Innocence Project Ribs, Veggie Pickup, Steller Turns 50

Keeping busy these days.  I'm in the third grade class daily mostly helping one young man catch up on his English but also with other kids too.  Biking in the breaks in the rain.   

Also went to the Alaska Innocence Project's BBQ Rib Cook-off.  This year their invite also mentioned there'd be veggie options too.  The baked beens were great.  

Justice is one of my most cherished values, and the idea of innocent people be locked up, even executed, moves me greatly.  Right now the national Innocence Project is working to prevent an innocent man from being executed. 

"The Missouri Supreme Court has scheduled the execution of Mr. Williams on Sept. 24, for a crime he did not commit."

Even the prosecuting attorney involved has changed his mind.

"The St. Louis County prosecuting attorney reviewed these DNA results and filed a motion to vacate Mr. Williams’ conviction because he believed the DNA results proved by clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Williams did not commit this crime."

Moving on to the execution, when there is serious question, even if not definite proof, of innocence, tells me these people are not serious about justice. 

The BBQ took place at the Alaskan Airmen's Association great building at Lake Hood float plane base.  It's a great location, but the steady rain and cloud cover that evening meant there were very few planes taking off or landing.  And one would hope they might consider a name change soon.  Airmen seems a lot sexist.  I suspect they could find reasonable synonyms, like pilots, flyers, etc.  

Picked up our Thursday veggies from Grow North Farms.  

And Friday afternoon went to the Community part of the Steller Secondary School 50th Anniversary celebration.  Here's one of the students who spoke to the crowd hold the Legislative Proclamation Rep. Alyse Galvin presented the school.  Alyse was involved with Steller a long time as a parent.  (As were we, but not for so long).  I saved this picture in fairly high resolution.  The story is pretty cool, but not sure you can read it.  Among the signatures is Sen. Jesse Kiehl of Juneau, who was a Steller student when my daughter was.  

Here's Rep. Galvin talking to the gathering before making the presentation of the Certificate.  To the side are the student speaker (whose name I didn't catch), the principal Maria Hernandez, and a parent who worked hard to organize the anniversary weekend.  

And here's Bob Reid, one of the original Steller teachers back in 1974, who came up from Texas to participate.  Bob talked about how the school got started and the ideals of creating a school where everyone participated in the decisions on courses, rules, etc.  Students, teachers, administrators, staff, and parents.  And how the vision was to bring the world into the school and involve the students out in the world.  

Bob was also a neighbor of ours before he moved to Texas, so it was great to see him again.  His major claim to fame for me was that he was the host of "Nothing but the Blues" on the then new public radio station KSKA.  

For those who can't read the Legislative Proclamation, here's part of it:

"The self-directed aspect of Steller Secondary School is a big part of what makes Steller so successful, and so unique.  With an emphasis on responsibility to self and to one's community, students, parents, and staff work together through a democratic process to set school policy and procedures.  The school ethic encourages self-advocacy and inquiry:  students are encouraged to participate in collaborative processes to determine what courses should be offered and which events will take place. 

With no bells to call students to class, no advanced placement classes, and no interscholastic sports, students who choose to attend Steller find themselves both appropriately challenged and personally engaged through the opportunity to co-create independent studies and intensives with their instructors and their peers, and to develop self-directive intensives ranging from foreign and domestic travel, sports, carpentry, drama, creative writing, sculpture, and batik, to fun with math and the chemistry of cosmetics.

As part of Stellar's commitment to their motto, "only the educated are free," and their recognition that education of the individual occurs in the context of an interdependent world, the school heavily emphasizes service to community, both through a sustained commitment to service intones community, region, and state, and through a commitment to one another within the school's peer mentoring and leadership opportunities."

I'd note, that while it says "no advanced placement classes, and no interscholastic sports," students are free to arrange those activities at other schools in the district.  My daughter took advanced placement classes at another high school and she took German at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) while she was in high school.  And NBA player Trajan Langdon played basketball for East High School while he was at Steller.  

The school was named after Georg Steller, (from Wikipedia):

"Georg Wilhelm Steller (10 March 1709 – 14 November 1746) was a German-born naturalist and explorer who contributed to the fields of biology, zoology, and ethnography. He participated in the Great Northern Expedition (1733–1743) and his observations of the natural world helped the exploration and documentation of the flora and fauna of the North Pacific region.

