What's Keeping Me From Blogging?

So much . . .

Weekly trips to pick up our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) [It's a USDA website so go quick before the regime either takes it down because it's too 'woke' or it crashes from neglect or incompetence.]

They use salt - some Alaska salt - and mix it with things for use in cooking, eating, and making your house smell better, like in the simmer pots.  

I've highlighted soap artist (seriously, what she does is art!)  Kit before.  She showed me a prototype of a soap she's working on that will have a Rorschach test on it.  I asked if there are psychiatrist interpretations included.  Those, she assured me, would cost a lot more.  Learn more at MirthAlaska.com. 

There was a long line at the WIC table.  This market is in the lowest income area of Anchorage and the Grow North Farm here - sponsored by RAIS (Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service), a part of Catholic Social Services - is an urban farm worked by refugees.  

It was gray and threatening, but not raining all that day, but it finally came down on the ride home.  It was so light it really only got my clothes slightly damp.  And my odometer with drops.

I've gone past my 1600 km goal for the summer - one reason I guess I haven't blogged as much.  All that biking along Anchorage's green bike paths has been good for my physical and mental health during this disastrous time in US history.  

The picture below was on an earlier ride on the Campbell Creek south trail.  And I'm delaying today's ride to get this post up.

The mushroom isn't connected to anything else in this post, but of course mushrooms and fungus in general are connected to everything underground.  You can't really tell but this one was five or six inches across.  Growing right next to the compost pile.  

  
                                                                      

Again, a somewhat random picture here.  Walking down the steps after a routine doctor visit at Providence, I was greeted with the lovely sounds of live piano music.  The acoustics in the huge atrium entrance are great and the notes pulled me over to listen to the end and thank the musician.

Our power, phone/internet went out during the windstorm a week ago Friday.  This downed cottonwood was the culprit.  Chugach Electric had the power back on the next morning when we woke up.  Alaska Communications took until Tuesday or Wednesday to come out and then they didn't have the equipment to fix it right, so while the phone line and internet are back on, the wire is lying on the ground and about two feet off the ground in some places I have to walk.  In what world is that acceptable?  Alaska Communications is so terrible!  The techs I have to call now and then and those who come out to the house are generally very good.  It's just the management that has promised me fiber every summer since 2023 and not delivered that pisses me off.  And the website that has the circle of death spinning hopelessly when I try to pay online, and then they charge me a %25 late fee because I couldn't pay online.  With no grace period.  None.  Visa emails me three days before to remind me to pay my bill.  ACS emails three days after it's due to say, "We screwed you again."  I'm ready to cut that cord forever.  

Got that off my chest.  

Our neighbor did hook us up to his power with a series of extension cords to power the refrigerator since we didn't know how long it was going to take to get the power back.  We decided to go to Queen of Sheba for dinner that night.  Here's David, the owner and chef, chatting with us after our meal.  

Ethiopian food is truly special and delicious.  Anchorage folks, go eat there and keep them in business.  The prices are reasonable for this day and age.  

It's between Northern Lights and Benson - on Dawson.  

So, probably this should have been three or four blog post spread over the week.  

But I'm not done.  I've been reading several books at once, but I'll just highlight Caraval.  This was a recommendation from my 12 year old granddaughter.  When I told her I was number 25 on the waiting list at Loussac Library, she said, "I told you that you'll never get it."

But I got an email saying it was mine to pick up.  I understand why people read it.  Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger of sorts.  And I think the author has synesthesia, because every feeling is associated with a color, some vibrating.  Lots more descriptions of odors than you normally see too.  And I don't think Nancy Drew ever had chills from the touch of a young man's bare chest leaning against her. 

I'd say this teen fiction is the gateway drug to adult romance fiction.  

Moving along - I'm still overwhelmed with the barrage of outrageous statements and actions spewing from the White House.  Here are a few images that I've saved as I try to find new ways to ask my junior US Senator how long he thinks he can wade in this filth before he is sucked under completely.  He gleefully points at what he sees as 'wins' for Alaska, while the president tramples the constitution by kidnapping people off the streets, invading US cities with our military, ignoring judge's orders, bombing boaters in international waters, gerrymandering Texas to squeeze out Democratic house seats, and on and on and on.  I didn't even mention Epstein.  And Dan Sullivan turns a blind eye to all of that in exchange for some oil drilling permits.  

My previous post was on the normalization of the word normalization.  Nothing could illustrate that point better than this post by His Travesty.   

What previous president could have done something like this and not been impeached?  Some say it's just 'a humorous bit' but I did a paper on government humor once.  What I learned was that government humor that is self deprecating is fine, but government humor that punches down is NOT fine.  

And then his Vice Travesty defends another military operation off the coast of Venezuela:

Has anyone seen any evidence that these are cartel members (just like we haven't seen any evidence that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a member of Tren de Aragua gang)?

I copied this one for Labor Day.  We're back to the time when business owners could call on the government to bring in troops to break up labor unions.  And when I say 'break up' I mean that literally.  But they stood in solidarity until they won their rights which have benefited most of us.  (You know, 40 day weeks, paid overtime, health benefits, the right to grieve bad treatment, etc.)  We have to be as brave and persistent now to prevent what's happening today.  

I don't believe ignorance is greater now than it was.  But the propaganda forces of the fascists have powerfully taken advantage of that ignorance, and the latent fears of white America.  They've taken all the damage to the working classes done by exporting jobs and increasing the income gap and blamed it on Black people and immigrants.  

 I remember when the first polio vaccines became available and we got poked at school.  My small pox vaccine scar no longer really shows, but I was inoculated.  

Public health programs have saved more lives than medical treatment of individuals.   As I look for good links to explain the importance of public health to society, I see that some of the most important public health initiatives - clean water and sewage systems - are so taken for granted that they aren't even mentioned.  But we haven't always had clean water and sewage systems.  And parts of the world still don't have them.  

President Nixon famously had an enemies list.  But no president has ever, so blatantly used the powers of the federal government to go after his perceived enemies.  The president is publicly telling the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute people who oppose him.  And as a blogger, I found this cartoon a bit close to home.  

