It's So Much Easier To Destroy Than To Build

This is so obvious.  Something we all know.  Yet we need to be reminded regularly.

I was reminded this morning as I took apart the jigsaw puzzle we'd worked on intermittently since June and only finished this week.  Here's what the finished puzzle looked like after two months of 'construction':

And here's what it looks like now - after about a minute of work:

We drop a porcelain bowl that shatters in seconds.

We see this when a wrecking ball or a fire takes down a building.  All the time to acquire the money and materials and designs.  All the time to gather the people who put those materials into place and then maintain them.  The time to gather the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the photographs, the shared events, and other memories of a place.  Years of work and play can become rubble in minutes.

We see this in a violent death.  Years of becoming a human being - the learning, developing, building relationships destroyed in an instant.

And, less obviously, Trump has been trying to dismantle the government.  Pulling out of the Paris Agreement.  Banning transgender folks from the military.  Cracking down on immigrants and threatening to end DACA.

And Trump's also finding out how difficult it is to create things - like a healthcare program where “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

We've been watching the speed of destruction in Houston this week.

Yet, destroying individual items, buildings, people is much easier and faster than destroying larger systems - a city like Houston, the US government,  the ecosystem of the earth.  With slow-building disasters, you have time to avert them.  But the gradual nature also lulls people into not seeing what is happening and where it leads.

I worked for NOAA during the year that Reagan was elected and came into office vowing to cut back on government.  I'd been there long enough to see that the agencies were made up of people with years of experience all over the country.  They understood weather, oceanography, atmosphere, marine mammals.  They also understood the vast network of people who monitored these things to make weather forecasts, to map the coastlines, to protect seals and whales.

As Reagan planned (unsuccessfully) to dismantle agencies like NOAA, I saw not just interchangeable parts that could be easily rebuilt by ordering so many meteorologists and atmospheric scientists off the shelf.  Rather I saw complex networks of human beings that over the years, working together on various projects in different locations, had built an understanding of how to make the organization work and had built an understanding of who to call on for this expertise and that.  They'd built, through years of interaction, a trust amongst each other.  Something that takes a long time to build.  A commodity we aren't seeing among the people Trump has gathered to help him in the White House.

So, the thought that some NOAA agencies might be axed, was horrifying.  So much that had been built up over so long would be lost and could not be replaced except over another very long period.

I think about this as I hear that Trump wants to cut the State Department by a third.  Wants to get rid of the special envoys for the Arctic and for Climate Change.

Fortunately, human systems, human communities are not as vulnerable to instant destruction (unless all the humans are destroyed).  In fact, bureaucracies are designed to resist quick, impetuous changes.  But that doesn't mean a lot of damage can't be done.

One last thought:  how do we come to understand why some people either don't see or don't care about such destruction of things and people?  Don't understand or don't care about what will be lost?  What can we do, as a society, in the way parents rear their kids and schools educate them, and societal structures encourage or discourage them, that minimizes the number of folks vulnerable to such destructive impulses?

Lists Are Good

I made a list today and did most of the things on it.

Some are done:

• I copied some pages from The Camp of the Saints √ - a book supposedly on Steve Bannon's must-read list.  The library was saying I couldn't renew it.  I'd been taking notes, for a blog post, but I just couldn't finish it.  Partly because it's so disgusting.  Partly because I was reading it carefully so I could blog about.  Copying pages I'd put into my notes means I can find the quotes I want when I'm ready to post about it.  I then took it and three other books back to the library.√  
• I got the hoses out in the front√ and the back√.  Washed down the chaise lounge (not on the list, but should have been), and watered the flower beds in front√ and some in back√.  I also swept the cottonwood catkins off the deck twice.  (That wasn't on the list).  
• I picked up the seedlings we'd left with friends while we were gone.√  
• I called a couple of folks ☐☐ about things I need to do, but I had to leave messages, so they're still hanging.  (I use those little boxes to mark things I did, but didn't get completed.  I'd made the calls, but had to leave messages.  So not really settled.)
• I recorded a statement for an insurance company about an accident I witnessed Wednesday afternoon in Alameda, California.  Our friends were showing us this little island in San Francisco Bay that used to have a navy and army base.  We heard a bang.  Across the street a car had pulled out of a parking space and hit a car that was passing by.  I left my card with the driver of the car that was hit and told him I'd seen it if he needed a witness.  The insurance company called.  I realized, as she asked me questions, how little I had paid attention.  I'd focused on the key aspects - the fact that car had pulled out and hit a passing car - but I couldn't tell her what street it was, what kind of cars were involved.  That wasn't on my list either.  
• I didn't call the IRS, but I called my mother's accountant √ to let him know I'd gotten a letter saying there was a discrepancy in her 2014 income taxes.  That was the year that deductions for the caregiver got messed up and it took me over a year of monthly phone calls to the IRS and help from the Alaska IRS ombudsman to clear things up.  I didn't call the IRS because I couldn't find all the forms from that year.  I'd finally put them away, thinking that horror was behind me.  Apparently it isn't.  Calling the IRS was on the list.  Instead I went through files looking for the forms and instead I found other stuff that had been dumped in the file cabinet.  Sorting that stuff wasn't on the list.  

