Obituaries Should Be Published At Least A Year Before People Die

 As I read the obituaries in the Anchorage Daily News, I come across people that I really, really wish I would have known and could have talked to about their apparently incredible lives.  Waiting until they are dead means I've missed the opportunity.  

And this thought was reinforced when I saw this note about Alfred Nobel's premature obituary:

"To prepare for your next cultural activity in Värmland, ask yourself this: what would you do if you read your own (accidental) obituary? In Alfred Nobel’s case, an obituary published by mistake on a French newspaper made him re-examine his whole life. See, the Swedish chemist held 355 different patents and one of them was for the invention of the dynamite. But after a long career producing firearms and weapons for sale, he decided he didn’t want his legacy to be “the merchant of death”. So he funneled all of his considerable fortune to form the Nobel Prize Institute, which awards 'outstanding contributions to humanity'”.

Not only do early obituaries give the living a chance to meet interesting people before they die, but, in Nobel's case, it gave him the opportunity to reflect on his life and legacy.  

There are a number of folks today who might be able to repair some of the damage they've done in the world if faced with their obituaries a year or more before they die. 

And then there are people who might be able to edit what their children write about them.  We could publish an obituary cliche list that people could use to be a bit more authentic.  First obituary cliche entry would be: "he married the love of his life."  

I ran across this excerpt at Culturetrip.tcom while trying to find out more about Värmland, the county where the Story of Gösta Berling takes place, preparation for Monday night's book club meeting. I've put up some quotes from Gösta Berling in the last post.

Bill Allen - My Respect For Him As A Pre-Modern Man In A Modern World

When I heard last week that Bill Allen had died, I immediately wanted to write a bit of a remembrance.  I sat through three different political corruption trials in 2007 and 2008 where he was a key witness for the prosecution.  He had already pleaded guilty and would explain each time how he had given money to different Alaskan GOP politicians so they would vote favorably for the oil industry, for his company VECO in particular.

I thought I had a post that spoke to the part I wanted to say.  But I couldn't find it.  

I just read Michael Carey's Anchorage Daily News opinion piece remembering Bill Allen, so I'll refer you to that.  I met Michael on the first or second day of the first of the trials.  He'd heard that the defendant had been a former student of mine and invited me to lunch.  I told him I couldn't talk about what I knew about Tom from my teacher-student relationship, but he still took me to lunch that day.  Michael's a good man and I appreciate his view on things.

Michael's article got me to look again back into the archives of this blog and I found what I was looking for.  It's in a post talking about the stories imbedded in the trail, in this case, cultural stories. I'd note my use of the term "pre-modern man."  This doesn't mean cave man.  It refers to the value systems prior to the Scientific Revolution and the application of science and rationality to agriculture, the production of goods, to medicine, and to government and law.  It was a time when family and power were the key things that mattered. 

From Pete Kott's Trial: The Underlying Stories September 15, 2007

"First, I would note that the main character in the trial so far has been Bill Allen. Pete Kott has said very little since the first day when the jury pool assembled and Kott stood up with the attorneys and introduced himself as "Pete Kott, the defendant." Since then he's been a quiet shadow sitting between his attorneys. Witness Rick Smith has a supporting role to Bill Allen. So let me try on this story as an interpretation of some of what is happening here in court.

We have a clash of two different cultures - a pre-modern, tribal world and a modern, legal world. In Bill Allen's world, as I tease it out of his words and behaviors, power and family are the main values. Loyalty is a second, but lower value. The law, the government, the legislature in particular are seen as either obstacles to be overcome or tools to get what you want. Allen is clearly an intelligent man. Coming from a poor family, as he told the story, where he and his family survived as 'pickers' of fruit and vegetables in Oregon, he often missed school to pick. He finally dropped out at 15 to earn money as an assistant welder. He has used his wits, his ability to work hard, and his ability to size up people, to create a business that earned between $750 million and $1 billion last year, according to his testimony. 

In the world he described, good and bad referred to how something would affect his business. Good legislation was legislation that would benefit - directly or indirectly - Veco's prospects. Good people were those who supported Allen and Veco. Money was a sign of power. And with money, this high school drop-out could show his power over the better educated. He could buy legislators. He paid Tom Anderson to be a consultant who did, apparently, very little for his monthly check. He paid for political polls for state legislative candidates. He handed out checks to legislators. They had audiences with Allen in the Baranof Hotel's Suite 604. But symbolically, he could really show his power by building the addition to Ted Stevens' house and by hiring Ted Stevens' son for $4000 a month to do "not a lot." The most senior Republican U.S. Senator was beholden to him. Surely, that's a sign of power. He even bought a newspaper - The Anchorage Times.  So all these educated people worked for him - a high school drop out who'd picked fruit as a child. 

Earlier in the trial, I'd thought perhaps loyalty was the main virtue in this world - the loyalty of the Pete Kotts. The loyalty of his Veco employees. He said he trusted Kott as a friend who would do whatever it took to support him. He told the court he'd put aside $10 million when Veco was sold, to support the loyal employees who'd worked for the company and made it what it was - not the executives, but the workers. 

But then I looked at the situation before me. Allen was the government's witness against his most loyal servant, Pete Kott. We've watched this tribal culture on HBO - in the Sopranos and in Rome. We see it in the car bombs of Baghdad. We even see it in the White House where the rule of law is trumped by the raw use of power, and the redacting of significant parts of the Constitution. If the rule of law has any meaning in this culture, it is might makes right. And when the FBI confronted Allen with hundreds of hours of secretly recorded audio and video tapes, he saw that their army of investigators and attorneys had more juice than Veco. In this conflict of power, the FBI had him by the balls, a graphic image that would say it all in Allen's world.   And to protect the ultimate core of a tribal culture, his family, he abandoned Kott and the others, to keep his family out of prison.  

