Apocalyptic Beliefs Go Back A Long Ways

"Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted some of America’s most prominent evangelical leaders to raise a provocative question — asking if the world is now in the biblically prophesied “end of days” that might culminate with the apocalypse and the second coming of Christ."  (The Times of Israel)

Christianity.com tells us:

"Ever since Jesus predicted the end, even before Revelation was written, Christians have worried and/or believed that the apocalypse was upon them. Several events were widely thought to herald the end of the world and were offered supposed biblical backing, but ultimately did not result in the apocalypse."

They they go on to list various times that many people expected the Apocalypse to happen.  But it didn't.  But they aren't debunking that it will happen.  Only that we can't predict it.

"We can’t control when the end comes. We can’t even predict it. However, there is one thing we can do: Be faithful followers of Christ regardless of the situation. And that is what we have been called to do."

These ideas were in my mind when I read   "Reindeer at the End of the World"  by Bathsheba Demuth.  How did I find that article?

My book club book this month is The Best American Travel Writing 2021.    The title didn't excite me. How could they already have a book out (back in January)?  2021 was only just over.  How did they evaluate stuff published in December?  (I think, now, it is the date the book is published, not when the original articles were published.)

Besides, I wanted a book that would take me to another world, to new ideas, with words that would excite me and make me smile.  A great novel of inspired biography maybe.  Not some travel industry hype.

Well, an advantage of a book club is that you read things you never would have picked on your own.  

Despite the fact that B picked this book as a substitute for the cancelled cruises he missed over the last couple of pandemic years, the book is much better than I expected.  I am way behind - but I've only got about 150 pages to read by Monday night, so I could make it.  

So far, my favorite chapter was "Good Bread" about a guy who takes his family to Lyon, France so he can learn to cook at a great restaurant there.  He ends up working in a bakery that only uses fresh local flour from small family farms.  As the bread baker in our household, I found lots to appreciate in the chapter.  

But this is about the Apocalypse and also Russia.   

 In "Reindeer at the End of the World"  Bathsheba Demuth writes about a trip that takes place on the Chukchi Peninsula in the Russian far east.  

While looking for reindeer, the author stumbles across Karl Yanovich Luks in the archives in Vladivostok.   He came to the far east in the 1920s to revolutionize the lives of the local folks and modernize the fox hunting and reindeer herding enterprises.  (It didn't turn out well.)

Karl was born in 1888 and grew up very poor and became a deckhand as a teen.  It was the last decades of the Czar Nicholas II, who 

"heir to four centuries of autocratic rule, sheltered in his palaces, spent lavishly , and hired more police.  The people Karl met outside these aristocratic walls found their present so unjust, so sickly, so impossible, their question was not would it end, but how.  Karl heard the Baptists preaching hellfire, Orthodox priests involving the salvation of saints, and a dozen other sects calling down the final judgment.  

As the historian Yuri Slezkine explains, these visions all shared a plot:  first the apocalypse, then a reign of harmony and perfection.  An old story, passed from the Middle East to Europe, from Jewish cosmologies into Christin traditions, going back almost 3,000 years to the prophecies of Zoroaster, who foretold a cataclysmic battle between light and dark.  The triumph of light would give the righteous a new life, one without suffering or toil, one where time is meted out in cycles of birth and death ended in a linear, immortal world."

As she tells the story of her visits with the indigenous reindeer herders, she keeps coming back to this theme.  

"Karl did not become a Baptist or worship saints.  He joined a socialist reading circle.  In Slezkine's masterful reading of the Russian socialist condition, the plot Karl learned also came from Zoroaster's lineage.  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels foretold how the darkness of capitalist exploitation would become the light of communist utopia.  Between these poles was a kind of earthly revelation:  what socialists called revolution.  A word, Slezkine reminds us, promising 'the end of the old world and the beginning of a new, just one."

 "Another appeal of the apocalypse:  proclaiming it is not an act of supplication, but of certainty."

"The core of apocalyptic thinking is nihilism:  this world is too despoiled to continue.  The seduction of such stories is how certain they make the tellers feel.  An apocalyptic narrative is like looking at a horizon with no clouds or hills:  the way forward is terribly assured.  To walk it, there is no need to mind the lives of others, rendered invisible by the power of imagining they are already gone.  

"Apocalyptic prophecy is also an escape from contemplating- catstrophe."

The apocalypse was not a part of my upbringing.  It scares me that so many people accept it so easily.  My upbringing says we should do everything we can to make the world a better place.  Accepting the apocalypse as inevitable says, the world is a terrible place and there is nothing you can do about it, but not to worry, God will fix it for you if you follow his commandments.   

