if he had disclosed that in the letter.  And would still like to hear Mr. Wassell's explanation for the somewhat old fashioned way of writing.

Let me also note that Jesuit schools have a reputation for teaching rigorous thinking skills, so this is not a condemnation of Catholic schools. Though victims of sexual abuse at Catholic schools will be less forgiving of their failures.    I have less confidence in the thinking skills students get in Evangelical schools, particularly those that deny evolution and teach traditional roles for males and females and believe that homosexuality is a sin.  But that is straying a bit.

Renaming LA Memorial Coliseum To United Airlines And Dealing With Statues For Disgraced Causes

[In this post, perhaps more than most, I'm stepping into my brain and tracing events in my life that affect how I think about this topic.  Be prepared to meander.http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2010/06/meandering.html]

From an LA Times article 

The University of Southern California’s $69-million sale of naming rights for Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is being criticized as dishonoring the historic stadium’s dedication as a memorial to soldiers who fought and died in World War I just a few years before it opened.

(USC took over control of the Coliseum in a 98 year lease in 2013.  More details here.)

I personally became concerned about selling naming rights back around 1965 when UCLA built a new basketball stadium on campus and named it Pauley Pavillion, for the oil mogul who paid for naming rights instead of for John Wooden who had recently worked miracles with his Bruin basketball team.

When I was growing up, stadiums and other public places weren't plastered with billboards.  You could watch sporting events without being bombarded by corporate logos.  In fact, corporate branded T-shirts and other such swag were actually given away to people.  It was part of companies' advertising budget.

Since then, companies have somehow convinced people they should become human billboards for their products, but the billboards, not the companies, should pay for the opportunity.  But that's another blog post.

The Coliseum naming gave me an idea.  Why not let corporations or even individuals, buy the naming rights to all the offensive statues still standing in the US.  In most cases, there are few if any  people still living who knew the statues' models or would recognize their faces.  You could have the "[Insert Name Of Corporation] Horse and Rider."  Instead of spending money to tear the statues down, cities and towns can make money from them.

But my favorite option, one I came up with as a UCLA student, is to have plaques next to buildings and statues that tell the reader all the shady things the donor had done to make the money being used now to name the building.  And offending statues, whether built to commemorate defenders of slavery or killers of Native Americans, or polluters of the air and water, or the swindlers of the poor, could have the deeds listed that make the statues embarrassing today.  If we erase history, it's hard to learn from it.

My understanding of this was broadened as a sixth grade teacher in Los Angeles.  My students were all black and we figured out a way to work with each other so they learned something and I felt reasonably productive.  One day I was was reading from one of my favorite childhood books, The Story of Doctor Doolitle.  I had my own copy with me in class.  We were a few chapters in and I was reading out loud to class.  Dr. Doolitle and Polynesia were in Africa when the good doctor used a racist term for the native peoples.  Whoops.  I didn't remember Dr. Doolittle as a racist, but it was clear now it was part of his culture.  I stopped in mid-sentence and told the students it was time for our next activity.  What I SHOULD HAVE DONE was explain why I was stopping and then had an authentic conversation with them about racism.  They would have understood.   They were angry with me because the Dr. Doolittle book disappeared.

I should also note that I went to day care, K-12 schooling, college, and graduate school in Los Angeles.  When I saw the LA Coliseum on television during the 1980 Olympics in LA, I realized that it was one of the landmarks of my life.  I spent time at the Coliseum all the while I was growing up.  It was the setting for a diverse array of activities from rodeos and boy scout jamborees, from early LA Dodger games before Dodger stadium was built, to UCLA football games.  And it was just south of campus when I was a grad student at USC.  So there is a personal connection to that structure that is important to who I am.  And last December when we visited the Tutankhamun exhibit at Exposition Park, we walked over to the Coliseum ticket office that was surrounded by wooden barriers during the Coliseum's reconstruction.  But I do have this list of rules that I certainly don't remember from my childhood visits.