I tell myself I'm just a tiny voice out in the wilderness and they have much bigger targets than me.  But I also notice that Google says my recent posts have way more hits that I usually get.  Stat Counter has always shown far fewer hits than Google, but they also track individual visitors.  I can't tell if I really have more hits or whether there are more bots.  In times past when there were lots more hits, it looked like someone scraping my blog for content, and more recently for AI.  But when that happens you can see a single user going to thirty or more different pages per day.  So many hits on a single page is different.  

In any case, I want people to stay strong and be engaged in fighting this regime to preserve our democracy (not to mention our health and economy and general well being.)  Do what you can.  And take breaks to laugh, enjoy nature, good friends.   Find like minded people.  And know your rights.  

And a teaser for a post I hope to put up this week.  

From Animalspot.net

A Little Hannah Arendt For Labor Day

 "With the term vita active, I propose to designate three fundamental human activities:  labor, work, and action.  They are fundamental because each corresponds to one of the
basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to man.

Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body, who's spontaneous growth, metabolism, and eventually decay are bound to the vital necessities  produced and fed into the life process by labor.  The human condition of labor is life itself.

Work is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence, which is not imbedded in, and whose mortality is not compensated by, the species' ever-recurring life cycle.  Work provides an "artificial" world of things, distinctly different from all natural surroundings.  Wthin its borders each imdividual life is housed, which this world itself is meant to outlast and transcend them all.  The human condition of work is wordliness.

Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.  While all aspects of the human condition are somehow related to politics, this plurality is specifically the condition - not only the conditio sine qua non, but the  conditio per quam -  of all political life.  Thus the language of the Romans, perhaps the most political people we have known, used the words "to live" and "to be among men" (inter homines esse) or "to die" and "to cease to be among men" (inter homines esse desinere) as synonyms."

Later, she elaborates on the distinction between labor and work.

"THE LABOUR OF OUR BODY AND THE WORK OF OUR HANDS"

"The distinction btween labor and work which I propose is unusual.  The phenomenal evidence in its favor is too striking to be ignored, and yet historically it is a fact that apart from a few scattered remarks, which moreover were never developed even in the theories of their authors, there's is hardly anything in either the pre-modern tradition of political thought or in the large boy of modern labor theories to support it.  Against this scarcity of historical evidence, however, stands one very articulate and obstinate testimony, namel, the simple fact that every European language, ancient and modern, contains two etymologically unrelated word for what we have to come to think of as the same activity, and rtains them in the face of their persistent synonymous usage."

"Thus Locke's distinction between working hands and a labouring body is somewhat reminiscent of the ancient Gree distinction between the cheirotechnēs, the craftsman, to whom the German Handwerker corresponds, and those who, like "slaves and tame animals with their bodies minister to the necessities of life," . . .

I thought I would find an easy passage from Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition that would clearly distinguish between work and labor on this Labor Day.  But I forgot that Arendt makes my blog posts seem like extremely shallow tweets. But it seemed to be a fitting thought exercise for Labor Day.  

When Is A Crossroad Just A Copied Fork In The Road Dishonestly Promoted?

 With mail in voting, there really is no such thing as election day any more.  It's an election period with a deadline.  And so we're in that period in Anchorage in mayoral runoff.  If we had ranked choice voting, it would have all been over at the end of the original election.  

In any case, I got this flyer (among many others) the other day.

Cross roads, I thought.  When roads cross.  Like an intersection.  But this is really a fork in the road. One road becomes two.  No roads cross.  But, no matter.  Truth, accuracy, literacy all those things have been abandoned by about 30% of the public.  A crossroads - "a" before "crossroads" is a bit like a fingernail on a blackboard to me - is whatever Dave Bronson wants it to be.  

There was also a bit deja vu.  I'd seen this picture before.  And it took less than a minute to pull it up via google.  

This is John Kasich making the same point when he opposed Donald Trump.  Recycling old campaign ads is an old political habit.  

And then I read the ad from Bronson.  Sorry, the resolution is probably too low for people to read it. It's a quote ranting against Forrest Dunbar, Bronson's opponent signed by "Todd Peplow, President of Local 71."

That seemed odd.  Why would a public employee union be supporting a candidate who has promised to cut every department except police?  I even considered calling the union to ask.  But lots of things were already on my mental to do list.  

But then I saw a Tweet.

A clarification is made. The mailer from Bronson falsely claims Local 71 supports him.

As you do anything is how you do everything. Mr Bronson fails to be honest in his dealings.
https://t.co/DwRN5687Ks

— Christopher Constant (@akartisan) May 7, 2021

The link goes to a letter from Jordan A. Adams, Business Manager/Secretary-Treasurer, Local 71 the union.  In part, it says:

"Today, I find myself in the unfortunate position of informing you that your recent mailer quoting Todd Peplow constituted an unauthorized and invalid endorsement, which must be corrected. To be clear: Public Employees Local 71 has not endorsed your candidacy, and I must correct this misinformation publicly.

In utilizing his official title and purporting to speak for “hundreds of union members,” Mr. Peplow has violated our LIUNA Constitution, longstanding protocols for candidate discussions, accepted procedures, and the expressed direction of both our Executive Board and General Membership provided to him following extensive debate on 13 March 2021 and 17 April 2021."

It's a long letter that says they don't go out looking for candidates, but if candidates come to them, they will review their platforms and make decisions about donations and endorsements and that Bronson never came to them.  

One might give Bronson the benefit of the doubt here.  After all, the president of the union gave him the endorsement.  Shouldn't that be good enough?  This is a problem for the union, not the candidate. Part of me says, 'yeah, that's plausible.'

But, reading the letter again, I don't think so.  

"Unfortunately, the only arguments Mr. Peplow has brought to our membership to deny Mr. Dunbar support have been based on his personal non-union issues related to lifestyle and actions of Mr. Dunbar’s family.  Had he made enough of a case to support your candidacy, our membership would have taken action to do so a mere two weeks prior to Mr. Peplow acting on his own and disregarding our members direction that they approve all endorsements."