Even though the end of times has been predicted so many times in the past and yet failed to appear.  This may not be the most enlightening discussion of it, but getting bits and pieces from here and there helps me think about such things.  Gives me questions to raise when I meet people who truly believe.  

This And That, Ups And Downs - San Francisco And Seattle

 We're back on Bainbridge Island.  San Francisco was great.  We tried a new rental car option.  Actually we've used BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and buses in past trips, but we were going to different places over the four days, so a car seemed to make sense. Kyte is a company that delivers the car to you.  And they were cheaper.  Everything worked well except two things.

• They aren't allowed to deliver to the airport so they deliver to Daly City BART.  That's pretty close to the airport and sounded ok.  But it turns out it costs $9 per person one way from SFO to Daly City BART.  So we went to the information office in the airport to get senior BART passes.  In the past a $9 senior BART pass would get us into town and back, plus a trip to see friends in Oakland.  But they aren't selling them at the airport any more.  So the two roundtrips added almost $40 to the bill.
• We were a bit earlier than our appointment and the pick up site is listed as 500 John Daly Blvd.  Well, that includes the entire BART station and two parking lots.  Finding out where we were supposed to be was hard and the driver was late.  

This would be great if we needed to get the car at a residence or anywhere besides SFO.  

Overall, we had a great time visiting good friends on the Peninsula one night and staying with an old Thailand Peace Corps buddy I've known since 1966.  Saturday we walked to the top of Twin Peaks from his house and my son and the two grandkids met us up there.  We spent the rest of the day with them on a glorious sunny T-shirt warm day at Golden Gate Park.  

Twin Peaks involved lots of steps

And flowers - there's a bee in there, but the resolution is too low.  Sorry.

Cool trees.

And birds, like this hummingbird.

And this crow enjoying the view from Twin Peaks

Red tailed hawk?

And for my friend Jeremy, I take pictures of towers like this that interest him much more than the trees or the birds or even the view.  

We also looked at a couple of houses.  My son's family is growing out of the confines of a two bedroom apartment.  It's interesting to visit open houses, but the prices are depressing.  Everything is super staged with furniture, paintings plants.  I discovered it's useful to look behind things - the stagers use items to hide things they don't want you to see.  

Getting altitude is favorite of my grandson.  This was sunny Saturday.

Back in Golden Gate Park Sunday, but it was cloudy and windy and chilly.  That didn't stop the kids from having a great time.  

Monday was sunny again and we had more park time.  Even though it was a much smaller park, there was enough room to play monster and the kids were good at changing the rules if they thought they were going to get caught.  

Broken glass, from my experience, is not an uncommon sight in San Francisco.  This is at a bus stop.  

Dropping off the car was much easier than picking it up and we got to the airport with plenty of time.  An advantage to walking instead of taking the sky train is getting to see the art exhibits all through the terminals.  

Most of these Tabitha Soren pieces didn't excite me, but I did like "Emailed Kiss Goodnight".

This should be larger and clearer if you click on it.

Alison Saar's Flourish

Thought this was interesting.  This isn't far from where my son lives now.  Filmore near Geary.

Finally, we got to our gate and had some ramen.  And I also finally had some time for yesterday's Wordle.  So I started with RAMEN.  

I got two right - one green one yellow -  and I figured I'd try to go through the possible words and make it in two or three tries. 

But as I discovered when we got off the plane and onto the ferry in Seattle, that I'd used the wrong letter as the yellow (A instead of R) one.  An almost totally wasted turn given the two words I'd boiled it down to - ABBEY and ALLEY.  For the first time I got it only on the sixth round.  Bummer.  

But I made up for it today with 99.99% luck.  

Meanwhile, it was 54˚ F in the condo when we got back last night.  A good part of the trip was being away while we waited for the plumber to fix the boiler.  And they called this morning to see if it was ok to come earlier.  YES!

But then they reported it needed parts they had to order.  The fireplace and the two space heaters we got have gotten it into the low 60s.  Oh, and there was fresh snow on the ground.  The weather app reported 32F on Bainbridge and 40F in Anchorage.

So, that's all you missed while I've been gramping instead of blogging.

Oh, my book club met last night.  It was a book I just couldn't finish. Reading it wasn't fun nor was it telling me anything I needed to know.  I didn't want to keep reading.  But that's a different post.  

The Difficult Life Of Flight Attendants And Passengers

When we waited for our plane in LA, there was a large group of men, say mid twenties through forties, maybe fifties.  They kind of invaded the waiting area and were speaking to each other in another language.  And they were less than fastidious about their masks.  I'd guess five to ten had their masks on their chins much of the time.  Others didn't have their noses covered. 

