Snow, Sun, Bread, And Saving Lives

Tromped to the dentist for a cleaning this morning through the new snow.  Others had already created a path.  When I got home I shoveled a lot of snow.  

The sun crept into the bedroom this afternoon and hung a new picture on the wall.  I like it.  But it was only a temporary loan.

Yesterday I did the work.  This morning I pulled it out of the refrigerator, let it warm up, and put it in the oven.  This was a good one.  Rosemary olive.  

How professors can save lives:

Three Thats, Caterpillar Liquefaction, The Electrician, And Impeachment Banter

1.  This first one has me in mild awe of this sentence that has three 'that's in a row, correctly.  

From New Republic article on Frosh* Member** of Congress Katie Porter:

"She discovered as much during her teaching days, when students declared the subjects she taught to be “too hard”—“my classes were like, ‘oh my God, what even is that that that lady teaches?!’”—but she remains devoted to breaking the concepts down."

The article is worth reading to get to know this interesting young Congress member.

*Frosh is a gender neutral substitute for Freshman
**Member of Congress is gender neutral for Congressman or Congresswoman (Just plain Rep. can work too, but it could be confused with a state rep)
And while I'm at it, I'll mention a term that many people still use - "to man (ie a booth)" when a non-sexist alternative for most cases exists:  "to staff".


2.  Under, "whoa, I didn't know that!"

From an LA Times article about Art Shapiro,  a 73 year old professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis  who has been tracking butterflies in ten locations in California every two weeks as long as the weather permits.  He's been doing that for 47 years.

"Butterflies are not the only insects that go through a dramatic metamorphosis, but they may be the most well-studied.
Even so, as recently as 50 years ago scientists weren’t sure how this transformation occurred, but in the last few decades researchers learned that between the caterpillar and adult stage the animal’s body liquefies inside the pupa and then reorganizes itself to form the butterfly. Only the nervous system stays intact."

3.  We had the electricians out to convert light to LED's,  work on our out-of-date electrical panel, and other things around the house - including dealing with the wire cut accidentally by the floor guy.  So here's a picture I couldn't resist of one electrician and his shadow.

4.  Impeachment Quotes

After Rep. Jim Jordan said he wanted to question "the person who started all this"  Rep. Welch replied:  (from Talking Points Memo)

“I say to my colleague, I’d be glad to have the person who started it all come in and testify,” Welch said.
“President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there,” 

This was a rare bit of snark from the Democrats today.  There was one more spot where I was hoping for one more.   Here's part of Rep. Maloney's questioning: (from Rev.com's transcript)

Patrick Maloney: (00:25)
So when you’re top 1% of your class at West Point, you probably get your pick of assignments, but you picked the infantry didn’t you, sir?
Bill Taylor: (00:35)
I did, sir. Yes, sir.
Patrick Maloney: (00:36)
You were a rifle company commander?
Bill Taylor: (00:38)
Sir.
Patrick Maloney: (00:39)
Where’d you serve?
Bill Taylor: (00:41)
In Vietnam.
Patrick Maloney: (00:41)
Did you see combat in Vietnam, sir?
Bill Taylor: (00:44)
I did. 

I was hoping he'd ask one more question:

Patrick Maloney:  Did you have bone spurs?

But he didn't, and it's probably just as well he didn't.  

Cathedrals, Bank Lines, The Disappeared And Their Killers

I really owe you more than pictures, but it’s hard keeping track of and sorting out my impressions and what I’ve been told.  People I see on the streets - what they look like, what they wear, their constant cell phone use - look exactly like the people I see in the US.  Pizza and hamburguesas and beer are among the most popular foods here in Cordoba. But these folks live among buildings that, in a few cases, go back to the 1500s.  They walk down narrow streets with little shops on every block - at least in this neighborhood - with fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, and a few other items, that are right next to bakeries with all sorts of decadent sweets.  There’s history here (not counting the original people prior to European conquest) that makes even the US east coast seem young.

Argentina has free health care and free higher education.

