It's June 4: Remember Tiananmen

 tiān'ānmén: 天安门 - Gate of Heavenly Peace 

[from:  https://contextualchinese.com/%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6]

I arrived in Hong Kong in July 1989 for a year to teach at Chinese University of Hong Kong.  Tiananmen had happened barely a month before.

In May of 1990 I took a group of Hong Kong students to Beijing at the invitation of the Ministry of Personnel to learn about Chinese Civil Service Reform.  One student couldn't come because his father thought it was too dangerous.  We had planned the trip so we would be back in Hong Kong well before the one year anniversary.  

This is a picture of the Forbidden City in May 1990 from Tiananmen Square.  Here's a post with more pictures of that trip.

Just as the Trump regime is busily erasing government information and history that's not supportive of their ideology 

• Here are all the ways people are disappearing from government websites
• Trump administration purges websites across federal health agencies
• The Trump administration is deleting government data. From infant deaths to hunger, here are five ways it’s hurting Americans
• Trump Erasing Black History An Urgent Crisis

China [is] Erasing Tiananmen Massacre Memory As 37th Anniversary Nears

But in this digital world, information can't really be suppressed forever.  Individuals, organizations, in the US and around the world, are and will be the preservationists of US history.  

And the same is true for Tiananmen.  

From The Guardian

So this post is my contribution on this 37th Anniversary of Tiananmen to keeping the memory alive.  

Here's a link to an old post about the iconic photo of Tankman.

How to Organize My Books

 

I have books.  There are books in pretty much every room in the house, though we don't keep books in the bathrooms.   

The other day I wanted to show someone a book, but I couldn't find it. (Bob, if you're reading this I did find it just now when I went down to take these pictures.)  I'm also looking for some of my old journals in hopes they can ground me as I write vignettes about my Peace Corps experiences.  This is spurred on by my writing group.  Basically, I took a class through OLÉ - the lifelong education program through the University of Alaska Anchorage.  

I thought signing up for a writing class would help me write the book for my youngest grandchild.  The other two grandkids got their own books already.  This one was going to be about her great grandmother, whom she is named after.  And it worked.  I wrote parts each week and I have the basic text done.  Now I have to work on the illustrations and mesh them with the text.  

But when the class was about over, the convener said that the weekly meetings would continue and that some of the members had been in the class for several years already.  About that time I got an email from the National Peace Corps Association that gave a step by step how-to booklet on writing about your Peace Corps experience - from the writing to finding an agent and a publisher.  

So I started writing.  But while I could find a couple of old journals that covered my Peace Corps time, others were missing.  

So tackling the biggest bookshelf seemed like a good project.  

Organizing books sounds easy.  Do it by topic.  Or should it be by genre - fiction or non-fiction or poetry or travel books?  What about books that span different topics or genres?

I started with topics.  I pulled out the bird books and the ones that help to identify insects and plants, and mushrooms.  This was going fine until I had books that fit the topic, but not the shelf.  Too big.

There's another problem with sorting books - it's hard not to start reading them.  The Shape of Thought is a book about writing - which is relevant to the writing class. 

 Maybe I can add some ideas to the group. (People are invited to read other writing than their own on occasion.) The book says writing has three basic purposes:

1. entertainment
2. explanation
3. convince

Really, is that all?  I have to think about it.  But then the book offers  ten patterns with which to do those things:

1. Basic Structures:  Introduction, Body and Conclusions
2. Narration
3. Description
4. Definition
5. Process Analysis
6. Classification
7. Comparison/Contrast
8. Judgment
9. Cause and Effect
10. Problem and Solution

Each pattern is a chapter with writings of famous and not so famous writers.  I jumped to the last one in the book, written by Art Buchwald that advocated for gun stamps for the poor, because "no American citizen, no matter what his financial status, would be deprived of his right to bear arms."  And "Many of the poor are to blame for this condition [not owning a gun].  They would rather buy food with their money than guns,"   [If it's not obvious, Buchwald was a satirist.]

And I also got distracted by The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richmond Latimore..  I read, and, thanks to a great instructor - Dr. Pasinetti - enjoyed The Odyssey in college.  But I never read The Iliad.  And having toured the remains of the ancient city of Troy last October while we were in Turkey, I had lots of questions.  So I read a few pages of the Iliad but mostly I read the introduction which is 55 pages long.  

The intro covers a number of topics - the plot, questions about Homer and when and where he lived, the Greek Gods' roles in all this, etc.  I just wanted a better sense of the plot.  

