Corona Art - Old Friend Gets Recognized Again

Got an email today from my friend Tomás.  He's a friend I met through the blog.  He left a comment and we connected before he returned with his family to Spain. That story was in 2010 and includes Exit Glacier.  He's been in Kentucky this year while his wife teaches Spanish in a high school.  Tomás is an architect and artist.

He wrote to let me know that the Washington Post invited readers to send in their pandemic art.  They got 650 submissions and Tomás was picked in their top 20.  Here's his picture, Corona Rising.

 

You can see the other 19 they picked, plus some of the honorable mentions here.  It's an impressive collection of very different visions.  

Go-Nuts, Do-Nuts At the Anchorage Downtown Weekend Market

A friend invited me several weeks ago to come to the weekend market to see his do-nut stand.  I finally made it today.

Do-nuts are not a temptation and haven't been for years.  Some foods I'm able to put on my mental do-not-eat list because of their negative nutritional value.  But I'm not an absolutist.  I did have a hot malasada in Maui last year - as a nostalgia snack.  And today I bought a "baker's dozen"  - there were a lot more than twelve of the little guys.  They were good.  But look at all that fat they're swimming in.

But the machine that carries them from dough ball to do-nut, is made in Minnesota.

I also met Jessica who was trying to take short videos of the do-nuts being flipped over for her instagram site.  She must have more than one because the link on the card she gave me gets you pictures of dogs of Alaska.  (Good pics, btw.)

Then I wandered around looking at what else is there.  Since the market is walking distance from the downtown hotels, it's always full of tourists from around the world, though there were a lot of empty spaces.   There are some Alaskan artists and craftspeople as well as imported kitsch.

And prices all around seem a bit steep.  But my 'normal' range was set long ago and is resistant to inflation.  $23 for a styrofoam box of deep fried battered halibut seems wrong.  But I'm guessing no one gets rich selling stuff at the market.

Well, let me check how much halibut costs in actual restaurants where they serve you on a plate and at a table.

Humpy's has something close: 

Alehouse Halibut and Chips  18.99
Alaskan halibut, dipped in humpy’s famous ale batter, and flash fried to perfection. Served with our zesty alehouse made tartar sauce.

But do you get as much halibut?  There's a lot in that white box.

Simon and Seafort  (dinner) has a much fancier halibut dish for a lot more:

Crab & Macadamia Nut Stuffed Halibut* Mashed Yukon potatoes, seasonal vegetables 39

F Street Station has something similar for quite a bit less, but we don't know how much halibut:

Beer Battered Alaskan Halibut Or Shrimp $15.50
chunks of alaskan halibut or shrimp, deep fried with a beer batter crust to a light golden brown, served with tarter sauce, lemon and fries

I'm also wondering how many people can tell the difference between halibut and cod when it's deep fried like this.

This was a booth from the Chugach Mountain Quilters Guild.

There was a lot more at the market, but that's all I've got for you.  Hope your weekend is going well.

Flowers And Sky And Friends

We're in Oakland with very long time friends and today we go into San Francisco to gramp for a few days.  Our friend has a Tesla with a tinted glass roof.  (Probably they all do, but I have no idea.)  It made the sun in the clouds quite a show.  I'd note this this is the first new car my friend has every bought, but he did build and drive his own electric car over 30 years ago.

We had a great day and also visited other good friends and saw lots of flowers.

A poppy bud.











Another blooming.

And one that is finished blooming.  

Rhododendron.

















And an iris.  Just a small sampling of yesterday.

I'd note it's only about ten degrees warmer here now than it was in Anchorage when we left.

Rediscovering Anchorage History: Benny's Mexican Food Wagon

Food wagons have become a big thing in urban USA for the last ten or fifteen years.  But back in the early 80s when the university lent me out to the Muni, Benny's Mexican Food Wagon would be in the old flat parking lot (where the multi-story parking structure is today) at G Street and 5th Avenue for lunch.  I had lots of good lunches from Benny's.

Today, riding home from a couple of errands I ran into the original Benny's Mexican Food Wagon on Cope Street between Northern Lights and Benson.  And it's still serving Mexican food.