US citizens have a way of feeling superior to the rest of the world, but there’s more to culture than military superiority.  Of course, this is what I’ve discovered every time I’ve been to a new (for me) part of the world.  People are people.  And everywhere you go there are very smart, sophisticated people.  People with great common sense and wisdom.  And there are jerks.  When we were surveyed at the airport by someone from a tourism agency, we were asked to rate a number of things.  I asked if we were going to be asked about the people.  No, we weren’t.  Well, I said, you should ask us.  The people were absolutely the best part of our trip.  Tolerant of my terrible Spanish and always wanting to know “De desde son?”  Where are you from?  And Alaska always elicits a smile and ‘frio.’

That said, here are the pictures.  These are two days old.  We walked up to Plaza San Martin, the center of Córdoba, Argentina’s second largest city.  While we were at the Museum of Memories, a group came in with a guide speaking in English and when we listened in we got invited to join.  It’s a company that puts on free tours - it’s up to you to decide what to pay the guide.  The group was mostly Spanish speakers and the English speakers got a much shorter version.  And two dropped out during the two hour plus tour, leaving just us.

But first here’s a picture from our 8th floor balcony.  Airbnb had a two bedroom apartment  for under $50 a night.  It’s by far the most spacious place we’ve stayed.  Well, the Buenos Aires homestay was bigger, but we didn’t have it to ourselves.            

  

I couldn’t pass up the shadows - also from the balcony.

 

This is the inside of the main Cathedral on Plaza San Martin.  If you’ve been reading the blog lately, you’ve  heard this name before.  San Martin, someone said, was the George Washington of Argentina.  But he was more than that.  Besides getting Argentina free from Spain, he did the same in Chile.  Then passed the torch to Simon Bolivar in Peru.

Here’s a view of the plaza. It’s much warmer here in central Argentina.  Up to about 70˚F in the afternoon.

    

Here’s the cathedral from the plaza.

Construction of the Cathedral began in 1582 according to Wikipedia and it was finished in 1709.  For the historically challenged, the Mayflower got to North America in 1620 and George Washington was born in 1732.

If you look closely below, you can see a long line of people at the bank.  We’ve seen shorter lines before and asked.  Someone suggested about a Friday lineup that people were getting money out for the weekend and wanted to get their money in case the ATMs ran out of money over the weekend.  In this case, it was Tuesday after a holiday weekend.  (This is here because it was on the way to Plaza San Martin.)

 

The Museum of the Memories is in a former detention and torture center from the 1970s when the government rounded up suspected opponents.


The Free Tour guide (in the red in the center) said about 30,000 people disappeared.  Tortured to death, shot, and others were  thrown out of airplanes over the ocean.  Children were kidnapped and given to other families.  I knew some of this.  Netflix has The Official Story up - well it’s here in Spanish without English subtitles.  It’s about this period.

 I was going to save this museum for a post all its own, but I have so many backed up photos I should just put it up.  It’s a chilling account.  30,000 people is a tiny fraction of the population.  But if it’s your son or daughter or husband, it’s everything.  And all the relatives and friends and acquaintances of 30,000 people is enough to spread terror among millions of others that they will be next.  Sort of like undocumented Americans waiting for ICE to knock on their doors.
 
Buzzfeed reported in May that over 52,000 people were being held in ICE detention centers.  The vast majority of these are decent, innocent people fleeing violence in their own countries.  But the Trump administration is full of heartless people who easily rationalize the evil they are doing.  Here is a picture of some of their Argentinian colleagues from the 70s and 80s.

.  The guide mentioned that the detention center that houses the museum is right next to the cathedral and part of the cabildo - the main government building of the province.  Both were complicit.  

Here are a few more memories.

This giant (5 or 6 feet high) fingerprint is made up of names of the disappeared. There were several more such fingerprints on the wall.    

A courtyard in the detention center.

A poster about one of the young women who disappeared.

Another victim.

And interrogation room, I think.