Steller pursued studies in theology and medicine before turning his attention to the natural sciences. In 1734, he joined the Russian Academy of Sciences as a physician, eventually being selected to accompany Bering's expedition to the uncharted waters between Siberia and North America. Steller kept detailed records of species and cultures encountered, as well as ocean currents during the journey. . ."

Among the regular visitors to our backyard, the Steller's Jay was named after Georg Steller.  (The photo is from a 2014 post and I wrote then that I did nothing to enhance the color. The light was just right.)

So connecting several threads here, I took Dr. Margritt Engel to the Steller anniversary celebration.  Dr. Engel was my daughter's UAA German teacher while my daughter was at Steller.  But more important, Dr. Engel translated Georg Steller's journals from the expeditions to Siberia and North America.  She brought two with her to give to the school for their library and to arrange for further interaction with the school and scholarship on its namesake.   

Biking For Veggies Gets Me Into Police Blockade

 It's Thursday.  The Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service of the Catholic Social Services in Anchorage has a farm - Grow North Farm - where I subscribe for weekly veggie pickups over the summer.  It's about 7.4 km or or a bit over 9 miles round trip.  I can do much of it on wooded bike paths.  But eventually I get to a quiet residential street in Airport Heights.  

My first hint was a police car a block to the east.  But then as I headed down the street there were more police cars.  Lots of them.  My first reaction was a bad crash, but I'm on a bike and I can go around on the sidewalk if necessary.  But then I got within about 20 feet of the cars and police behind them, yelling at someone I couldn't see.  But I could see that at least one officer had a gun pointed over the car.  As regular readers of this blog probably know, guns are not a fascination of mine.  But one of the benefits of blogging is that I learn new things.  Here's an image of shotguns I got when I googled 'police guns'.  What I saw most resembled one of the circled guns, probably the bottom one, because he was holding it and I saw that box magazine as well.  (Based on the pictures and interactive description from here.)  Of course, I'm just guessing from my brief look and googling now.  

I realized quickly that if the police had guns pointing further down the street, over their cars, that there was someone down there who might start shooting toward the police, near where I was.  (There are fairly regular reports in the newspaper of Anchorage police involved in a shoot out.)  Rather than pull out my camera and try to catch this dramatic scene, I turned my bike around and headed back, turned the corner and tried the next street over, which got me to DeBarr.  From DeBarr and Airport Heights, I took this picture while waiting for the light to change.  I never heard any shots fired.

I originally encountered one set of police coming from the south.  Now I'm looking south from two blocks to the north.  So there were police on both ends of the street.  

I carried on toward Grow North Farm.  It seemed bizarre that cars and people were carrying on normally so close to this dramatic scene, without even knowing that something was happening.  

On my way back everything on that block was back to normal.  Not a sign that anything had happened.  It was like a movie set had packed up and gone home. (I grew up in LA where there were movie shoots all over.)  But I don't know that a movie set would have cleaned up as well.  

At home I unloaded the veggie haul.  Today's selection was:

• Rainbow Chard/ Collard Greens

• Mizuna

• Cilantro

• And a choose-two grab bag of: Kohlrabi, Cucumbers, Zucchini, Salad Mix, Hot Peppers, Tarragon, and Oregano

From the grab-bag, I chose Kohlrabi and Cucumbers.

I played around a bit with the Curves on my photo program to offer you this somewhat alien looking kohlrabi.

As a bonus, we got to pick out a peony.  This one made it in pretty good shape sticking out of my backpack on the ride home.  

Taking Advantage of My Air Drop Working Again

 My phone asked me to log in with my Apple ID today.  On a whim, I tried Air Drop after and it worked.  So, in what I hope is a long window, I'll put up some pictures.  

Grow North is the farm in Mountain View where the Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service of Anchorage Catholic Social services grows food for the summer and operates a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with once a week pick ups and sells fresh vegetables and some baked goods as well during the week.  You can't get much fresher food in Anchorage unless it's from your own garden.  

The garlic and the picture of the farm are from last week.  

This week's box includes:

• Classic cauliflower,
• Crunchy kohlrabi
• Unique malabar spinach,
• Tasty bok choi,
• And some lovely sage for the herb of the week!