Lists do focus me and tend to keep me from forgetting all the things I'm supposed to do.  And from getting distracted with things not on the list.  And checking things off the list is a good feeling.  I get to see all that one did in a day and don't feel that I totally wasted the day.  Getting a blog post up wasn't on the list.  Maybe I thought I'd have the Camp of The Saints post ready.  No, I knew that would take longer.

White Tears

"I do not know if I have ever been alive.  How would I tell?  Where in the living creature does life actually lie?  No single part of a cell is alive.  And life itself is just an aggregate of non-living processes, chemical reactions cascading, birthing complexity.  There is no clear border between life and non-life.  Once you realize that, so much else unravels."

I've just spent a couple of days unraveling.   An outsider meets and insider and they create their own inside by taking from another circle from which they are excluded.  And one of the insiders of that group, from another time, comes to claim his due.  Time merges one period into another.

"Time is flattened here in the back room"

At times I was lost, hoping that author Hari Kunzru hadn't abandoned me somewhere on the road, as he abandoned characters. (He always came back to get me.)

Cover (by Peter Mendelsund) close up

Kunzru paints words and sounds onto pages shortcutting conventions, but not shortchanging the reader. An ethereal musician says:

"Since I was a child I could always play, always find the thread of what I was feeing and follow it up and down the strings." 

I just finished the last lines today.

"The needle vibrates, punctures my face just below my left eye.  The tattooist's homemade gun is powered by a motor from an old CD player.  The ink is made out of soot.  Four tears, one each for Carter, Leonie and their parents. I listen to the buzz of the motor and think of what I learned by listening through the crackle and hiss, into the past:  they either add dollars or days and if you don't have dollars, all you have to give is days."

I'll write more.  But first I need to let it sink in.  I may even reread it before I try to write more.  This is just an appetizer.  This is no ordinary book.  The inside of the dust jacket tells you beautifully about the story and yet it tells you nothing.  How this book even arrived at my door is a story in itself.  More soon.

Some Investigations I'd Like Congress To Undertake Without Evidence

Kellyanne Conway:  "I have no evidence, but that's why there is an investigation in Congress."

WATCH: "I have no evidence but that's why there's an investigation in Congress..." @KellyannePolls on Trump's wiretap claims. pic.twitter.com/W4kGlrK0Um

— Good Morning America (@GMA) March 13, 2017

Who needs evidence to start an investigation?  I'd like some investigations and I have no evidence (actually for some, I'm sure I could come up with a reasonable amount of evidence).  Here's my quick, off the top of my head list of congressional investigations I'd like to see:

1. Why do so many Republican members of congress claim that climate change isn't human related?
2. How much income tax has Donald Trump paid over the last 20 years and who has leverage over Trump because he owes them significant amounts of money or favors?
3. Who do the Supreme Court justices talk to off the bench and how do those conversations affect their decisions?
4. What is Sen. Dan Sullivan's (R-Koch) obligations to large oil interests and other funders?
5. How do members of congress who knowingly vote against their constituents' best interests sleep at  night?  Is it true the pharmaceutical companies provide them with all the sleeping drugs they need?  How does this affect their clarity and ability to make good decisions?
6. How many officially pro-life legislators (federal, state, and local) have wives and/or girlfriends, mistresses who have had abortions?  Who?  
7. How is it that members of congress do not object to Viagra being covered by health insurance, but they fight to keep birth control and abortions from being covered?

I'm afraid, I'm not too good at this.  I've only asked questions, unlike Trump who made accusations.
Plus, these are all investigations which, I believe, if carried out honestly and effectively, would provide the US population with important information about how our representatives operate.  And I'm sure a day of googling would give me lots of evidence that there is reason to investigate each of them.


The point here, is that investigations cost money.  From what I can tell at that link about the costs of the Benghazi investigation, most of the money goes to pay for staff.   What doesn't get factored are the opportunity costs of so many people spending their time on, say Benghazi or whether Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.  What might they have spent their time on instead?  Like coming to resolutions of issues so that the US is a stronger and safer and more democratic nation.

Try asking your local police department to do an investigation on something without providing them any evidence.  Or your company to investigate something without evidence.  It doesn't happen, because it costs money and takes people away from more pressing issues.  And that seems to be the point of Trump's allegations, to divert attention from more pressing issues.  But that's part of his standard operating procedure - Attack, Counterattack, Never Apologize.  [I try not to be too repetitive, but I don't think I can refer to often to this Attack line of thinking.  It truly appears to be how Trump thinks and everyone should understand it.]

Amazon's Proposed 30 Minute Delivery From Airborne Warehouse

The ADN had an article touting Amazon's patent application for a floating warehouse that could reduce delivery to 30 minutes or less.

I can imagine that there are some items that one must have in 30 minutes.  I'm not talking about an onion you forgot to buy with dinner guests due in an hour.  There could be some life-saving items that are occasionally needed quickly.

But, generally, what's the point?

I remember when my son got impatient waiting for something to appear online in 20 seconds because he was used to a faster connection.  But this instantaneous gratification comes at a cost.  Actually, a lot of different costs.

