Odds And Ends - Central American Peaks, 99 Year Life Ends, Race, Police, And Headlines

A colleague has driven from Seattle to Mexico in the hopes of climbing the highest mountain in each Central American country.  (I actually have a book of the highest peaks in all the US states, but doubt that at this point I'll reach the tops of too many of them.)  Anyway, Sharman's blogging the trip and some of you might like to follow along.  Her partner Mike made it to the top of Mexico's highest mountain Citlaltépetl, but Sharman decided not to fight the altitude and only went part of the way.

Frank at 99

My step-mother's husband died the other day. (She married him after my father died.)  We saw them Here's a video I made of the two of them in 2008, with more biography of each.
in early January.  Frank was 99.  He grew up in Czechoslovakia, speaking Hungarian and Czech and was in Nazi work camps during WWII.  His younger brother Larry got out of Europe before WW II to study at UCLA.  Larry died a couple of years ago.

Time speeds along.  The Anchorage IRS advocate (I didn't know each state had one.  Sen. Murkowski's office contacted her on my behalf.) called yesterday to let us know she's working on the case and will get back to me.

I probably should have mentioned yesterday for folks not in Anchorage that the library steps are getting torn down to reconfigure the entrance. We aren't tearing down the library.  The fact that money was found for this is a positive sign.   The old entrance was a compromise between the original architectural design and lack of funds to do it right.  That led to the main entrance being on the second floor with a big staircase.  Not terribly accessible, especially in the winter when the steps got covered with snow.  So they built a cover.  But now they are planning to put the main entrance on the ground floor.  I haven't seen the detailed plans.


I still have video from the racial equity summit Monday and Tuesday. (And from other encounters as well.)  A regular reader also send a link to an interesting article about researchers demonstrating subconscious responses that show racism based on very quick (less than a second) views of people.  Clever techniques to figure this out.  Interesting article.   Here's the beginning.

"Jennifer Eberhardt presented her research at a law enforcement conference, she braced for a cold shoulder. How much would streetwise cops care what a social psychology professor had to say about the hidden reaches of racial bias? Instead, she heard gasps, the loudest after she described an experiment that showed how quickly people link black faces with crime or danger at a subconscious level. In the experiment, students looking at a screen were exposed to a subliminal flurry of black or white faces. The subjects were then asked to identify blurry images as they came into focus frame by frame.

The makeup of the facial prompts had little effect on how quickly people recognized mundane items like staplers or books. But with images of weapons, the difference was stark—subjects who had unknowingly seen black faces needed far fewer frames to identify a gun or a knife than those who had been shown white faces. For a profession dealing in split-second decisions, the implications were powerful." [To read the rest]

This is particularly interesting in light of Mike Dingman's commentary in the ADN today about police reaction to the Mayor's intent to diversify the Anchorage police department.  The headline was:

"Mayor calls for diversity in APD, and some folks get the vapors"

But then again, I'm seeing more and more sensational headlines these days.  When you read the article it doesn't seem as extreme as the headline.  Like this teaser on the cover of the ADN today:

"In sharp clash, Clinton and Sanders swap barbs and views
In a brutally caustic debate Thursday night . . ."

Really?  If the Clinton/Sanders exchange was 'brutally caustic' how would you describe the recent Republican debates.  In the article (link is to original NY Times article) it tells us that Clinton said,

". . . months of criticism by Mr. Sanders over her taking speaking fees from Wall Street banks amounted to a suggestion that she was corrupt — or, as she put it, a 'very artful smear.'

Is this an attempt to be even handed?  To make the Democrats look as belligerent as the Republicans?

Shaving Legs And Armpits

The other day I was thinking about how back when I was  a student in Germany in the mid-1960s the women students didn't shave their legs or armpits.  As a good American student my first reaction was shock.  But over the year I got to regard it as normal.  I considered a post about how corporations shape our thinking and behavior so they can sell more stuff, but other things came up.  I don't even remember how the topic came up.

And then I ran across this posted on a friend's FB page.

Rest On The Flight To Egypt

This is one of those posts I could never, in a million years, have predicted I would put up here.  I found a 1994 calendar tonight.  (Unfortunately, it was good in 2015, but there are only six days left of this year.  The calendar is good again in 2022, which isn't that far off.)  It's a drug company promotional calendar which my mom got many of because she worked in a doctor's office.  It's paintings from the State Museum of Berlin.

detail from Altdorfer's Rest on the Flight from Egypt, 1510

Looking up pictures in a calendar, today with access to the internet, allows one to gain much greater depth of understanding than was easily available in the past.  So as I was checking on different pictures in the calendar, I looked up "Rest On The Flight To Egypt."  As with the previous pictures I looked up (this one is December) I expected to find it quickly.  I did, and I didn't.  I got a lot of hits for a picture of the same name by Caravaggio (1596-7), but the one in the calendar is by Albrecht Altdorfer and is dated 1510.


So I looked a little more and found a website that lists over 100 paintings with that same title!  You can see the list with links to the various versions here.  I guess that isn't so remarkable for biblical stories, but it did surprise me.

Here's Wikipedia's description of the subject matter (of the Caravaggio painting):

"The scene is based not on any incident in the Bible itself, but on a body of tales or legends that had grown up in the early Middle Ages around the Bible story of the Holy Family fleeing into Egypt for refuge on being warned that Herod the Great was seeking to kill the Christ Child. According to the legend, Joseph and Mary paused on the flight in a grove of trees; the Holy Child ordered the trees to bend down so that Joseph could take fruit from them, and then ordered a spring of water to gush forth from the roots so that his parents could quench their thirst. This basic story acquired many extra details during the centuries.

Caravaggio shows Mary asleep with the infant Jesus, while Joseph holds a manuscript for an angel who is playing a hymn to Mary on the violin."

From the photo I took of the calendar, you can't quite make out that Altdorfer's angels are also playing music, but with a small harp and a flute like instrument.

Actually, I thought I was going to put up pelican and other bird pictures today.