This is not an immoral man. Rather this is a man who lives by a different code of right and wrong from the one that now judges him. Family and power come first. Loyalty to underlings comes next. He told the court he didn't expect anything from the Government for his testimony. He recognized their power, and in their place he would not treat his vanquished with 'fairness'. But he also had his own pride - in the powerful company he built by his own hands and wit, in his own hard work - and as he told Kott's attorney, "I won't beg" the government to lower his sentence. He'll take what comes as a man. He's protected his family, whatever else happens, happens.

This man who ruled by the pre-modern values of power and personal loyalty is put on trial by the rules of a modern state, where rationality, not personality count. Where merit, not loyalty and personal connections, is the standard. (A merit system generally prefers college degrees to dirty fingernails.) His behaviors are judged, not by power, but by laws. The kind of laws he paid legislators to write in his favor and that he ignored when they were in the way.  

I think it is important to recognize the good qualities in Allen. This is a man who, it would appear, was raised in a culture where poverty was bad and thus money was good. No one was there to help him, he had to help himself. The modern, civilized world failed him. It forced him to work as a child. The school system didn't work for him. The idea of rule of law wasn't, apparently, one he learned from his family and he wasn't in school enough to get it there. With what he had, he built a large corporation which gave him the power to take care of his family. He played well by the rules of tribal culture. 

And lest those of us who believe in the rule of law get too smug, tribal instincts are alive and well under the veneer of civilization we wear. We see it flare up in divorce courts, at football stadiums and boxing matches, among hunters and fishers. It's part of our humanity. We're still learning how to balance the tension between protecting our own and helping others, between the freedom of the individual and the good of the larger community.

 

Lots of FaceTime With My Granddaughter, Blog Suffers, But World's A Better Place

My oldest granddaughter is eight.  She's been FaceTiming with me fairly regularly.  Also teaching me the whole emoji alphabet and how to custom design emoticons.  And she shares her explorations with the effects options.  She also plays the piano for me. In exchange I've been providing an appreciative audience. And loving challenges.  I've been  introducing codes.  We've had a lot of exchanges where every second letter is the real one.  Slbigkne rtshwims.  And I've finally got her working with me on the newspaper Cryptoquotes.  And she dazzled me with her magic trick of making a toothpick disappear and reappear.  Her calls come whenever and I just don't think there is anything I can do that is more important than being available for her.  

But there was also a local Citizen Climate Lobby meeting yesterday.  I helped tutor reading in my granddaughter's class via zoom.  That's easier than it sounds.  I just sit there and listen to first and second graders read books they've chosen.  

And Wednesday is the zoom with my SF grandkids for a couple of hours.  And I've been keeping up with my DuoLingo Spanish (I'm taking a break from the Turkish - they started introducing too many new words and grammar patterns at once.)  

After dark - it gets later and later now - is Netflix time, though their algorithm is now sending us lots of bloody sword fight combat movies.  This seems to have started by our watching Marco Polo - which is an interesting fictionalized account of Polo's time in Mongolia with Kubla Khan.  There are some bloody hand to hand battles with swords.  Not my thing, but getting a sense of the history, even fictionalized, was interesting. The costume designers must have been in heaven.  This led to The King - about Hal and Falstaff moving up to King and his general and a lot of blood and swords as they attack France.  

That's when the algorithm seems to have gone crazy.  We got offered Age of the Samurai; Rise of Empires: Ottoman.  All take place around the 15th Century and include lots of battle scenes which include sword fighting, some rudimentary guns, catapults, and some canons to break down the walls of sieged cities.  The blood and guts has gotten too much for us. A couple episodes were enough. We passed when they offered The Lost Pirate Kingdom.  When we do watch these sorts of shows, we have to clean our our brains with something sweeter, like the Great British Baking Show.  

But there are lots of more serious things I want to blog about, but those things take more time.  There's lots that needs to be done on the Alaska Redistricting Board, like profiles of the Board members and some contextual pieces on how to evaluate how much the final maps have been gerrymandered.  I'm also trying to get information on the law firm that was chosen to advise the Board.  

So, no, I've not abandoned the blog - and I do update the Alaska COVID numbers daily (see the tabs up top.)  And thanks to the commenters on the last post.  I'm thinking about what they wrote.  

And while I'm rambling, some thoughts from reading today's obituaries:

"... is survived by his loving wife. . .; children . . . ; two snakes; a goldfish; a turtle; and a cat."

". . .  and gave hugs to family and friends to show how much he cared for them and never wanted anyone to feel left out or unloved." 

The second one, about the hugs, relates to another issue I've been thinking about - the evolution of what men are allowed to do in their relationships with women.  While many Republicans may have been distressed by Trump's admitted (on the tape) use of his star power to abuse women, they still voted for him.  Meanwhile, they're all aboard in calling for Gov. Cuomo to resign.  

This obituary raises a cultural issue about touching and hugging.  Some people grew up in families where hugging is a natural form of greeting.  (In France people kiss each other on the cheeks as a form of greeting.)  So when men come from hugging families and cultures, that kind of greeting for someone you care about, is usually pretty innocent.  But for a woman who comes from a family with little or no affectionate touching, or who has been abused, those touches can have a very different meaning.  I'm not downplaying the ways men abuse their power to make sexual overtures to women who work for them.  I even suspect a fair amount of male support of Trump is in support of their own right to rule over women.  But I am saying that in some cases it may not be about power or sex, but simply cultural differences in how people show platonic affection.    

I'd also note that in this second obituary, there are long lists of people who preceded him in death and those who survived him, including "his pride and joy" two sons.  But nowhere could I find mention of the mother of those two sons.

So, this is to let you know I'm not brain dead.  More like overloaded.      