I, of course, am a supporter of keeping the old name.  My alma mater, USC, has become one the best fund raising universities in the world in the last decades.  That money credo has improved the academics, but it has also made money more important that ethics and other human values - like respecting history.   (For those who have missed it - USC, who now manages the Coliseum, has been wracked with scandals in its medical school as well as other programs, most recently the admissions scandals.)  So, the idea of changing the name of the Coliseum for $69 million is not even a decision.  It's a given.  It's been their modus operandi for a long time.  For a price, we'll do anything including looking the other way.

Is there a point to all this?  Yes.  Remembering good things, like the Coliseum as a Los Angeles memorial to WW I dead and NOT  auctioning off its name to the highest bidder, and dealing with the statues of fallen heroes or the misdeeds of corporate branders are all of the same issue.  I think I advocate for dealing with the past as openly as we can.  I don't mean 'can' politically, but rather 'can' in the sense that we are aware enough of the good deeds or misdeeds of whom or what is being remembered.  Let's acknowledge our collective misdeeds of the past as well as our collective good deeds.  And where we don't agree, let's sit down and talk about values that these people, entities, events embody and how they connect with who we are as a nation today.

[Yes, this could use a couple of rewrites before posting, but I've got posts waiting in line to be written and I've got grandkids to go pick up right now.]

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.

Signs Of Our Discontent - Rally Outside Americans For Prosperity's Private 'Public Meeting"

Background:  The Alaska governor Mike Dunleavy introduced a budget that cuts almost everything drastically.  He recently announced public meetings across the state to meet with Alaskans on the budget.  We quickly learned that Koch funded Americans for Prosperity had organized and was running the meetings.  One had to get free tickets online by giving up personal information - name, phone, email, etc. - and agree to lots of stipulations including no signs, no political T-shirts, no recording, need to show ID, and on and on.  More specifics here.  And there was a hearing sponsored by House Finance Committee Sunday afternoon.

Various groups including Senate Democrats and unions called for a demonstration outside the venue where the governor was going to speak in Anchorage tonight.  Anchorage Assembly member Forrest Dunbar acted as the MC.  That was today.  Here's the first of a few posts of pictures of the demonstrations.  I'm guessing there were altogether, about 300 people.  The NYE (New York Equivalent is a metric I came up with a an anti-Palin rally to give people outside of Alaska a sense of what an equivalent crowd would be in New York City.) would be about 9000 people.

This shot I got from the stairs on the side of the 49th State Brewery where the Americans for Prosperity private meeting was held.  (They said they had room for 150, even though various legislators offered larger venues for free if the governor would speak without all the restrictions.)  This picture doesn't show all the people in front of the building, so I took this picture too.

So these posts are going to focus on signs.  There were lots of signs!  Some were printed up and distributed - particularly supporting education.  But there were a lot more home made signs.  I've  grouped them into categories.  Like all such groupings, there are instances that easily fit into more than one category.  But this at least tries to capture what people were expressing in a bit more organized way.

GROUP 1:  COMMENTS ON THE PRIVATE NATURE OF THE GOV'S PUBLIC HEARING

This first group seems to be focused on the fact that this 'public' meeting wasn't public.  That a private organization was staging what the public was going to hear from the governor and limiting what the public could say in the meeting and could even document to tell others.  (An ADN story did quote an AFP person saying that individuals could use their phones to record, so they loosened up, but still people had had to sign a document forbidding recording.)


GROUP 2:  CONCERNS ABOUT SELLING OUT THE STATE TO OUTSIDE INTERESTS

Tomorrow I'll put up more.  There was a lot of focus on raising revenues instead of cutting, opposition to the governor's budget in general, and more specific concerns, particularly cutting education.

Can Cures For Brazilian Domestic Violence Perpetrators Work With Trump Supporters Too?