The food scene in Anchorage is a lot different now.  The other evening I was going to meet my wife at the Queen of Sheba Ethiopian restaurant.  But it turned out they are closed  Mondays and Tuesdays.  So we decided on Sushi Ya, which for us is a descendent of the old Yamato Ya which moved across the street and down the block when Sagaya raised their rent.  But the new location didn't work out that well - and the sisters who were part of the original family were in their 70s and ready to retire.  It was the last Japanese owned Japanese restaurant in town at the time as a Korean family took over.  That lasted a couple of years and then a South Anchorage restaurant moved in.  We shared a Sashimi Combo.

But as we were finishing, a former student/friend walked in so we invited her to join us and talked for another couple of hours.  We hadn't seen each other in a long time - family members with health issues in both cases - so it was a wonderful Anchorage kind of event that used to happen more frequently.

It's Abe's Birthday Already? This Post Took Me Places I Didn't Expect

I've been derelict here.  We've been spending a lot of time away from the computer - either transporting the grandkids to pre-school and elsewhere, or playing with them.  Or helping with food and pajamas and story times.   Also we had lunch yesterday with a former student from Beijing who is visiting the US.  It's been nearly 15 years since we've seen each other, though we've kept online contact.  But there were lots of questions we had for each other.

So here are a few pictures of the last few days until I have more time to think more clearly.  Some of these building pictures lead to architectural and technology issues I wasn't expecting.  And Lincoln's birthday tempted me into the question of whether the civil war was necessary and had it been avoided would we be more united today.  I'm still working on exit row issues including a promising incident on our flight to San Francisco.  Stay tuned for that.

The building with the turrets on top is an Episcopal Church whose red doors are usually closed.


But Sunday I was strollering by with my nieta (the Spanish word for granddaughter sounds so much nicer and is much shorter to write) and the doors were open.  We got invited in to listen to the organ.

We looked at our shadows at the playground and while we were walking.  

We also experimented with foot prints since the grass was wet.  

My nieto (o makes it grandson) and I spent about 90 minutes at the Japanese Garden.  He was interested in all the bridges and shrines and paths and, of course, the dragon made of a winding hedge and a rock head and rock tail.  

We also checked out St. Mary's Cathedral.  the basic structure is set on four points like the one in the lower center of the picture.  Arch Daily gives lots of details and more pictures:

"Pylons support the 19-story cupola at each corner of the floor plan, each constructed to withstand ten million pounds of pressure. With a circumference of 24 feet at their narrowest points, the pylons are embedded 90 feet down into the bedrock. A surprising 1680 pre-cast triangular coffers comprose the inner area of the cupola, featuring 128 different triangular sizes. These transfer all the weight of the structure down to the ground, while allowing large windows to frame views of the city of Saint Francis of Assisi. To call on memories of historic mission architecture, red brick is used on the floor in sweeping patterns."

And San Francisco is not without broken glass.  Here's part of the bus stop on the way to pre-school yesterday.  I've seen a couple of vehicles with broken windows and the shattered pieces lying on ground below. like in this picture.


By the afternoon, most of the glass was swept up and there was tape across the ad.  

And this car was making its point pretty loudly.







We ate at a Ramen place in Japantown with my Chinese friend.

And finally, here's the tallest building in San Francisco with its top in the clouds.  It's called the Salesforce Tower, though it used to be called the Transbay Tower.  And since I dislike branding everything so that people are forced to say some corporation's name when they mention it (it's much worse for public or semi-public places like stadiums), I'll stick with Transbay. From Wikipedia:

The site of the tower was in a dilapidated area, formerly used as a ground-level entrance to the San Francisco Transbay Terminal, which was demolished in 2011. The TJPA sold the parcel to Boston Properties and Hines for US$192 million,[14] and ceremonial groundbreaking for the new tower occurred on March 27, 2013, with below-grade construction work starting in late 2013.[15][16] The project is a joint venture between general contractors Clark Construction and Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction.[16][17]
The footprint of Salesforce Tower rests on land fill near San Francisco's original waterfront, an area prone to soil liquefaction during earthquakes. To account for this seismic risk, the tower uses a design that is modeled to withstand the strongest earthquakes expected in the region.[18] Its foundation includes 42 piles driven down nearly 300 feet (91 m) to bedrock and a 14-foot (4.3 m) thick foundation mat.[19]

My son explained to me exactly what Salesforce (the company) does.  They make and run the software for tracking communications between companies and customers.  So when you call up a company and they can look to see all the times you've called and what you said and what they said, they could be using Salesforce technology.  Here's how their website describes it: 

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. The goal is simple: Improve business relationships. A CRM system helps companies stay connected to customers, streamline processes, and improve profitability.