Bev Beeton, I'm Glad I Got To Know You

 The Anchorage Daily News has an obituary for Beverly Beeton this week.  

I was a faculty member at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) when Dr. Beeton became Provost.  She was a formidable presence.  My description of her at the time was something like this:

"I've never seen her wearing less than $1000, and she speaks like Katherine Hepburn.  Does anybody speak like that naturally?"

My sense was that Dr. Beeton had a one hell of a facade, one that had been carefully developed.  I made a goal of finding the human being behind that facade.  It wasn't a high priority, more like a curiousness.  

One day the opportunity came.  I was chosen to chair the committee that nominated the people who would get honorary degrees.  And Dr. Beeton, as Provost, oversaw that committee.  She invited me out to lunch to talk about how the committee would work.  

A couple of years before that (my dates are a little fuzzy, but it was close to that time) I had gotten a grant to create a class that would focus on women in public administration.  The proposal was to get five prominent women public administrators and give them the freedom to design a class to "pass on the wisdom of women administrators."  We had three women who had been state commissioners, one Native Alaskan woman leader, and a Superior Court judge (who eventually would become an Alaska Supreme Court Chief Justice.)  They were given the freedom to design the class and Arlene Kuhner, an incredible English professor, and I would figure out the mechanics of making it work.  

The structure they gave us was a panel of women administrators each week addressing a different topic with lots of time for Q&A. They invited the women administrators and set up the subject, Arlene and I took care of all the academic work, though the five women, if I recall right, got to see some of the work the students did.   It was a great class and I learned a lot.  I recall one of my students, a man from China, telling me afterwards how impressed he was that all these women were so smart and capable and how it made him realize how China was wasting so half its human resources by not giving women equal access to important positions.  

So, at the lunch,  after discussing the committee work, I mentioned the class and how it had been run as a lead in to this question:  "You're the most senior woman administrator at the university (this was before we had any women Chancellors).  You must feel somewhat isolated."  The ice was broken and from then on we had an entirely different relationship.  We talked about that isolation, about the problems of sex discrimination, and lots of other administrative issues.  

I remember one time she told me that she wanted to set up a more objective evaluation system where administrators and faculty would have to develop measurable outcomes.  That was something I had my graduate students do for their jobs in one of my classes.  But I always told my students that it was useful for them to do for their own jobs, but it was impossible to do really well. And it was easy to misuse the results of such measurements.  Especially if someone just focused on the numbers and not the context of the numbers.  There are just too many important, but hard to measure aspects of their jobs. 

My response to Bev (by then she was Bev to me) was that it was a difficult but interesting exercise and suggested that she set up an example of how to do it for her own job as Provost.  Her response was, "My job is just too variable and complex to be able to do that."  My response was, "That's what every other administrator and faculty member will say.  If you can't do it for your own job, then it doesn't seem fair to ask others to do it."  I never heard about that project again.  

But this started out being about getting past the facade and learning about the real human being inside.  After our first lunch and the committee meetings that followed, I was in her office for something and mentioned that my daughter, a Steller Alternative School student at the time, was taking a spring break hiking class in Utah.  I had resisted at first.  Why do Alaskan students need to go to Utah to go hiking?  Well, she countered, we're going to learn about Utah too.  I asked a colleague of mine who was from Utah for an assignment for her.  He suggested she read Wallace Stegner's Mormon Country.  She agreed she would. 

When I explained this to Bev, she really opened up.  She'd grown up in rural Utah in a not particularly academic setting.  She felt very much like she didn't belong there.  She really wanted to get out of Utah, as far away as possible.  She was even a fashion model in New York, I think, for a while - which began to explain her very un-Alaskan high style way of dressing.  She got herself through school.  But essentially became as different a person as she could.  And once I got past that facade, I got to meet a very warm, accomplished, and charming woman.  

We didn't become the kind of friends who see each other out of work  - though I did run into her once on a garden tour.  We didn't have a lot of opportunities to talk about non-university issues.  I only learned from the obituary, for example, that she'd been married twice and had children but we were allies of a sort who liked each other at the University.  

One other observation.  Bev was a smoker.  When the university banned smoking indoors, small knots of people could be seen huddled outdoors in the dead of winter, smoking.  It created a cohort group of people from various parts of the university hierarchy who had smoking in common.  Their basic connection was that they were smokers, but they got to develop other things they had in common as well.  

I haven't seen Bev in years, but my world is poorer knowing she is no longer with us.  

This wandered a bit.  It's memories, not an academic paper.  It is a reminder that there is a human being inside all the people around you.  A person who is hidden behind whatever facade they've intentionally or unintentionally formed.  Try to talk to the human being - especially in these days of high conflict - instead of just to the facade.  

Garth Jones Leaves A Big Hole As He Leaves Us At 95

I saw the obituary in the ADN yesterday morning before my bike ride.  The picture was of a man who lived  at least 25 years before I met him - young and handsome.

As I rode, it hit me that this man influenced my life more than most people I've known - if it weren't for Garth Jones, it's unlikely I would have ended up in Alaska.  He was the Dean of the School of Business and Public Administration in the late 1970s and was looking to fill a position.  He contacted his colleagues at USC, where he had taught earlier and one of them showed me the job announcement.  I'd been in Anchorage about 8 hours - from 6am to 1pm - about eight years earlier after Peace Corps training.  I'd gone home to LA for the weekend and then flew to Anchorage to meet the plane that was carrying us all to Tokyo, then Hong Kong, then Bangkok.  It had been a spectacular August day and I was astounded by how beautiful it was.

But I wasn't finished with my dissertation and had seen too many people who had taken jobs before finishing their degrees.  It was clear I needed to finish before leaving so I didn't apply.  But the faculty member had stayed another year and when I was finished, the position was open and I applied and was selected.