An LA Times article reports that a group therapy program for men who beat their wives has been extremely successful.  Here's a short excerpt:

"For Fabio Alberto Alves, discussing feelings was something only women did.But the judge had sentenced the 53-year-old machinist to group therapy for men convicted of domestic violence, so he didn’t have much choice. It was either that or prison.During the first two of 20 weekly sessions, he didn’t say a word. He shouldn’t even be here, he thought. His wife of 25 years had blown the situation out of proportion. He was drunk when he grabbed her and caused a scene at her church. The cops should have never been involved. Then, on his third night as part of the group, he opened up.“Being here for me now is like being with family,” he said. “I realized that what I did was wrong, but that no one is here to judge me. When I’m here, I feel like I can talk, express myself.”The shift in attitude — from indignant and detached to temperate and open — is what groups like the one Alves participates in are after. As Brazil continues to register startling rates of domestic violence and femicide, therapists, prosecutors, judges and women’s right activists all agree on one thing: If saving women from becoming victims is the goal, working on men is the answer."

The article reports that recidivism rates drop to zero!  But even if it was as high as 20%, that would be huge.  It also notes that most resources go to victims, but as that last sentence in the quote points out, if anything is going to change, the men have to be involved.  (Just as whites have to be become more aware of the  their own involvement and the magnitude of the problem, if racism is going to end.)

Any kind of serious change like this has to go on in the heads of perpetrators.  Their self-serving narratives have to be challenged and they have to be offered alternative ways to think about the world and their position in it.   That's what good education is about.  Getting people to articulate their models of how the world works and then having them compare their own models to experts' models.  (And I'm not blindly siding with experts here.  Sometimes the students' models are better.)

The Brazilian article got me to wondering whether group therapy might be helpful for Trump supporters.   After all, these are people who believe crazy conspiracy theories and are clearly deciding emotionally, not rationally.  (Yes, I realize that's pretty strong, but not enough Germans confronted people who supported Hitler's lies and racism.  Though in Germany such confrontation could quickly lead to death.  In the US we don't have that threat - yet.  And if you are offended by Hitler analogies, there's Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Idi Amin, etc.)

And then I found this study - Men with Fragile Masculinity Vote for Trump - today that suggests my idea isn't that far-fetched.

I'd note that it appears this study has not been published in a peer reviewed journal - just the Washington Post.  And the authors themselves caution:

"Our data suggests that fragile masculinity is a critical feature of our current politics. Nonetheless, points of caution are in order.
First, the research reported here is correlational. We can’t be entirely sure that fragile masculinity is causing people to vote in a certain way. However, given that experimental work has identified a causal connection between masculinity concerns and political beliefs, we think the correlations we’ve identified are important.
Second, it remains to be seen whether any link between fragile masculinity and voting will persist after Trump exits the national stage. We suspect, however, that Trump’s re-engineering of the GOP as a party inextricably tied to many Americans’ identity concerns — whether based on race, religion or gender — will ensure that fragile masculinity remains a force in politics."

(Can you imagine a Trump supporter cautioning that his data is only correlational and hasn't been proven to be causal?)

Assuming the study has merit, then I'd argue that if the therapy works with macho Brazilians, why not with the men of the MAGA crowd?  But then, Brazilians who beat their wives have an incentive to attend such therapy.  It keeps them out of prison.  We can't offer Trump supporters therapy as an alternative to prison, unless, of course, they are convicted of a crime.

And if the study is wrong, well, I still believe that changing how one sees the world is the most likely way to permanently change their behavior.  This is another reason why good public schools that teach critical thinking skills are important.

So, it's time for people to start organizing discussion groups and finding skilled facilitators to bring our country back together again.  It won't work for everyone, but if 10% of Trump supporters are cured of their delusions, that would make a huge difference.  (And I'd note there are people whose dedication to Clinton was just as emotionally based, and who would have voted for her against a truly enlightened, experienced, and science oriented Republican.  (Yeah, I'm trying to figure out who that might have been.  Abe Lincoln?)