"The essential story may be summarized as follows:  Paris, also called Alexandros, was the son of Priam, who was King of Troy, a city in the north-west corner of Asia Mior.  Paris on an overseas voyage was entertained by Menelaos in Sparta, and from there carried away, with her full consent, Helen, the wife of Menelaos.  He took her back with him to Troy, where she lived with him as his wife.  The princes of Greece thereupon raised a force of a thousand or more ships, manned by fighters, with a view to forcing the return of Helen.  The armada was led by Agamemnon, elder brother of Menelaos, the King of Mykenai . . .The fleet assembled in Aulis in Boiotia and made for Troy.  There the Greeks landed after a fight, but were unable to take the city.  For nine years they remained before Troy, keeping the Trojans on the defensive, and storming and plundering various places in the vicinity.  In the tenth year, Agamemnon the most powerful chief, quarreled with Achilleus, his most powerful fighting man.  Achilleus withdrew from the fighting, and kept his followers idle as well.  In his absence, the Trojans, led by Hector (a son of Priam and brother of Paris), temporarily got the better of their enemies and threatened to destroy the ships.  Achilleus returned to the fighting, killed Hector and routed the Trojans."

 

But why did Achilleus and Agamemnon quarrel?  That's revealed later.  

"Chryses, priest of Apollo in Chris, a small place near Troy, comes to the camp of the Greeks to ask for the return of his daughter, Chryseis, who has been captured and allotted to Agamemnon as his concubine.  Agamemnon refuses, and Chryses prays to Apollo to avenge him.  Apollo inflicts a plague upon the Greeks.  When there is no end in sight and the people are dying, Achilles calls an assembly of the chiefs to consider what can be done.  With the support and encouragement of Achilleus, Kalchas the soothsayer explains the wrath of Apollo.  Agamemnon, though angry, agrees to give the girl back and propitiate the god, but demands that some other leader give up his mistress to him, in place of Chryseis.  When Achilleus opposes this demand, Agamemnon takes away Briseis, the concubine of Achilleus. . ." 

Of course, we all know that Troy was sacked to recover the kidnapped Helen.  But from the description it would appear that every 'leader' in Agamemnon's fleet had his own concubine, and Agamemnon appropriates his best fighter's concubine as his own, leading Achilleus to withdraw from fighting which leads to Hector's initial victory.  

In light of the Epstein scandals today, one (at least this writer) can't help but think that men's need for sex objects plays an oversized  role in society and in the suffering of humankind.  After all, they did battle for ten years over a stolen woman!  The Greeks almost had their ships destroyed by Hector, again over a stolen woman (Agamemnon's taking of Achilleus' concubine.).  

In the case of Troy and Greece, there were two powerful entities who fought it out.  And Achilleus had leverage to use against Agamemnon.  But today we seem to have a class of rich men who have found a way to exploit women with little or no counterforce.  (Along with not so rich men who have some other skill that allows them inclusion in the club.)

To be clear, I'm exploring this idea here rather than making firm conclusions.  And while the men of Ancient Greece and Troy may have done battle over specific women, what seems clear from the discussion is that the women had no say in any of this.  Homer translator Latimore tells us that all the leaders of Agamemnon's army had mistresses.  

I'm leaning toward some sort of conclusion that for at least the last 3000 years (the sacking of Troy as related by Homer, whether history, historical fiction, or fiction happened about 1300 BC and women have only gotten the right to vote, the right to an education, to spend money without their husbands' permission, to compete for 'men's' jobs in the last 100 years or so.  (I'm assuming there were some brief periods in isolated locations where women had, for a time, some of these rights.)

Not to mention dragging thousands of others into suffering the wars of the egocentric 'leaders - the soldiers and sailers, the citizens of Troy and surrounding areas, and today the Ukrainians still being bombarded without mercy by Putin's military.  Not to mention the people of Gaza and Lebanon and Iran and elsewhere around the world.  

And in the United States, we now have a president whose treatment of women is not different from the ancient Greeks and that seems to have brought the misogynists out of the woodworks.  This is a more universal problem than USians realize.  Is it built in to men's genes?  Some men's genes?  Is it nurtured by parents, by society?  Is it curable?  

All this from trying to bring order to my book cases.  And that's just a tiny fraction of how I spend my time.  The garden beckons.  Fighting the corruption of the GOP beckons.  My bike and the bike trails beckon.  

Of course, I don't raise questions here, without checking online after I've done my own brainstorming.  Here's a list a ways to organize one's books from WikiHow

1. by genre
2. alphabetically 
3. by color
4. by subject
5. chronologically
6. put rare or valuable books in a noticeable spot
7. by how much you like them
8. by how much you use them
9. by size
10. by date you got them

To a certain extent I use the following:  1, 4, 6, 7, and 9.  It seems to me that organizing by color is for someone who sees books as decoration rather than reading material, but that's just my first reaction and I'm willing to be corrected.  