When we got on the plane, I mentioned this to one of the flight attendants at the entrance as a bit of a warning.  She said she'd already heard.  We sat down.  The lady next to us was handicapped and needed assistance getting up to let us pass to our seats.  She was agitated.  The men were still breathing mask free around us.  She said she'd told Alaska Airlines before we boarded.  She had health issues and was worried about getting COVID.  She got an attendant and explained her concerns and pointed out that the men around us had noses and mouths showing before the attendant arrived.  She even got the captain to come out and talk to her.  

It's not clear how good their English was (presumably some better than others) and if they could even understand the captain's announcement about keeping masks on.  But they did know they needed to be masked and did pull them up when an attendant was nearing.  This wasn't a political statement.  It just appeared to be avoidance of an inconvenience.  

The men pulled up their masks when asked to and then they would slip off again.  Around us there were four or five offenders.  We took off.  Soon the lady next to us got the attendant again and wanted to move.  We decided to just stick it out.  An American Airlines flight attendant soon replaced the woman who got assistance to move to another seat.  The attendant was headed to Anchorage to celebrate his birthday with friends and relatives.

Throughout the flight the masks went up when attendants came by and then down again.  

It's a tricky business when you are up in the air.  The flight attendant sitting next to us told us that it was something like three warnings and then you go on a no fly list.  But it didn't appear that was happening.  The flight attendant sitting with us left and then the original woman was back next to us.  

When we landed we were all told to stay seated while those who needed assistance got helped off.  An attendant was there to help the woman next to us and the nearest offender stood up and helped her get up too.  His mask was in place at that point.  

I'm just thinking about the calculations the airlines make.  This was a large group - maybe 20 or 30  good sized men.  Were they flying up to work on the Slope?  Fishing?  Who knows?  Was Alaska Airlines weighing the loss of a bunch of passengers against trouble in the air?  It was a five hour flight.  No one wanted to land midway and drop off anyone.  The attendants were clearly avoiding confrontations and the men didn't refuse to wear masks.  They complied when asked.  Alcohol was not an issue.  

I already had  concerns about flying on a plane full of masked people with Omicron spiking, when it turned out I'd be flying with some unmasked and partially masked passengers.  You could say that we're overreacting - most people who are fully vaxed and masked are less likely to get COVID and if they do, not likely to get too sick.  That's what I told myself.  

As a blogger, I know pictures pique people's interest.  But as a person, I'm not comfortable putting any pictures of these folks up.  

Just want to let everyone know that even the Airline that banned an Alaska State Senator is walking a fine line between enforcing the mask rules and looking the other way.  

To the person who wrote a letter to the editor (Anchorage Daily News)  yesterday complaining about the Airlines giving in to the unions and cutting back in-flight services, I'd say the flight attendants' lives are hard enough as it is without spending lots of time among the passengers.  And serving alcohol is clearly not a good idea. Sure, a lot of people would like a drink on a flight and for most it wouldn't be an issue.   If people really can't get through a flight without a drink, it would seem to be an indicator of a problem that needs attention.  Not having alcohol on board (and I'm not completely sure that's the case) keeps the skies a little calmer.  

Headed Home

 Now that we're at LAX waiting for our 7:20 pm non-stop back to Anchorage, we had the most beautiful day since we got here. Thanks to my mom's neighbor who drove us to the airport!   I did get in a bike-ride to the beach (stopping to duplicate some keys on the way).  

Not only was it warmer than it's been (low 70s) but clear too.  Though to the south you could see fog/clouds/haze.  This is looking north toward the Santa Monica mountains (really hills.)  I've been to a lot of places and I'm only now truly appreciating the great beaches of LA.  Not that I didn't always love the beach growing up, but I never appreciated the huge expanse of sand between the water and the buildings.  There's a lot of sand.  No rocks.  In the picture the water is to the left.  You can see a thin band of water between the sand and the sky.  

This African iris was sticking out from the wall of green between my mom's house and the neighbor's.  The plant itself was way inside, but the flower found the light.  It wasn't there yesterday.

These oranges were weighing down a tree in front of an apartment building in Beverly Hills. If people had more edibles in their gardens here they could feed a lot of people 

An oak tree across the street from friends we visited Sunday.

It's been a different, pandemic trip.  We've gotten take out, but haven't dined in any restaurants like we normally would.  

And the ceiling at our gate at LAX this evening.

This has been, until this week, a pretty chilly visit, for LA.  But it's been chilly for Anchorage too while we were gone.  Our house sitter reported that our kitchen sink pipes froze, but he was able to get that taken care of.  