Emergency Evacuations In Planes - Some Thoughts and Recommendations

We've been in the exit row on a lot of flights.  These rows have a lot more leg room but you have to agree that you are able to follow the procedures to open the emergency exit on the window.  But the instructions available are very detailed.  Here's what you get:

Specifically the lower part - Emergency overwing exits.  This is pretty vague.

The flight attendant has to get everyone in the two rows to say 'yes' out loud, affirming that they can and will perform the emergency procedures.  But it's really not clear what that means.  The person at the window has to open it.  But what are the others supposed to do?  What happens when you get the emergency door open?  You're out on the wing.  How do you get off?  It's kind of high off the ground.

These are questions I've had, so I've looked around on line.  Here's what I've found:

1. Finding videos for what you - as a passenger - are supposed to do, is difficult.  I have some videos below that you can see, but they don't really help much.
2. An old study says that the more people are prepared, the better they respond. 
3. Crew gets lots of training.

I was beginning to think that the airlines didn't take this passenger exit row thing too seriously.  That they aren't expecting people to have to use the emergency exits.  

But I looked up how many emergency landings there were.  As a percentage of flights, it's rare, but as the list of emergency landings of commercial planes in the US 2018 below shows, there were 201 emergency landings listed for the US in 2018.  That's almost two every three days.  

( I copied the list so I could  sort it and look closer.  There were several events that were listed as in the US but weren't - from UK, Ireland, Scotland, India.  I got rid of those to get to my total.       And since there were some non-US incidents listed here, there could well be some US incidents listed elsewhere by mistake.)

The category this website allowed me to search for was:

•  Emergency, Forced Landing, Diversion - Commercial

That doesn't mean all, or even most were landings that involved emergency evacuations from the plane.  Some (many?) involved passenger illness or drunkeness or other disruptive behavior which probably wouldn't require emergency evacuations.   Here's the list by state.  You can see the details at the original site linked above.  You have to fill in the parameters yourself.   I've highlighted Alaska Airlines simply because that's the airline I'm on the most.  I've also highlighted the five states with the most emergency landings in red.  Except for North Carolina (#9 in population), they are the highest population states.

Alaska	5
Arizona	4
Arkansas	2
California	13	8/12  Alaska Airlines
Colorado	1
Connecticut	3
Delaware	1
DC	1
Florida	13
Georgia	8
Hawaii	3	4/27 Alaska Airlines
Idaho	1
Illinois	5
Indiana	2
Iowa	2
Kansas	3
Kentucky	4
Louisiana	1
Maine	1
Maryland	1
Massachusetts	5
Michigan	4
Minnesota	2
Missouri	5
Montana	1
Nevada	5
New Jersey	3
New Mexico	5	Alaska  6/11
New York	14
North Carolina	13
North Dakota	3
Ohio	6
Oklahoma	10
Oregon	2	Horizon 4/28
Pennsylvania	6	Alaska 5/15
Rhode Island	2
South Carolina	4
Tennessee	3
Texas	15
Utah	2
Vermont	1
Virginia	6
Washington	1
West Virgina	3
Wisconsin	2

Here are a few of the articles I've found on this topic:

Plane Exit Row Seating is a  Responsibility  - This is written by "John J. Nance, ABC News' aviation analyst, is a veteran 13,000-flight-hour airline captain, a former U.S. Air Force pilot and a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves."  He recommends training and certifying passengers on how to open the emergency doors and giving them priority to these seats with extra leg room .  It begins:

"Of course I can open that hatch if needed!"
It's the battle cry of the long-legged coach passenger who's figured out that even a middle seat in the emergency exit row of most single-aisle airliners has as much leg room as first class. There are even small turf battles among the highest-level members of different frequent-flier plans as they try to jockey for priority seating in the emergency exit row. And experienced travelers know how to sidle up to the agent at the departure gate and request to be one of the defenders of passenger safety, in the unlikely event of an emergency evacuation.
Because that's exactly what you're asking for when you accept or request an exit row seat: The responsibility to move fast and efficiently to open the hatch in the it-almost-never-happens-but-could event that your jetliner has slid to a stop on the ground and the flight attendants relay an order to get out of the airplane fast.
That moment -- as utterly rare as it is these days -- is not the time for realizing your shoulder won't handle 40 to 50 pounds of unhinged door."