What's A Blogger To Do? Too Much To Write About - LIO Scandal, Forced Arbitration, Trump's Good Old Days, Hockey

Me:  Even with the gain of an hour overnight as we set our clocks back,  there's not enough time!
Jiminy Cricket:  Of course there is Steve, you just have to prioritize.
Me:  Actually, the number of things we could do has increased so fast that humans will soon be obsolete, we just can't keep up.  It used to be we maybe had two newspapers to read, now every newspaper in the world is available online.  Not to mention every home video anyone has ever made.
Jiminy Cricket:  You going to complain all morning or write?
Me:  OK, OK.  So, my first glimpse of November 2015 was an inspiring one as I looked out the window at what should have been 9:24am, but because of the time change was only 8:24am.  And if you look closely you can see the snow that we got Friday still lingering.


So, what's stacking up in the blog pile?  Anchorage International Film Festival (AIFF) posts on documentaries, shorts, animation, and maybe even Alaska films in competition.  I try to get some of those groups done before the festival begins and this year I have the features in competition up already.  I don't have to think too hard on these, just go looking for info on the films.  And the AIFF 2015 page is started already.  That's up on top and I'll be updating general festival strategy stuff from last year and information on the films for this year.

I've got more to do on the Chuitna decision which the resource development community is upset about and has appealed.  There are some significant democratic principle issues at stake there that should be explored.  But it's complicated and people have lots of other things to distract them (back up to complaints about too little time above.)

I want to post more on my new, evolving relationship with my sourdough starter.

I'm working on something on rules - what they do for us, but how to keep from becoming trapped by them.   There are some books I want to say something about, some movies, how Netflix and other online movie sites are changing things, more on the conflicts between police and African-Americans  . . .  But serious posts require some time and thought and if I take on a subject, I want to look at it differently than others, not just reprint what others write.

Then there are all the potential posts that show up everyday, not part of the queue, but begging to be written.  Today's Section A of the Alaska Dispatch News (ADN)  (it was the second time this week we had to call to say it wasn't delivered) was full of such stories.  I'll just try to do a short take on a couple of them.

1.  Jim Gottstein's lawsuit against the Legislative Information Office remodeling contract.  It's so easy for legislators to get away with stuff.  Lisa Demer wrote along detailed story on all the irregularities in the contract two years ago in the ADN.   But this needed someone with legal standing and money and perseverance to step up and sue.  Today's article reveals some private emails that show Rep. Hawker worked with the politically generous developer to get around legislative attorneys' opinions that a no-bid contract was illegal.  Legislators often work with constituents to find ways to get around obstacles to get things done.  But when it's for a no bid contract for a state building that's going to raise the legislature's  rent enormously, it's suspicious.  And Hawker's an accountant, so he can't plead ignorant (ignorance is not a get out jail free card for anyone, but he had special expertise and clearly should have known better.)

2.  Corporations slipping arbitration language into contracts.  This is a New York Times article that was on the front page of the ADN.  It's got several themes I've got an interest in:

• The power of large corporations to force rules on their customers, rules that always favor the corporation.  In particular it is looking at rules that require arbitration to resolve disputes.   The offending language is:

". . .the company 'may elect to resolve any claim by individual arbitration.'

Those nine words are at the center of a far-reaching power play orchestrated by American corporations, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

By inserting individual arbitration clauses into a soaring number of consumer and employment contracts, companies like American Express devised a way to circumvent the courts and bar people from joining together in class-action lawsuits, realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices.

Over the last few years, it has become increasingly difficult to apply for a credit card, use a cellphone, get cable or Internet service, or shop online without agreeing to private arbitration. The same applies to getting a job, renting a car or placing a relative in a nursing home."

[Added later:  I should also add that attorneys have lots of incentives to fight for their ability to file class action lawsuits.  And that my sense is many of those suits only bring in money for attorneys because either the individuals don't understand all the paperwork needed to make a claim, or they do understand and decide that for the small amount they might possibly get, it's not worth all the work.]

• The impossibility of consumers actually reading all the contracts they have to agree to these days.  For a particularly egregious example, see my post on the iTunes update agreement back in 2013.
• Among many disturbing aspects of this issue, is how this change was carried out and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' role in this.

" . . .the move to block class actions was engineered by a Wall Street-led coalition of credit card companies and retailers, according to interviews with coalition members and court records. Strategizing from law offices on Park Avenue and in Washington, members of the group came up with a plan to insulate themselves from the costly lawsuits. Their work culminated in two Supreme Court rulings, in 2011 and 2013, that enshrined the use of class-action bans in contracts. The decisions drew little attention outside legal circles, even though they upended decades of jurisprudence put in place to protect consumers and employees.

One of the players behind the scenes, The Times found, was John G. Roberts Jr., who as a private lawyer representing Discover Bank unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to hear a case involving class-action bans. By the time the Supreme Court handed down its favorable decisions, he was the chief justice."

 The problem for me isn't that a group of people come together to change the law.  That happens all the time for things like civil rights, environmental protection, and other important causes.  But the Constitutional narrative of James Madison was that competing powers would mean that laws would be just because people would challenge misuses of power.  And that's what seems to be happening in the LIO case mentioned above.  However, given the huge inequality in the distribution of wealth in the United States today, the ability to challenge large corporations becomes harder and harder.  The ability of corporations to draft legislation for the legislators they've funded, to change the laws in their own favor, grows increasingly hard to challenge. 


3.  A Washington Post article reprinted on page A-7 of the ADN explaining that supporters see Trump as the candidate who can restore America's greatness.   Trying to understand the motivations of Trump and other candidates is something I always want to do.  I think it is often more complicated than is normally reported.  Unfortunately, the reporter's tone is a bit flip (not to the snark level).  But he does point out that 'when America was last great' varies from person to person, and how Trump is going to restore this lost quality isn't clear.  But let's look at a couple of the examples of the good old days.

• ". . . the last time America was great was when Ronald Reagan was president, when people played by the rules."   

Let's see, the 1980's included the savings and loan scandal, Iran Contra,  Reagan's Chief of Staff was convicted of lying to Congress and more. Jimmy Swaggart and Jimmy Baker scandals, and in sports Pete Rose was betting on his games and Ben Johnson got his Olympic Gold metal with steroids. 