This sure sounds like Peplow did try to get the union to endorse Bronson and the union turned him down.  I'd be surprised if Bronson didn't know that was going on.  And then when Peplow failed to get the endorsement for Bronson, he just went rogue and said, "I'll just put my name on it.  What is anyone going to do about?"  

And, if something like that happened, he wouldn't be wrong.  There's really no serious penalties for violating the Alaska Public Offices Commission rules.  A $10,000 fine would be unusual, but it's like an ad buy for some candidates.  Part of the cost of the election.  

If Bronson is elected mayor of Anchorage, we're screwed.  We got Trump nationally.  We got Dunleavy for the state, and now there's Bronson hoping to be mayor.  His greatest claims to fame in the public arena are fighting gay rights, fighting women's right to choose what they do with their own bodies, and fighting efforts to minimize the impact of COVID-19.  

 

Netflix and Unions - So Far So Good

LA Times article by Wendy Lee  

"As Hollywood’s major unions gird for potentially contentious contract negotiations with the major studios, streaming giant Netflix is moving to hash out its own labor deals that could give it a competitive advantage in the event of a strike.
This summer Netflix negotiated its first overall agreement with actors union SAG-AFTRA. Last month the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the union that represents Hollywood’s craftspeople and technical workers, revealed it will negotiate its own contract with Netflix. And labor experts expect other Hollywood unions will seek their separate agreements with the streaming giant. . . 

Netflix has the ability to go it alone in labor negotiations because unlike Hollywood studios such as Disney — as well as tech rivals Apple and Amazon — it does not belong to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the collective bargaining group that represents studios in negotiations with unions representing actors, writers and directors.
As a result, Netflix would not be subject to any contract dispute that erupts between the unions and the studios should they fail to reach agreement on new film and TV contracts — all of which expire next spring or early summer. Writers, actors and directors could continue to work on Netflix shows even if they staged a walkout with members of the producers alliance.

As a Netflix subscriber, this is good news.  Not only do we get lots of good movies, but it turns out I'm supporting a company that, for now anyway, has a healthy understanding of unions.  But if they heads of Netflix watch the movies I see there, then one would expect a positive attitude toward unions.

But I won't assume that things will always be this way.  As corporations get larger and more powerful, they often forget their original values.  

A Look Back At The Jungle On This Labor Day - We've Come Far, But We're Slipping Back To How Things Were

It's Labor Day.  And as the president foments anti-immigrant anger and violence, and unions are weaker than they've been in over 50 years, it's probably important to remind people why we have unions in the first place.

So here are some excerpts from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle which was first published in 1906.  It follows Jurgis a strong young Lithuanian immigrant as he goes from confident innocent to experienced bitterness.  You can read the whole book online here.   It takes place is the stockyards of Chicago.

This may help people understand why people risked their lives to create and join unions.  And why the Kochs (what do we say now that only one of the brothers is still living?) and Waltons other wealthy business owners have fought them - so they could do as they wished despite the misery it caused their employees, who are simply expendable.  And this story also shows us why factories today still employ millions of undocumented workers - because the workers are desperate and compliant so they won't be deported.  It's also a story of why we can't trust for-profit companies to police themselves - for worker safety, fairness, or food safety either.

The owners of the factory Sinclair depicts are no different from how our president behaves - ruthless and entitled.

What made all this the more painful was that it was so hard on the few
that had really done their best. There was poor old ponas Jokubas, for
instance--he had already given five dollars, and did not every one know
that Jokubas Szedvilas had just mortgaged his delicatessen store for two
hundred dollars to meet several months' overdue rent? And then there was
withered old poni Aniele--who was a widow, and had three children, and
the rheumatism besides, and did washing for the tradespeople on Halsted
Street at prices it would break your heart to hear named. Aniele had
given the entire profit of her chickens for several months. Eight of
them she owned, and she kept them in a little place fenced around on her
backstairs. All day long the children of Aniele were raking in the dump
for food for these chickens; and sometimes, when the competition there
was too fierce, you might see them on Halsted Street walking close to
the gutters, and with their mother following to see that no one robbed
them of their finds. Money could not tell the value of these chickens
to old Mrs. Jukniene--she valued them differently, for she had a feeling
that she was getting something for nothing by means of them--that with
them she was getting the better of a world that was getting the better
of her in so many other ways.

Chapter 2

Jurgis talked lightly about work, because he was young. They told him
stories about the breaking down of men, there in the stockyards of
Chicago, and of what had happened to them afterward--stories to make
your flesh creep, but Jurgis would only laugh. He had only been there
four months, and he was young, and a giant besides. There was too much
health in him. He could not even imagine how it would feel to be beaten.
“That is well enough for men like you,” he would say, “silpnas, puny
fellows--but my back is broad.”
Jurgis was like a boy, a boy from the country. He was the sort of man
the bosses like to get hold of, the sort they make it a grievance they
cannot get hold of. When he was told to go to a certain place, he would
go there on the run. When he had nothing to do for the moment, he would
stand round fidgeting, dancing, with the overflow of energy that was
in him. If he were working in a line of men, the line always moved
too slowly for him, and you could pick him out by his impatience and
restlessness. That was why he had been picked out on one important
occasion; for Jurgis had stood outside of Brown and Company's “Central
Time Station” not more than half an hour, the second day of his arrival
in Chicago, before he had been beckoned by one of the bosses. Of this he
was very proud, and it made him more disposed than ever to laugh at the
pessimists. In vain would they all tell him that there were men in that
crowd from which he had been chosen who had stood there a month--yes,
many months--and not been chosen yet. “Yes,” he would say, “but what
sort of men? Broken-down tramps and good-for-nothings, fellows who have
spent all their money drinking, and want to get more for it. Do you want
me to believe that with these arms”--and he would clench his fists and
hold them up in the air, so that you might see the rolling muscles--“that
with these arms people will ever let me starve?”
.....
Yet, when they saw the home of the Widow Jukniene they could not but
recoil, even so, in all their journey they had seen nothing so bad as
this. Poni Aniele had a four-room flat in one of that wilderness of
two-story frame tenements that lie “back of the yards.” There were four
such flats in each building, and each of the four was a “boardinghouse”
 for the occupancy of foreigners--Lithuanians, Poles, Slovaks, or
Bohemians. Some of these places were kept by private persons, some were
cooperative. There would be an average of half a dozen boarders to each
room--sometimes there were thirteen or fourteen to one room, fifty
or sixty to a flat. Each one of the occupants furnished his own
accommodations--that is, a mattress and some bedding. The mattresses
would be spread upon the floor in rows--and there would be nothing else
in the place except a stove. It was by no means unusual for two men
to own the same mattress in common, one working by day and using it by
night, and the other working at night and using it in the daytime. Very
frequently a lodging house keeper would rent the same beds to double
shifts of men.