Susannah Fox's personal experience of an emergency exit:  This is her first hand account of having to evacuate a plane which hadn't yet taken off.  An engine had caught fire.  Here's an short excerptt:

"A line from the safety demonstration popped into my head like a snippet of an old song: “the closest exit may be behind you.” That was true in my case, but there was a bottleneck. People were refusing to go down the slide. I craned my neck and saw that some of the people hesitating at the back of the plane were older adults who were understandably afraid of hurting themselves. I could hear the flight attendants cajoling them, telling them that we had no choice: The only way out was down the slide. Their voices grew increasingly sharp as the time ticked by."

Many Passengers In Exit Seats Benefit From Extra Briefings - From the Cabin Crew Safety study. This 2001 publication reviews procedures and studies from different airlines and countries.  They don't really make recommendations, but from one study it says that the more instructions passengers get, the better prepared they are.  Not really surprising.

I had trouble finding good videos, but today, as I'm about to post this I looked again and others popped up.  This first one shows how to open the exit row emergency door and what to do after.  But it's a nine minute video and 'nothing happens' until 6 minutes in.  It's mostly talking - not useless info, but this is not the kind of video that will teach people quickly what to do.





Wall Street Journal Video about evacuations:  This is a passengers video from his phone as he evacuated.




Baltic Air Training Video - it starts with talk, but then demonstrates how to open the door and how to use the safety strap on the wing.





Here's an ancient (1960sh)Western Airlines training video for evacuating a 737  Despite its age, this was the one that gave the most practical visuals of what happens.





Training Video for Chinese - a little odd.  In one scene smoke comes out and the passengers sit there until they disappear in the smoke.  This seems to be intended for crew.




On a February 9 flight from Seattle to San Francisco we were once again in the exit row.  The flight attendant perfunctorily asked each of us if we could and would carry out exit row responsibilities.  She had to ask one person to say it out loud.  Then at the other end of the row she asked a person I couldn't see several times until she said 'yes.'

Later, another flight attendant came by with the drinks tray and to take food orders.  The person at the other end wasn't answering her questions.  The flight attendant realized she didn't understand English and said she had to move to another seat.  And sitting behind her was one more person in her party who didn't understand English.  I complimented the flight attendant, Sherry, for doing her job and told her I was working on this post.  I told her the emergency info they hand out are just pictures and not particularly clear.  She answered some of my questions:

• When you pull down the handle in these planes, the window automatically pulls itself up and out of the way.  
• That the back wing flaps lower so it's not so far up off the ground.  (I said that it looked pretty high from the wing to the ground  - were we supposed to just jump?)  She added that when you open the emergency door, a rope comes out that people can use to sort of rappel down to the ground.  (Or is this just the rope that gets tied to the wing to hold on to on the wing?)
• She also said our job was to get the emergency door opened and go on the wing, then crew will help people get down.  
• They get lots of training on this.  

After rereading all this, here are my recommendations.

1. Alaska Airlines (or Boeing or Airbus) should make an emergency training video for passengers that shows exactly what someone like me, sitting next to the emergency exit window, would do in an emergency - opening the window, getting on the wing, how the rope works, what the others in the exit row do, what the crew's role is, etc.
1. This can be available:
1. in the inflight video entertainment package
2. in the terminals
3. on the Alaska Airlines website (and all other airlines of course)
2. Put emergency exit windows in the terminals where people could try them out.  If this is too costly, then videos showing how they work.
3. Airlines allow passengers to get the same kind of training that flight crew get for emergencies
1. Then, exit row seating would only be available to people who had taken the training and been certified.  Because exit rows have lots more leg room, this would be a bonus for many.
2. I'm guessing many people would pay a reasonable fee for this training if it meant priority seating in exit rows.