• ". . . it was in the ’70s, Holly Martin says, when you could depend on Americans to work hard."   

When the US had the largest number of union members who still had some power to negotiate with their employers?  When the pay ratio between the CEO and the lowest paid employees was about 20-1 compared to today's 350 - 1? [Clearly related to inequality of wealth mentioned in the class action suit article.]  And jobs were easy to get because so many men were fighting in a controversial war in Vietnam and women were supposed to stay home and raise the kids?

• " . . .to find true American greatness, Steve Trivett contends, you need to go back to before the Vietnam War, “when you could still own a home and have a good job even if you didn’t have a college education.”

You mean just before the Civil Rights Act when whites didn't have to compete with blacks for jobs?  And redlining meant blacks couldn't get loans to buy houses?  

• “The last time we had good jobs and respect for the military and law enforcement was, oh, probably during Eisenhower.” 

When income tax rates in the US were at their all time highest, the largest percentage of US workers were unionized, and when Southern police and courts looked the other way when blacks were lynched?  That was right after WW II and before Vietnam tore the country apart.  

All this selective memory echoes the theme of the play I just saw Other Desert Cities.  We all remember things differently.  And none of those decades were calm and peaceful. They all had strong conflicts. 

4.  Local hockey player squeezes in grandmother's and great aunt's funerals in Saskatchewan before leading his team to victory back in Anchorage.  Here's a kid whose family obligations came before his team obligations.  It involved three plane changes each way (and a hefty bill, I'm sure).  On the lucky side, instead of the normal Fri-Sat games, it's a Sat-Sun series.  A good story and my condolences and congratulations.

Goodbye Ruth Marx - May 26, 1913 - September 1, 2015

We met Ruth Marx two and a half years ago when she was walking down the street with her walker and we had the baby stroller and there wasn't enough room to pass.  So I went ahead to negotiate and so I met one remarkable woman.  We talked and when she told me she was going to be 100 years old in a few months, I couldn't believe it.  Here's the video I made then.

Watch it, it will make you smile.



My granddaughter had just been born in 2013 and Mrs. Marx had been born 100 years earlier in 1913. So when we were here to visit Z we would try to get in a visit Ruth Marx too. Every visit was delightful because of her sunny and enthusiastic disposition. So a week ago after dinner, Z and I walked down to the nursing home where Mrs. Marx lived.


There was a piano player and a group of folks singing along in the lobby. I found someone from the nursing home and said we'd like to visit Mrs. Marx. She looked at me solemnly,
"Did the family tell you?"
"Tell me?"
"Mrs. Marx passed away September 1."

What sad news. But she was 102, and fitter than my mom was at 93. And what great luck we had to get to know her during her last two years of life. Knowing her only during her second century of life, I can only imagine what a wonderful and bubbly woman she must have been in her first century.

Z was disappointed and I wasn't quite sure how much she understood. Although she's only two and a half, she is talking away. I reminded her that she had been in Los Angeles when her great grandmother passed away in July, and now Ruth Marx had passed away too. When we got back home, she ran to her mother to tell her, "Mrs. Marx passed away."

I emailed Mrs. Marx's son before posting anything.  He had sent me some biographical information on Mrs. Marx when we had first met and I wanted his permission before posting it.  He just sent me some additional information and I'll add some of that as well.

Here's from the most recent email:

The Bluebird on Her and Our Shoulder: 
Ruth Ungar Marx 1913-2015 

Better pass boldly into that other world,
in the full glory of some passion,
than fade and wither dismally with age.

    James Joyce’s words perfectly capture the vibrant essence of Ruth Henrietta (Ungar) Marx who passed away Tuesday, Sept. 1, at age 102 on Bainbridge Island. A week before she died, sitting outside by the flowers she loved she said, “I want to start doing my book reviews. I so love them.” Several days later she sat up from lying in bed and said “what a beautiful day, let’s go for a walk.” Then as we prepared to go, she laid back down and said, “I am tired, let’s go later”. The night she died we sat with her and read
some poems. She was barely conscious when we kissed her goodbye and squeezed her hand, but she squeezed it back. She wanted to burn out, not rust out (well into her nineties she bought two new bathing suits). [Update 1045pm:  I forgot to mention, this photo was taken when she was 99.]

Here's from the bio written just prior to her moving to Bainbridge Island in 2013:

Ruth Ungar Marx was born in Cleveland in 1913.  Her family moved to Los Angeles in 1914 where her father was the distributor for Carlson speedometers and Majestic radios. Her father founded Ungar Electric Tools in the 1930s, a manufacturer of wood burning pencils and soldering irons. Ruth attended USC and UCLA. She enjoyed debate and tennis. In 1936 she married Donald Marx and they moved to Lemore, California where they ran a general goods store and had a farm. Missing her family and friends, they returned to Los Angeles in 1940. In Los Angeles they founded Hollywood Shell and Toy Co., manufacturers of hobbycraft shell
jewelry and copper, aluminum and leather embossing kits. She also worked as a sales representative for Ungar Electric Tools. Tired of the big city and smog, they moved to Palm Springs in 1957 and ran the retail Desert Garden Date Shop. Several years later they sold the store and became date and grapefruit farmers and moved farther east toward Palm Desert, California.
In Palm Springs Ruth founded the Desert Mental Health Association and Community Concerts and was active in UNICEF and other civic groups. In 1981 they retired and moved to Coronado, California where she has lived ever since. Don died in 1992 and her dear friend for a decade Mac, died in 2003.  In Coronado Ruth was very active founding opera, film, book and swimming exercise groups and volunteering for decades at the library. She continues to enjoy scrabble, bridge and reading. Her daughter Nicki --an artist and jewelry maker lives in Taos, New Mexico. Her grandson Ben lives in Phoenix with his wife Cori and their children  Julien and Simon. Her son Gary lives on the island, as do children and grandchildren Josh, Stacey, Sallie and Nate Marx. Ruth is an outgoing, upbeat person with a lively interest in the affairs of the world and other people.