One of the first problems that Jurgis ran upon was that of the unions.
He had had no experience with unions, and he had to have it explained
to him that the men were banded together for the purpose of fighting
for their rights. Jurgis asked them what they meant by their rights, a
question in which he was quite sincere, for he had not any idea of any
rights that he had, except the right to hunt for a job, and do as he was
told when he got it. Generally, however, this harmless question would
only make his fellow workingmen lose their tempers and call him a fool.
There was a delegate of the butcher-helpers' union who came to see
Jurgis to enroll him; and when Jurgis found that this meant that he
would have to part with some of his money, he froze up directly, and the
delegate, who was an Irishman and only knew a few words of Lithuanian,
lost his temper and began to threaten him. In the end Jurgis got into a
fine rage, and made it sufficiently plain that it would take more than
one Irishman to scare him into a union. Little by little he gathered
that the main thing the men wanted was to put a stop to the habit of
“speeding-up”; they were trying their best to force a lessening of the
pace, for there were some, they said, who could not keep up with it,
whom it was killing. But Jurgis had no sympathy with such ideas as
this--he could do the work himself, and so could the rest of them, he
declared, if they were good for anything. If they couldn't do it, let
them go somewhere else. Jurgis had not studied the books, and he would
not have known how to pronounce “laissez faire”; but he had been round
the world enough to know that a man has to shift for himself in it,
and that if he gets the worst of it, there is nobody to listen to him
holler.

Yet there have been known to be philosophers and plain men who swore
by Malthus in the books, and would, nevertheless, subscribe to a relief
fund in time of a famine. It was the same with Jurgis, who consigned the
unfit to destruction, while going about all day sick at heart because
of his poor old father, who was wandering somewhere in the yards begging
for a chance to earn his bread. Old Antanas had been a worker ever since
he was a child; he had run away from home when he was twelve, because
his father beat him for trying to learn to read. And he was a faithful
man, too; he was a man you might leave alone for a month, if only you
had made him understand what you wanted him to do in the meantime. And
now here he was, worn out in soul and body, and with no more place in
the world than a sick dog. He had his home, as it happened, and some one
who would care for him if he never got a job; but his son could not help
thinking, suppose this had not been the case. Antanas Rudkus had been
into every building in Packingtown by this time, and into nearly every
room; he had stood mornings among the crowd of applicants till the very
policemen had come to know his face and to tell him to go home and give
it up. He had been likewise to all the stores and saloons for a mile
about, begging for some little thing to do; and everywhere they had
ordered him out, sometimes with curses, and not once even stopping to
ask him a question.

Jurgis would find out these things for himself, if he stayed there long
enough; it was the men who had to do all the dirty jobs, and so there
was no deceiving them; and they caught the spirit of the place, and did
like all the rest. Jurgis had come there, and thought he was going to
make himself useful, and rise and become a skilled man; but he would
soon find out his error--for nobody rose in Packingtown by doing good
work. You could lay that down for a rule--if you met a man who was
rising in Packingtown, you met a knave. That man who had been sent to
Jurgis' father by the boss, he would rise; the man who told tales
and spied upon his fellows would rise; but the man who minded his own
business and did his work--why, they would “speed him up” till they had
worn him out, and then they would throw him into the gutter.
One day a man slipped and hurt his leg; and that afternoon, when the
last of the cattle had been disposed of, and the men were leaving,
Jurgis was ordered to remain and do some special work which this injured
man had usually done. It was late, almost dark, and the government
inspectors had all gone, and there were only a dozen or two of men on
the floor. That day they had killed about four thousand cattle, and
these cattle had come in freight trains from far states, and some of
them had got hurt. There were some with broken legs, and some with gored
sides; there were some that had died, from what cause no one could
say; and they were all to be disposed of, here in darkness and silence.
“Downers,” the men called them; and the packing house had a special
elevator upon which they were raised to the killing beds, where the gang
proceeded to handle them, with an air of businesslike nonchalance which
said plainer than any words that it was a matter of everyday routine. It
took a couple of hours to get them out of the way, and in the end Jurgis
saw them go into the chilling rooms with the rest of the meat, being
carefully scattered here and there so that they could not be identified.

When he came home that night he was in a very somber mood, having begun
to see at last how those might be right who had laughed at him for his
faith in America.
The men upon the killing beds felt also the effects of the slump which
had turned Marija out; but they felt it in a different way, and a way
which made Jurgis understand at last all their bitterness. The big
packers did not turn their hands off and close down, like the canning
factories; but they began to run for shorter and shorter hours. They had
always required the men to be on the killing beds and ready for work at
seven o'clock, although there was almost never any work to be done till
the buyers out in the yards had gotten to work, and some cattle had come
over the chutes. That would often be ten or eleven o'clock, which was
bad enough, in all conscience; but now, in the slack season, they would
perhaps not have a thing for their men to do till late in the afternoon.
And so they would have to loaf around, in a place where the thermometer
might be twenty degrees below zero! At first one would see them running
about, or skylarking with each other, trying to keep warm; but before
the day was over they would become quite chilled through and exhausted,
and, when the cattle finally came, so near frozen that to move was an
agony. And then suddenly the place would spring into activity, and the
merciless “speeding-up” would begin!