1.  Opportunity costs of creativity and money spent on this rather than on  projects that make a greater contribution to humanity's well being.

2.  Continued reduction of people's long term thinking and planning skills as businesses work compete over speed of gratification.

3.  Loss of patience as a human quality, and thus, the devaluing of things that take time to grow - trees, babies, friendship, love - and inability to deal with any delays.  It seems we already have enough road rage.

4.  Loss of attention span, necessary to evaluate ideas, test theories, make good decisions.

5.  And whose airspace will these warehouses be in?  Whose sunlight will they block?  Where will their pollution pollute?  Will they be silent or add to the noise we all suffer daily?

The article talks about using such flying warehouses at events where lots of people gather - such as a baseball game.

"Imagine you're at a baseball game and wanted to buy a meal or a jersey without ever leaving your seat. The system Amazon describes would allow you to place an order and receive the item within minutes."

Well, I'm imagining 30 drones zooming down to three rows trying to figure out which person to deliver the hot dog to and how to avoid crashing into the other 29 drones.  I'm imagining people snatching someone else's lunch, that was paid for already electronically when the order was placed.  I'm imagining drones picking up bottles of urine for a fee so the patron doesn't have to leave his seat.




Doesn't this all sound a little like the people in Wall-E?


But maybe virtual reality will make going to the stadium totally unnecessary.

But I take hope from other trends.  Here's another Alaska Dispatch News article that goes in the opposite direction:

"Folk schools offer lessons for battling ‘convenience culture’"

"Raising urban chickens, making a leather belt or building a traditional kayak aren't among the offerings you'll usually find at mainstream educational institutions. But they are skills you can learn at two of Alaska's newest schools. 

They're known as folk schools, and they focus on teaching and sharing traditional, hands-on knowledge and homesteading skills typically nonexistent in the educational system."

And the Los Angeles Times had an article about the growth of the vinyl record business.

But it shouldn't be an either/or, thus versus them issue here.  There are some great benefits from new technology.  We just need to consider the environmental, cultural, and human costs of the technology against the benefits.  People can argue that if consumers don't buy, businesses won't make the products.  But since business spends so much money tapping into people's primal brains to get them to 'need' every new product, I think that's a specious argument.  But it is true, if people don't buy, those things will no longer be on the market.

But I think that humans should always be ready for the day, or the year, when the power goes out, the satellites fail, and that infrastructure that supports the life so many are totally dependent on crashes.  Humans need to be able take care of themselves when all the conveniences collapse.

Spending Afternoon In The Late Pleistocene Epoch

The UC Museum of Paleontology gives the dates of the Pleistocene as 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago and says the La Brea Tar Pits is "one of most famous Pleistocene fossil localities anywhere."

The tar pits is one of my good childhood memories.  Before the LA County Museum of Art was there.  Before the Page Museum was there, it was just a big park with giant, climbable  statues of the long extinct big mammals that lived then - mammoths, mastodons, saber tooth tigers, and giant sloths.  And there were live rabbits hopping about the park.  And, of course, the scattered pools of tar that entrapped so many of the animals.

So it seemed a good place to go with our granddaughter and we spent the whole afternoon there.

We took the tour, and the guide - he was really good - took on some of the myths and misnomers surrounding the tar pits.  First, they were really asphalt* pits.  Tar, he said, is man made.  Second, the animals who got stuck in the pools, didn't get sucked down like in quicksand, but tended to stay on the surface and die of hunger or thirst or from predators.  And this iconic set of mastodons is a little more Hollywood than real.

The animals at the tar pits are from the late Pleistocene era - 10,000 - 50,000 years ago.  So, no dinosaurs.  Just animals that lived when humans were around.  And whether these large mammals went extinct because the Ice Age ended or people got better at killing them or diseases is still in debate.

The museum offered lots of examples of fossils from the era and simulated versions the many of the animals and birds.  There are also people actively sorting through bones still today.

This woman (and two others) were sorting through material with paint brushes and magnifying glasses and microscopes to separate non-fossils from fossils.  The collect fossil insect parts and even plant seeds.


The building itself is mostly underground, with grass slopes built up around it.  My granddaughter had fun 'jumping off' the roof, the running down the sides and back up again.   (The 'roof' is actually that whitish wall, not the top grey facade which has a frieze depicting animals of the period.)  As you can see if you look carefully, it had rained heavily the night before, and as you can't see, it would rain again that night.

Click on any of the images to enlarge and sharpen them

Altogether a good afternoon for the oldsters and the youngster.  



*for a distinction between tar and asphalt, check here.
For a long and interesting pdf on asphalt, check here.

AIFF2016: Saturday Suggestions - Demimonde For Sure

My advice is to go to the Festival's Sched Page for Saturday.

It looks like this (for the morning):

Click on this image and it will take you to the whole Saturday Schedule with all the dropdown windows working

It's good and will help you plan.  But it doesn't show the overlaps very well.  Unfortunately they continued what they did last year - program films that end after the next films nearby begin.

