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.   

Six Images Winter, Visitors, Nourishment

 

We have several Steller Jays that visit regularly.  Part of me wants you to see how blue it is.  But the snowy background made the exposure of the bird dark.  But when the bird is dark you focus more on it's silhouette.  

It's been snowing close to every day.  I figure my personal trainer is adding an inch or two regularly to get me outside with the snow shovel, since my biking is pretty much curtailed.  

Today it snowed a bit harder.  I think we have about three inches to be shoveled.  

Besides the Steller jay, we had some moose visitors who left messages in the snow to let us know they'd been by.  

Meanwhile, inside our cooking gives other interesting visuals.  

Cooking bananas and kiwis for my morning oatmeal.  

And a whole wheat bread using Mrs. Nash's old bread machine recipe.  Except the bread machine is long gone and the recipe didn't have temperature and time instructions.  

Enjoying And Sharing Our Summer Room With Steller Jay

It's summer enough that we are using the deck a lot now.  Breakfast, lunch, dinner, if it's not raining or too cold, we're out there in this great room.  And the birds get pretty close too.  Black capped chickadees, nuthatches, and particularly the Steller Jays.

I was finishing the newspaper the other day when two Steller Jays showed up eyeing the peanuts I
was eating.  I like peanuts in the shell because I can't eat them as fast as shelled peanuts.  I have to open them first and there are only two inside.  You get the point.

I had the peanuts on a plate and a bowl to put the shells.  Some shells had fallen to the floor.  The birds were calculating whether it was safe to hop down to the table with me sitting there.  I covered the plate of peanuts with the newspaper and went inside to get my camera.

And one of the jays struck.  Below is the video.






Here's dinner a couple of nights ago.  When we bought this house, aside from it being close to where I worked, we loved the natural backyard.  It's just a normal little city lot, but with the hills and the natural foliage, it looks much bigger.

J made Maqluba - from a cookbook called Jerusalem.  I bought the book because of the picture of this dish.  And it's incredible - so many flavors.  (The first link is to a website called Multiculturiostity that describes making this dish from this book with better pictures.  The second one links to a Jerusalem Post review of the book.  It's MUCH cheaper online than what I paid for it at a bookstore, but the bookstore price was worth it for just this recipe.  And I must thank my wife for having the patience to put all the different ingredients together now and then.)

Home Building - Are Stellers Moving In? And Home Show

There were four Steller Jays poking around under the dead leaves in the backyard.  Yes, the snow is pretty much gone, except on the north side of the house, and that follows the shadow line as the sun gets higher each day.

The Stellers seem to be having a territorial fight over our backyard with some magpies in the last couple of weeks.  But I haven't seen more than three at a time before this morning.  This one came up on our deck.  The others were too far away and obscured by the branches of our still bare high bush cranberry bushes to get a decent shot.  The last time we had a magpie nest in our yard, we lost access to half the yard to screeching, dive-bombing magpie parents.  But we also got to see a nest full of chicks learn to fly.

Stellers have seemed more comfortable with people, often coming very close.  But that might not be true if they have babies.




 It's gray today, after lots of sunshine.  While the bike trails through the woods are still full of snow, the last two days I've been able to take a loop along the street-side bike trails/sidewalks with only a little water here and there.  But even with a fender on the back tire, my jacket or backpack shows I've been on the bike.





We went to the home show yesterday.  I still object to having to pay to get to have companies pitch to me, but since we have some long delayed home repairs - starting with our front porch.  We're comfortable with it, but guests do make comments.






Last time we went was long ago at the Sullivan Arena.  There's an advantage to having lots of companies related to homes all in one place.  We got to talk to lots of folks.  Even a company that uses a helical drill to put in metal posts instead of sonotubes if we switch to wooden steps, which we're thinking about.  But it seems they're a lot more expensive.

I talked to Adam about rain gutters.  Our old plastic ones I put in myself long ago, still are working fine, except the down spouts keep detaching from the gutters.  The part you use to hold the downspouts in place has broken in each case and the ones they have are for a different size.  Adam sells metal ones.  They also have some heat wires to put on the roof along the overhang that create places for the melting snow to get to the gutter instead of building up big ice dams.  We also got ideas for window upgrades - they even sell electric shutters for windows.

I also got to talk to some solar energy folks.  For under $10,000 (plus a federal rebate of 30% until 2019) I could get solar panels installed on our house.  They aren't useful, he said, in the three darkest months, and the price that MLP buys back energy is too low to be worth it, he claimed it would pay for itself over a period of time.  I didn't catch how long, but I did notice the average electric bill prices they listed were higher than ours.  So, while gun sales have dropped after Trump's election, perhaps solar buyers may be rushing to get their panels installed before the subsidies drop. 

A woman named Lisa, who was here from Minnesota, was selling, what I learned now online, is a "whole body vibration" machine for 'only' $2495.  I did get to stand on it and do some exercises.  It essentially vibrates and is supposed to help muscle tone.  This was a whole technology I knew nothing about.  Whether it actually does what they claim, is not really proven by science according to science based medicine website which seemed to one that wasn't industry based.  I did see them online ranging in price from $3999 to under $200, though the lower ranging ones only had a base and no handles.

What stood out as we walked around the basketball arena at UAA's newish sports center where vendors had their booths - plus a few more in adjacent areas - was the number of mortgage companies and realtors.  While I'm sure they were there when we did this in the Sullivan Arena long ago, they seemed to make up a much larger proportion of the vendors.

A Different View Of Election Day - Part 1

These backyard visitors weren't at all interested in the election.

 

This steller jay was looking for the bag of peanut shells we had on the deck.  (I didn't do anything to enhance this photo.)

My presence didn't deter him at all.  He scolded me and told me to leave so he could go about his business.

This black capped chickadee was keeping more to itself in the trees.

 

Backyard Bird Fest

There were so many birds in the backyard this afternoon. After seeing flashes of yellow and a couple of red breasted nuthatches were flitting right outside the window, I took the Canon Powershot 550 out to see what I could get. It took me about 15 minutes of waiting and shooting to fill my 2 gb sd-card. Downloaded and checked that video and decided to go find the old tripod. Wow, what a difference. Duh. Then as soon as I sat down, the Steller Jay came.