Select Hub offers some alternatives to Salesforce CRM technology after this introduction:

"Saying Salesforce is a big name in the CRM software space is like saying Christianity is a popular religion — it’s pretty obvious to most people who know anything about CRM. But it doesn’t have to be the only option. For those who may be looking for something else, we gathered data on the best Salesforce alternatives to help you find the right match for your organization."

So, I bet you weren't expecting some of this.  Neither was I.  Happy Birthday Abraham Lincoln.  What would the US be like today if didn't have the Civil War?  Would slavery have died out naturally because it became economically unsound?  Would African-Americans gained legal status without creating the race divisions that our president has reignited today?

Could Slavery Have Died A Peaceful Death?

Would Slavery Have Survived Without the Civil War?   This is a journal article you need a library connection to reach.  For those without that access, here's an excerpt from the intro to the article:

"My argument here is two-fold: (1) slavery, though generally profitable, had a harmful, long-term developmental impact on the southern economy; and (2) that the institution would gradually have evolved into something else in the late nineteenth century even without the Civil War. Before moving on, however, a necessary disclaimer: I well recognize the moral enormity that was slavery, and my comments here pertain only to the economic aspects of the peculiar institution, and, even delimited to the economic realm, should be seen as an attempt to analyze “what was” rather than “what ought to have been.”1"

Here are some interesting, related articles that don't address the question head on:

Without Slavery, Would The U.S. Be The Leading Economic Power?

Could Compromise Have Prevented the Civil War?

Civil War's dirty secret about slavery

The Economics of the Civil War - This one gives a lot more detail, but doesn't really answer the question

Would there be less animosity between Americans today had we not fought the civil war?  I'm guessing not.  Scapegoating the other is practiced by the power hungry throughout time and in all parts of the world.  The legacy of slavery would still have left the US divided, in my humble and unsupported opinion here.  Perhaps the support is for another post.

My Brain Is Exploding Trying To Capture In A Title All The Connections I'm Thinking

This post got started by this tweet.

Administrative Theory & Praxis has announced a call for papers for a new special issue titled "Toward Prefigurative Public Administration"! Special issue editors are Dr. Jeannine Love (@JeannineMLove ) and Dr. Margaret Stout. Check out the call here: https://t.co/27YV0vbHaO

— PA Theory Network (@patheory) October 3, 2018

The PA Theory Network was the professional group that I felt most at home with in the world of academic public administration.  It was the only group that I knew of that rewarded folks who seriously challenged the accepted assumptions.

When I read this I wasn't quite sure what 'prefigurative public administration' was - I haven't kept up with the literature too well since I retired.  But it sounded worth going to the link in the tweet.  That got me to stuff like:

Call for Papers: Toward Prefigurative Public Administration
Special Issue Editors: Drs. Jeannine Love and Margaret Stout

"Contemporary public administration continues to struggle with how to address the deeply interdependent issues that comprise the “wicked problems” (Rittel & Webber, 1973, p. 155) of sustainability—including social, political, economic, and environmental crises. Responses to this challenge have been shaped by ontological assumptions that drive strategies for knowledge production and understandings of “best” practices. As a result, ideas about effective governance have shifted over time; from government modeled on military style hierarchy in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, to business-oriented models and privatization in the late twentieth century, to collaborative network governance at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Within this latest turn, proponents of governance networks argue that coordinating responses to complex policy challenges across jurisdictional and sectoral borders can yield “collaborative advantage” over traditional governance approaches (Huxham, 2000). However, assessments of actual governance networks yield poor results. It has been argued that despite the rhetorical commitment to collaboration, these governance networks perpetuate the practices of hierarchy and competition (Stout & Love, 2019) and that new social movements more effectively function as collaborative networks (Love & Stout, 2018). This symposium therefore asks what public administration can learn from such sources."

Yes, jargon filled sentences like this are why I'm blogging rather than writing academic papers these days.  But, in the writers' defense, most of the readers of announcements like this understand this shorthand for more complicated ideas. If a carpenter had to describe a 'hammer' every time he needed to mention one, it would take forever.  In any case, I sensed that some of my own frustration with mainstream public administration was embedded in this call for paper proposals.  I could possibly write about stuff like this that calls for an entirely new way of thinking about the structure and purpose of governments.