From the email that CSA subscribers get:

"Malabar spinach seems like it would retain similarities to that of regular spinach. The plant uses the name spinach in it, yet the ironic part of that the two could not be more different. Malabar spinach grows on a vine, granting it the nickname of vine spinach, whereas regular spinach grows from the ground (like many leafy greens)."  

This Goose Lake as I rode by  The ducks hang out here because its's  spot where people feed them.

On a completely different bike ride, out past Taku Lake, they've had the big blue sign up much of the summer, but the little one just popped up.  If you can't read the small sign (which I'm guessing you can't) it says, "We are upgrading the skatepark!"  It also says the construction budget is $1.2 million. I know we've had inflation over the years, but really?  $1.2 million for curved concrete?  Curious how much profit the contractor, also listed as "Street Maintenance and Grindline Skate Parks LLC" is making.  I realize they may be doing more than just the skateboard park, but it would be nice if there was a watchdog group which gathered all the data on summer construction projects and evaluated how the money was spent.  

In other construction news, the ACS fiber optic team was out on Crescent in Geneva Woods today.  We're on the Lake Otis side, but all this area is getting wired.  That bright orange wire is popping up all around the neighborhoods.  

And it's mushroom season.  Here are some making appearances in my yard.

Don't have time now to research these.  The orange one is an amanita - hallucinogenic and al over Anchorage now.  It can also make you really sick.  Not planning on eating any, though I'm waiting for the King Boletes and the Shaggy Manes.  

But I have started eating the olive bread I made last night.  It came out well.  The one in the back is a dill experiment.  (We got lots of fresh dill from Grow North Farm last week.)

Meanwhile J got off the phone this evening with her long time friend (does 45 years count as long time?) who lives on the Haleakala foothills in Maui.  Her house is far from Lahaina, but there is also a fire up in that neighborhood as well and she's been evacuated and is staying with friends.  If I recall right, Maui has its share of eucalyptus trees, and their oil burns easily.  May the fire be quickly extinguished and your house survive.  

Teaching English To A Refugee In Alaska - Polishing Old Skills

RAIS is the Alaska Catholic Social Service's Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service.  Last summer I volunteered to tutor English for them, but I decided that I did not want to go into someone's house regularly during COVID.  They said some of their clients live outside of Anchorage and maybe we can do this online.  

Several weeks ago they got back to me.  A refugee living outside of Anchorage wanted lessons. (I'm going to be vague to protect confidentiality.)

In Peace Corps training back in 1966 and 1967 we got killer training for Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL).  The trainer in charge of the TEFL lessons was like a teaching machine.  She had a technique and a style that, in hindsight, was a really good way to teach a foreign language AND the lessons were good for teaching any class.  I can't believe her name escapes me at the moment.  I used to have nightmares about her watching me practice teach.  [UPDATE March 11, 2023 - It was Phyllis!]

A 50 minute class consists of

• 5 minutes of pronunciation drill
• 10 minutes of vocabulary lessons
• 20-25 minutes of grammar drills
• 20-25 minutes of reading the lesson in the text out loud and questions and answers about the text

The pronunciation drill would be related to some of the words in the vocabulary lesson.  The vocabulary would come from the reading in that chapter.  The grammar drills focused on lots of oral repetition using the grammar we were working on.  And, of course, it included the vocabulary and sounds we just did.  There might be a sentence and after the students could repeat it fairly well, I'd give them words that they used to replace words in the sentence.  This was a good way to see if they understood it or whether they were just parroting stuff they didn't understand.  

We had a Level 3 English textbook at training that was used in Thai high schools.  The readings in the chapters were about Thai history, US history, and British history.  (I learned the basics of key Thai historic figures that way.)

When I arrived at my school, I found they were using the same book we had trained with.  And the class was at a chapter that I had done a practice lesson on in training in DeKalb, Illinois.  It felt like magic.  

So, using what I learned then,I've started preparing my lesson plans, though now I can do that with Keynote (Apple's version of PowerPoint.).  My student is highly motivated, already speaks fluent enough English, but grammar and vocabulary are limited and pronunciation could be improved as well.  Lesson 3 is tomorrow morning (Saturday).  So far he's put up with my very packed lessons with good humor.  I think I will have to ease back a bit - I can't sustain that level of effort.  But we've got lots of material to work with over the next month.  I told him he's my boss and he has to tell me what he wants and then I'll do it. But, of course, his texts also alert me to sentences and grammar he needs to work on.    