Looking forward to being home for a bit.  

Started Day In Bainbridge, Ending In Anchorage

The day began on Bainbridge Island walking my granddaughter to school.  She had on a backpack and a yam (rising tone, like you're asking a question).  That's the Thai name for the shoulder bags you see on the left.  Those are from a blog post in 2008.  I told my granddaughter I'd bought the yam for her mother long ago.  

She said I sounded like I was asking a question and I responded that in Thai each word, actually each syllable has its own tone and yan is rising town.  In English the tone goes with the sentence, so that's why you think it sounds like a question.  When I was studying Thai, at the very beginning, we were just being taught how hear the different tones and then repeat them.  The teacher would say "mea" very flat tone and we would say it adding an English question to the word and changing the tone to a rising tone, which meant dog instead of to come.  

She was quiet for a while and then she said, "Grampa, if Thai words all have tones, how to they make songs?"    She's eight, going on nine.  Good question.  I wonder how much her piano lessons helped trigger that question.  

Then we got a ride to the ferry.  Actually, it was balmy, if cloudy, about 60˚ F.  We'd usually walk, but our daughter offered us a ride.  

I did walk around the deck, but it was very windy.  Here's a picture just as the ferry was leaving Bainbridge.  Downtown Seattle is in the middle, just to the right of the trees.  I thought about it.  Why do we think of the tall cluster of skyscrapers as an image of Seattle.  It's just a tiny fraction of the city.  

COVID and warnings about jammed TSA lines at SEATAC put us into a taxi instead of the train to the airport.  It's really fast that way - about 20 minutes instead of over an hour.  Because of the long lines, they've set up a system where you can make a reservation for a spot in the line.  Ours was for 11:15 (you get 15 minutes period).  Turned out there was no line whatsoever.  And we were in the terminal waiting for our flight.  

I thought this was an interesting sign.  Not sure where they store all the water.  Do they collect it from the roofs of the terminal buildings?  

Our flight was uneventful - the best kind - and were in Anchorage a little early.  We had a great Somali cab driver.  Hope to see him again.  You know, maybe people are afraid of immigrants because they know they are smarter and willing to worker harder than they are.  

And here's the back yard.  

I'll shovel tomorrow.  Nice to be back and to be greeted by much warmer temperatures that we were hearing about.  Our outdoor thermometer says 20˚F.    Didn't feel cold at all.  But we didn't spend that much time outside.  But not the shock that it sometimes can be when it's below 0.

Leap Of Faith - Flying To Seattle After Deicing

 March 4, 2020, we returned from a long trip with our daughter and granddaughter and assorted family members.  We'd also been to San Francisco to visit our son and his two kids.  Early US COVID deaths were happening at Seattle area nursing homes.  Our daughter was concerned enough to give us each an N-95 mask and drove us all the way out to the airport. (We usually just caught a train out after the ferry to downtown Seattle.)  After a few days I had mild COVID symptoms, but even though I could check off three symptoms and being the right age group and coming from a COVID outbreak area and testing negative for the flu, I couldn't get tested.  

I was near the end of  Michael Lewis'  The Premonition  on the plane today, a story of 'outlaw' doctors

who on their own came up with a plan for what to do when there's a pandemic.  About that time there just weren't enough tests available.  I wasn't sick enough to get tested.  They were saving tests for people in the hospital.  Premontion  tells of a UCSF lab that created, with lots of volunteer help (Post-Phd grad volunteers) a way to provide free tests, but Kaiser said no because they were afraid they'd lose their contract with their regular supplier (according to the book) and a non-profit said no because they couldn't put $0 for cost in their accounting system.

In any case. there was over a foot of snow in some places in my driveway when I shoveled at 8am.  We watched the cab drive by looking for an address.  We couldn't catch his attention, but he stopped down the block and asked someone who was out.  We caught that guy's attention.  

There was a lot of snow.  Wednesday afternoon there hadn't been any.  

Getting through security at 8:45am wasn't bad.  It felt both odd and familiar as we walked through the airport to our gate.  Soon we were on the plane.  We had an empty middle seat, though the pilot kept saying it was full.  Finally at the very end, someone showed up and I moved to the middle seat as a barrier for J.  (Usually I'm at the window with my camera, but it's COVID.  But my neighbor had a good mask on and I saw a Providence screen, then a UAA screen on her computer, so I'm assuming she has a good understanding of the virus.  But still being that close to so many strangers can be uncomfortable.  But I just dismissed the anxiety - I was on the plane and I could either enjoy the ride or have a miserable trip.  I chose option A.