So I scrolled down to see the bibliography.  The first on the list is:

Dixon, Chris. 2014. Another politics: Talking across today's transformative movements. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

OK, I thought, this is getting better.  Chris was a high school classmate of my daughter's.  He's one of the nicest, most thoughtful, respectful people I know.  And he's seriously dedicated to making a better world.

So, two of my worlds are coming together here.  In fact, Chris and J and I  had dinner, serendipitously, together at the Thai Kitchen this summer.  But I haven't actually read any of Chris' books or articles.  So, I looked up the book reference.  I can get it on Amazon.  But my sense is that's not where Chris would want me to buy it. If you read on you'll understand.  But I found a link to a paper that was probably the precursor to the book.  

So I've been reading it online, while watching the surf pound off the balcony.  (I did my bike ride this morning at 8am on a new route I discovered - it goes along a main highway, but it's more than a painted line on the side - it's separated by grass as well.  It allows me to ride my 30 minutes out without anything to slow me down, and it goes by the visitors center for the wildlife sanctuary I've been visiting. It's all connected.  A good ride.)

So Chris' paper is an attempt to map out the various anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist,  non-sectarian movements that are working for a world without oppression.  He's showing where they came from, where they overlap and where they have differences.

The terms - including anarchists, but not so much anti-authoritarian - all seem to identify what people are against (and he notes that) instead of what they are for.  I guess when someone is beating you, you are against being beaten first and foremost and you'll worry about what comes next when the beating stops.

Some of the movements he mentions that overlap include:
1.  Anarchism

2.  Global Resistance to Neoliberalism

3.  Prison Abolitionism

5.  Women of Color Feminism

All of these need explanation for the average person, including me, to grasp.  They aren't terms that our history books and dominant political system look kindly on.  That should tip people off right away that maybe there's something here.  So I should spell this out more.

He says, in part, about Anarchism (clearly talking about the modern version):

"The first strand begins in the anarchism of the 1990s. The mostly young people involved in this anarchist politics and activism were connected through a series of predominantly white and middle-class subcultural scenes, often rooted in punk rock, across the U.S. and Canada. They set up local Food Not Bombs groups,10 learned direct action skills through militant queer organizing and radical environmentalist campaigns, supported U.S. political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal, worked to inject art and imagination into activism, organized anarchist convergences and conferences across North America, and developed a network of anarchist bookstores and political spaces known as infoshops."

Then, Global Resistance to Neoliberalism.

A second strand has its origins in the international revolt against neoliberalism, especially growing from the global South. Building on legacies of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles, this started in the 1980s with widespread popular mobilizations against austerity measures mandated by the International Monetary Fund. By the early 1990s, meetings of neoliberal institutions like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) faced massive protests from Bangalore to Berlin.13 And then, on January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation stepped onto the world stage by seizing seven cities in Chiapas. “Ya Basta!” (“Enough!”), they said in opposition to the Mexican government and neoliberalism.

Anarchism in the Global Justice Movement  [The formatting of this paper seems to slip an extra strand in here, but clearly this is part of Global Resistance.  If my severe abbreviation here is problematic for you, the link to the whole paper is above, and here.  And perhaps get a copy of the book, which I'm sure is an improved version of all this.]

"Through the global justice movement, thousands of people participated in anti-authoritarian approaches and politics. At the same time, this cycle of struggle provided opportunities for anarchist and anarchist-influenced activists to wrestle with their own limitations in the context of a growing movement. Longtime radical and writer Elizabeth ‘Betita’ Martinez raised some of these with her widely circulated essay “Where was the color in Seattle?”19 This critical intervention and subsequent ones fostered widespread discussion. While the conversations were most visible around the racial composition of summit mobilizations, they opened up a range of crucial issues: the relation between global justice mobilizing and community-based organizing; the question of building strategic and effective broad-based radical movements in Canada and the U.S. linked to other movements across the globe; and how to confront hierarchies of race, gender, class, age, and experience as they were being reproduced in movement spaces."

Prison Abolitionism - finally a term that most people can, I think, understand.  But I suspect many would  exclaim, "but we need prisons."