So in September 1977 I met Garth Jones, my new boss, and the only other faculty member there with a degree in Public Administration.  He was also probably the oldest member of the SPA faculty.  And I'd never met a person like him in my life.  He nurtured me and he drove me crazy.  Over the years he shared a lot about his life, and while I was trying to impress him as a young faculty member, he seemed also trying to impress me.

Early on I remember a dispute we had.  The university had $10,000 allotted to open a childcare center.  I had two children under 4 years old.  A preschool on campus would be perfect for us.  Garth was 100% opposed.  University money should be spent on students and college education, not child care.  So Garth, I continued, supposed someone donated $10,000 to the University that could only be used for day care, would you still be opposed?  Yes, I would.  Young children should be at home raised by their mothers.

He came from a poor Mormon sheep farming family in southern Utah. At times there wasn't a lot of food, he'd tell me. He married into Mormon royalty.  Women were supposed to stay home and take care of their kids.

But, Garth, I argued, you told me I couldn't afford to live in Anchorage if my wife didn't work.  So how can she work if we don't have child care?  You're different Steve.  You're Jews and you value education and take care of your kids well.  It turned out that Garth had a strong admiration for Jews, though it didn't always come out in ways that sounded complimentary.

What this exchange meant to me was that while we disagreed strongly on a number of important issues, Garth would be honest with me if I pushed past his initial assertions.  It was also my first introduction to his, sometimes odd, but sincere admiration for the value that he felt Jews put on education and scholarship.

Garth also had an inherent thirst for learning which, in his telling, made him something of an oddball in his community as a kid.  He had read voluminously and there were lots of words he had read, but had never heard anyone say out loud.  For a number of these book-learned words, he had his own unique pronunciation.  He'd made his way through college and into the State Department and ended up in Pakistan where he helped establish the discipline of public administration there and helped teach the members of the civil service.  As someone from a poor background, he was not a typical foreign service officer.  He learned Urdu and got along too well with the locals.  When he was reassigned to Indonesia the same thing happened.  He told me he got chastised for getting too close to the natives.  Perhaps my Peace Corps experience in Thailand was something he could relate to when he saw my application.

When he came back he got a faculty position at USC which had faculty who had had grants to help with Garth's public administration work in Pakistan.  He also published an article that was critical of the State Department bureaucracy that was unusual in its very personal tone as well as its frankness.  I immediately gained a lot of respect for Garth when I eventually read the article.

"Failure of Technical Public Administration Abroad:  A Personal Note" begins:

"Am I a Dodo?
Thirteen years of one’s professional life is a sizeable period to devote largely to one cause: technical assistance in public administration abroad. Ten of these years were spent in Southeast and South Asia, equally divided between Indonesia and Pakistan, and three years were spent in Los Angeles serving as the academic advisor to the University of Southern California Pakistan project. Since November 1956, my life has been almost completely absorbed in reforming or building public administration systems in Asian cultures-and I mean absorbed. During my last tour abroad, six weeks short of five years, I spent only two weeks in the United States and only six weeks away from Pakistan. My professional perspective of foreign aid is solely field oriented. My knowledge of Washington operations remains largely confined to memoranda, periodic meetings with headquarters personnel in the field, short and hurried debriefings in Washington, and scholarly works. Washington operations in my mind represent a rather confused, and I guess, distorted picture. I have never spent enough time in Washington to understand the real "bureaucracy" if that is ever possible.
With my return to the United States in September 1969, I felt for the first time in my professional life that I was a "Dodo." Was I professionally obsolete in my chosen vocational field of foreign aid? My thinking on the subject appeared certainly out of keeping with the current trends as I "felt" and "saw" them in the field.
Few persons - practitioners and scholars alike - question the prerequisite of a reliable public administration system for mounting a successful, planned development program. Beyond this, little can be written. Technical assistance in public administration the world over is yearly being given less importance in planned development programs. I do not believe that this decline necessarily indicates that the mission of technical assistance has been successfully accomplished, but rather that those of us who have a vested interest in public administration technical assistance have not been able to convince those who exercise "real bureaucratic" power that we have a valid body of knowledge which is useful in the development process."

As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) I could relate to someone on the ground in Asia thinking that those in Washington DC (the headquarters in Bangkok, even) didn't have an understanding of things 'on the ground' upcountry.

This slightly renegade outsider perspective also tied us together.

There's lots of posts worth of Garth stories, but let me just note a few more issues:

Donations - Garth amassed a enough money, that he was regularly setting up scholarships for students, research awards, and donations to academic programs he thought were doing important things.  

Marie - No post about Garth would be complete with mention of his wife Marie.  She was a force of nature and a fearless promoter and protector of Garth.  If you were on her good side, your life was made easier.  If you were on her bad side, watch out.  She also fiercely watched out for their children as did Garth.

Racquet ball - Garth was winning racquet ball games with much younger opponents well into his 60s.  He didn't run around much on the court, but he would regularly put the ball in the farthest corner from you, or he'd hit so it died and rolled on the ground after barely touching the front wall.

Mormon Rebel - Garth wrote regularly for a Mormon journal called Dialogue. The link goes to an issue with an article by Garth.   It's a journal on the fringes of the faith, enough so that its editor at one point got excommunicated.  While Garth was regularly meeting with local Mormons giving counsel and help as needed, and considered himself a devoted Mormon, he didn't necessarily agree with all their policies.  I remember him talking about birth control and the problems he saw with large families, where children ended up raising their brothers and sisters because there were too many for the parents to give close attention to them all.  His support and contributions to the Dialogue were one way he expressed this.