But we weren't leaving that fast.  We had snow on the wings and had to be deiced first.  But another plane was ahead of us.  

Here's our snowy wing.  And it was really a low cloud cover. 

Finally our deicer is on the way.  Our window wasn't very clear. 

Our turn.

We got to the 10,000 foot level still shrouded in flat opaque gray clouds.  It was a full ten minutes before we emerged above it and saw blue again.  

It turned out that our seat mate had missed her 6:30 flight to Portland because the security line was so long.  So she'd had to wait around for our 10:30 flight which was delayed over an hour and still had to get to Portland.  Which I guess explains why she showed up at the last minute - they had to see how many empty seats there were.  

I'd semi decided that we'd skip the train - we'd been cooped up in a plane full of masked, but potential COVID spreaders, and I didn't need more of that.  And we were an hour late.  And it was raining pretty hard, so we took a cab which we'd never done before.  The cab driver asked what time our ferry left.  It was 4:18 at that point.  "We won't make it - it's at 4:45."  The cab driver assured us we'd make it, and we did.  After eating another of the sandwiches we'd brought along (the food service on the ferry was shut down), I needed to get outside.  But it was raining hard and the wind was blowing.  But I found a protected spot in the back.  (As I typed that I thought do ferries have a front and back - since cars come in one end in Seattle and they leave out the other end on Bainbridge Island?  So, I checked with you know who and got this answer to the same question someone asked at sailnet in 2013:

"Washington State Ferries have a pilothouse at each end, so when the boat is ready to leave the dock, the crew moves to the new front of the boat. Sometimes they do turn around or back in, but that is because they loaded cars at the end of the load that need to be offloaded first. That mostly happens on Lopez, Shaw, and Orcas islands and sometimes on Vashon island. Most of the routes are point A to point B though."

Well, here's the view from the back (for that trip anyway) of the ferry looking towards downtown Seattle.  

What a pleasure to be met by our daughter and granddaughter after all this time.  My son-in-law is off on a business trip in Nairobi, 

Today begins two days of discussions amongst the Africa Eats investees on how to speed up the growth of their solutions, how to fill in the gaps African businesses face, and to make Africa Eats more than the sum of its portfolio companies.#hunger #poverty #Africa pic.twitter.com/WxisPMmsd6

— Africa Eats (@AfricaEats) November 12, 2021

but he's due back before Thanksgiving. 

Alaska Airlines Safety Dance Goes OneWorld

 When I was relatively new to Alaska, I went to a public administration meeting downtown during the annual Fur Rendezvous.  Walking from my car I passed the ice sculptures which included a large structure with a slide.  I couldn't resist.  I went up the ice steps and slid down the slide.  And went on to the meeting.

Sometime later, one of my graduate students, a women older than I, told me that she had seen me go down the ice slide and that was the moment that she knew I was okay.  

Later I read an article about how Japanese CEOs participate in all day company retreats and join in some activities in which they aren't particularly skilled - maybe karaoke or basketball - and that showing their clumsier selves in front of all their employees is a way to humanize them and connect them with the people they work with.  

Those were my thoughts as I watched Alaska Airlines' video welcoming them to OneWorld - an alliance of, now 14, airlines around the world.  I understand the importance of OneWorld membership because when we went to Argentina a couple of years ago, LATAM airlines told me "if you are a OneWorld member" you can get much better prices and services.  

The video starts with Alaska Airlines' president and then he gets welcomed by the heads of the various airlines in the group.  Then at the end they do the Alaska Airlines safety dance, an adaptation of the Virgin Airlines safety video Alaska acquired when they bought Virgin Airlines.  (The Virgin one is worth looking at - an example of how imagination can take a boring safety announcement and make it riveting.)

So below is the second part of Alaska's new OneWorld welcome video - the part that involves a variation on the safety dance, including the CEOs of the various member airlines.  [I'll have to wait until it's actually posted to be sure it starts at the dance.  If not, the dance starts at about 3:16]

Sure, it's a PR video, but with a spirit that takes off the corporate suits and gets seriously playful

AK Redistricting Board: January 26 - Approving Their Own Pay And Per Diem, Public Hearing Notice & Public Records Policies

 The Board met and passed the policies recommended by the staff.  The main change they made was to combine the meals ($60) and incidentals ($25) into on $85 which, it seems bumps up their meal allowance when traveling.  There was no mention or discussion of whether it was appropriate for that to cover alcohol.  Board member Melanie Bahnke, the President and CEO of Kawerak,  a Native non-profit Corporation of the Bering Straits Native Association, asked that her pay go to Kawerak because that's the corporation's policy when employees do this sort of work on corporation time.  Staff thought that could be arranged but will check.  