"A third* crucial strand leading into the anti-authoritarian current has its origins in popular struggles against policing and prisons, especially in communities of color.
In 1998, the radical edge of this movement came together at an ambitious conference in Berkeley, California called Critical Resistance (CR), out of which developed an organization of the same name. Since then, individuals and groups affiliated with and inspired by CR have played a vital role in the movement against the PIC, whether through CR chapters in places such as Oakland or New Orleans or organizations such as the Prisoners Justice Action Committee in Toronto.27
Many abolitionists also have begun to explore alternatives to state-based strategies for dealing with violence in communities and interpersonal relationships. This approach has opened small but significant spaces for organizations and communities to experiment with ways of reducing harm and resolving conflict."

#BlackLivesMatter would fit as one of the groups he's talking about.

[See the book White Rage by Carol Anderson for much more detail on how the prison system has extended slavery for blacks in the US up to today.]

*[The way the paper was formatted, I got this as the fourth strand, but I suspect the extra one was either number 1 (Anarchism) or 3 Anarchism and the Global Justice Movement.  I'm sure this was all worked out in the book.]

5.  Women of Color Feminism

"Both the anti-capitalist current in the global justice movement and prison abolitionism draw upon and connect with a fourth strand, which is usually known as anti-racist feminism or women of color feminism. This sort of feminist politics has roots in earlier struggles, but it bloomed in the liberation movements of the 1960s and came into its own more fully in the 1970s and 1980s. And although this politics took many routes, they all started in a similar place: radical women of color, many of them lesbians, criticizing the limitations of existing movements to account for their experiences of oppression. Coming together in groups, conferences, publishing collectives, and
social scenes, these activists began creating shared politics grounded in their lives and struggles. Through these collaborations, they also constructed the category “women of color” as a new radical political identity."

Chris takes these strands and then goes on to write about what they all have in common:

1.  refusing exploitation and oppression,
2.  developing new social relations,
3. linking struggles and visions, and
4. grassroots nonhierarchical organizing

He says that what they are all striving for is "another politics" which he describes

"One useful way to understand another politics, it seems to me, is as an emerging political pole within anarchism and the left more broadly. A growing set of anti-authoritarians are staking out this pole through work significantly based in the four principles I laid out above. With these politics and related practices, this pole draws many activists and organizers who are fed up with the problems and limitations of much contemporary anarchism in North America and yet remain committed to the best of the anarchist tradition: a far-reaching critique of domination, a dedication
to prefigurative politics, a commitment to building popular power, and an unbending belief in people’s capacity to create a world where we can all live with dignity, joy, and justice."

And he raises a number of questions anarchists face.  (Go read the paper for those.)

It occurred to me that if someone wants to understand what is happening in the US Senate today, I'd argue it is a clash between the capitalist, authoritarians - represented by McConnell, Trump, Kavanaugh, etc.  versus the people who are left out of power - the poor, people of color, lgbtq, immigrants.  

Chris talks about the various movements doing grass roots recruitment among ordinary citizens  caught up in these struggles, but don't see how it is structured or what they can do about it.  And I couldn't help thinking that these many organizations involved in these movements also need to be reaching out to the Trump supporters who are also victims of the capitalist and authoritarian systems.  But the Right has captured them with false narratives about race, immigrants, foreign workers, and fear of losing 'their' power.  

I'd say what Chris is doing in this paper is trying to look past the point when the beating stops and what we do then.  And as I think about public administration and how all this works into an alternative way of achieving those common goods that we need to work collectively to achieve, there are still lots of questions.  

But yes, the Founding Fathers were fighting injustice and authoritarian rule, but their vision of who deserved justice and equality before the law were restricted by the social values of their day.  

Normally, I'd let this sit overnight, but I could rework this over an over again.  So, please excuse any sloppiness you see.  But you can point it out and I'll try to make repairs.  Thanks.

And, anyone who got this far, if you have a better title fire away.  

Hot

Anchorage has been sunny and hot.  For Anchorage that means 75˚F or more.  It's gotten into the low 80s some days this week - depends what part of town.  We also have good friends up from California who don't think it's all that hot.  We've spent a lot of time outside, and when at home, on the deck, where the mosquitoes seem to be distracted by the heat too.  There are some, but not many.  So here are some pictures of a bit of our time.  