It's Daylight Savings Time Again Today So The Legislature Has Yet Another Bill To End It

We set the clocks ahead again last night or this morning.  And the Alaska legislature has a bill to end Daylight Savings.Again    [I suspect the link to the Anchorage Daily News is paywalled for non-subscribers.]

The session I blogged the legislature from Juneau (2010) there was also a bill.  And it seems there's one every year.  So I'm not expecting it to pass.

From an Alaskan perspective there are extra wrinkles in all of this.

1.  When I first got to Alaska in 1977 the state had four (yes 4) time zones.  That was ended so it was easier for Alaskans, scattered across so many time zones, to know what time it was everywhere else in the state and for airlines and their passengers to stay sane traveling in the state.  

2.  Besides size, Alaska is north.  In the summer much of the state never actually gets dark.  In the winter much of the state has, at the winter solstice, five hours or less from sunrise to sunset.  So school kids are going to go to school or come home in the dark no matter what.  In some places both.  (Though when there is a white ground cover, it isn't quite as dark as you would expect.)

3.  I don't think we're going to end Daylight Savings time this year.  But I expect that one day it will happen.  Maybe on the national level.  But the legislature meets in Juneau, and as the post below says, 

"People in Southeast Alaska have a real issue because they are basically in Pacific time, so they get less light in the evening while the sun comes up 3am at solstice."

Below is that 2010 post on Daylight Savings time: 

Thursday, March 18, 2010

HB 19 to End Daylight Savings Time

The other two meetings going on right now are dealing with issues of far greater impact on Alaska I presume.  But this is one most Alaskans can understand easily and are impacted by most directly and tangibly.


Here is the table with copies of emails and letters for and against the bill.  










[Update:  I looked through these and they are all dated March 18 and some 17.  Actually this stack is misleading.  I didn't realize I have one big stack twice.  The vote was 62 for HB 19, 18 against, and four had other options, like get the US to change, but not just Alaska.]

Sen. Olson and Sen. Menard listen to phone testimony on the ending daylight savings time in Alaska.  

Rep. Anna Fairclough, the bill sponsor, responded to the comments received through the mail, email, and by phone today.  She said there were two reasons that have real justification for not changing:

1.  People in Southeast Alaska have a real issue because they are basically in Pacific time, so they get less light in the evening while the sun comes up 3am at solstice.
2.  The difficulty in coordinating with people outside of Alaska.  (I think this was the second one)

Other than these two points, most people prefer getting rid of daylight savings time.  A lot of this is about having to change and the disruption that causes with relatively little daylight impact for most Alaskans (further north and west than Southeast.)

Other issue:  Why don't we just spring forward and stay on daylight savings time the whole year.  There area a couple of issues:
1.  Feds, not states, can change time zones.
2.  Western Alaska would be even further off of sun time (opposite problem of Southeast.)

Meeting was adjourned just about 5pm with the decision postponed.

Gallipoli - Why?

The Gallipoli Tour:  The bus picked us up Tuesday (October 22) at 7am, before the breakfast buffet opened.  So the hotel gave us sandwiches to take along.  We were headed to Gallipoli, where the Turks held off the British and French in 1915 and 1916.  

1.  Why did the British and French undertake what turned out a military failure that cost so many lives?

2.  Why were most of the people on our tour Aussies and Kiwis?

You military and World War I buffs, of course, know all about this, but The Dardanelles was a name I knew, and I sort of understood it was a shipping route to Istanbul.  Having been in Istanbul for a couple of weeks now, having taken a Bosphorus cruise to the edge of the Black Sea, and having ferried by the Marmara Sea,  I understand all this much better.  

For those of you who are like I was, I’m going to map this out.

Let’s start with the Black Sea.  [Update Nov. 2, 2025 -I didn't have a picture of the Black Sea when I first posted this, but we flew over the Black sea when we left Türkiye.]

It’s bordered by six countries.  What are they?  Start with Turkey and go clockwise.  

Turkey

No, not Greece, the Turkish border goes north of Istanbul

Bulgaria

Romania

NOT Moldova - it’s landlocked

Ukraine

Russia

Georgia

And on the western side of Turkey you can see the Aegean Sea.  Our day off Friday has been in Kușadası.  Our travel guy in Istanbul, Ilyas, got us into a hotel that’s got a balcony looking out at the Aegean Sea.  (See photo on the right.)

We could hear the waves. 

 Between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea, you can see a small blue puddle - that’s the Marmara sea.   The picture below is looking toward the Marmara Sea.