My key recommendation for Saturday is Demimonde at 8:15pm at the Bear Tooth.  Attila Szász's The Ambassador To Bern was the AIFF best feature in 2014.  It was a fine movie.  He has the same crew for this film about a famous Hungarian courtesan who was murdered and shocked the whole city.  It's a period piece and the trailer is exquisite.

I had a skype interview with Szász in 2014 about The Ambassador To Bern. At the end we talked a little bit about the new production he was beginning - which turns out to be Demimonde.  You can see it below.




But there are other films in competition showing today as well:

Happy Lucky Golden Tofu Dragon Panda Fun Fun Good Time Show is a documentary about a comedy act  known as Slanty Eyed Mamas.
Dropka is doc about Tibetan nomads.
Both are discussed in the Docs in Competition post.

Planet Ottakring  is an Austrian feature that I've discussed in the Features in Competition post.  (Along with Demimonde).

There are also panels where you can participate in discussions with some of the filmmakers.

Lots of good stuff.

AIFF 2016: Super Shorts In Competition - Matches, Magic, Weight Loss, And More

Super Shorts are under ten minutes.  Films in competition are those chosen by the original screeners to be eligible for awards.  Super Shorts are shown in programs so they can be hard to find in the program.  Below is

• a list of the super shorts in competition
• list of the programs where they appear and when
• description of each super short in competition in alphabetical order

I'd note that while these are the screeners picks, screeners don't always agree, so some would have chosen other super shorts as the best.  I often disagree with the screeners, but this is a good start.

Super Shorts in Competition	Director	Country	Length
20 Matches	Mark Tapio Kines	USA	10 min
Death$ in a $mall Town	Mark Jones	USA	7 min
How To Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps	Benjamin Berman	USA	7 min
A Magician	Max Blustin	UK	3 min
On Time	Xavier Neal-Burgin	USA	8 min
A Reasonable Request	Andrew Laurich	USA	9  min

Program (right)   Film (below)	HARD KNOCKS Saturday - 1st Dec 3, 2016 11:30am -1 pm - AK Exper Small Thursday -2nd Dec. 8 5:30-7:30pm AK EX Large	MARTINI MATINEE Friday. Dec 9 2-4 PM BEAR TOOTH	LOVE AND PAIN Wed.  1st Dec. 7 5:30-7 pm BEAR TOOTH Sat 2nd Dec. 10 5:45-7:15pm AK Ex Small	GLOBAL VILLAGE Sunday, DEC. 13  1PM-2:45PM AK Exper Large
20 Matches			√  √
Death$ in a $mall Town		√
How To Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps			√  √
A Magician				√
On Time	√  √
A Reasonable Request		√

As you can see, three of these films are only showing once, so you're going to have to work hard to see them.  In the past they've occasionally shown super shorts before features, so maybe they'll do that, though A Reasonable Request will need to be with a mature audience feature.  Fortunately you can see the whole film below.

202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020

20 Matches

Mark Tapio Kines

USA

0:10:00

"A young woman (Nina Rausch) sits alone in a pitch black room and lights twenty matches, one at a time.
Her face illuminated only by the flame from each match, the woman tells the story of a Viennese serial killer who kidnapped and murdered twenty immigrant women – one per year."

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$


Death$ in a $mall Town
Mark Jones
USA
0:07:00


Can't find much about this one.  From IMDB page:

"A mayor has a unique way to revive the fortunes of his small town that had been losing citizens, businesses and tourist prior to his taking office."

Based on these first two pictures, the team that chose the super shorts in competition had a thing about matches and the dark.


4444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444

How To Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps
Benjamin Berman
USA
0:07:00

Here's the guy whose story is told in the film writing on the film's Tumblr page:

“'How To Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps' is a short film is based on a true story from my life: I went through a bad breakup, then hit the gym as a way to get over the heartbreak - and ended up losing 90 lbs in the process. Then I did what anyone else in this glorious age of the Internet we live in would do:
I wrote a blog post about it.
Published on my small personal Tumblr as just a cathartic way to somehow make sense of my heartbreak and what I had gone through, The Little Blog Post That Could surprisingly went massively viral and struck a chord around the world with millions of people: It turns out (unfortunately) that there are a lot of people out there who have gotten their hearts broken, and almost all of those people turned to the gym to get over it. I wasn’t alone.
One of those people who had gotten their heart broken and stumbled across the “4 Easy Steps” blog post was director Ben Berman, who contacted me through a friend. He said “let’s make a film!”. So we did. "

It continues, including how the actor suggested that he actually lose weight during the filming.

There's also an SNL connection.

Here's the whole movie.  It's got over 4 million hits already on Youtube.  Who needs film festivals anymore?  If a film was in every festival in the US, it wouldn't get 4 million viewers.







MAGICIANAICIGAMAGICIANAICIGAMAGICIANAICIGAMAGICIANAICIGAM





A Magician  Global Village*
Max Blustin
UK 0:03:00

Image and description from Agile Ticketing;

"After witnessing a man behave violently towards his girlfriend, someone decides to intervene."