As I've been reading online to get foreign language teaching tips, I found one that both of us like:  Learn the words to English songs you like.  He's suggested the Beatles "Yesterday."  So I'm going to see what sort of grammar and pronunciation lessons we develop using the lyrics as a starting point.  (I used "Hello, Goodbye" once in Thailand.  Very easy lyrics.)

I'll look at the grammar they use, and then try to substitute words to make a lot more useful sentences from the lyrics.  

Learning to teach English as a Peace Corps volunteer meant we were learning Thai using the same method that we were preparing to teach our students with.  That's a very humbling experience which gave me a much better understanding of what my students were struggling with.  What looks so obvious to a native speaker seems impenetrable to a non-native speaker.  Sounds they make in Thai, we simply couldn't distinguish at the beginning.  So I had a lot more patience than I probably would have when my Thai students had the same problems I had and was still having trying to speak Thai.  Thais only have eight final consonant sounds.  Eight!  B, D,  K, N, NG, M, P.  (I checked online and they include W and Y, but it seems to me that those really become vowel sounds.)  But that means Thais have a LOT of trouble with all the consonants and consonant clusters (RD, ST, CH, NK, etc.)

So I've been looking at specific pronunciation issues that speakers of my students native language have.  

That's been using a lot of my creativity.  

I also learned in our first meeting that one of his sponsors is someone I've spent a fair amount of time with in the last couple of years.  

Anchorage's Refugee Farm Market - Great Fresh Produce And More

 Catholic Social Services has a host of programs to help various communities.  RAIS - Refugee Assistance and Immigration Services - is focused on new refugees coming to Anchorage.  They help them get housing, English lessons, jobs, into school, and other help as needed.  One of the most visible activities is the Grow North Farm, on 

Mt. View between Bragaw and Airport Heights.  

As you can see from the sign, they are open weekday afternoons from 4-7pm.  

The growing season seems to be in its prime now.  These are pictures from Thursday when I went to pick up my CSA box.  CSA is Community Supported Agriculture.  Community members subscribe to get weekly produce boxes.  Details vary from program to program, but the RAIS program pick up is on Thursdays.  But there are lots of vegetables for anyone to buy, even without a CSA subscription.  

                                                                               

The vegetables on sale are picked that day.  

A number of the refugees are from African countries such as Somalia and Congo and Ethiopia and they are growing greens they know from home.  We got sorrel and dodo in a recent box.  Fortunately RAIS also has a cookbook with recipes for some of the produce that are not usually available in Anchorage.  

                  

I was told these were pickled radishes. There are other goodies available from different vendors - spices, sweets, and other surprises.  

Potatoes.

The vendors get the benefit of tents and umbrellas which they have definitely needed in August.  

There's also a food truck and every Thursday there's a dinner offering from a different culture.  This Burmese coconut chicken soup was great.  And last week we go an Arabic rice dish that had a wonderful sauce.  

Getting to meet the folks who grow and sell the food is a big part of attraction of this market.  We've got fascinating neighbors here in Anchorage with lots to teach us.  

This is a summer only market.  It's scheduled go through the end of September.  

Little UN at Muldoon Farmers' Market In Anchorage

 Finally made it to the Muldoon Farmers' Market Saturday.  It's a little smaller and has fewer venders than when I was here last in 2019.  Maybe there will be more venders as the summer crops ripen.  

Still, I got to buy veggies from Cherry, who's from Myanmar.  

She spent something like ten or twelve years in refugee camps - first and longest, in Thailand.  And then in Malaysia.  She was in the refugee camp near Maesot, Thailand which I passed on the way to and from Umphang where one of my former students is the headmaster of the local school.  He tried to take us into that huge camp, which sprawls across a mountainside, but the officials he knew there were away that day.  Here's a picture I took from a post back in 2007.  They said 25,000 refugees from Myanmar were kept there.