I realize that airlines don't want to alarm passengers by showing them videos of people having to evacuate a plane.  The Jaws effect, if you will.  For example, Alaska Airlines asked a non-profit they were sponsoring, to change the name of an event from "Turbulent" to "Tail Winds."  

"Alaska Airlines, an event sponsor, suggested the change at the last minute because of turbulence’s negative connection to air travel."

So they are clearly sensitive to these issues.  

But if kids can do lock down drills in schools, airline passengers can watch videos that show them how to get out of the plane quickly and safely in an emergency.

The February 2019 Inflight Magazine on Alaska Airlines has an article saying that Alaska has been rated as one of the 20 safest airlines in the world.  The article quotes Max Tidwell, Alaska's VP for Safety as saying:

"Safety is our top priority and is firmly ingrained in our culture, as we are personally committed to the safety of our guests and one another."

I'm hoping he will pay attention to the issues I'm raising here and consider implementing the recommendations that I'm borrowing from people with greater expertise than mine.

Miscellaneous Bits And Pieces

I've been working on a post in reaction to the Covington High School buzz.  (I'm trying to think of a reasonable name for the many social media/mainstream media phenomena that cause a temporary ringing in our ears, then are gone as something else gets our attention.  This is clearly not a good way to get an understanding of what's happening in the world.  Well, this is my problem.  This parenthetical comment was not what I was writing about, but could become a whole post on its own.  And the Covington post is raising so many issues that I can't tie it all together.  But maybe that shouldn't be my goal, since the world itself is messy.  But the whole point I used to think, was that a blog post should make at least a small part of the universe a little less opaque.)

Also working on the lack of useful instructions for people who sit in the emergency rows in airplanes.

My daughter invited me to her Barrecor exercise class yesterday and it was much easier than the high intensity workout my son took me to three years ago in San Francisco.  After the one - in which I made it through the routines without embarrassing myself - I ached badly for three days.  But today, no new aches or pains.

Today I did a bike ride, which here on Bainbridge Island means lots of ups and downs through big trees.  And water.  There was a raft of water birds at my turnaround spot, and a view of Seattle.

And the sun came out and lit up downtown Seattle across the channel.  Here are two different pictures - one from my old Canon Powershot and the other from my new used iPhone 7.


I like the Canon result better, but maybe it's because I tried to enlarge the iPhone image too much.


Getting good granddaughter time while we're here.







And Murkowski voted to open the government without requiring $5 billion, or is it $7 billion now?

And Dunleavy's new commissioner of administration apparently lied to the a Senate committee about his background.  But, hey guys, he went to a Christian college, that's all Dunleavy had to read.




And finally, I recommend this video be shown at the School Board meeting when they discuss the minimum times kids should get to be at recess and lunch.  Right now it's being whittled down to nothing, which means teachers have kids with way too much unused energy who can't sit still in class.  (I couldn't figure out a way to embed the video itself, so you get the whole tweet.)

#MostWatched Principal gets students up and dancing pic.twitter.com/Yc7cDmtpAN

— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) January 24, 2019

So, it's not that I don't have anything to write about, rather there's too much, and I'm trying to write the posts so you can read and get the bigger sense of things.  Not easy.  Remember that once each day ends, it's gone.  So don't complain about waiting in line - take those seconds or minutes and enjoy your life.  Try thinking about something important.  Text your members of congress what you're thinking they should do.  Send a note to someone you care about.

[UPDATE 10:14 pm:  And the ADN had an article today about how three major oil companies have carbon pricing already built into their long term plans, the House has reintroduce a carbon fee and dividend bill, and the Senate is working on one too.  There is good news.  But as Vox notes:

"But what’s gone largely unnoticed is that Exxon’s proposal comes with a massive catch: In exchange for a tax, the company wants immunity from all climate lawsuits in the future."]