The world has lost a truly unique person, full of contradictions, who spent his whole life working to make the world a better place.  I can hear his chortle like laugh as I write this.  The closest I ever heard him come to swearing was his regular exclamation - "What in Sam Hill!!" - though Hill usually sounded like it had an 'e' in it.

Notes On The News: The Symbolism Of Killing Obamacare, Of Travel Bans, Hawaiian Shirts, And Of Income Taxes

[These are my quick reactions to things I saw in the Alaska Dispatch News, paper edition, today.  Links are to what I could get online.  The ADN takes national stories from other papers, so the links get to them instead of ADN and may have different headlines.  And even the ADN articles online may have different headlines than the paper edition.]


1.  CBO:  22 million would join uninsured  

My Take:  The Republican brand has been anti-Obama for so long that they have forgotten what they are for.  Their key symbol of Obama has been the ACA or what they dubbed Obamacare.  And Trump, who wasn't particularly involved in Republican politics before his campaign, piggybacked on the Fox News generated hate of Obamacare among his 'base' and made 'repeal and replace' one of his key campaign goals.

So now  Majority Leader McConnell is willing to wreak havoc for tens of millions of Americans who will be edged out of health care access, just so he can say, "We got rid of Obamacare."  It would be fascinating to know what psychic demons are driving McConnell's sick mission.

This is all symbolism, with potentially deadly consequences for many Americans.

2.  Supreme Court to hear case on travel ban

Basically the court said the 90 day ban on people coming from six Muslim nations and the 120 day suspension on the nation's refugee program, could happen, but with limits.  Trump claims victory, travel advocates say the decision will impact only a few.

"The court said the ban could not be imposed on anyone who had 'a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.'”

Immigrant advocates say such a bonafide relationship means people with relatives in the US, who have been accepted into universities or been offered jobs, or asked to give a speech.  Most applicants meet these standards, the advocates say, so the ban will affect few people.

But I'm looking at the issues of dates and security.  This ban was imposed right after Trump took office, in late January.  A CNN report from Jan 29 says:

Trump barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for at least the next 90 days by executive order, which a senior White House official said later Friday is likely just a first step toward establishing a broader ban.

"Trump also stopped the admission of all refugees to the United States for four months.
During that time, Trump's secretary of state will review the application and screening process for refugees to be admitted to the US."

So they've had plenty of time - more than the 90 and 120 days - to expand the ban and review the refugee process.    They should be ready now. If not,  it will be nearly another 120 days before the court hears the case.  So it will be moot.  Except probably what they wanted won't be allowed.

Trump said in February, "nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated."  Of course we all knew, and we all know now that if Trump doesn't know something, he believes 'nobody knows' it. Middle East peace isn't as easy as he thought either.  

He also had no idea of the high level of vetting that already existed for refugees  to get into the United States.  And he still has no idea of the suffering and hardships and fear refugees experience trying to get out of danger and into a permanent home, and how his polices just makes things worse for them.  And our Republican controlled congress. . . well see the first headline above.  The bans were just symbols for his base and his own ego.


3.  Rick Koch (1956 - 2017) 

"For the Celebration of Life, attendees are invited to wear loud Hawaiian shirts, awful camouflaged shorts and/or mismatched prints in honor of Rick's truly horrendous fashion sense."

An obituary that starts out like this suggests that the good things it says about Rick Koch are probably true.  He died too young (age 60 in a motorcycle accident), but it sounds like he was a good man who loved people and helping out.

3.  How to fix alaska's fiscal problem for the long haul

When I read this title, it hit me:  everyone is talking about a fiscal problem.  Alaska has no fiscal problem, we have an ideology problem  - the Senate majority is so stuck on the evils of an income tax that they can't see the forest for the trees.  As this opinion piece spells out, the compromise our legislature just made, pretty much drained the Constitutional Budget Reserve (CBR).

 A $13 billion CBR could have generated $650 million a year – year after year after year. At the end of the coming fiscal year, according to press reports, only $2 billion will be left.

This is a good piece (translation:  I agree with most of it, though I think he's a bit near-sighted about the Permanent Fund) and I recommend people read it.  A step in changing the ideology problem in the state senate is the announcement that Fairbanks representative Scott Kawasaki is seriously considering running for the state senate seat now held by Senate Majority leader Pete Kelly.

". . . if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract," Ellsworth Kelly and Haskell Wexler

The LA Times had two front page obituaries of people whose names weren't on the tip of my tongue. But they both struck me as people I would have liked to have known.

The first obituary was about Ellsworth Kelly, an abstract artist.  Here are a few things about him from the article that caught my attention.

The key to creative inspiration was in the world around him, not in other artists' studios or at the Louvre. If he paid close attention to, say, the contour of a window, the shape of a leaf, the play of light and shadows on man-made and natural forms, his art would emerge.
"I think if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract," the artist told an interviewer in 1991, reflecting on the evolution of his work. Six years later, when a Kelly retrospective exhibition — organized by New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum — appeared at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, he told a Times reporter: "I'm not searching for something. I just find it. The idea has to come to me … something that has the magic of life." [emphasis added]

I like the conceit that if one can "turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract." That describes part of what this blog is ultimately about:  exploring how we know what we know.  How much of what we see in the world, we see because of the models in our heads that cause us to see what we've already been trained to see and to label in just one way.  People who don't know much about flowers may see "a rose" in many flowers because that may be one of the few flower names they actually know.  A police officer may see a life threatening man because his understanding of black men comes from movies and television and not from close black friends.  But if we can 'turn off the mind" then we can see the world fresh again, with all sorts of new possibilities.

Here are some pictures from the blog that show my attempts to see new things in the ordinary.

None of these were pictures I sought. They found me.

I'd note that none of these images was altered, except for the frame added around the onion.