This booth was set up by Vonnie whose company is Arts by Vonnie.  She has her own unique Alaska cards that she designs.  Vonnie's got cards with a number of different styles as well as stand alone prints.  The website reveals a lot of interesting pieces and also a woman who's involved in important social issues, like projects at Hiland Correctional Center and the Let Us Dream project - for which she did clever portraits of the various participants.  I recognized EJR David as soon as I opened that page.  

The vendor at this booth sold us some great kale and some baked goods.  She's from Somalia and ok'd a photo of the table, but not of herself.  

Another vendor was from Bhutan and I got a jar of rhubarb-raspberry jelly from an Alaska Native woman.  

Here are some  posts from 2018 and2019 that feature the market.  And yes, by September there are a lot more fresh vegetables for sale.  

There's also a great playground here for the kids.  

Happy Birthday Mom

We've been working from early morning each day trying to get my mom's house ready for renting.  We got new beds, cleaned the yard just to fill the compost garbage for Monday night pickup, fussed with the alarm system, got the electrician, someone to steam clean the sofa and other upholstered furniture.  We visited my 96 year old step mom, who was briefly awake and engaged in a limited way.  I got ride in to the beach to simply to work off all the anxieties that were building up - it worked.  We had the electrician and the repair man.  Moving furniture back into the house from the garage now that the wood floor has been sanded and redone.  Maybe the car will fit in tomorrow.

picture from previous visit

Also squeezed in a trip to the cemetery today to wish her happy birthday.  I cut some flowering jade plant, a bird of paradise, and some epidendrum from my mom's yard, and we took out some of the dead flowers from last time and stuck in the new ones.  My wife's parents, my brother, and another close family friend are there too.   Last year I put some soil in the vases and stuck the jade plants in.  A caretaker at the cemetery waters them and the jade plants are growing and healthy.  So the flowers were just to add some color for a while.  She would have been 96 today.

And so as I was sorting out the books I opened Erich Maria Remarque's Shadows in Paradise to see why my mom  still had that book.  Here's the prologue:

"I lived in New York during the last phase of the Second World War.  Despite my deficient English the midtown section of New York became for me the closest thing to a home I had experienced in many years.
Behind me lay a long and perilous road, the Via Dolorosa of all those who had fled from the Hitler regime.  It led from Germany to Holand, Belgium, Northern France, and Paris.  From Paris some proceeded to Lyons and the Mediterranean, others to Bordeau, the Pyrenees, and across Spain and Portugal to Lisbon.
Even after leaving Germany we were not safe.  Only a very few of us had valid passports or visas.  When the police caught us we were thrown into jail and deported.  Without papers we could not work legally or stay in one place for long.  We were perpetually on the move.
In every town we stopped at the post office, hoping to find letters from friends and relatives.  On the road we scrutinized every wall for messages from those who had passed through before us addresses, warnings, words of advice,  The walls were our newspapers and bulletin boards.  This was our life in a period of universal indifference, soon to be followed by the inhuman war years, when the Milice, often seconded by the police, joined forces with the Gestapo against us."

My mom's Via Dolorosa was a little more straightforward.  At age 17 she finally got her visa and a ticket to sail from Hamburg to New York.  It was late August 1939 when she left home for Hamburg, leaving her parents behind.

Reading this and thinking of my mom and other family members whose trips were more arduous and followed Remarque's path more, the journeys of today's refugees seemed more real, and I seemed more connected.  Lacking visas, at the mercy of local police, finding word from relatives wherever you can (for those with cell phones today, this is probably easier), and getting advice from other travelers - some of it good, some of it not - wherever you can.

AIFF 2017: Videos of Yasmin Mistry (Family Rewritten) and Ida Theresa Myklebost (Unwelcome)

Both these films play today

Monday, Dec 4, 2017  

Short Doc Program Against The Grain at 

3pm at the Alaska Experience Theater small.  

and these two film makers will be there.  

Here's Yasmin Mistry:

Family Rewritten is about a girl in the foster care system who has cystic fibrosis.



Here's Ida Theresa Myklebost:



"Unwelcome" is narrated by a young Syrian refugee in Greece.  Myklebost is a Norwegian television journalist who covered the Syrian war.  This is her first film.
"Unwelcome" plays again

Sunday, 12:30pm at the 

AK Exp Small as part of the program 

Short Docs 2: Against the Grain.