Now back to Istanbul’s important location.  Further west and south of the Aegean Sea, you can see the Mediterranean Sea.  Russia is on the Black Sea, but needs to go through Istanbul to get to the Marmara Sea and then the Dardanelles to get to the Aegean Sea and then on to the Mediterranean Sea.  

But since on the map above Istanbul is just a dot, you can’t really see the wet significance.  So below is a map of Istanbul and its watery environment.  

All the white is Istanbul.  On the top and on the right is European Istanbul.  On the right is Asian Istanbul

.  The Bosphorus, coming from the Black Sea, flows into Istanbul. From the upper right.  Look closely, it says Bosphorus   The photo to the right is looking at European Istanbul from the Bosphorus. Then at the bottom you can see the Marmara Sea. .  On this map you can see how the Bosphorus connects to the Marmara Sea and divides Istanbul into the European and Asian sides.  There are lots of ferries that go back and forth.  That channel going up on the left is called the Golden Horn and ends not far above the edge of the map.  

I’ve got you to the Marmara Sea, now let’s proceed from the Marmara Sea to the Dardanelles.

You can see on the map above how narrow the Strait gets. Several websites (here’s just one) say that at the narrowest point, the Dardanelles is 1400 meters wide (about 3/4 of a mile.  We took a ferry at that point to Çanakkale where we spent the night.  

Getting close to the WHY question.  

1.  Britain and France were allied with Russia in WW I.  This was 1915.  The Russian Revolution was two years off.  Britain and France wanted to get supplies to their ally Russia. Central Europe was allied with Germany, so this was the only warm water port for Russia.  

2.  Australians and New Zealanders (ANZAC = Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) were a large part of force used to try to get control of the Dardenelles in Gallipoli.  8,709 Australians died and 19,441 were wounded.  The Kiwi numbers were 2,721 and 4,752.  The British numbers were much higher (34,072 and 78,520)  and the Turk casualties were significantly higher (56,643 and 97,007).  (From Wikipedia.)

One of the Kiwi families on the tour brought along a New Zealand flag and held it up at an ANZAC memorial.

So Gallipoli was all about opening the route to and from Russia’s Black Sea ports. 

You might have noticed I started out talking about Turkey and then switched to the Ottoman Empire.  The Empire was on its last legs - which was why the British thought they could overpower the military.  But looking back at other accounts, they use Turk and Ottoman, so I’ll leave it mixed.  

After WWI what was left of the Ottoman Empire was partitioned among the Western Allies .  However Ataturk defeated their forces and abolished the Ottoman Empire in 1922 and in 1923 declared the secular nation of Turkey.  That is grossly simplified.  You can read more about Ataturk here, and about the partition of the Ottoman Empire here.  And about the WWI Gallipoli campaign here.   Just writing this post reminded me how much I don’t know.  Fights over the Dardanelles goes way back.  

Those heroes that shed their blood 

and lost their lives . . .

You are now living in the soil of a friendly country

Therefore rest in peace

There is no difference between the Johnnies

And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side

Here in this country of ours. . .

You the mothers ,

Who sent their sons from far away countries

Wipe away your tears

Your sons are now living in our bosom

And are at peace.

After having lost their lives on this land,

They have become our sons as well

-Ataturk, 1934

By a cemetery for Turkish soldiers is a large statue of Ataturk with a group of Turkish students posing for a picture.  Ataturk was the commanding officer defending Gallipoli from the British and French and ANZAC troops.  There were also Indians.  

And this spot - the remains of the trenches of the ANZAC/British troops so near to the trenches of the Turkish troops - brought the reality of all this much closer.  The trees weren’t there back then.  It was hot, there were lots of bugs.  

That’s it.  A post like this takes me way too much time.  There are so many other stories and pictures that I’m afraid most of which you’ll never see here.  

We only have a few days left.  Can’t spend them at the keyboard.  

Cappadocia

 The Cappadocia region is shown on the map in the previous post.  

 We arrived in Göreme by bus after dark and walked up to our hotel which was less than a kilometer.  The town is old and buildings are mostly built with rocks. But it was uphill on a narrow road paved with stones.  The picture isn’t great, but it gives you an idea of neighborhood.  We’d find out that most of this hill was ‘cave hotels’ built in old houses and even in the strange rock formations that the area is famous for.  

I used the word ‘old’ just now.  Let’s clarify that.

‘Göreme is a unique town located in the Cappadocia region of Turkey. It is known for its fairy chimneys, rock-cut churches, and cave dwellings. The town’s history goes back to ancient times when the Hittites were the first to inhabit the area. Later, Göreme became an important center of Christianity, and many churches were carved out of the soft volcanic tuff rock. In the 4th century, Göreme became a monastic settlement for hermits who lived in the caves and practiced asceticism.”