I'd note the idea that the models in our heads cause us to not see what is really there was shown in a different light on an NPR piece this morning, talking about how the gambler's fallacy also tricked judges, loan officers, and others who made decisions about people.  The study showed they consider how the previous decision went when they are making the current decision.


The second obituary was about cinematographer Haskell Wexler.  These words grabbed me:

Despite his success shooting big-budget films for major studios, Wexler, a lifelong liberal activist, devoted at least as much of his six-decade career to documentaries on war, politics and the plight of the disenfranchised.
“His real passion was much larger than just making movies,” said son Jeff Wexler a few hours after his father's death at a hospital in Santa Monica. “His real passion was for human beings and justice and peace.”

Isn't that really what's important?  Justice and peace for human beings?  Our society is so distracted by the demand to acquire material goods, that we're all to willing to look the other way when confronted with injustice and war.  We excuse ourselves because we 'don't have time to get involved' or we 'couldn't make a difference anyway.'  Yet, if we don't do something, who will?  If we don't elect representatives who care, who will?   There are lots of stories about ordinary 'powerless' people who have made a difference.  You don't have to save the world, you just have to make it a little better than you found it.  If half the people did this, we'd be in a much better world.   The Wexler obituary reminds me that I need to do more.

And you've probably seen some of his films, like Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolfe?  or Bound For Glory  or One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest or In The Heat Of The Night.   If not, you might want to look them up.

Less well known and less seen was his feature directorial debut, Medium Cool.  I remember when I was a trainer for a Peace Corps group at Hilo, Hawaii.  Medium Cool was playing with another film, but the newspaper didn't say which one was playing first. (They still showed double features in those days where you paid once to see two films.)  So I called the theater and asked which film was playing first.  He responded, "Which one do you want first?"  After a second to digest this, I said, "Medium Cool."

From the obituary:

"Described by Wexler as “a wedding between features and cinema verite,” the drama about an emotionally detached TV news cameraman was partly shot in Chicago during the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention. 

At one point, as the camera inches closer to a tear-gas cloud and a wall of police officers, a voice off-camera famously can be heard warning, “Look out, Haskell — it's real!” 

Considered “a seminal film of '60s independent cinema,” “Medium Cool” was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2003."

Great Alaskan Walt Parker Departs

Walt Parker June 2011

I met Walt Parker when I first arrived in Anchorage in 1977 because he was active in the local American Society for Public Administration (ASPA).  He has been supportive of whatever I was working on since then and a constant inspiration of how to be a great human being.  


I just learned this evening that he died this afternoon.  I just need to say a few things here off the top of my head about him and what an amazing man he was and life he led.

He served in China and the Burma Road as a pilot in World War II.  He told me once that he got contact lenses so he wouldn't be kept out of the air force.  I didn't even know they existed back then.  They certainly must have been uncomfortable before all the fancy wetting solutions became available.

He came to Alaska from San Francisco as I recall, after WW II, and worked out in very rural Alaska with the FAA.  He was a bush pilot, lived in a log cabin, and mushed dogs.

He acted in the Anchorage Community Theater in the 50s and was on the Anchorage borough assembly.  He was head of the Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill Commission and has been on the Arctic Commission regularly flying to places like Siberia and Greenland and Iceland.  He helped the Australians develop distance education.  There was something else he did in Mongolia. 

You could mention any place in the world and not only had he been there, he'd done important projects there and could tell you about the politics and economy and history.  I consider myself extremely lucky to have had him in my life and as a mentor and guide as well as a friend.  He was my google before there was a google.

I'd bump into him out skiing with his dogs on the Campbell Airstrip trail in his late 70s and probably early 80s. 

Walt believed in honest government, justice, fairness, decency, and education.  He was smart and wise and always ready to stand up for the public and for reason.

I've had a fair amount of experience with people in their 80's and 90's in the last ten years and life can be good as long as you're reasonably mobile and still have your faculties.  Walt had all his faculties, but he was getting noticeably frailer in the last year, though he did drive himself over to our house not too long ago.  I'd like to think he checked out while he was still himself and before he became a burden on others.  But there's a big hole in my heart today. 

These are just a few quick random thoughts.  You can see a better organized bio of Walt here.

I decided I needed to double check on this and called another friend who knew Walt well and he told me Walt died at home with all his family around.  

Alaska Reporter Bob Tkacz Dies

Bob Tkacz was found dead Tuesday.  I met him briefly while I blogged about the legislature in 2010.   Here's Bob Tkacz's empty chair and desk in the press room of the Alaska Capitol Building from that time. 

I was blogging the legislature that session and dropped into the press room to check on the other folks who were covering the legislature.  Folks suggested that I apply for a press pass - which would allow me to get on the floor of the House and Senate chambers and allow me to ask questions at press conferences.  Bob, particularly, pushed that idea.  A blogger had recently been turned down for a pass.  While I was interested in the idea of a blogger getting a pass, I didn't see any great advantages - I could walk around at will and talk to folks except on the floors of the chambers - and wasn't sure how much extra work it would take to get.  The told me that such press passes hadn't been required before Palin was governor.  Then, apparently, there was concern that Outside media would cram the Capitol and that they'd need a way to control that.  That seems to have been an unnecessary fear.

I also was told to look up Bob's past, and found that earlier he'd been stabbed and been found at the bottom of the long outdoor stairs that go from near the City Museum down to Willoughby.  I looked it up, but didn't post about it in my post about meeting the press. 

Bot struck me as an interesting person who didn't sugar coat anything.  At only 61, he's gone way too soon.   A lot of Alaska legislative history that was stored in his brain is now now gone.  May he rest in peace. 