Here's a bit more that her son sent, but if you watched the video, you'd figured much of this out already:

Ruth had a radiant, billion dollar smile. She was an outgoing, upbeat person and a masterful, extemporaneous, communicator with a lively interest in, and curiosity about, the affairs of the world and other people.  She was a uniquely vibrant force and her own person. She loved the spirit of the poem, “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple.”
 She was strong, resilient, direct and honest, but kindly in the form and content of what she expressed, supported by her quick sense of humor. She was very powerful, yet in a very soft and unpretentious, yet persevering way. She spoke gently, but with self-assurance.
For whatever the turn of fates she experienced or choices she made, she was a fundamentally cheerful person. Through word and deed, in a marvelous feedback loop, the happiness inside her effortlessly spread to others and their positive response to her further increased her happiness.  Ruth had the gift of joy, an optimistic lightness of being, a gentleness of spirit and a fathomless reservoir of kindness. She offered unconditional love and support to her family and friends. With her blithe spirit, unselfishness and absence of rancor, she was goodness personified. Her enthusiasm for life was infectious.

Getting Things Done Part 2: The Unexpected

We discovered that we had come home to a leaking water heater.   This fits yesterday's unexpected tasks.  Things that sneak up on you unexpectedly. 

The plumber came out and we're finally just going to toss the Amtrol (this is the 3rd or 4th one - after the first one exploded, they've given us new ones when we had problems) and go to a totally different company.  This water heater thing has been a multi-year failed attempt to get something done - get the shower water to not drop 10 degrees after two minutes in the shower.  One company cost us a ton of money as they tried this and that to fix it.  Whatever they did then led to the furnace shutting down on its own and not starting up again without help.  Eventually we got a new company and the guy fixed the furnace shutting down problem in 30 minutes.  But the hot water for the shower didn't get fixed.

The guy who came today, K, sounds like he knows what he's doing.  He's already diagnosed the shower problem and thinks he can fix it.  He pointed to a cold water pipe that starts adding water to the shower water.  He even tested it by having me turn on the bathtub water.  No hype.  Modest and straightforward.  Enough grey hairs to suggest he's got experience. 

But it will be an all day job and there wasn't enough time today to finish.  And we'd be out of hot water for the weekend.  So he's coming back Tuesday.  Meanwhile it's dripping - from the bolts on the bottom.  I'm hopeful. 

Meanwhile, another unexpected problem has been solved well.  Our internet speed was slow on tests so I called ACS and they tested it and agreed.  The solution was to get a new modem and a shorter telephone outlet cord.  So the new modem includes a router.  So we went from this:

to this:

This definitely simplifies our life by getting rid of all that stuff and replacing it with just this one small item and two cords.  And the speed is back up where it belongs.  This was very satisfying. 

These are two long term fixes - that is, you get them done right and you don't have to mess with them for a long time.  And I'm sure hoping our water heater blues are over. 

Getting Things Done

We got back early this morning.  Alaska Airline's 20 minute baggage guarantee meant that we were home less than 30 minutes after we left the plane.  I remember days past when it took over an hour for suitcases to show up on the luggage carousel. 

Our house sitter left a beautifully clean house, all the plants thriving, and a beautiful offering of fresh vegetables.

I looked into the fridge to see what  I needed to put on the shopping list.  It was pretty empty.  A good time to go through and see what needed to be thrown out.   And as I did that I realized I needed to take everything out and do some cleaning. [No pictures, too embarrassing.]



 And I started sorting the mail.  

 And as I did that I was thinking of all the things we have to do while we're home - for here, with my mom's stuff, and just generally, to regroup after these two years of monthly trips to see my mom.  Getting back a rhythm for getting things done.  Not just the basics, but to move ahead.
 

I'd been thinking about a post on this idea already and this seemed like a good time to make a start.  It just seemed to me that there were things we do that have to be done over and over again.  And there are things we do that settle some issue and let us move on.  So here's a first stab at figuring that out.  Any suggestions warmly accepted.  


Things we must and should do

1.  Regular tasks  (you do them and they need to be done again)
1. Things that you  do regularly (daily to weekly)
1. brush teeth
2. make dinner 
3. take out trash
2.  Things that you do regularly (monthly)
1. pay bills
2. clean the refrigerator
3.  Things that you do regularly (annually)
1. go on vacation
2. clean the garage
3. service the car 
2.  Irregular Tasks  (you do them and they are taken care of for a long time)
1. Remodel the kitchen
2. Have a wedding or just a dinner party
3. Find a new job
3.  Unexpected Tasks (they happen and interrupt your routine)
1. Breakdowns that need repairs - cars, machines, houses, computers, etc.
2. Serious health emergency
3.  Relationship change - death, breakup/divorce, infidelity, birth
4.  Changes that move you to a better place
1. I think this overlaps with #2 and probably #3, I need to figure these out more.

 
It seems for the regular tasks, it's best to find routines so these get done quickly without having to spend much time thinking about them.  The other tasks are often difficult because they are new and we don't know how to get started.  But nowadays anything can be figured out with google.  You can just get a list of steps for how to do pretty much anything.

The other thing I did along these lines was try to make a list of all the different areas of my life that need my attention.  It reminded me that I probably have too many different areas and I'll need to pull back in some and then set priorities in the remaining ones.  What's most important?  After spending a week with my granddaughter (I'm not allowed to post pictures here and telling you how smart and funny she is would sound like typically biased grandfatherly opinion) I'm reminded how important the family category is.

I know that when the number of things I want to do starts to exceed greatly what I actually get done, my mental well being suffers.  Writing everything down and figuring out how much time things will take and how much time there actually is tends to have a calming effect.  Usually I find out things aren't as overwhelming as they seem.  And I can prioritize what things are most important and what things can be abandoned, and that helps avoid all the time temptresses that urge me to do something totally off my list that won't get me where I want to go. 




OK, now I have to go do the shopping.  And I also have on my list to begin the sourdough starter that's critical to all the recipes in the new bread making book I got last month.  I know, this is not something I need to do, but making bread is so satisfying and fresh bread makes a great gift when you visit. 
 