The sun would seem a perfect start in this weather.  This version is downtown at 5th and G St.   Since Little J is a planet expert, it seemed like a good adventure to start here and visit as many of the planets as we could.  This high school science project brought to life over ten years ago, places the planets around Anchorage, proportionately sized and distant from each other.  So Mercury was a block away (5th and H), Venus another block, Earth a couple blocks, and Mars was at Elderberry Park.  

Then we got the car and went to the end of Westchester Lagoon for Jupiter.  Later that day went to visit friends in Turnagain, so we were able to go down to the bike trail at Lyn Ary Park to find Saturn (who's rings, unfortunately, have been broken off).  Then we drove down to Point Woronzof to find Uranus, which is on the bike trail before you actually get to Point W.  Fortunately, Little J's parents found it on google maps.  Neptune is somewhere further along the bike trail and Pluto is below Kincaid Park, not accessible by car, and Little J was getting tired and I think he'll have to do this another year when he's mastered bike riding.  He wasn't keen on the trailer bike I've got, even with the new dinosaur helmet.  

This was a view of some blooming cow parsnip from the bike trail that goes up Campbell Airstrip Road.  

I took our guests to the botanical garden where we saw this Chinese peony.  

And these prairie smoke flowers.  

And today we walked over to Campbell Creek Park playground where Little J tested all the playground equipment and then joined lots of other kids playing in the creek.  I saw some salmon in the creek a couple of bridges further down the other day.  

Tomorrow, Little J gets a playmate when my granddaughter arrives.  

Extravagantly Green

Summer began the last couple of days.  Today is magnificent.  I went to a rally against guns in Fairview and here are a couple of shots of the bike trail.  It's the kind of green that first awed me on a half-day layover in Anchorage 51 years ago.  And made me susceptible to a job offer ten years later.

This is the Chester Creek bike trail (the Lanie Fleischer trail) and now I'm getting ready to go in the opposite direction on the Campbell Creek trail for a party for someone special turning two.

FBI Names Kokayi Nosakere As Anchorage Community Leader

I got a text message from a friend with a link.  Being a troglodyte, I can't go to websites on my phone (but I do get texts!), so I checked on my computer.  It was ominous in that it had FBI in the url and Kokayi thinks of himself as something of a trouble maker.  Was he showing me that he was now on some FBI watch list?

Here's what it says:

"The Anchorage Division honors Mr. Kokayi Nosakhere. Mr. Nosakhere works to address teen violence and homicide by bringing together minority groups to get to know one another. Through employment resources and spiritual, educational, parenting, and leadership support, Mr. Nosakhere is motivating young men to put an end to violence."

Congratulations Kokayi!

Here's what their website says about these awards:

"Since 1990, the annual awards have been the principal means for the FBI to publicly acknowledge the achievements of those working to make a difference in their communities through the promotion of education and the prevention of crime and violence.
In his remarks to the group this morning, Director Christopher Wray thanked the honorees for their efforts to make the country safer and noted the similarities between community leaders and the FBI’s own workforce—both are dedicated to public service and “doing the right thing in the right way,” he said.
“We need the support, the understanding, and the trust of our community partners and the public. You’re out in your neighborhoods and your communities every day building that support and that trust and that understanding,” Wray added."

Seattle Day With Family and Friends, A little Wyeth Time, A Movie, and More Food

We took the 8:45 am ferry from Bainbridge Island into Seattle Wednesday.  The sun was sneaking past the clouds, it felt much warmer than it's been.  (A sign at one point said 66˚F.)

The day held promise.  My son and family were headed into Seattle to see an old friend and our other granddaughter was with us all too.  We were headed to see other friends.

The sky was mostly cloudy, but another ferry headed back to Bainbridge was sunlit.

We walked from the terminal.  Caught a bus.  Then took the monorail.  M is a big vehicle fan at 3 years old and hadn't been on a monorail.

Then another bus and a walk through the park to the Elliot Bay bookstore where we were meeting.  A lot of political stuff on the new books counter.

Our friends got us at the bookstore, the kids were at a story hour and we said good bye.

First to the Seattle Art Museum to see the Andrew Wyeth exhibit.

At first I was conflicted - I wanted to just talk to our friends, but I also wanted to absorb the Wyeth exhibit.  I must admit, I haven't been that big a fan of Wyeth.  The stuff was nice, but didn't really talk to me.  But I saw a lot of different styles and was much more impressed.  For instance, this early water color lobster is NOT something I would have identified as a Wyeth.