What does “ancient times” mean? 

The Hittite Empire was an ancient civilization in Anatolia from the late 17th century BC to the end of the 12th century BC. The Hittites provided significant examples of stone masonry. Stone reliefs are commonly found on monumental structures, such as city walls and gates. If you read that paragraph and pulled 4th century out to determine ‘old’, that’s perfectly reasonable.  But go back to “ancient times when the Hittites were the first . . .” (From a Koç University site)

Our hunger got us back down that street to a looking for a place to eat.  The photo isn’t too clear, but under ZUKRA it says “Pasta & Bliss.”

In Turkish, pasta means cake.  But it was in English and it sure looks like pasta on the plate.  I asked J, “Does it mean pasta in English or Turkish?  Looks like English.”  And it was a pasta place, but I was hoping to have lentil soup, which is delicious in Turkey.  I asked the young lady if they had soup.  She said no, but to wait a second.  

She came back and said her mother would make me soup.  So we had dinner there.  The whole family worked there - mom, dad, and the two adult kids.  And no, it wasn’t lentil soup, but it was a delicious tomato based pasta soup.  

The next morning at 5:55am I was supposed to be ready for a balloon ride.  Cappadocia is known for balloons.  I’d decided that everyone should probably ride a balloon at least once and that Cappadocia was one of the best places to do that.  J didn’t agree with the first

They said there were 160 balloons aloft.  It was magical. I bonded with a French Canadian couple as we lifted up in morning twilight.  

It was chilly - about 35˚F (1.6˚C).  Colder than it was that day in Anchorage.  I had several layers on, and fortunately I was relatively close to the propane burner.

Soon we were up and drifting over the many rock formations that Cappadocia is famous for.

The ride was just under an hour and I got back in time for the hotel’s buffet breakfast that comes with the room.  Maybe I’ll do a post on the breakfasts.

Then we were picked up for the ‘Red Tour”.  The next day we did the “Green Tour”.  Cappadocia’s tourist industry is highly organized.  One tour goes to the north, the other to the south.  Big white VW busses (not vans, but busses that hold 20 people or so) come up the narrow streets picking up their passengers from their hotels.  Where we were the street was very narrow and one way, and if a passenger wasn’t out waiting and the guide had to go looking for them, it would lead to seven or more vehicles blocked.

I’m running out of steam here, so I’m going to focus just on the rock formations parts of the tours and combine the two.  I wanted the people in this picture so you’d get a sense of the size of these formations.  People, over the millennia, have carved out spaces inside the formations and lived in them, had churches in them.  

“Geologically, Cappadocia is an ancient region that has been shaped by millions of years of geological activity, including volcanic eruptions, tectonic movements, and erosion. The landscape is characterized by soft, easily erodible volcanic tuff, which has been sculpted into a variety of shapes by the forces of wind and water.

Over the centuries, humans have also played a role in shaping the landscape of Cappadocia. The region has a rich history of human settlement, dating back to the Hittites in the 2nd millennium BCE, and later occupied by the Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines. The people of Cappadocia have also left their mark on the landscape, carving homes, churches, and other structures into the soft volcanic rock.” (From Geology Science)

 

One last very memorable visit on the tour was the Nevşehir Kaymaklı Underground City.  This is a city build underground - eight stories underground.  I couldn’t figure out how to take good pictures - I had to keep up with the folks in our tour.  But you can go to the link to learn more.  The public is only allowed to go down four levels.

Besides narrow passageways with low ceilings, there are bigger spaces for sleeping, kitchen areas, and ‘living rooms.’  People lived in these underground cities when they were in danger from enemy armies.  They were down there up to several weeks at a time.  For those wondering, they also had a ventilation system, which was pointed out, but not explained.  

I’d note the first day tour included people from Germany, Italy, Japan, London (originally from Hong Kong), Palestine, and Turkey.  We were the only Alaskans, and the only people from the US.  As we stopped at different places we got to talk to all the folks.  The next day it was just us and three women from Brazil who we got to know fairly well.  The guides were excellent.  

We’re back in Istanbul, exploring this amazing city.  I’m looking at Istanbul itself as a museum.  We’re learning how to use all the public transportation - which includes busses, trams (on tracks), ferries, a subway, and a furnicular.  I may have missed something.  We’ve figured out how to use and refill our Istanbul Card - which you tap to use the various forms of transportation.  And we’re eating well.  

I’m going to post this now and I’ll proof it again tomorrow and make any necessary edits.  