February 27, 1922 - July 11, 2015

An eventful two days.  Our kids and grandkids got here yesterday. My mom was well along, but she clearly knew we were here.  And then we all said good bye.   She left at noon today.  At home. 





This picture with her brother was on the dresser.  I think this would have been about age 3 - 90 years ago. 


















And this was in May of this year, playing with her great grandson. 





I don't put much family stuff up but this is an important day in my life.  She had a long, interesting, and mostly good life, with some big tragedies as well.  She was ready, but those of us left behind are never really ready. 

Sitemeter Out Of Control - UPDATED Again: July 9

[UDATE July 27, 2015:  I've switched to StatCounter,  Hello StatCounter, Goodbye Sitemeter explains why, and has links that show how to do it.]

[UPDATE July 9, 2015:  Sitemeter has been working again for the last two days for me.  It is still going to Vindicosuite and I will be looking at Statcounter as people have recommended when I have a little more time.]

[UPDATE June 30, 2015 10:45pm Alaska Daylight Time:  An hour ago I checked Sitemeter and it was still saying to try back in a few minutes.  But now there is something back up, but it's still whacked.  There are days with way more hits than I ever get and there are days with zero hits.  But it's a sign someone is working on it.

OK, back to the original post.]



I signed up for Sitemeter probably back in 2007.  At that time it was a one man operation and if I had a question I could email him and get a quick personal response signed by David Smith.  It gave me formats for seeing who was visiting my blog that were different from others - more precise and meaningful.  It also revealed to me how much data websites get from visitors - ip address, location, kind of computer in detail, search terms, browser, and much more.  Not everything from every visitor, but more than most realize.

I've voiced praise and frustration with Sitemeter in the past.

Then at some point Sitemeter apparently was bought by MySpace.  Since then things have gone downhill.  Reports about MySpace selling information about  Sitemeter users would come up.  Sitemeter stopped answering any of my help requests or comments.

Recently, something called vindicosuite started showing up and gumming things up.  From a google forum:

Mark Liberman said:

I posted about this on Language Log (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=16345).

x.vindcosuite.com seems to be "passive DNS replicator", which may be performing a genuine function; but apparently buggy software at sitemeter results in pages with sitemeter counting code on them getting redirected there.

I've been seeing intermittent flashes of this sort of thing from sitemeter for over a year, and during that same period of time, the company has failed to respond to repeated questions directed at their "support" team.

As of yesterday evening, the problem was categorical rather than intermittent, so I removed the sitemeter code from the WordPress theme, and the problem went away.

As far as I can tell, this is a symptom of incompetence rather than malice, but in any case, sitemeter is clearly more trouble than it's worth.

Then Sitemeter was down for nearly day and when it returned, it was totally whacked.  It would show the same hit 30 or 40 times in my stats.   My stats are totally crazy.  I'd note that the number of hits Sitemeter tells me I get (generally in the 200 range each day) is wildly different from Google's count of over 1000.  But the Sitemeter info on individual hits tells me more about who visits what pages.  (No, there are no specific names connected to the visitors, but for some repeat visitors I can tell.)

I'd totally get rid of it, but that just adds one more thing to my todo list - finding another good stat counter.  And my todo list is already way too long.  

Selma's Garbage Bag Problem

We thought it would be a good idea to finally see Selma on MLK Day.  And it was.  I'm hoping to get a post up on why before long.  But there was one scene that jarred me and I've done a little checking.

MLK and his wife are in the kitchen.  He takes a full garbage bag out from under the sink.  It's a clear plastic bag.  He empties it and then she unrolls a new bag which puts bag under the sink for the rest of the garbage.

What's wrong with that scene?  My problem has nothing to do with division of household labor.  My immediate thought when I saw that was:  No one used plastic garbage bags then.  Especially not clear plastic bags.

In Los Angeles, people used incinerators to burn garbage until they were banned in 1957 in an attempt to reduce smog.  (There's still an old one in my mom's backyard.)

I checked online and here's what I found:

1. Plastic garbage bags weren't invented until 1950 (by a Canadian) and the first ones  were sold to businesses, not households.  The bags were green.
2. The first green plastic garbage bags for the home were sold by Union Carbide - Glad Bags - in the late 1960s.  (The movie takes place in 1965.)
3. Plastic bags weren't introduced to grocery stores until 1977!

I recall putting garbage into paper shopping bags until plastic bags were available.  And paper bags don't really hold  garbage well when they get wet.  

Here are some sources:

http://www.packagingknowledge.com/waste_bags_sacks.asp#history_of_waste_bags

The familiar green plastic garbage bag (made from polyethylene) was invented by Harry Wasylyk in 1950.Harry Wasylyk was a Canadian inventor from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who together with Larry Hansen of Lindsay, Ontario, invented the disposable green polyethylene garbage bag. 

Garbage bags were first intended for commercial use rather than home use - the bags were first sold to the Winnipeg General Hospital. However, Hansen worked for the Union Carbide Company in Lindsay, who bought the invention from Wasylyk and Hansen. Union Carbide manufactured the first green garbage bags under the name Glad Garbage bags for home use in the late 1960s.

Reference: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blGarbageBag.htm

http://www.bagmonster.com/2011/05/history-of-the-plastic-bag.html

1977
“PAPER OR PLASTIC” WARS BEGIN: The plastic grocery bag is introduced to the supermarket industry as an alternative to paper sacks.[iv] At this point, plastic produce bags had long overtaken paper bags in the produce aisle. The grocery sack market was later, in 1986, described as “paper’s last stronghold” by Mobil Chemical’s marketing manager. [v]
 

Film makers:  If you're doing a film that takes place before you were old enough to remember, but not so long ago that there are still people alive who do remember, show the geezers the film and let them spot the anachronisms.

With technology changing so much faster today, future film makers will have an even harder time.
Is it a biggie? No.  But for people my age,  it's like seeing a film that takes place in 2000 with people using iPhones.