There were weeks at a time when Jurgis went home after such a day as
this with not more than two hours' work to his credit--which meant about
thirty-five cents. There were many days when the total was less than
half an hour, and others when there was none at all. The general average
was six hours a day, which meant for Jurgis about six dollars a week;
and this six hours of work would be done after standing on the killing
bed till one o'clock, or perhaps even three or four o'clock, in the
afternoon. Like as not there would come a rush of cattle at the very
end of the day, which the men would have to dispose of before they went
home, often working by electric light till nine or ten, or even twelve
or one o'clock, and without a single instant for a bite of supper. The
men were at the mercy of the cattle. Perhaps the buyers would be holding
off for better prices--if they could scare the shippers into thinking
that they meant to buy nothing that day, they could get their own terms.
For some reason the cost of fodder for cattle in the yards was much
above the market price--and you were not allowed to bring your own
fodder! Then, too, a number of cars were apt to arrive late in the day,
now that the roads were blocked with snow, and the packers would buy
their cattle that night, to get them cheaper, and then would come into
play their ironclad rule, that all cattle must be killed the same day
they were bought. There was no use kicking about this--there had been
one delegation after another to see the packers about it, only to be
told that it was the rule, and that there was not the slightest chance
of its ever being altered. And so on Christmas Eve Jurgis worked till
nearly one o'clock in the morning, and on Christmas Day he was on the
killing bed at seven o'clock.

All this was bad; and yet it was not the worst. For after all the hard
work a man did, he was paid for only part of it. Jurgis had once been
among those who scoffed at the idea of these huge concerns cheating;
and so now he could appreciate the bitter irony of the fact that it was
precisely their size which enabled them to do it with impunity. One of
the rules on the killing beds was that a man who was one minute late
was docked an hour; and this was economical, for he was made to work the
balance of the hour--he was not allowed to stand round and wait. And on
the other hand if he came ahead of time he got no pay for that--though
often the bosses would start up the gang ten or fifteen minutes before
the whistle. And this same custom they carried over to the end of the
day; they did not pay for any fraction of an hour--for “broken time.” A
man might work full fifty minutes, but if there was no work to fill out
the hour, there was no pay for him. Thus the end of every day was a
sort of lottery--a struggle, all but breaking into open war between
the bosses and the men, the former trying to rush a job through and
the latter trying to stretch it out. Jurgis blamed the bosses for this,
though the truth to be told it was not always their fault; for the
packers kept them frightened for their lives--and when one was in danger
of falling behind the standard, what was easier than to catch up
by making the gang work awhile “for the church”? This was a savage
witticism the men had, which Jurgis had to have explained to him. Old
man Jones was great on missions and such things, and so whenever they
were doing some particularly disreputable job, the men would wink at
each other and say, “Now we're working for the church!”

One of the consequences of all these things was that Jurgis was no
longer perplexed when he heard men talk of fighting for their rights.
He felt like fighting now himself; and when the Irish delegate of the
butcher-helpers' union came to him a second time, he received him in a
far different spirit. A wonderful idea it now seemed to Jurgis, this
of the men--that by combining they might be able to make a stand and
conquer the packers! Jurgis wondered who had first thought of it; and
when he was told that it was a common thing for men to do in America, he
got the first inkling of a meaning in the phrase “a free country.” The
delegate explained to him how it depended upon their being able to get
every man to join and stand by the organization, and so Jurgis signified
that he was willing to do his share. Before another month was by, all
the working members of his family had union cards, and wore their union
buttons conspicuously and with pride. For fully a week they were quite
blissfully happy, thinking that belonging to a union meant an end to all
their troubles.

How are things today?  Here's from a 2006 PBS look at meat packing in the US from the days of The Jungle until today:

"Today, America's meat industry is the nation's largest agricultural sector and sales of meat and poultry exceed $100 billion a year in the U.S. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the animal slaughtering and processing industry employed a total of 506,000 people at the close of 2005. The average earnings of production workers that year was $11.47 an hour, about 30 percent less than the average wage for all manufacturing jobs in the U.S. According to REAP, a union-affiliated group, union membership among meat packing employees has plunged from 80 percent in 1980 to less than 50 percent today.
The face of the average meatpacking plant worker has also changed. Over the past two decades, the number of immigrant laborers in meat packing plants—and in the Midwestern areas in which they are primarily located—has increased dramatically. According to the USDA, the percentage of Hispanic meat-processing workers rose from less than 10 percent in 1980 to nearly 30 percent in 2000."

[UPDATE 2:30pm:  KS offers a link to an Atlantic article on current labor conditions.   ]

Working Conditions of Some Folks Who Feed Your Electronic Media Habits

Some pieces on the less visible side of our rapid adoption of electronic media.

Computer Games - From Real Life

"During a quarterly earnings call on February 11, Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard — one of the biggest companies in video games, publicly traded with a market cap of about $35 billion — announced excellent news for investors: His company had just completed a “record year” of revenue. But then he had even better news for them: Activision Blizzard was set to lay off 8 percent of their workforce, to further increase shareholder margins, meaning 800 employees would be losing their jobs.
The cycles of extreme crunch and job churn have meant that game employees often burn out after a few years in games: In 2017, the industry had the highest turnover rate of any in the country. Games companies are not troubled by this, because they bank on the aura that their products and their fan communities give them. The idealism and passion of the young people who come to games hoping to work in a field that inspires them and brings them joy end up making them ripe for exploitation, a pattern many young writers, actors, and musicians might recognize. At so-called triple-A studios like Rockstar or Ubisoft, they get chewed up and spit out in the name of creating an expensive few hours of pleasure for middle-class consumers."

Casey Newton's The Trauma Floor:  The Secret Lives of Facebook Moderators in America, tells the story of contract workers who screen FB posts to eliminate inappropriate posts.  It starts of at a training session:

"For this portion of her education, Chloe will have to moderate a Facebook post in front of her fellow trainees. When it’s her turn, she walks to the front of the room, where a monitor displays a video that has been posted to the world’s largest social network. None of the trainees have seen it before, Chloe included. She presses play.
The video depicts a man being murdered. Someone is stabbing him, dozens of times, while he screams and begs for his life. Chloe’s job is to tell the room whether this post should be removed. She knows that section 13 of the Facebook community standards prohibits videos that depict the murder of one or more people. When Chloe explains this to the class, she hears her voice shaking." 