Some Turkeyı Pics

Keeping up here has been difficult.  We’re just too busy, but let me just give you some selected pictures and comments.  

We met with a travel agent our trusted hotel guy recommended.  He put us on a whirlwind tour of the places we wanted to go.  Konya and Cappadocia.  Fortunately I’d done a bit of research and knew we could get a fast train to Konya and then a bus the rest of the way.  On the map below, Konya is to the lower left of the red circle showing the Cappadocia region.  We stayed in Göreme, which is northeast of Kayseri.  Istanbul is in the upper left between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara.

These men whirled slowly, like they were connecting with the universe.  See more on Sufi dervishes here.

Konya proved a true highlight.  I’d seen that Çatalhöyük was closed on Mondays, so we left Saturday.  Our travel agent arranged for a guide with knowledge of Çatalhöyük who picked us up at the train station.  WhatsApp proves to be very helpful communicating.  Çatalhöyük is a world heritage site.

Our guide turned out to be a Sufi teacher who teaches college level - not only was he knowledgeable, but he practiced his Sufi - with lots of care for us.  I’d also read that there were whirling dervish (performance isn’t the right word,). There’s a huge modern building where they whirl on Saturday evenings from 7-8 or so.  Our guide showed us where it was before dropping us off at the hotel.  We had a delicious local meal
next door to the hotel and then walked to the Mevlana Center.  (Mevlana, as I understand it, is the Turkish name for Rumi, the founder of Sufism.)

The next morning we walked a bit after breakfast and I was duly impressed by this blue motorcycle.

We were scheduled to go to the Mevlana Museum, which was across the street from the hotel.  We didn’t realize that - we thought it was a mosque.  And it had been a mosque, but is now a museum for Mehvlana (Rumi).  But the name ‘museum’ doesn’t do it justice.  It had been a like a monastery for men studying to become Sufi dervishes (I need to be careful here with my terminology.  My understanding is they would become monks, though again I’m not sure that’s the right word.)  So in addition to the old mosque, attached to it are a series of cells for the acolytes. 

The picture below shows Mevlana’s tomb inside the old mosque.  Rather than requiring people to remove their shoes, they provided paper shoe covers to wear.  

There is a mosque right next to the museum.  There’s a pic below showing the mosque (to the right) and the museum from the night before when we walked back from the dervishes. 

The picture above is Çatalhöyük. This is a site that dates back to the Neolithic period.  (Yes, I had to look it up to better understand what we were looking at).  But 9000 years ago, people built this community of 3500 - 8000 people.  The living spaces are all connected to each other.  There were no streets.  People had ladders inside to the roof, and the roofs were the ‘streets’ of this place.  There’s a museum which explains a lot, then there are some reconstructed dwellings that you can go into to see how people lived.  Finally, there is the actual archeological site.

I’m going to let people who are interested, go to the link to find out more.  The picture above is a tiny part of the complex under a large cover that visitors are allowed to see.  There’s another section open to the public, but it wasn’t open when we were there.  

I’m still trying to grasp people who were only just beginning to transition from hunter/gatherer to growing some of their own food, and developing this complex housing system.  

The picture below shows the mosque, to the right, and the Mevlana Museum.  The green tiled turret in the museum area is from the original building, which if I got it right, was build in the 1200s. The rest was built later. Later = 1500s.  

Think about it.  The turquoise green turret in the back of the museum complex was built over 200 years before Columbus’ reached what became ‘the new world.,’. Humans back then were just as clever and just as emotional as we are today.  Not really much difference from what I can tell.

 

There is a lot referenced in this post that people know little or nothing about, so I won’t feel bad if I don’t post again right away and give you time to check out the links.  

New Inspiration From A Long Time Hero

Just in the opening intro to Robert Caro’s Working, I was inspired to take on a project I’d put off for a couple of years now.  Caro reads his audio book and talks about how when writing the Power Broker he realized he needed to document the human cost of all the parkways and bridges and slum clearance Robert Moses built.  I have such a project to pursue in Anchorage.

I guess I’m getting ahead of myself.  My bookclub is reading Working this month, and while the time zones don’t work out for me to zoom in, Caro has been a hero of mine for just about 50 years.  Caro’s first big book - The Power Broker - is about Robert Moses who created  a mesh of overlapping ‘authorities’ - park authorities, transportation authorities, port authorities - that gave him a working income that he controlled and the power to create public works projects that transformed the landscape of New York City.  I should be clear - Caro never found any indication that Moses was in this business to make money, but rather to fulfill his visions of how to create infrastructure that would improve life for New Yorkers.  They money he made through tolls and bonds went to build his vision.  