Tea N. Crumpet Returns Online As Token Liberal

When I first started blogging in 2006 and 2007 a small community of Alaska bloggers found each other and linked to each other.  We had relatively small audiences and we checked each others blogs regularly.  Many of them have dropped by the wayside, and just the other day I was thinking how much more community we had back then.

Well, I just learned that Tea N. Crumpet is returning at Token Liberal.  Back then she basically had a mommy blog and blogged about, mostly, the joys and unjoys of raising her nine kids.  She described herself as living north of Chicago, but soon the stories she wrote seemed more Ancchorage than Chicago until I finally emailed to ask why.  Her reply was that Alaska is north of Chicago.  In those days we all played with versions of anonymity because we didn't know what we were going to say and how this would all play out.  Tea N. Crumpet's family played a big role in her blog and she wanted her location vague.  

So I'm pleased to put her new blog  onto my blogroll.  We'll see how it evolves, but I expect it will be well written and interesting.  Check it out. 

Happy Birthday Party In Absentia For Walt Parker Monday Night

I always thought I had a special relationship with Lydia Selkregg.  We'd both started teaching at UAA the same semester, though she'd been in Anchorage a long time and I'd just arrived.  She treated me like family and we even shared the same birthday.  When I went to her memorial at the Fourth Avenue Theater I listened in as person after person said they had a special relationship with her.  I was a bit chagrined to find out that so many other people had their own special relationship with her.  But I quickly realized what a great reflection  that was on her as a human being.  It was a quality I wanted to strive for even though I'm much more introverted than Lydia was.

I thought of Lydia Monday night at the Hilltop Ski Area chalet as people great and humble gathered to celebrate what would have been Walt Parker's 88th birthday.  Walt shared that quality with Lydia - everyone felt they had (and did have) a special relationship with Walt.  Including the Selkregg family.

There were a number of notables there, including former Democratic Governor Steve Cowper who appointed Walt as head of the Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill Commission.  Also there was Republican Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell.  A number of Walt's sled dogs were outside.  They've all found new homes.  Someone said that when Walt died, they all began to howl and Monday evening's festivities ended with everyone howling for Walt.

July 4 and the Arab Spring

Egypt's military are back in charge.  Syria's civil war has killed about 150,000 and displaced millions.  The Arab Spring's spirit of democracy looks like a failure. 
Richard Youngs writes: 

Politics in the Middle East are increasingly polarized and fragmented. The Arab Spring’s citizen-led spirit of reform is still alive, but societies are increasingly torn apart by bitter tensions between Sunni and Shia, secular liberals and Islamists, and governments and civil society.

On this Fourth of July, we can recall some context from our own revolution and  remember that it took another 11 years and a revolutionary war from the

• July 4, 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence to 
• September 17, 1887 signing of the Constitution on   and two more years until the 
• June 21, 1888 ratification (nine states were needed for ratification) 

It's also important to remember that the American colonies were just one part of the vast British empire and that the colonists fought rulers who were based across the Atlantic ocean.  It could take weeks to cross the Atlantic.  (Here's an interesting piece of Ben Franklin's writings on the Gulf Stream and how shippers could speed up their voyages.) 

The American revolt was a major blow to the British prestige, but it wasn't a fundamental challenge to the existence of the British monarchy and power structure.  The middle eastern protests were attempts to overthrow the existing power structures of their countries. 

And in 1812, the British were back and burned Washington DC.

The US democracy wasn't settled in a few years.  Reading history books, knowing 'the ending,' things always look much more stable and inevitable than they do as they are happening. 

There was still a civil war that would challenge the viability of the US.

And I put 'the end' in quotes, because 'the end' tends to mean 'today.'  But today we are in a major culture clash with some seriously challenging the United States from within.  The end is well into the future.

The Richard Youngs quote above isn't actually complete.  He goes on to try to reframe the Arab spring.  

As polarization has deepened, the concern with engaging in dialogue to bridge differences has intensified. The relationship between these mediation efforts and support for systemic reform will be a pivotal factor in the Middle East’s future political trajectory.

 This quote could apply equally to the United States today.  

You Get What You Pay For

I'm paralyzed - there are so many things to write about I don't know where to start. I'll  never catch up.   But the genius of being an unpaid blogger is that if I don't post today, my readers can't cut my pay. 

Here are some things I'm not ready to post about:

Kid's Count Report - headline on the email:

No Child Left Behind—Except 73 Percent of Alaska’s 4^th Graders

Shocking New Numbers Rank Alaska 45^th in Nation for 4^th Grade Reading Proficiency; Show Troubling Racial Disparities in Learning Outcomes

Ervin Kaplan, artist

• Some art exhibit pics still from LA.  Here are the museum custodians playing tic tac toe on the Mondrian at jna gallery in Santa Monica.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Thoughts on the ADN's new sections on Science, Technology, Health; some of their headlines;  and the end of the Ear and what Amanda Coyne has done with its reincarnation, or as Hollis French might say, "pourquoi?"
  
• Book club meeting on Tom Kizzia's Pilgrim's Wilderness. 
  
• The Coast Guard's Kulluk report which seems to support the frustration this blog had with their press releases last year which tended to say how great Shell was doing and withhold everything else. 
• Impact of the Koch "dump Begich" campaign.
  
   
• Easternization and Confucius Meets Feminism -  followup from the Philosophy conference last weekend.

Or how nice a day it is today and why I should go out and enjoy the sun and snow and ice free surfaces (including in front of my house, but not yet everywhere.)

UCLA IS THE CHAMP - Sports Illustrated Cover Story 50 Years Ago Today

When I was a college student, sports was a big deal.  Probably because I started college when UCLA started winning basketball championships.  When I was at my mom's in LA recently, I found this old copy of Sports Illustrated with the cover story of UCLA's first championship.  It was exciting times.







Here's the article inside.  I saved these as really big files so you can click on the pictures below and magnify them and you'll be able to read them.

Click on the picture and use the magnifying glass and you can read this

To get some perspective, that cheerleader on the right has got to be somewhere between 67 and 72 today.

This is, in no way, intended to take any glory from today's final four.  I just thought it appropriate to post this on the 50th anniversary of the publication.  In fact, I did post on this once, but I didn't have the pictures.  I thought I'd just add the pictures to that post, but since it is the exact day today, another post seemed appropriate.