The piece goes on to talk about how these employees are NOT really FB employees and their pay and working conditions are much different from those in Menlo Park. Interviews with a number of former and current employees reveals high mental health problems, with sex and drugs a common way to cope.  While there are counselors, they aren't there all the time.   A long section in the middle discusses the difficulty of interpreting the rules for what is allowable and what isn't.  As you can imagine there is a fine balancing act between not offending people and not being overly protective.

"In some cases, the company has been criticized for not doing enough — as when United Nations investigators found that it had been complicit in spreading hate speech during the genocide of the Rohingya community in Myanmar. In others, it has been criticized for overreach — as when a moderator removed a post that excerpted the Declaration of Independence. (Thomas Jefferson was ultimately granted a posthumous exemption to Facebook’s speech guidelines, which prohibit the use of the phrase 'Indian savages.')"

The scores employees get keeps track of their accuracy.

Eventually gets to tour the Phoenix workplace under controlled conditions where employees say things aren't as bad as he's been led to believe.


And finally (for this post anyway) (and a slightly different focus)  "AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld" in Wired, by Kevin Kelly.  This begins with a description of AR as experienced by Mythbusters' Adam Savage:

“I turned it on and I could hear a whale,” he says, “but I couldn’t see it. I’m looking around my office for it. And then it swims by my windows—on the outside of my building! So the glasses scanned my room and it knew that my windows were portals and it rendered the whale as if it were swimming down my street. I actually got choked up.” 

Kelly gives an overview.  (Wired assumes everyone knows what AR means and doesn't define it.  But I suspect not all my readers do.  It stands for Augmented Reality.)

"The first big technology platform was the web, which digitized information, subjecting knowledge to the power of algorithms; it came to be dominated by Google. The second great platform was social media, running primarily on mobile phones. It digitized people and subjected human behavior and relationships to the power of algorithms, and it is ruled by Facebook and WeChat.
We are now at the dawn of the third platform, which will digitize the rest of the world. On this platform, all things and places will be machine-­readable, subject to the power of algorithms. Whoever dominates this grand third platform will become among the wealthiest and most powerful people and companies in history, just as those who now dominate the first two platforms have. Also, like its predecessors, this new platform will unleash the prosperity of thousands more companies in its ecosystem, and a million new ideas—and problems—that weren’t possible before machines could read the world."

So what?

Every new technology inherently brings change to the society that adopts it.  I remember reading about an indigenous group of people's first contact with foreigners, who gave metal hatchets to people in the group.  The possession of tools like these had been restricted by tradition to village leaders.  Now everyone had such a tool and the whole social order of the community fell apart.

We've been on an incredible technology ride as we adopt one new technology after another with very little concern for how these technologies have and will impact us.  Digital imagery manipulation has destroyed the idea of photos and videos as reliable evidence of truth.  And the internet is currently being used to further destroy any notion of a provable truth.  Democracy requires a level of agreement on what is true.

But aside from the content of the internet and how it influences our world views, there is also the impact of how the technology is produced - the materials, the work settings, wealth redistribution.  And capitalism itself makes it hard to control the impacts of new technology.  Cloning and genetic modification of humans will happen (have happened?) despite strong ethical concerns.  Capitalists supply what they think they can profit from.  We know, for example, the free market plays a key role in the extinction of species - either because some part of them is valued like rhinoceros horns, or because their habitat is destroyed as a side-effect (externality) of resource development and the unregulated dumping of waste.

Before you give up because you think the problems are too great to solve, remember your own consumption and waste management strategies.  Talk about the side effects of computer games with your friends and relatives who made Activision Blizzard a $35 billion! company.

"Yes, the lips pay, but notice how trumpet players usually have an exaggerated vein going up their forehead." The Costs Of Perfection

I recommend listening to the video while you read this.  (I realize that Coltrane isn't a mass consumption product, but some of my readers must know this music.)




The following comes from an LA Times commentary by The Doors original drummer,  John Densmore, on the price musicians pay to master their craft.  He's also in a documentary coming out on Coltrane.

"Coltrane was one of the first tenor players to switch from the old plastic, black mouthpieces that made Coleman Hawkins famous to the silver metal ones. The old plastic ones were bigger and usually produced a heavy vibrato sound, whereas the new metal ones were smaller and elicited a more narrow tone.
The space for air to come into the horn is smaller (like the trumpet), and the trap of metal mouthpieces is to produce a “cold,” or modern, sound. JC chose to use a No. 5 reed (the wooden piece under the mouthpiece that vibrates), to counteract that problem; No. 5s are very hard pieces of wood.
That forced John to dig deeper into his abdomen for more air, but it produced a warmer sound. Hard work, but he was reaching for something new.
It turned into a simply gorgeous sound, full of empathy, passion and every emotion in the human condition — from the rage over four girls killed in the bombing of a church in a song called “Alabama” to the gentle feeling of photosynthesis in “After the Rain.”
Coltrane is so in my blood. Every time I go outside after a storm, I “hear” that melody."

He acknowledges other occupations also take their toll.  He mentions Sandy Koufax's elbow and offered this tribute to construction workers.  But in the end, he thinks it's worth it.

You know what, though? It’s all worth it. If you have to contort muscles to produce whatever you’re working on, so be it. That’s why high-rise buildings should have a plaque outside on the wall listing all the workers who built those skyscrapers … all of them.
And hopefully readers of this will have a new understanding and respect for the toll musicians pay for the love of their craft.

I've often wondered if the toll many Olympic athletes have to pay, or the children in China who are identified early and plucked out of their families to train to become perfect gymnasts or dancers, is worth it.   Yes, virtuosity is thrilling both for the performer and the audience, but is it worth giving up so much that encompasses being human?  I suspect the answer is different for different people.  We give up some things and gain others.   Many people have developed no skill at all and still live lives of pain, so why not go for it?  Or would we be better off in balance with nature and follow the Greeks' advice on the golden mean?  I think true artists push themselves in their pursuits of perfection.  It's what they have to do.

In any case, think about the people who built that skyscraper, who sewed your pants, worked on your microwave and your cell phone.  And enjoy the music, since it cost the musicians a great deal.