One item was added to the published agenda - an update on the progress of the website. The staff is working on it, but no dates were given for when it goes up.

Chair Binkely reiterated several times that these policies could be revisited and amended if that seemed necessary.  

I posted the other day saying I didn't think a board like this should be asked to set its own compensation.  I further raised various ethical and socio-economic questions about the role of public boards like this.  My personal sense is that in many cases per diem and travel allowances are often abused by both private and public sector employees.  I agree fully that members of such boards shouldn't have to spend out-of-pocket to serve on boards, but I also feel that given Alaska's severe cutting of public programs because of the drop in oil revenues, that members of public boards, particularly when they have other well paid jobs besides their board appointments, should be very conscious that many people, many children in Alaska today eat on much less than $60 a day, let alone $85.  

Again, this is something I feel is important and not really aimed at the Board itself, but more at the contradictions between some politicians who vigorously promote cutting the budget and then want to be generously compensated by a government agency.

Below is my rough transcript of the meeting as I listened in by phone.  Occasionally I had trouble identifying who was speaking and I try to indicate that with a question mark.  This is not verbatim, but it's enough to get the gist of the discussion.  Audio tape will eventually be up at this link (and later on their own website when they get that up. 

[I've included some of the staff recommendations from the Documents for the meeting which were online as well.]

Alaska Redistricting Board January 26, 2021

Present:  Board members: Nicole Borromeo, Melanie Bahnke,  Bethany Marcum, Budd Simpson, John Binkley, 

Staff:  Peter Torkelson and TJ TJ Presley 

Open meeting at 2:34

Approval of Agenda - Simpson - amend to add # 6 Webpage

Adopted

Agenda

1. Call to order

2. Establish a quorum

3. Adoption of agenda

4. Board Policy Review and Discussion

a. Public Meeting and Notice Policy

b. Public Records Policy

c. Member Compensation Policy

d. Member & Staff Travel Per Diem Policy

5. Adoption of One or More Board Policies 

Added new 6 -Website progress -  and made Adjournment 7

6. Adjournment

1. Board Policy Review and Discussion

Turn it to Peter

Peter:  Worked through this.  TJ drafted the first two. (Hard to understand)

Public Meetings and Notices Policy:  

Melanie - about screens on Zoom

Dept Director TJ Presley:  

Public Meeting - how the board communicates to public about when there’s a meeting.  Executive and Legislative branch policies.  Executive Branch uses public meetings - all bodies, pretty broad.  

Notice given reasonable time, but no definition.  (Reviewing info in documents covered in earlier post on the Board.)

Banke:  It’s hard to understand, very muffled.

Move to Second Policy Public Records Policy

Hoping to procure a minutes taker as well.  How to keep records varies.  AIDEA - has statutory requirements.  Legislature has uniform rules - court proceedings electronically.  

In this case Board could adopt Legislative or Administrative. 

Staff recommendation - electronic recordings and minutes provided.  (Again see previous post )  

More discussion about TJs audio.  

Peter doing quick summary.  Here’s the official written staff rec:

Meetings and Notice

“Staff Recommendation: Redistricting Board should adopt Alaska Open Meetings law, AS 44.62.310, as its public notice requirements. This action directs staff to ensure notice of themeeting, its location, attachments, and teleconference options, would be posted to the Alaska Public Notice System website within a “reasonable time”. Staff will further make notice of its meetings available on the legislative website.

It is the policy of the Alaska Redistricting Board that the board comply with the Alaska Open Meetings act and seek to provide 72 hours of public notice prior to board meetings with 24 hours notice being allowable. Notices shall be posted to the State of Alaska Public Notice System.

Advance public notice can be difficult if you aren't organized or if things come up at the last minute, but it's important for the public to be able figure out when the board is meeting.  Furthermore, while the State Public Notice System is there, it's not something that most people regularly use.”

Public Meetings 

"Staff Recommendation: Adopt a policy that includes recording and maintaining electronic copies of the audio recording of each meeting and keeping minutes that capture votes, motions, and a “brief statement of the position of any Board Members who makes a statement on the issue before the board” (This is modeled on legislative committee minute recording language). This could be a simple summary like, “Member A expressed concern that the proposed House District 12 did not take into account the city boundary”

It is the policy of the Alaska Redistricting Board that meetings be electronically recorded and made available to the public and that written minutes be kept of each meeting which identify motion makers, seconds, vote tallies and a brief summary of the concerns of any Board member who states a position on the issue under consideration.