Caro tells us in the intro that he wanted to understand how Caro had wielded so much power for close to 50 years, power over mayors, governors, and other elected  officials, though he had never been elected to any office.  He talks about advice he  (Caro) got early on about doing research on documents - read every page.  

Caro worked full time on The Power Broker for over five years.  It came out in Fall of 1974 about when I’d finished my Masters in Public Administration and was working on my doctorate.  And I would have read it right after it came out - maybe the Spring of 1975.  And as I started teaching as a doctoral student, The Power Broker, at least parts of it (it’s over 1100 pages) were part of the readings in my intro class until I retired.  One of the questions I had about the book - as did many others - was how did Caro find out all the stuff he had on Moses.  This book answers that question 

I’ve mentioned “Thick Description” several times lately, and as I listened to Caro talking about the need to get the stories of the people Moses displaced with his projects, I realized this was an example of thick description as well.  (I hadn’t thought about that before since I’d been using Caro’s book long before I’d heard about thick description.). https://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2015/07/who-am-i-who-are-you.

”. . . we can return to dreams of our long gone riches, our legendary past”

 I’m reading Istanbul by Nobel Prize winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk.  It’s an autobiographical look at the author, Istanbul, and Turkey. (I’m speculating here, because I’m not that far into it.  He’s talking about his childhood when the neighborhood was filled with the dilapidated old palaces of the pashas of the Fallen Ottoman Empire,  I’m not sure what kids learn about in world history these days, but the magnificence of the Ottoman Empire was left out of the history classes I took.  

This is what people in the US might feel in 50 years or more if our current political trajectory continues and the many riches of the US are gutted, and the rest of the world leaves us in the dust.  

“When I watch the black and white crowds rushing through the darkening streets of a winter’s evening, I feel a deep sense of fellowship, almost as if the night has cloaked our lives, our streets, our every belonging in a blanket of darkness, as if once we’re safe in our houses, our bedrooms, our beds, we can return to dreams of our long gone riches, our legendary past.  And likewise, as I watch dark descend like a poem in the pale light of the streetlamps to engulf these old neighborhoods, it comforts me to know that for the night at least we are safe; the shameful poverty of our city is cloaked from Western eyes.”  (p. 35)

“To stand before the magnificent iron gates of a grand yali bereft of its paint, to notice the sturdiness of another yali’s moss-covered walls, to admire the shutters and fine woodwork of a third even more sumptuous yali and to contemplate the judas trees on the hills rising high above it, to pass gardens heavily shaded by evergreens and centuries-old plane trees - even for a child, it was to know that a great civilization had stood here, and, from what they told me, people very much like us had once upon a time led a life extravagantly different from our own - leaving us who followed them feeling the poorer, weaker, and more provincial.” (pp 53-53)

I’m sitting at SeaTac waiting to board our flight to Frankfurt, so that’s it for now.  

Why Truth Is So Illusive? Braun- Blanquet Scale

[I found this draft post from July 2012.  It appears never to have been posted.  But it's interesting to see how what I wrote 12 years ago is still relevant today.  Probably more so. And posting it today - August 3 - is fitting as you will see if you read it.]

Getting the facts right - whether it's in an old sexual abuse case or an attempt to see how ground vegetation has changed over a period of time - is the first step.  Once the facts are established, then models - whether scientific theories, religious beliefs, or the unarticulated models of how the world works we carry in our heads - are applied.

For example, did your son lie to his teacher about his homework?  If the answer is yes, then you must go through various models you have about topics such as lying, education, changing the behavior of young boys and apply them to this situation to get the desired result.  It's not as easy as you might initially think.  You may have a clear value that lying is never good.  Or you may think there are times it is ok.  Do you think his teacher is wonderful and working hard to teach your son to be a great human being with all the necessary skills?  Or is he part of a corrupt educational system that expects all students in the class to be at exactly the same level at all times and finds fault with your son because he's brighter than most and bored in class, or slower than most and having trouble keeping up? Or do you think he is picking on your son because he's a different race from the teacher?  And finally, will you talk this over with your son?  Restrict his internet access for a week?  Or whup him with a belt to help him learn this lesson?  Or maybe you'll go to the school and defend your son and attack the teacher. 

Things get much more complicated when we deal with the collective problems of a community.  If king salmon aren't returning to their rivers in the numbers expected, how should state fish and game authorities deal with this?  First, is their method of counting salmon working right?  Perhaps the salmon are getting through without being counted?  Then, do you restrict subsistence fishers?  Which models do you use to explain the shortage?  Is it climate change which is affecting the water temperatures?  Is it overfishing by commercial ocean fishing vessels?  Is it that these salmon are being caught as by-catch by bottom trawlers?  And when you think you know, what model do you use to decide whether subsistence fishers are allowed to catch any?