The title quote also comes from the article.

Painting Beauty On A Wall

We went to the UCLA hazardous waste drop-off this morning and saw these guys actually painting this Beauty and the Beast billboard onto the side of the building.

If you enlarge the one below (click on it) you can barely see the lines on the wall where they are supposed to paint.

Glad to see that these painters haven't been replaced by a giant ink-jet printer.

University of Alaska Presidential Search: Your Reading Assignment Before Johnsen Visits

The single candidate for president of the University of Alaska, Jim Johnsen, will visit Anchorage July 8, 2015.  There will be forums for different constituents all day long.  That includes members of the general public as well (that one is at 4:30 - 6:30 in the new Corporate Sponsored Sports Center.)  Here's the schedule for all three campus visits.

The vibes I'm getting suggest that, contrary to many people's original assumption that this was a done deal, it apparently isn't. (More on that in another post.)  The regents, it seems, do need to hear from the public before they make their final decision.  So people who are in town - community folks as well as university folks - should meet the candidate, make their conclusions, and send feedback to the regents.

I did read Johnsen's resume when it was posted in early June.  I suggest you do too. 

The resume lists three "selected publications."   When I couldn't find them online, I contacted the reference librarian at the Consortium Library.  She couldn't find them either.  She did contact Johnsen and he quickly sent them to me.

Now I see that the Regents' website lists them as well.  Actually, he only listed three as 'publications.' 'Interest Based Bargaining' and 'Reengaging' are listed under Selected Research and Professional Presentations.  You can (and should) read them yourselves and determine if they fit your definition of a 'publication.'

Selected Publications

Jim Johnsen

• The Essential Elements of a Faculty Collective Bargaining Agreement in Higher Education
• Innovation in Faculty Collective Bargaining
• The Restructuring of the University of Alaska System

Selected Research and Professional Presentations (the resume lists more than these two.)

• Interest Based Bargaining with a Faculty Union (pt1)
• Interest Based Bargaining with a Faculty Union (pt2)
• Reengaging the University 1998-2002

Nearly all the papers I've read so far are directly taken from his work experience.  There's very little breadth,  but given that he was working full time in Alaska while he was getting his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania's Higher Education Management program, it's probably not surprising. 

Additionally, you might find his doctoral dissertation interesting as well.  Leadership in Context: A Case Study Of Presidential Effectiveness In A State University System  looks at Johnsen's boss for a number of years  - Mark Hamilton - as the effective leader in the title.  I'm not sure whether you need a UAA library card to get this particular link.  I think anyone with any Alaskan library card should be able to get to it through their librarian if not directly online.  It's in ProQuest dissertations.

There's a lot to read, especially over the July 4th weekend.   I'd suggest people in the university find three or four other folks they can share the work with - people both in and outside the university. 

TSA Guy Wasn't Happy About Possible Homeland Security Budget Failure

As Congress appears close to at least temporarily approving the Homeland Security budget, I am reminded of a conversation I had last week as we were leaving Anchorage.

As I was gathering my stuff from the security conveyor belt in the airport in Anchorage, one of the TSA workers was complaining, in an irritated tone, about the possibility of Congress not passing the Homeland Security budget.  When I asked him his key concerns he said they'd have to work without pay.  I asked why not just stay home?  It's part of our contract that we have to come to work, even if we aren't getting paid.  (I couldn't find the contract* on line and the AFGE hasn't returned my call.)

Last time the government shut down, he said, when they finally got paid - they missed a pay period - the amount was so much that a much larger chunk than normal was taken out for the IRS withholding.  For folks making under $40,000 a year, missing a paycheck and getting a smaller paycheck because of deductions is a big deal.

When members of congress want to make symbolic points, they don't always consider the many impacts those gestures have on real people.

*Finding a copy of the contract is proving a little difficult.  There are lots of articles about it eing signed, but so far no links to the contract itself.  The union AFGE talks about highlights, but I still haven't found a link to the contract.

        Ensures performance-rating payouts are based on a consistent assessment system.

        Guarantees we have safety standards and equipment that help protect you from risks like chemical exposure and extreme temperatures.

        Successfully expanded the parking subsidy program at participating airports
        Nearly doubled your TSA uniform allowance from $232.00 to $446.00 a year.

        Granted officers permission to wear jackets at the checkpoint and shorts in hot weather

        Stops TSA from denying leave without an appropriate reason or as a form of discipline.

        Allows TSA supervisors to excuse tardiness for up to 30 minutes.

        Creates rules for shift bids and a shift trade policy that all airports must follow.

        Learn more about what's in your Union contract

 The learn more link is just as vague.  Obviously the union isn't going to tout a provision that requires employees to come to work when they aren't assured of being paid.  

AIFF 2014: Saturday Schedule - Lots of Movies, No Bear Tooth

The second weekend, lots of movies, lots of hard choices.  But no Bear Tooth this weekend.  That's new this year.

Here's the grid for Saturday.  You can get it with live links here.

The only thing I'm absolutely sure of, is that I want to see the Animation program at 7pm.  And I've heard good things about The Barefoot Artist showing at 11am.  Appropriate Behavior is a figuring out who I am film about an Iranian-American lesbian.  It's funny and well done.  I've posted about 6 Bullets to Hell here.  A friend has challenged my problem with a gang rape and murder in the movie.  I'm not saying it doesn't fit in the movie, but I am saying that in general, movies that have violence against women as entertainment, aren't movies I want to see.  There are times when such events are part of the context of the movie that makes an important point.  My friend pointed out that a 14 year old is molested in WildLike too.  My response is that

• what we saw on screen was from the point of view of the victim
• it was suitably uncomfortable and creepy
• the film showed the long term negative consequences
• the situation was integral to the whole story which was about sexual abuse and its terrible consequences

Is a movie like 6 Bullets To Hell merely reflecting society?  Or do such movies model behavior for viewers as well as desensitize them to the fact that such actions are despicable?  Even if the movie then proceeds to portray the perps as the bad guys?   I don't know the answer to that.  I'm not for banning such scenes.  But I don't have to watch them and I hope others object to them as well.  This is NOT entertainment - and 6 Bullets To Hell, if not meant to be entertainment, is nothing at all.  