⌚️ ⌚️ ⌚️ ⌚️ ⌚️ ⌚️ ⌚️ ⌚️ ⌚️ ⌚️

On Time
Xavier Neal-Burgin
USA
 0:08:00

Image and description from the Bureau of Creative Works:

"'On Time' is a short form adaption of the feature length script 'Rough Around the Edges' written by Xavier and Tiara Marshall. The script made it to the first round of the Sundance Screenwriter's Lab. We can't wait to see this story unfold into a feature length film."

NOTNOTNOTNOTNOTNOTNOT

A Reasonable Request
Andrew Laurich
USA
0:09:00

If you let your child watch this, you might have some explaining to do.  I'd suggest you watch this on your own first.  Below is the whole movie.

AIFF 2016: What's In A Name? Anchorage International Film Festival Films Selected - The First Look

[UPDATE Nov 27, 2016:  I've posted the films in competition on the AIFF2016 page.  I have detailed pages for the Shorts in Competition and the Super Shorts in competition and working on the others.]

Looking at the lists of films selected in the various categories for the first time each year is always exciting.  There's not much to go by - film titles, names of directors, countries.  It's like being in a big room with strangers many of whom you will soon get to know.  Some will become great friends, others nodding acquaintances, others you'll never connect with.

But for now all you've got are appearances and stereotypes.  Does a film title catch your fancy?  Intrigue you enough to want to know more?  Maybe you have a connection to particular country that's represented by a film or two.  And perhaps there are some interesting or even familiar names.

That's where we are now as the 2016 films selected for this year's festival have been posted on the AIFF2016 website.  At this point I'm just going to give a brief overview and comment briefly on some of the names and titles that caught my attention.

From the poster for Attila Szász' Demimonde

The background for the Features list isImage .  Szász is a Hungarian film maker whose The Ambassador To Bern won the Best Feature at AIFF in 2014.  You can see a Skype interview I did with Szász back then.  There's also transcript.  Part 8 talks about the film (Demimonde) he was starting to work on (which was why none of the film crew could make it to Anchorage that year).

Screenshot from the trailer of Karan Ananth's Indian film The Blind Side.

The background is a  

Here's some dialogue I created from three other titles from the documentary list.

A:  Goodbye Darling, I'm Off To Fight 

B:  I'll Wait Here 

A:  Walk With Me

As you can see, at this point, these are just words on a page that have whatever meaning you might invest in them.  But before long, as we learn more about the films and, hopefully, see them, they will show us who they really are.

 Image from the trailer of Richard Harper 's Evil's Evil Cousin.

Some of the shorts titles that seemed to have some superficial connection at this point:

Black Cat Gorilla Like a Butterfly	Row 1,	Sing For Your Supper No Touching Virgin Territory	Row 1,	This Path Thunder Road	Row 1,

Background is screenshot from A Reasonable Request 

You can't help but assume that a title like A Reasonable Request will be anything but reasonable.

Some other titles:

There were the titles with numbers:

• 20 Matches
• How To Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps

But maybe the second one should have been paired with

• Fresh Chocolate Bar

And there are time related titles:

• On Time
• Late Night Drama

ANIMATION, which was a little thin last year, has a robust roster of films this year.

Image from  Elif Boyacioglu's The Teacup

And there's lots of mischief we can do grouping some of the titles

Food	Puns	Colors	Time
Notorious Corn	Pug of War	Red	Just Like It Used to Be
The Old Man and the Pear	No Touching	Green Light	A Space In Time
Under the Apple Tree	Virgin Territory		The Land Before Time Machines Time Chicken

Image screenshot from Daven Hafey's We Eat Fish

Some Intriguing Titles:

The Girl Who Spoke Cat

You bruise, You lose

GlaswAsian Tales

Welcome to the Last Bookstore

At this point I know next to nothing about these films, though finding pictures for this post gave me a bit more information.  We have titles (and you can see all the titles and names of directors and countries and lengths of most of the films at the AIFF2016 website.  Soon we'll know a little more, and eventually, we'll be able to see many of these films and meet some of the filmmakers.

Note:  Since the Alaska films didn't have countries listed (last year all but one was a US filmmaker), I've listed the titles.

Note 2:  HTML Table Generator has revamped its page and I'm having a bit of trouble making the tables work here in blogger.  I can't see the final table when I'm composing or in Preview which means I have to post it to see if I got it right.  So forgive the different kinds of tables.  I'll get this eventually.  

It's All About Being At The Right Place At The Right Time

Was biking home last night to a huge rainbow that arced the sky, with a dazzling display just over Flat Top.   I only had my little Spotmatic to snap with, but you can get a sense of how vivid it was.

This morning, about 12 hours later I was back at the same spot I had gotten this picture.  But things were different.  

My Head's Still In Paris, But My Feet Are Back Home In Anchorage

It took Captain Cook almost two years to sail from England to Alaska, though he didn't really have a map and he went via New Zealand.

This morning, we walked along the Seine and had breakfast in a sidewalk cafe off of the Champs-Élysées.

It was about 8:30am, still a 'cool' 73 or 74˚F after the previous day's high 90s weather.

We left Paris at 2:10pm.  Can you find Waldo?  Or in this case the Eiffel Tower?