Cal Worthington -" a cross between Dale Carnegie and Slim Pickens" -Joins His Dog Spot

I just got an email with a link to the Cal Worthington Wikipedia page:

Image from LA Times

Calvin Coolidge "Cal" Worthington (November 27, 1920 - September 8, 2013) was an American car dealer well known throughout the West Coast of the United States, and to a more limited extent elsewhere due to minor appearances and parodies in a number of movies. He was best known for his unique radio and television advertisements for the Worthington Dealership Group. In these advertisements, he was usually joined by "his dog Spot," except that "Spot" was never a dog. Often, Spot was either a tiger, a seal, an elephant, a chimpanzee, or a bear. In one ad, "Spot" was a hippopotamus, which Worthington rode in the commercial. On some occasions, "Spot" was a vehicle, such as an airplane that Worthington would be seen standing atop the wings of while airborne. "Spot" was officially retired in the mid-1980s; however he was mentioned occasionally in his later commercials.
According to a profile published in the Sacramento Bee in 1990, Worthington grossed $316.8 million in 1988, making him at the time the largest single owner of a car dealership chain. His advertising agency, named Spot Advertising, had Worthington as its only client and spent $15 million on commercials, the most of any auto dealer at the time. He sold automobiles from 1945 until his death and owned a 24,000-acre (9,700 ha; 37 sq mi) ranch located in Orland, California, north of Sacramento.

Cal Worthington was a fixture on Southern California TV when we left for Anchorage in 1977.  What an unpleasant shock to find out his tacky ads were on TV in Anchorage as well.  'Spot' was a bizarre menagerie of animals he posed with in his ads.  But he was a very smooth talker. 

Here's the beginning of the LA Times Obituary:

Cal Worthington, the Oklahoma native whose old-time carnival flair built one of the most successful car dealerships west of the Mississippi, has died. He was 92.
Worthington died Sunday while watching football at his home on the Big W Ranch near Orland, Calif., said Brady McLeod of the Miles Law Firm in Sacramento, which represented Worthington.
Described as a cross between Dale Carnegie and Slim Pickens, Worthington was best known for his wacky television pitches that had him wrestling with a tiger, flying upside down on an airplane wing or riding a killer whale. His sales antics with his “Dog Spot” drove a career that took him from a three-car lot on a patch of Texas dirt to a multi-make dealership empire that grossed billions of dollars and stretched from Southern California to Alaska.

The Art of Writing Obituaries - "I feel so lucky. . ."

The obituaries I've written about in the past, like this one  or this one, were ones that raised my eyebrows a bit.  While I understand the urge to say nice things about the recently deceased, the sugarcoating of less than perfect lives seems a feeble attempt to  . . . to do what?  I'm not sure.  Continue to pretend it isn't so?  The human condition is so complex and contradictory, that the truth always seems far more interesting and more cathartic.  Other obituaries tell the interesting stories of the person's life.

Today, I'm pleased to comment on an obituary unlike any I've seen before.  It was in yesterday's ADN and made me smile and wish I'd known Emma Milkeraitis.  It begins:

"I feel so lucky. I get to write my own obituary and make my end-of-life decisions. It is fashionable to go kicking and screaming and fighting for every breath. Not me, I choose grace and dignity.

Several components of my heart failed. Many options were suggested to allow for some normalcy for living. Shortly after that I was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer.

How much effort do I expend to live another day? How many of my assets do I give for that day? I saw my future becoming filled with tests, appointments, and procedures. Whether it is 70 or 100 years - we only live for a flicker of time in relation to this earth. I went home and called a travel agency!"

She goes on to talk about how traveling the world transformed her.

"In my travels I have learned:

Greed and power are insatiable.

Don't leave anything undone. If you always wanted to jump out of an airplane or kiss an elephant - DO IT!

Make your end-of-life choices while you are able, with forward vision.

Support the arts in all forms; it is our communication to future generations. Unlike me, the arts will live forever.

Do not hang on to life; be remembered for the life you lived rather than as a burden in death.

No regrets and no scooter chair for me!"

Read more here: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/adn/obituary.aspx?n=emma-milkeraitis&pid=160968521#storylink=cpy

 This sounds like someone who knew who she was and didn't pussyfoot around the truth.  And while I might want that scooter chair because I still have things left to blog, I respect her decision. 

You can read the whole obituary here.

Read more here: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/adn/obituary.aspx?n=emma-milkeraitis&pid=160968521#storylink=cpy

Where Would You Celebrate The Life Of Someone Who Died Of A Massive Heart Attack?

Occasionally, I can't help but comment on something from the obituary page.  If I think my comments in any way could add to the family's immediate grief, I'll wait a month or more before posting. If anyone reading this knows the deceased, my condolences go out to you.  This is not meant to be any disrespect to you or the deceased, but rather to raise some health issues of importance to everyone. 

Here's part of an obituary I saw a while ago. 

[Someone] passed away in Anchorage on [Month day], 2012, surrounded by his loving wife and sons after suffering a massive heart attack. .  .

It goes on to describe someone I think I'd have liked to meet.  And then . . .

A Celebration of Life will be held at ********* Steakhouse in Anchorage.

Seriously.  The guy died of "a massive heart attack"  and they are having the celebration of life at the steakhouse.  I'm guessing they chose it because it was a favorite restaurant.  But to me it seems like inviting the murderer to the funeral.  Or pushing more family members to the edge of the same cliff. 


 How long should he have lived?

The man was born in 1942 but it didn't say the date, so he would have been 69 or 70 when he died.  As the excerpts below show, life expectancy increases as you get older - as you survive childhood and teen risks.  Someone 65 today, according to this source, should live to 83.  So, presumably, enjoying steak maybe cost him 13 years.   Maybe it was worth it to him.


From About.com

Life expectancy is the average life span for an individual. Life expectancy figures are collected by national health systems and by projecting current mortality statistics. Life expectancy is generally given for a person born this year. For example, according to the CDC, anyone born in 2006 could expect to live about 77.5 years. But this is tricky, because life expectancy changes based on age and gender.