Binkley:  Public Notice questions?

Borromeo:  Public Notice.  On Legislature’s website?  Tied to Governor’s office?  I had problems finding us.  

Peter:  We were under umbrella of Legislature because they funded us.  Now on both  Alaska Notice dot Gov [I'd give you a url if I could figure out the right one- Steve] also on http://w3.akleg.gov/index.php#tab4 (?)   So we’d be on both.  

We have our own website being set up and we’ll notice there as well and also have email notification for those who subscribe.  

Binkley:  Compensation Policy.  The Constitution says they should be compensated.  Board members spend a lot of time on Board matters not just on meetings.  We send hundreds of pages to the members.  Done on daily rate, but should also cover hours working on Board issues not at meeting.  

We recommend $477.  Legislators at $486.  We don’t know how many weeks we’ll have before Census Data arrives.  This is our 8th meeting.  Board has been in place about 5 ? months.  

Banke - My company policy says it should be directed back to the organization since I’m doing this on company time.  Otherwise I have to take personal leave each time.

John?:  Check with Leg Legal.

Peter:  Staff will check on how this gets done. I think it’s possible, but we need to check

Borromeo?  - Presume every day a Board meeting being held?  Not per day, right?

Peter:  Per Board Meeting Day.  

Budd:  If 15 minute meeting, say procedural, I wouldn’t feel right about taking a full day meeting rate.  Perhaps a half rate for shorter meetings.  

Binkley?  - in my experience - corporate boards, sometimes preparation is lengthy even if meeting short.  It’s hard to quantify every possibility.  It should balance out with time you spend preparing, meeting with public, but no recognition on that.  Maybe we can proceed and make adjustments.  I don’t see these policies as static.  

Banke:  Hand up?  No, forgot to put it down.

Borromeo:  I have same reaction that Budd did.  I don’t think any of us accepted appointment to this Board to make money.  In another board it’s a sliding scale.  This is a high meeting fee, but it is in line with other Boards and commissions and if we can review it in the future, I’m comfortable moving forward.

Binkley:  Travel and Per Diem Policy

Peter:  Given COVID right now different.  2010 Board did numerous meetings around the state.  We should be able to travel in the future.  We’ve looked at different options.  Using the AK Boards and Commissions policy.

Actual housing costs.  $60 food and incidentals.  We felt $25 for incidentals and $60 for transportation.  

[From the documents:

"Staff Recommendation: Adopt a policy based on the State of Alaska Boards and Commissions Per Diem table with actual lodging and $60 per day for meals. Amend this to include up to $25 for incidentals and $60 per day for ground transportation or car rental to reflect the fact that board members may be sent on road shows to distant communities with little logistical support available on the ground. Provide the Board Chair the ability to waive policy caps if there is documented need (for example, renting a car in Utqiagvik may cost more than the specified daily car rental rate).

“'It is the policy of the Alaska Redistricting Board that members and staff receive per-diem reimbursement for actual lodging, meals to a value of $60, actual incidentals to a value of $25 and ground transportation to a value of $60 per day for board related travel that is authorized by the Board Chair or Executive Director. Reimbursement for actual costs incurred over the maximum amounts may be made at the discretion of the Board Chair.’”]

Banke:  Up to $25 for incidentals.  Is that by request or added to meals?  

Peter:  You can submit receipts for optional - topped at $60 and topped at $25.

Barromeo:  All sounds good except for the meals at $60 per day.  You’d be hard pressed to eat at that price in even Anchorage and Fairbanks.  Can we raise it to $75?  What do others think?

Budd Simpson:  Agree it would be tight.  Either way works for me.  

??? :  I agree with Nicole.  What if we just mix meals and incidentals at $85 and all it good.

Peter:  Board traveled with lots of maps that required skycaps to get them on planes.

Bethany? :  I’m comfortable.  I don’t thinks it’s reasonable to raise the rate, but if we merged with incidentals I’m ok, but otherwise don’t think we should raise it above $60.

Barromeo:  I like the suggestion to merge the meals and incidentals to $85 and above that give receipts and get approval.

Binkley:  Public Notice - Should include meetings AND Hearings   and agree to change the per diem to meals and incidentals together at $85 and other actual expenditures require receipt and approval.

Banke?  - Can we hold off til Peter gets confirmation they can take care of my issue of giving my payment to my corporation?  

Binkley - I don’t think adopting this language would preclude that from happening.  

Motion to adopt these?  Seconded.  Discussion?  Hearing nothing.  Motion adopted.

Web page discussion:  Peter.  We need to have a website so public can be introduced to what we’re doing etc.  Also posting existing districts and maps.  So public will have ready access to maps as they are adopted.  Map section is core to website.  