The difference between what happened in Chile and what’s happening today is great.  We still have enough accountability that people aren’t being actively and intentionally  tortured or thrown out of airplanes into the ocean.  But it’s not because some of the people in charge wouldn’t do those things if they could.  They did it at Guantanamo.  We still have some safeguards.  But being locked up indefinitely without adequate food and, bad sanitary conditions, having your kids separated from you, is all pretty terrifying by itself.  We’re watching the cold-bloodedness of Mike Dunleavy in action.  He would have gone along with the men in the picture above.  And I’m guessing the 22 legislators who went to Wasilla and refused to vote to override the vetoes  have moral compasses that don’t recognize evil either.         

      

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

And this car was making its point pretty loudly.







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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Could Slavery Have Died A Peaceful Death?

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

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

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

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

Could Compromise Have Prevented the Civil War?

Civil War's dirty secret about slavery

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

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

The New Thai Kitchen, Homegoing to Cleveland and to Ghana, Bending Toward Justice, And Tree Shadow

The Thai Kitchen, after 30 years, was closing briefly to move a few spaces down the mall, next to the Yogurt place that they also own.  That was going to happen after we left in December, and Saturday night we went to see the new place.  Here's Sommai at the stove and some of the flowers for the new opening.

The overall space is a little smaller, but it's new and fresh and it has a door directly to the Yogurt place so you can get dessert after your Thai meal.

And it has some new menu items.  Kow Soi is a great Chiengmai noodle curry that we enjoyed while we were in Chiengmai.  (Transliterations into English from Thai can vary.)  I  Also the new spicy cabbage was good.


Today I got my teeth cleaned and picked up a book at the UAA library.  Coming out I passed the small gallery next to the library entrance and was impressed with the pictures there by Michael Conti.  The sign said he grew up in near Cleveland and last summer went back for a couple of months fine arts residency funded by the Rasmuson Foundation at Zygote Press, ant art printshop.  I liked what he learned to do with his photos.  Here are a couple examples.

There also was this poster for a free lecture Thursday (Feb 1) at the Wendy Williamson auditorium that sounded interesting.  Marika Anthony-Shaw:  Collective Impact:  Bending Toward Justice.   7:30pm












And finally, walking the rest of the way home I had to wonder about whether trees check out their shadows to see how they look.

I'm sure the appreciate the warmth radiating back from the sunlit wall next to them in any case.





The book club is meeting here tonight so I have some cleaning up to do.  I made a Ghanian peanut soup last night - we read Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, which follows the generations of two half-sisters - one who is taken as a slave to the new world and one who stays behind in Ghana from the late 1700s to the almost present.  Interesting book, lots of insights, but you have to keep on your toes as the characters change with each generation in two continents.

Shadows

Today's news, probably more starkly than usually, is about what people see and and how they interpret it.   When we see what's real, who do we interpret it?  When we see shadows of what's real, how do we interpret it?  

I'm a bit overwhelmed by the interpretation of shadows of shadows (can shadows have shadows?) coming out of the US administration these days.  There is so much focus on shadows rather than on the thing itself, and shadows of things that aren't that important.   Wiretaps?  Budget cuts?  Everyone acting as if the shadow in the white house is an actual president.

So I thought it might be best to just focus today on shadows and their interpretations.

Some thoughts from others on shadows:

“What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.”
― Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
― C.G. Jung 

“It's part of what we call the Shadow, all the dark parts of us we can't face. It's the thing that, if we don't deal with it, eventually poisons our lives.”
― Michael Gruber, The Good Son  

“Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.”
― Steven Erikson, House of Chains 

“One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.”
― Jean Rhys, Quartet 

“I consider a dream like I consider a shadow,” answered Caeiro, with his usual divine, unexpected promptitude. “A shadow is real, but it’s less real than a rock. A dream is real — if it weren’t, it wouldn’t be a dream — but less real than a thing. That’s what being real is like.”
― Álvaro de Campos

“Facts are delusion," he said. "They are a delusion of truth as a mirage is a delusion of sight. The real facts lie in people's minds and not in fingerprints and books and photographs and all the other physical things which are only the accidents that occur as a result of what lies in the mind. Truth is a matter of the mind and all else is only a blurred shadow to reconstruct the original image. Bit it is the image we are searching for.”
― Leonard Holton, Out of the Depths

Shadow Man

This is not a political post.  It's just about the joy of sun pouring through the windows and setting up every changing images of light and shadows on the walls.