Dogs, Long Time Frame, Cloudy Descent - Random SF/LA Shots

There are lots and lots of dogs walking their owners around San Francisco.   Lots of shops have water bowls set out for them and most allow dogs in. 
















The Long Now Foundation was closed as we walked by, but they'll be back in a while.  It's an organization founded by Stewart Brand (of the Whole Earth Catalog) and others.  They're building a ten thousand year clock. 

"The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide a counterpoint to today's accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years."

Their website has an essay by Steward Brand, of the Whole Earth Catalog and one of the Long Now founders which says this quote from Dennis Hillis helped start the clock project:

 "When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 02000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 02000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an

ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium."

 For me, 1984 was the year we were moving toward.  Then 2001.

We were at the Long Now because we were headed for greens for dinner.  But they were closed for a private party.




I took this shot as we headed back for the car and another place to eat.

 

Talking about about greens, I thought this Plant Exchange idea was worth posting.  Lots of people have too much of one thing in their yards and not enough of other things.  I'd love to see this happen in Anchorage.  Just a spot to bring extra plants and exchange for ones you'd like. 













Our trip to the Bay area was much too brief, but we got to see my son and his wife and other good friends.  And soon we were back over an overcast LA and slipped down through the thin cloud cover. 



They announced we'd be on the ground in 15 minutes.  I thought we were further away than that, and once we got over the opening of Marina del Rey, we wandered around the LA airspace and finally landed in 20 minutes.  But it took another 20 minutes before we got a place to park. 




Here's one last shot I took as we meandered around LA waiting to be cleared to land.  A freeway interchange. (As you can tell, I used the little camera.  We were cutting down on what we carried on this trip and my bigger camera was on the don't take list.)

I found myself trying to trace all the connections from one direction to another.  I see how you can switch from the vertical freeway to the horizontal freeway and go either direction.  But I only see a way to turn right from the horizontal freeway to the vertical one.  There's a little something above the loop on the right and below the one on the left, but I can't figure out what they're for. Maybe they go down to a street below.   My other camera would have made this all much clearer.  (No I don't even know what interchange this was.  You can see park area below, and there was a lake on the upper left.)

Why Many Of My Videos Won't Work For A While

Viddler, a site similar to Youtube in that you can put videos there and then embed them into your blog post, recently notified me they were shutting down the free accounts.   I posted about this once March 2, 2013.

I used YouTube in the beginning, but uploading was very slow and videos had to be very short.  So one day I discovered Viddler and found they uploaded faster, they had sharper images, and you could upload longer videos.  So I switched over.  That was back in August 2007. 

In 2010 Viddler sent out emails to members saying they were going to convert to paid accounts only.  I told them about my blog, that I was an early adopter, and all the trouble it would cause me to replace all the video on my blog. I suggested they let me continue free as an early adopter.  I'd even put up my only ad for them as a sponsor of my blog.  They agreed in concept, but it turned out they just backed down on closing down the free accounts.  But I got the message.  Meanwhile, Google had bought YouTube, and the quality there was much improved.  So I started using YouTube as my main server for video on the blog.  Once the video is on the server, you can get the embed code and put that in your blog (or on your website) and the video appears.

So about a month ago, I got the new email that they were now closing down the free part of their website.  I had 478 videos on Viddler.    So I've been busily downloading.  I had some problems and the staff were very prompt and helpful.  They even offered me a way to batch download the videos, but I couldn't make it work.

In any case, with the exception of about a dozen videos in December 2008 which had some sort of problem they've said they'd try to fix, I think I have everything downloaded.  Today was the deadline, but they assured me that they wouldn't shut down my page until I had it all done.

So now I'm uploading videos to YouTube so I can swap out the Viddler hosted videos for Youtube hosted videos.  In the near future, the ones that were Viddler will probably stop working.  I'm starting to replace the most recent ones - and I really haven't used Viddler that much recently.  So I think I might get 2014 and 2013 taken care of before the account closes.  Most of those I saved originally to YouTube.  It's the older ones that will take a while and may be unviewable until I get them swapped out.  If I can do ten a day, I could get them done in a couple of months.  

Don't Forget To Turn Your Clock Ahead

Timeanddate writes:

The idea of daylight saving time was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 during his stay in Paris. He published an essay titled “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light” that proposed to economize the use of candles by rising earlier to make use of the morning sunlight.

National Geographic adds:

While serving as U.S. ambassador to France in Paris, Franklin wrote of being awakened at 6 a.m. and realizing, to his surprise, that the sun rose far earlier than he usually did. Imagine the resources that might be saved if he and others rose before noon and burned less midnight oil, Franklin, tongue half in cheek, wrote to a newspaper.

"Franklin seriously realized it would be beneficial to make better use of daylight, but he didn't really know how to implement it," Prerau said. . .

It wasn't until World War I that daylight savings were realized on a grand scale. Germany was the first state to adopt the time changes, to reduce artificial lighting and thereby save coal for the war effort. Friends and foes soon followed suit. In the U.S. a federal law standardized the yearly start and end of daylight saving time in 1918—for the states that chose to observe it.

Both pieces have lots of information including pros and cons and research links that say DST is beneficial and harmful to energy use and to health.

As long as we have it (doesn't make too much sense in Alaska), I still propose that in the spring, we jump ahead at 4pm on Friday afternoon instead of on the weekend. 

Working Hard To Get Back To Normal - Viddler Shuts Down Free Accounts

Blog videos need to be hosted somewhere on a server. (So do photos - but Blogspot automatically puts them on Picassa.)  When I put up my first video - about ten seconds of a street scene in Amritsar, India - I put it on YouTube.  But YouTube was the big player and I as I looked around for other video server platforms, I found Viddler.  It let me put up bigger files, they looked better, I could insert comments.  There were lots of advantages.