Three hours later we'd landed in Reykjavik, Iceland, where it was a brisk 53˚F (12˚C)  And hour or so later we were leaving Iceland.

And soon Greenland was below us.  

A while later we were flying over the sea ice in the Beaufort Sea over far northern Canada.
[You can enlarge and focus any of these pictures by clicking on it)

The sea ice was right up against the land.  Look closely below and you can see a pretty massive and sharp cliff.

Based on the inflight route mapper and Worldatlas, I'm guessing this was Banks Island

A little while later, we were flying over the Yukon River.

And then past Denali, though the plane's computer map still called it Mt. McKinley.

















We landed in Anchorage a little over ten hours after leaving Paris, and that included a change of planes in Reykjavik.

And although I'd been reading reports of rain and cold, when we walked over to the Thai Kitchen for dinner it was bright, sunny, and a warm 72 or 73˚F.

While this isn't as amazing as the Star Trek transporter, I'm sure Captain Cook would have had difficulty believing someone could go this far this fast.  Paris is still part of my reality, but I know it will fade soon.

[UPDATE Aug 29 7:24am:  Seems I jumped the gun when I reposted this.  It did get onto Feedburner, so I took down the repost.]

Friday In Paris

The Musée Cluny was recommended by a friend, but the idea of rooms and rooms of stuff from the middle ages just wasn't that appealing.  But J wanted to go and it opens an hour earlier than most other museums.

First we stopped for some breakfast in Luxembourg Park.   At 9:30 am the temperature was still in the 70s F, so it was a good time to be in the park.  It later got into the high 90s F.

Then walked the short way from there to the Cluny.









Well, let me say, a museum of the middle ages, housed in a building built in the middle ages turned out to be much better than I expected.

Here we are walking down into the lowest level which was built in Roman times and was a bath.


[Most of these pictures enlarge and focus if you click on them.]

This week I'm reminded anew, that just because people lived 500 or 1000 years ago, doesn't mean they weren't just as involved and aware of their world as we are of ours.  And even more obviously they were talented in many ways.




We then walked over to the Notre Dame, but it had a line to get in so we passed it up.  One of the benefits of the museum passes is supposed to be skipping the lines.  But nothing we went to had a very big line (Notre Dame is free;  the Eiffel Tower did have a line, but it isn't covered by the Museum pass).  I posted yesterday about the Lebanese food place we stopped at.

We made it to the Pompidou Center.  This has 'modern' and 'contemporary' floors.  The modern goes back to the beginning of the 20th Century.  The contemporary seems to be the last 20 or 30 years or so.

My mind is filled with so many thoughts from the last two days that this post is just a glimpse while I try to make sense of everything.  From the Pompidou, first a view.

You can see Sacre Couer on the top of the hill on the right.  The wide angle lens makes it possible to get a lot more into the picture, but it makes things look further away than they actually are.  (I went to look for the view I took from Sacre Couer, but it didn't get posted.)

And from the 'modern' collection, here's part of a Matisse from 1910 - young girl with a black cat.   There were some great works there, but I was familiar with a lot of the painters (my year as a student in Germany in the mid 60s gave me a great art education), and I wanted to see the new stuff.  Here's a little from the contemporary floor.

I wasn't impressed with the two short films that looped in the theater, but it was a great place to catch a short nap.  Dark, relatively quiet, and big, soft sofa like seats.  A few winks was exactly what we needed to carry on.  The description talked about the symbolism of the films, but I still was unimpressed.













This is a close up from a larger canvas by Cheikh Ndaiye  - the one in the middle below.

The description says they are from 2011 and that the artist is interested in urban transformations.

"These former cinemas, built shortly after the countries of Africa gained their independence, consist of a hybrid architecture influenced by the international modernism that arose from colonization.  The re-appropriation of these buildings is observed by the artist with a degree [of] 'euphoric' objectivity [oblique angles, Technicolor skies] strangely reminiscent of freeze frames."

This picture particularly caught my fancy - by Edgar Arceneaux.  Detroit Monolith:  It's Full Of Holes, 2011.

This is a closeup of a very large drawing by Iris Levasseur, Amnesia FB, 2013.  From the description:

"Here, it is about a medieval character dressed in a current outfit:  a recumbent statue in jeans and sneakers."

 Maybe he's one of the people in the stained glass from the Cluny museum transformed so he can fit into the Pompidou's more modern and contemporary collection.  Here's the first English article I could find on Levasseur.  And here she talks in a short video (in French).


Oh, there so much more, but not now.  Off a few blocks more to the Museum of Art and History of Judaism. 

The building was once owned by a wealthy French Jew.  This is the courtyard you cross after going through security.  All the museums we've been to have someone look into your bag.  Some wand you or have you go through a detector of some sort.  This museum had the tightest security screen.  You went into a little glass booth.  There were two soldiers with machine guns in the corner to the right (not on the picture.)  Presumably there are others unseen.  The courtyard would make it harder to break in I assume.  An interesting note is that the wall on the left is just a facade to give more symmetry.




I was struck by this sculpture by Chana Orloff called Le peintre juif.  It's from 1920.  Just look at the great angles and how everything flows just right.