Life Expectancy at Birth:

The life expectancies that you usually read about are life expectancies at birth. The current U.S. life expectancy is 77.5 years. This number takes the current rates of mortality at each age and figures out where the average is. Deaths at young ages impact life expectancy averages much more than older deaths. If a person dies at 18, that is 59.5 years lost. A person dying at age 70 only loses 7.5 years. Young deaths impact life expectancy at birth statistics. If you can reduce your risk to some of the most common causes of death of young people, such as car accidents, you can significantly beat this number.

Life Expectancy at 65:

As people age, their life expectancy actually increases. Each year you live means that you have survived all sorts of potential causes of death. If you were born in 1942, your life expectancy at birth was about 68 years. But the good news is that you didn't die of infectious diseases when young, car accidents, or anything else. The average 65-year-old today can expect to live another 18.4 years. So your life expectancy now is not the same as it was at your birth. It is 5.9 years longer than the current life expectancy figure (which is for people born in 2006) or 83.4 years. [Emphasis added.]

Is there a link between steak and heart attack?

The Wall Street Journal writes about a 2010 Harvard meta analysis on the relationship between steaks and heart attacks:

Maybe that juicy steak you ordered isn't a heart-attack-on-a-plate after all.
A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that the heart risk long associated with red meat comes mostly from processed varieties such as bacon, sausage, hot dogs and cold cuts—and not from steak, hamburgers and other non-processed cuts. . .

. . .  Based on information about meat products sold in the U.S., levels of saturated fats are similar in processed and unprocessed meats, while steak and other red meats have on average slightly higher levels of cholesterol, the researchers found. But sodium levels average about 622 milligrams per two-ounce serving of processed meat, about four times the 155 milligrams found in steak, hamburger or pork. Other preservatives, called nitrites, were also higher in the processed meats. In some studies, nitrates have been shown to interfere with the health of blood vessels and the body's ability to process glucose.

None of this suggests that steak is a new health food. While red meat wasn't linked to an increased risk of heart disease in the study, it didn't lower it either. Other research suggests frequent red meat consumption is associated with increased risk of colon cancer. The new report didn't look at cancer effects.

"Should people eat more red meat because of this analysis?" asked Robert Eckel, a cardiologist and nutrition expert at University of Colorado, Denver. "I don't think that is what the study is saying."

That's not necessarily a license to unleash your inner carnivore. Calorie control as well as a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, fish, whole grains and nuts remain the mainstay of heart-healthy eating, he said.
"If once in a while somebody wants to eat meat, our study suggests steak or other unprocessed cuts aren't going to increase their heart risk," he said.
 [emphasis added]

But a report in the Telegraph on a Harvard School of Medicine (not Public Health) study suggests that maybe comparing red meat to processed meats isn't the test.  It also concludes cutting back (but not necessarily out)  is the answer.

Small quantities of processed meat such as bacon, sausages or salami can increase the likelihood of dying early by a fifth, researchers from Harvard School of Medicine found. Eating steak increases the risk of early death by 12%.

The study found that cutting the amount of red meat in peoples’ diets to 1.5 ounces (42 grams) a day, equivalent to one large steak a week, could prevent almost one in 10 early deaths in men and one in 13 in women.

The Art of Obituary Writing

This comes from an obituary in the Anchorage Daily News on page A8, Thursday, March 17, 2011:

Mike Lawless, 59, died March 2, 2011, at his home in Two Rivers. . .\ He was one of those unforgettable characters who was unlike anyone else, with his charisma, intelligence, quick wit, and unmistakable crooked smile. All will remember Mike as a kind, loyal and generous friend who was always willing to lend a helping hand.

He was a man of his word, strong in both body and mind and never allowed any hurdles to keep him from his objectives. He loved to "chew the fat." Mike was intelligent and well-read and fed his mind with knowledge of all kinds. Mike was a true patriot with a passion for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

Mike was a devoted father. He considered his children his legacy and was thrilled each time a new grandchild was born.

He is survived by his siblings, Hosanna (Dixie) Lee and Katt Pinette; wife, Rose; children, Ira, Tiffany, Melissa, Jackson, Nathan, Marie, Bernadette, Jeanne, Antonia and Blair; many precious grandchildren; niece, Bethany Bogart; nephew, Daniel Lahaie; and his loyal dog, Kobuk, who was with him until the end.

Pretty standard obituary fare.   But the name sounded familiar.  I went back to page 3 to a story I'd just read:

FAIRBANKS -- A 19-year-old Alaska man has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in the death of his father.
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported that Blair Lawless is being held on $1 million bail in the death last month of his 59-year-old father, Melvin "Mike" Lawless, at his Two Rivers home near Fairbanks.  .  .

Blair Lawless also faces charges of vehicle theft and tampering with evidence. He was arrested March 2 in Anchorage, after a day-long manhunt following his indictment on the murder charge.

I realize that for obituaries people tend to say nice things about the dead.  I think it should be possible to find things you can say without violating the truth.  Take this line from the obituary:

All will remember Mike as a kind, loyal and generous friend who was always willing to lend a helping hand.

 Apparently not all.  Even if his son Blair is not guilty, somebody apparently murdered him.  Someone who probably has a different view of the deceased.

I'm always a bit curious when no cause of death is listed or someone dies of 'natural causes' at age 45.  There was another obituary the same day with a unique cause of death.

Palmer resident Nick Charles Stachelrodt, 45, died unexpectedly March 12, 2011, in Ketchikan while protecting his parents.

I don't mean to make light of the situation in either case.  Two people have died and left behind people who will miss them.  And I decided to hold this post for 30 days  before pushing the publish button.