This picture of Siri is more familiar.  I couldn't help thinking about the current debates on sexual assault and also on child porn when I saw the nudes of Siri.  From a 1981 Time magazine article on Wyeth:

". . . teenage Siri Erickson, another Cushing resident, from 1967 to 1972. The paintings of her were also withheld, until she turned 21, and their release in 1975 caused a little of the same stir that the Helgas have. Siri, now 32 and the mother of two girls, recalls no embarrassment or awe about posing nude for Wyeth when she was 13. 'He would get totally involved in his work. It was as if you were a tree,' she says. 'He's a normal, everyday person. He does paint good, but he's just Andy.'"

By some standards, a picture of a nude 13 year old would be considered child porn.  By other standards it's great art.  I think we need to be much more discerning than we are at the moment about what we are seeing and how we classify it.  This CBC article talks about the fine line between sexting and child porn.  And this discussion of Wyeth's nudes is on the Catholic online forum Suscipe Domine.


Here are two folks regarding another Wyeth painting.

The exhibit was well laid out - with introductory posters discussing different groups of pictures.  My initial feelings of being overwhelmed lessened and I could wanter and view.  Sometimes looking at the descriptions of individual paintings, other times not.  While we ought to be able to appreciate a painting just by looking at, in theory, the background information helps me get a deeper sense of the each piece

But after two hours or so we were hungry.  And while I wished I could wonder around and look at other parts - like this modern section with this Andy Warhol "Double Elvis" . . . I too was interested in eating.






Someone wants to go to Boka to eat.  When we got there, we found out it is now All Water, in the lobby of Hotel 1000.  I was curious about the name All Water, when P pointed out this explanation on the menu.


Since the picture isn't that clear (but it is if you click on it), I'll help you out.

"In the 1880s the all water route would take prospectors from Seattle across the northern Pacific to the Alaskan coast.  In  the gold rush era this route created the trade in salmon and halibut industries. . . " 

It was a little after 2pm and we were told lunch was until 2pm and Happy Hour began at 3.  When I said, "So this is the unhappy hour?" we were told, "I'm sure we can get the kitchen to still do lunch."
It's only been open a few weeks.  We were all happy with our choices.





Then the group agreed to go see The Florida Project.  By this time, we'd had clouds, sunshine, drizzle, rain, more clouds, and more sunshine.  As we walked to the SIFF theater the sun was out and it was raining.  And a vibrant rainbow cleaned up the drab buildings.






 There was a lot I liked about The Florida Project, particularly the visual richness and the way the young kids had adventures.  I wandered my neighborhood like that with friends and wee also got into all sorts of mischief.  But the brashness of the mom, which got her out of some jams, made other ones worse, was painful to watch. Willem Dafoe's character Bobby was wonderful.  Justin Chang at the LA Times liked it a lot more than I did.

And finally we wandered down to "a Czech German beerhall."

Through these doors we walked into another world - a big warehouse like space with rows of communal wooden tables, a live band that was playing jazz (not polkas) when we walked in, and lots of beer.

Down the table from us the guys had 2 litre boots of beer.  (The two refers to the number of liters not the number of boots.)   Queen Ann Beer Hall is the official name, but doesn't really capture the mood for me.



Later J and I got in a good walk back to the ferry after rescuing our grandson's jacket from a restaurant where he'd left it.

A fun and busy day with family and good friends.

Jelly Fish And The Smoky Gate Bridge

We spent time with grandkids at the California Academy of Sciences. Many of the displays are amazing, but none so much as the fish - lots of fish. But yesterday the jelly fish were my favorite.

Later we met with an old friend and ended up eating ice cream at Ghirardelli Square and then walking out on the old curing pier where we got views of the famous San Francisco landmark Smoky Gate Bridge.

Talking about old friends, at one point I asked my four year old granddaughter if she knew who G was and how I knew her. "No." So I told her the story of how we met 53 years ago when we were both University of California (G from UC Berkeley and me from UC Los Angeles) studying at the UC program in Germany and that we had been good friends ever since.

 We take so much for granted.  My granddaughter had no idea who G was or how I knew her.    She just accepted the fact that we are visiting this (to her) stranger without asking who she was and why we were visiting her.  So I told her it's always ok to ask her parents about the people they are meeting and how they know them and why they are visiting.