I can post some mock up examples for public to see.  

Binkley:  appreciate what you’re doing and that you want to get it out to the public so we can get public input.  Any other comments?  

Budd:  Thanks to the staff for putting that together, Like the idea of using the old map as a graphic for this.  Beside being interesting, it doesn’t emphasize urban or rural areas like modern maps do.  

Barromeo?  Thanks for making the changes I sent the other day.  

Adjournment, but anything else first?  

Barromeo? - consider prioritizing with various organizations to say what redistricting is - time to educate public before we get into the details.  

Banke - traveling during quarantine hard from Nome because of quarantines, but things getting better, but next week I get my second shot.  More available for people in rural areas than for Anchorage folks.

Adjourn?  Borromeo, move.  Budd Second.  

Adjourned.  2:35

Alaska Airlines' Virgin Influences Show Up In COVID Safety Dance Video

 Virgin Airlines was bought by Alaska Airlines.  Virgin had created a safety instruction video that played before all their flights with an elaborate routine of dancing flight attendants (see video at end of post).  And apparently there are vestiges of Virgin still left in the combined airlines. 

I still can wait to get on an airplane until after I've been vaccinated.  

For those who never had the chance to fly on Virgin, below is one of their safety videos.  Well worth watching to see how to take a boring routine and make it entertainment. 

It's Been Sounding Like Last Summer In Anchorage

I noticed we had planes flying over our house again last week.  Lots of them.  Last summer was the

From my backyard today

second summer of widening the North-South runway at the Anchorage Airport.  Thus all the planes took off to the east - over probably half the population of Anchorage.  But that was supposed to leave us with quiet summers.

Yesterday I talked to Terri Tibbe, Operations Airport Operations Manager.  There are two basic reasons for the noise:

• Seasonal Maintenance 
• Every year there is some maintenance of the runways - repainting, striping.  And that was happening yesterday.
• Winds Aloft
• She described these as winds above ground level but low enough to affect planes taking off.  The pattern recently has dictated planes taking off to the east.  

In addition, she pointed out that 6-8 weeks ago there has been an increase in cargo flights and they are bigger and heavier than passenger planes and make more noise as they take off.

The airport controls the maintenance, but FAA makes decisions about wind affecting take-off direction.

I did google 'winds aloft' because I didn't quite catch what Terri said.   So, for instance, I found this map of winds aloft 200 MB for Alaska for June 17.

But what does this mean?  There were several other charts available at different MB levels.

"'bar' is the unit by which we measure pressure."

The lower the millibars the lower the pressure and the higher the altitude.  So the 200 MB is at a much higher altitude than the 850 MB chart, which is the lowest they show.    Here's the same location, same time, but for the 850 MB

"Constant Pressure Charts: 850 mb
This pressure level is near an elevation of 5,000 feet though it ranges from 3,800 feet (1,170 meters) to 5,200 feet (1,590 meters). As with all other constant pressure charts the heights are in meters with the last digit (zero) truncated. So, a height value of 132 represents 1,320 meters."

So the wind directions and speeds vary significantly at different altitudes.


And here's a bit more to help understand symbols on the maps above.

Wind Speed

When the height contours (lines) are close to each other, it means there is a more rapid change in altitude of the constant pressure level, and indication of a large temperature gradient.

As the temperature gradient increases (more rapid change) so does the pressure gradient. Wind is created when there is a pressure gradient, and the stronger the gradient the stronger the wind.

Wind speeds on weather maps are in knots (kt) where one knot equals 1.15 mph and 1.85 km/h. Toggle the "Wind Barbs" check box to display the speed and direction of the wind across the map.

The wind barbs indicate wind direction and wind speed (rounded to the nearest 5 knots). The longest line (shaft) points in the direction FROM which that wind is blowing.

The shorter lines, called barbs, indicate the wind speed in knots (kt). The speed of the wind is determined by the barbs.

Each long barb represents 10 kt with short barbs representing 5 kt. A pennant is used to represent each 50 kt. Total the barbs and pennants to provide the wind speed at that location.

When lines of equal wind speed are drawn (called isotachs) the regions of greater and less wind speed stand out. Isotachs are typically drawn for every 20 kt.

I've gotten myself further into this than I ever intended, but not far enough to understand clearly why the planes are taking off over midtown and whether the wind patterns are going to change soon.  And I know enough to realize that a little knowledge can be a dangerous things.  But it is also the first steps to more knowledge.  But if you go to this page at the Weather Service you can start exploring.  They even have some cool lessons.