These were all from yesterday.  Today was another busy day and my mind is racing about how to get it into a post.  Maybe it will be several posts.  But don't hold your breath.  We head out to the airport tomorrow and head back to Anchorage with a stop to change planes in Reykjavik.

Four Years Later, Becky's Back From Mexico

Anchorage Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV) had a BBQ Thursday evening.  I vaguely knew that the Anchorage Assembly now has TWO RPCVs on it, but I hadn't really thought about it, but there they both were.  (I'll let Anchorage readers guess who they are.)

Had a good time sharing thoughts with volunteers from places like Nepal and the Philippines.

And then there was Becky, who is technically still a volunteer, into her fourth year in Mexico.  Yes, that is a long time.  The normal assignment is two years.  Well, she's finishing up, maybe this month.

What makes Becky particularly relevant to this blog is that I met her four years ago here in Anchorage just as she was about to first leave for her assignment.  It was send off dinner for new volunteers.   Here's the link to that post.   And a picture of her in May 2012 before she left for Mexico.

And this was Thursday evening.  I should have checked the picture after I took it.  It's the only one I have.  We were talking quickly at the end of the BBQ and someone suggested she get in front of the Peace Corps emblem for the picture.

Four years ago she only knew the general area she was going into - Environmental Education.

Her town was just outside El Chico National Park and some of her recent projects were connected with the park.  Like developing an activity book for primary school kids that helps to introduce them to the National Park.  She helped set up an environmental book section in the local library.  She's also been doing community based workshops on a variety of topics including organic pesticides and bio-fertilizers.  There was also the book published by the kids in the community using their drawings and photos showing a kids' eye view of the community and the environment.   You can see the whole book here.

This was just a quickie overview of things she was working on recently.  But it seemed like a good idea to do a follow up of the four year old post.

Today Is One Year

My mom died July 11, 2015.  Time, live a fast moving creek, keeps taking her living self further and further off into the distance.  But our memories are strong, her life was long, and we're moving on.

I know she would enjoy these lilies blooming now outside, along with the forget-me-nots.

Why Passover And Easter Are A Month Apart This Year

Well, almost a month.

It seemed to me, though I'd never actually looked it up, that Easter and Passover were generally pretty close together and it had something to do with the last supper being a seder.

 But I noticed this year that Easter is March 27 and Passover doesn't begin until April 22.

 I got an answer - but I decided to double check and the other answers were overlapping, but not quite exactly the same. So here are three sources. This one is about why they are both generally around the same time, from My Jewish Learning:

"First, their inviolable matrix is spring. In each case, the calendar is adjusted to ensure that the holiday is celebrated early in the spring. For the church, which believed that the resurrection took place on a Sunday, the First Council of Nicaea in 325 determined that Easter should always fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. In consequence, Easter remained without a fixed date but proximate to the full moon, which coincided with the start of Passover on the 15th of Nissan. 

By the same token, the rabbis understood the verse “You go free on this day, in the month of Aviv” (Exodus 13:4) to restrict Passover to early spring — that is in a transitional month when the winter rains end and the weather turns mild. The word “Aviv” actually means fresh ears of barley.   

Moreover, since the Torah had stipulated that the month in which the exodus from Egypt occurred should mark the start of a new year (Exodus 12:2), the end of the prior year was subject to periodic extension in order to keep the Jewish lunar calendar in sync with the solar year. Thus, if the barley in the fields or the fruit on the trees had not ripened sufficiently for bringing the omer [the first barley sheaf, which was donated to the Temple] or the first fruits to the Temple, the arrival of Passover could be delayed by declaring a leap year and doubling the final month of Adar (Tosefta Sanhedrin 2:2). In short, Easter and Passover were destined to coincide time and again. .  ."

Here's the first one I found that looked at why the two were not so close together this year.  It's from Studies In The Word, and has the dubious title of "Why the Jewish calendar will be incorrect in 2016":

In trying to follow Exodus 12:2, Exodus 13:3-4, 7-10, and Numbers 9:2-3, Judaism [I didn't know that Judaism could speak] says that Passover, which they celebrate on Nisan 15 rather than on Nisan 14, must not fall before the northern hemisphere spring equinox (Tekufot Nisan). The spring equinox currently occurs each year on March 20th or 21st and is that time when day and night are of approximately equal length. The spring equinox establishes the first day of spring. It is a solar, not a lunar, phenomenon. 

But current Jewish calendar procedures periodically conflict with the use of the equinox to establish the first month of the religious year: 

In 2016, Nisan 14 (Passover) can fall on March 22, the first opportunity for the 14th day of a Biblical month to occur after the equinox. But the Jewish calendar sets Nisan 14 at April 22nd. Why? Because the Jewish year 5776 (the spring months of 2016 fall within the Jewish year 5776) happens to be the 19th year of the 19-year calendar cycle and is then, by Judaic definition, a leap year (the 13th month must be added). This forces the first month to begin one month later than it normally would. Unfortunately, their calendar leap year tradition is so rigid that they fail to follow what we agree is the correct interpretation of the scriptures listed above, that God gave them, which strongly imply that the Passover must be kept at the first opportunity on or after the spring equinox. 