So I opened an account and began loading up my video on Viddler.  Over time, YouTube got bought by Google (who also owns Blogspot), but I stayed loyal to Viddler.  A while ago - maybe a year, maybe a little longer - someone at Viddler sent me an email saying they were shutting down their free video hosting service and I could by a professional membership.  I wrote back I'd been an early supporter and that I have a lot of hits on my blog and people get to see Viddler's name on my videos.  I also talked about how hard it would be to download all the videos, upload them onto YouTube, and then re-embed them into my posts.  I suggested grandfathering in people like me.  They said fine and dropped their plan.

But I got nervous and began uploading most of my video onto you YouTube.  And a couple of weeks ago I got the email I assumed would eventually come:  They're dropping the free video hosting and I have until March 11 to download my videos before they close the account.  Or I can pay $300 a year to keep being hosted by them.  Is that a lot for the video hosting?  I don't know.  I tend to be an anti-consumer.  I think too many people are willing to shell out whatever their cable or phone company tells them.  They just have to have the latest goodies.  Even when the company is making huge profits.  Even when it means the consumer goes further into debt each year.  And that $300 a year is forever if I want to keep the videos showing up on my blog.

So I'm spending a lot of time now downloading my videos from Viddler.  (I do have them on external hard drives, but this way I'm getting them in chronological order with dates that will make it easier to figure out which posts they are in.  And then I'll have to upload them to YouTube.  And then I'll have to re-embed them into the posts they're in.

So, I get to do all this work - there are 535 videos on Viddler - and it will take from blogging time, and I'm sure it will take me longer than the deadline to get them all back into the posts they are in.


Here's a screenshot of my Viddler account.  This is eight of the 535 videos.  I have to hit edit, then manage, the click on the file.  In some cases there's a different file format and I have to play with that and change the name from Viddler's identification (numerical) to what I named the video. 


I figure about 8-10 hours to download, then the time to get them up on YouTube and embedded back here.   If it were just a one time $300 charge, it would be worth it.  But a continuing charge forever?  No.

Working hard just to stay where I am.

And I suspect a lot of stuff people are storing free on 'the cloud' somewhere, is going to get a fee one day.  And you're going to have to make a similar decision about whether to pay or find another way.  And there's no guarantee that YouTube won't do the same thing one day.  And slowly, but surely, the easy access we've had to be our own publishers, is going to disappear.  

[UPDATE March 11, 2014.  It was more than 10 hours, but it's mostly done.  Here's a new post on what I've done and replacing the old Viddler videos with YouTube videos.]

Working Hard To Get Back To The Start - Tag Your Luggage, And Richard Powers' Orpheo

Sometimes you have to work to just get back to where you started.  Most of this was my own fault.  It began Wednesday night at my mom's house when I opened my suitcase and found out it wasn't mine.

I called Alaska Airlines and related how someone had handed down my carry-on suitcase from a row or two behind and I hadn't looked at it carefully as people were waiting to get off.  I had the name of the person whose suitcase I had, but she said he wasn't listed on the flight.  And no extra suitcases were found either.  Uh oh.  Did I mix it up in the bathroom? Or on the shuttle bus?  

I called OP (other passenger), but there was no answer or voice mail.  I emailed him and went to bed.  He called the next morning, relieved that his suitcase was safe and said that the shuttle driver had taken mine to lost and found.  I called the shuttle company, they gave me another number, but they didn't have it, but gave me another number.  Nor did they.  But they gave me yet another number (the lost and found of the shuttle service whom I called in the first place) and they had it. 

I got into my mom's car to get my suitcase, but it wouldn't start.  I borrowed another car.   When I got there and told her who I was, the woman said that someone had just picked it up.  I'm not sure what my face said back to her, but she quickly said, "Just joking" and gave me my suitcase.  You really start thinking about what you had in there and how easy or hard it will be to replace.  When I got back with my suitcase I called the Auto Club which came to start my mom's car and then on his advice, drove it for 45 minutes.

There were a couple of other little things I had to redo - fix one of the toilets, and get the 'lost wallet' charge off one of my mom's credit cards.  I'd already done that last November, but it was on the January bill again.

And VISA declined a purchase while we were in Seattle.  I guess I like that they're noticing when we aren't where we normally are and they fixed it when I called. I told them we'd be in LA.  But today, J got turned down again.   One more call to get back to the beginning. He said our Seattle update didn't get updated.  When I asked what that meant, he said it wasn't recorded.  We've had a pretty regular pattern of being in LA this last year and shopping at that market.  It's not part of our pattern that they should be able to see from our billing record.  Guess they aren't as sophisticated as they'd like us to believe. 

Meanwhile, J spent Thursday sleeping and Friday was my turn - no pains or queasiness for me, just depleted.  Flu?  Maybe.  J had a flu shot this year, but I didn't. 


But there were some upsides.  OP, who came out in the evening to get his suitcase (I offered to take it to him, but he declined), turned out to be a very nice person who's been to 49 states, except you-know-which-one.  I told him I'd pick him up at the airport when he comes.

And while I was driving the car to charge up the battery, I heard a phenomenal book review of Richard Powers' new book, Orpheo on KCRW's Bookworm.   Reviewer, Michale Silverblatt, engaged Powers at a level commensurate with the complexity of the themes in the book.  I posted in 2007 about Powers' The Echo Maker, an incredible book that interweaves the ancient migration pattern built into the genetic memory of sandhill cranes and the memory problems caused by capgras syndrome. Do try the link to the interview.  [I know the link is just above, but I figure the easier I make it to link, the more likely someone will.]

I also learned, looking up Richard Powers, that our paths have crossed - he was a student at the International School in Bangkok while I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand and he returned home to DeKalb, Illinois where my Peace Corps group had trained.  This was about the same time Robert Merton was electrocuted in Samut Prakan, just south of Bangkok.


My todo list from this post?

1.  Put my name and contact info on the outside of my carryons as well as things I check in.  I had a very distinctive name tag on my roll-on (thanks Carol), but it disappeared on the previous trip when it flew as check-in.  And I didn't replace it.  Even after discussion the check-in lady in Anchorage talked about someone who had her name clearly on the outside of everything and on the inside as well.  (I did have a photo of the suitcase.)

2.  Look for Richard Powers' Orpheo.