Sorry, didn't mean to go there, but I do think violence against women is a major problem in the world and in Alaska and it should be challenged when it's used as entertainment in films.

All The Time In The World is about a family of five that spends a year in the Yukon wilderness.  That's all I know about it.

A non-film event Saturday is the SAG-AFTRA seminar.  That stands for Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Actors.  It's intended to educate both actors and film makers on the role of the union is film making.  It's being put on by Ron Holmstrom.  Below is a video where he explains more:

I mistyped the date - as you can see above - but that led me to learning about using annotations in YouTube as you'll see if you watch the video.

Conservative Intellectual Yoga

Rooster Pose image from Martin Brading

It seems to me that some conservatives seem to be incredibly adept at intellectual yoga, in which they can twist their logic and the facts into very bizarre ways in order to support their  logically contradictory positions.



Point 1:  Hobby Lobby objects to paying for health insurance for employees that includes contraceptive coverage for women, saying the business owner's religious beliefs should trump a woman's right to non-discrimination, privacy.  Basically, they are saying they should not have to pay for a woman's contraception through their health care.  What about paying for treatment of STD's resulting from an employee's adultery?  Will women have to research company owners' religious beliefs before applying for a job to be sure the health care will cover her reproductive health needs?
And what about the company money paid to an employee that the employee uses to buy reproductive health care?  That's the company's money used for the same thing, just not through insurance.  Will companies be allowed to not hire women if they use contraceptives or might possibly have an abortion in the future and would spend part of the salary to pay for it?

Point 2:  The Georgia legislature passed a law that would allow gun owners to carry their weapons into bars and churches.   In this case, it seems that the rights of owners and churches who are pacifists for religious reasons would be superseded by gun owners' rights to bear arms.

So the same people (business owners and churches) whose rights are asserted in point one are ignored in point two for the higher right of bear tools designed to kill other human beings.  

Original yoga image from CNTV

It seems they are getting closer and closer to merging their heads and their nether parts.

A Mother Jones report shows how truly twisted things get:

Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).

And under the 'be careful what you wish for' category,  Mike Papantonio raises the question of whether the giving the religious belief of the owner import here would threaten the legal separation of the owner from the corporation opening owners to lawsuits for misdeeds of the corporation. 

At the heart of this, what you have is, you have Hobby Lobby saying, “We’re a corporation but we’re a devout Christian corporation. … If you follow that rationale, the separateness that usually distinguishes the owner of the corporation from the corporation [itself] is then destroyed. …

[Note:  I modified both images in Photoshop.  I also used Google's search by image to try to get to the original source of the photos.]

Assembly Repeals New Labor Law. Mayor Vetoes Their Vote

Anchorage Assembly Meeting - click to enlarge

The Assembly voted 7-4 to repeal Assembly Ordinance 37 which squeaked by last year after Assembly Chair Ernie Hall cut off public participation.  The ordinance pretty much gutted collective bargaining in Anchorage and Ernie Hall nearly got voted out of office by a write in candidate who came within several hundred votes after joining the campaign two weeks before the election.   Some have argued this was similar to the anti-union ordinances that have been pushed by the Koch brothers in places like Wisconsin.  It was a hugely divisive ordinance. 

Tonight, after a lot of testimony, the Assembly voted 7-4 to repeal the old ordinance.  This was possible because Tim Steele was elected over appointed Assembly person Cheryl Frasca and because Adam Trombley and Bill Starr, who both voted for the original legislation, tonight said there were flaws in the bill and they were willing to work with others to make a better ordinance.   Trombley and Starr voted with Dick Traini, Elvi Gray-Jackson, Paul Honeman (who was there by teleconference), Patrick Flynn, and Tim Steele. 

You can see all the Assembly profiles here. 

Mayor Sullivan (r)

However, as soon as the bill passed, the Mayor immediately vetoed it and had his veto already written, printed, and ready to hand out. 

The no votes sounded pretty adamant about their votes and to override the Mayor's veto requires eight votes.



Here's the veto.  I saved it as very big file so you can read it easily if you click on it.

For me the big question is why did Starr and Trombley change their votes?  Both were strongly supported by the mayor and have voted with him on most if not all critical votes.    Both said they were willing to meet with those who so strongly opposed 37 and work out a better ordinance.

Yet I can't help think that after watching how Ernie Hall almost got beaten in the last election - by a write-in candidate no less - that they are looking out for the next election in April 2014 when their terms expire.  They can say to the unions that they voted to repeal the ordinance.  And if they did their homework and counted the votes, they knew that the ordinance would stay in place with the mayor's veto.  Starr comes from Eagle River which tends to vote pretty conservatively, so perhaps that isn't his motive.  On the other hand, I don't know how many union voters live in Eagle River and Municipal elections don't have that much of a turnout usually.  Trombley represents East Anchorage which is a lot more volatile and former state legislator Pete Petersen has already said he was going to run against Trombley.

I generally stay away from Assembly meetings.  The ones I've gone to have sucked a lot of blogger time out of me.  If I went regularly I'd have no time for anything else.  We went to the discussion on democracy and the role of government upstairs, and after we stuck our heads in to see how things were going.   So I'm not completely clear on the timeline of this.  But a petition to repeal Ordinance 37 got enough signatures.   In a video interview I did with Assembly member Dick Traini during a break in the meeting [see below], he said the Assembly plans to put the repeal measure on the April municipal ballot.  He also says the mayor plans to veto that, but he's sure the Assembly will win in court.  The elections are handled by the Municipal Clerk who works for the Assembly, not the Mayor.




But if the ballot included repeal of 37, then a lot of union folks are sure to vote.  Municipal elections - especially when there is no mayoral race - have turnouts under 20%.

So Assembly members Trombley and Starr had some incentive to repeal the measure already.  That would keep it off the ballot and not as many union members would vote.  And this way they can say they already voted to repeal it.

Interesting dynamics.

[UPDATE Jan 18, 2014:  Judge sided with the Mayor on his ability to veto the vote.]