Merlí - High School Philosophy Teacher, Student Issues, Barcelona Make Fascinating Netflix Series

We finished season one last night on Netflix.  It pulled together a number of loose ends in a satisfying way.

Photo of Merli (Francesc Orella) from Season 1 Episode 13

Episode 1 (I just went back to remind myself) opens with Merlí meeting his ex-wife in a bar across the street from his apartment.  As he talks to her about her new job (and boyfriend) in Rome, he watches police vehicles in front of his apartment.  He assures her he will take good care of his 17 year old son whose been with the mother.  Merlí goes across the street to talk to the police about his eviction while the wife goes to pick up the son, Bruno, at his ballet lesson.  Merlí packs his stuff and moves in with his mother a once famous actress.  Shortly after Bruno reluctantly moves in too, Merlí gets a call to fill an opening for a high school philosophy teacher.  In Bruno's school.

I'm not giving anything away.  This all happens in the first 15 minutes of Episode 1 of 13 nearly hour long episodes.  That's probably one reason this series goes so well - there is a lot packed into every minute.

Pol and Bruno (Carlos Cuevas and David Solans)

Each episode is titled after a different philosopher.  Episode one is The Peripatetics - and he takes the students for a walk to the school's kitchen.  He tells them the Peripatetics thought while walking.  A student asks him if everyone can do philosophy.  He stops.  Ponders for a long time as the students start snickering.  Then he tells them that he paused that long so he could think about the answer, and to make the point that people don't respect people who think before they speak.

As he engages the students, he antagonizes the other teachers, particularly one who starts a campaign to get rid of Merlí.  The show focuses on about ten of the students - we never find out anything about the black or the Asian student we see now and again in the class.  The students all have their own issues - absent parents, over protective parents, poverty, sex, difficulty in school, and one absent student who has been diagnosed with agoraphobia and never leaves his house.  Merlí helps them all through the application of philosophy.

Merlí is an inspiring teacher, but a difficult human being.  His pursuit of women is out of synch with #Metoo standards, yet he genuinely likes women and sex with them and they like him.  His constant violation of school rules and protocol is exasperating yet it's done in the interest of exciting his students with philosophy.  My sense is that the writers made his transgressions work out way too perfectly, but why not imagine such a world now and then.

I enjoyed it all - the acting, the dialogue, the issues, the look at teachers' lives and students' lives, all wrapped up in philosophy lessons as well.  We also get to see a bit of Barcelona, though mainly the neighborhood around the school and regular panoramic views of Barcelona.

Speaking of Barcelona,  Merlí teaches at Angel Guimera Institute.  Wikilpeida tells us:

Àngel Guimerà[a] (6 May 1845 or 6 May 1847[1] or 1849[2] – 18 July 1924), known also as Ángel Guimerá, was a Spanish Nobel-nominated writer in the Catalan language. His work is known for bringing together under romantic aspects the main elements of realism. It is considered one of the principal representatives of the so-called Renaixença,[3] at the end of the nineteenth century.

It goes on to tell us his most famous play was translated and performed internationally, including on Broadway.  That he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 23 times, but that Spain prevented a Catalan language writer from getting the prize. Clearly, the name of the school was no accident.

I'm writing this because I know that lots of people will enjoy this show.  I can find very little online about the show - basically a Reddit discussion group, but even that is brief.  One person who summarizes what he's found out on Spanish interviews of the actors who play the roles of Pol and Bruno.

What I've learned is that there are two more seasons.  That many think season 2 doesn't keep up the pace of season 1, and I'll leave it at that.

And I still haven't figured out what the owl symbolizes.

Netflix - and the other streaming channels - are transforming the movie watching experience.  We now have available outstanding movies and series from around the world.  It used to be that US culture was sent out into the world via films and music and television.  Now there's a bit of a two way exchange.

All of you with Netflix, especially those who are in education - students and teachers, - at least watch episode one.