All this is introduction to Josias Braun-Blanquet who in 1927 devised the Braun-Blanquet scale.  The Botany Dictionary tells us about the Braun-Blanquet scale.

A method of describing an area of vegetation . . . It is used to survey large areas very rapidly. Two scales are used. One consists of a plus sign and a series of numbers from 1 to 5 denoting both the numbers of species and the proportion of the area covered by that species, ranging from + (sparse and covering a small area) to 5 (covering more than 75% of the area). The second scale indicates how the species are grouped and ranges from Soc. 1 (growing singly) to Soc. 5 (growing in pure populations). The information is obtained by laying down adjacent quadrats of increasing size. One of a number of variations of Braun-Blanquet's method is the Domin scale, which is more accurate as there are more subdivisions of the original scale. The Braun-Blanquet scale also included a five-point scale to express the degree of presence of a plant. For example, 5 = constantly present in 80-100% of the areas; 1 = rare in 1-20% of the areas.

So, essentially, this is a measuring device to calculate the percentage of an area that is covered by different plant species.  Measuring is just the first step.  Once you have the measures, then you can apply your models. (OK, I know some of you will point out that you can't measure anything unless you have models that tell you what to measure.  True enough.  But once you have the measures - in this case of percentage of species of vegetation in a certain location - you have to interpret what that means using a model or several.)

But one problem is that the measurements might not be accurate or might not be used right. 

A 1978 Study in  Environmental Management found the Braun-Blanquet scale to be adequate and more efficient than another method of measuring species in an area.  Here's the abstract:

To document environmental impact predictions for land development, as required by United States government regulatory agencies, vegetation studies are conducted using a variety of methods. Density measurement (stem counts) is one method that is frequently used. However, density measurement of shrub and herbaceous vegetation is time-consuming and costly. As an alternative, the Braun-Blanquet cover-abundance scale was used to analyze vegetation in several ecological studies. Results from one of these studies show that the Braun-Blanquet method requires only one third to one fifth the field time required for the density method. Furthermore, cover-abundance ratings are better suited than density values to elucidate graphically species-environment relationships. For extensive surveys this method provides sufficiently accurate baseline data to allow environmental impact assessment as required by regulatory agencies.

 So, fifty years after Braun-Blanquet's scale went public, it was still being used.  And apparently it is still in use today.  And people are writing about some of the limitations of the model.

In Monitoring Nature Conservation in Cultural Habitats:: A Practical Guide and Case Studies, (2007) by Clive Hurford and Michael Schneider, the Braun-Blanquet scale is compared to the Domin scale and both are found to have two sources of error.  First, is the observer bias that could affect the initial estimate of the percentage of species coverage that is then used to identify the appropriate cover class.  The second problem arises when the vegetation is at or near a vegetation boundary.  This is, apparently, more of a problem in the Domin scale. (p. 82)

And a February 2009 (online) article in Journal of Vegetation Science warns that the Braun-Blanquet abudance-dominance scale cannot be used with conventional multivariate analysis techniques because the Braun-Blanquet scores use ordinal numbers. 

I bring this up for a couple of reasons.  First, today, August 3, is Braun-Blanquet's birthday.  He was born in Switzerland in 1884 and died in France at 96 in 1980.  Second, and probably of more general importance, has to do with science and truth.

We are at a time when science is under severe attack by a combined force of right wing politicians and fundamentalist religious groups.   They pounce on what they call scientific errors and publicize them to 'prove' science isn't trustworthy.  The emails about global warming data is a good example. 

Now, there are scientists who for various reasons (fame, money, revenge, you know the usual human failings that lead to compromises) do cheat.  But the beauty of science is that one's work must be made public and when others try to duplicate your work and can't, then your work becomes suspect. 

But the pursuit of truth is and will always be imperfect.  Data collection and interpretation will always be dependent on the ability to observe and measure and interpret.  And the Braun-Blanquet scale shows, in a small way, that even a technique that's been around over 70 years, is not perfect.  But in science no one holds all the cards, no one proclaims truth for everyone else to accept. 

Scientific truth is always being tested and challenged.  That's its strength, but absolutists see it as a weakness. 

DePaul University Professor of Environmental Science and co-director of DePaul University's Institute for Nature and Culture, has an interesting story about a project  to rid the oak woodlands of Rhododendron ponticum, an invasive shrub that was encroaching in the understory of this habitat in Killarney National Park in Ireland.  It talks about the use of the Braun-Blanquet scale.  It's posted at his blog Ten Things Wrong with Environmental Thinking.