What allows them to ignore their own calendar rules? One reason they feel free to adjust the calendar to their liking is because Leviticus 23:2 and 4 are interpreted by Jewish Oral Law as saying that the people are allowed to keep the Holy Days on whatever day is most convenient.

Another site I looked at explained why Easter and Passover were several weeks apart in 2014 - which shouldn't be related to a 19 year cycle if 2016 is on that cycle.  Part of this explanation comes from an astronomer:

"The Last Supper was indeed the Passover; thus Holy Thursday, in the year that Christ was crucified, fell on Passover. That made Easter, the day that Christ rose from the dead, the Sunday after Passover. 

Because Christians in different areas were celebrating Easter on different days, the Council of Nicaea, in A.D. 325, established a formula for calculating the date of Easter. That formula was designed to place Easter at the same point in the astronomical cycle every year; if followed, it would always place Easter on a Sunday after Passover. And indeed, that formula is still followed today. 

Why, then, will Jews celebrate Passover beginning on April 19, 2008, while Western Christians will celebrate Easter on March 23? 

The answer, as William H. Jefferys, the Harlan J. Smith Centennial Professor of Astronomy (Emeritus) at the University of Texas at Austin, explains, is that, since the standardization of the Hebrew calendar in the fourth century A.D., "actual observations of celestial events no longer played a part in the determination of the date of Passover." Thus, "the rule for Passover, which was originally intended to track the vernal equinox, has gotten a few days off." 

The same thing has happened with the Eastern Orthodox calculation of the date of Easter. Because the Eastern Orthodox still use the astronomically incorrect Julian calendar, rather than the Gregorian calendar that was adopted in the West in 1582, the Orthodox will celebrate Easter this year on April 27. 

With the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, the West brought the calculation of Easter back into sync with the astronomical calendar. In other words, the Western date of Easter is the most closely aligned to the astronomical cycles on which the date of Passover is supposed to be based."

This last one  "the rule for Passover . . . has gotten a few days off" but that doesn't explain why it was three weeks off in 2008 and is again that far off in 2016, which the second reference says is due to the Jewish calendar leap year.

I've quoted a little more than I normally would because there are lots of nuggets and I don't think I could summarize as neatly as the writers did.

Happy Year Of The Monkey

From Chinese Fortune Calendar:

"2016 is the 4713th Chinese Year. According to Chinese Horoscope calendar, the first day of Red Monkey is on February 4, 2016. This day is not the Chinese New Year Day. Most of Internet Chinese horoscope sites use Chinese New Year Day to determine the Chinese zodiac sign, which is wrong. Chinese New Year Day of Red Monkey Year is on February 8, 2016. This is the reason that some people confuse their Chinese zodiac signs."

The picture comes from my copy of the Monkey King and the illustration is by Zdeněk Sklenáf.  This picture is from chapter 9, 'The Monkey King disrupts the Peach Banquet.'

The Chinese Fortune Calendar also tells us about Monkey King:

"Monkey King is a main character in the Chinese classical novel Journey to the West. Monkey King was born from a stone and acquired supernatural powers from a Taoist master. It's very naughty, went to heaven, stole an elixir of life, ate many peaches of longevity, and then rebelled against heaven. All guardians or generals of heaven cannot conquer the monkey. Finally Buddha tamed and jailed it in the bottom of Five-Element mountain. The monkey had to wait Master Xuan-Zang monk for 500 years to rescue it. Then the story of Journey to the West began. The monkey had to escort the master monk to bring Buddhist sutras from India to China. At the time of the journey, the stone monkey was about 850 years old."

From Your Chinese Astrology:

The people born in the year of the monkey are of great intellects and skillful. They are usually good leaders. Quick and intelligent as they are, they can win prizes frequently from childhood, thus, often appreciated by parents and teachers. Besides, they are most in good physical conditions. Not only good in fortune when they are young, but also perfect after middle ages. As they are good at saving up money, they usually live lives without worrying about food and clothing.
The people under the sign of the monkey are sometimes a bit quick-tempered. This may hinder them from getting success. So, they should learn to be patient to overcome. They also like to project themselves to attract others. As they have extraordinary ability to distinguish between things, they can always make good decisions. In their families, they are usually considerate and thoughtful.

The monkey people born in different periods of a day have different personalities and fortune:The Monkey people born in the morning usually treat others kindly and politely. They would not like to push themselves forward. When dealing with things, they are usually actively to round off their work. However, they regard their interests much more important than work. Sometimes, they may give up a good job in order to have more time on their hobbies. So, when finding jobs, they had better choose one that they are interested. However, like the monkey scampering in the trees in nature, the Monkey people are not steady. They are fond of social activities and circulate among many friends. Nevertheless, they have few bosom friends.

To test this, here are some people born in the Year of the Monkey:

Leonardo de Vinci (1452)
Charles Dickens (1812)
Oscar Schindler (1908)
Elizabeth Taylor (1932)
Michele Kwan (1980)
Yao Ming (1980)

Here's a whole list of famous people born 1908.

Here's some flashy juggling, balancing, and acrobatics from the Beijing Opera about the Monkey King.