Is Getting WORDLE On Second Try Just Luck? What Are The Most Likely Letters?

 

How much of WORDLE is luck?  [This is a fairly long and detailed post.  But before you ditch it for something more interesting to you, I'd recommend scrolling to the end.]

Here are my stats (end of February).  The streak break was when I used my laptop instead of my phone.  Now I just use the phone.  The Sixes were fairly recent.  In both cases I goofed.  In one I used a letter I already knew was not in the word.  In the other case though I should have thought a bit more before trying out a word.  That left me with several possible first letters and not enough rounds.  I lucked out in round six.  If I'd have chosen the other possible word, I'd have gone over the Wordle cliff.  

A discussion with my daughter was the catalyst for this post.  I've got eight right guesses in round 2. (One more since then.) While luck plays a role, I would argue that strategy lowers the odds so that a second row pick isn't purely luck.  (But mostly)

So after February ended, I pulled up all the words for February 

If you look for patterns you can probably find what you're looking for.  How many days in a row do they use one or more letters from the previous day's word?   February 11 and 12 they had two words in a row that began with UL!  And they had had U's in the previous two days.  The lesson:  don't assume anything can't happen.  

THE DISTRIBUTION OF LETTERS (for February 2022)

Vowels

• A = 12 times in 11 different words
• E = 12 times in 12 different words
• I  = 9  times in 7 different words
• O =12 times in 12 different words
• U = 5 times in 5 different words
• Y = 1 time in 1  word

Here are some more observations about the vowels (Remember this is just February 2022):

WORDS WITH JUST ONE VOWEL - 6/28

WORDS WITH TWO DIFFERENT VOWELS - 19/28

WORDS WITH THE SAME VOWEL USED TWICE - 2/28 (ELDER and VIVID)

WORDS WITH THREE VOWELS - 1/28 (ONE DOUBLE) (AROMA)

IF A WORD HAD ONLY ONE VOWEL - IT WAS ALWAYS THE MIDDLE LETTER

VOWEL IS FIRST LETTER - 6/28   (A=2  E=1  I=0  O=1  U=2)

CONSONANTS (FROM MOST TO LEAST FREQUENT)

• L=  All three L's in 4th spot were words with LL at the end.(SKILL, SWILL, SPILL)
• T =  Note:   FIRST AND LAST = 1 (TACIT)
• H = Note:  2 TH..., 2 SH... 2 CH....words

• C = 7
• D = 5
• K = 5
• M= 4
• N = 4
• P = 3
• V = 3 (Twice in VIVID)
• M = 3
• B  = 2
• F = 2
• G = 1
• W = 1
• J, Q, X, Z = 0

THOUGHTS

1. This was just for February, a short month.  It doesn't mean these letter frequencies will hold up into other months.  But they might be pretty close.
2. I was surprised by L and R.  But on reflection, it makes sense for them to show up often in five letter words.  They form consonant clusters.  That's a term I learned when I taught English as a foreign language.  It just means two consonants together.  BR, BL, CR, CL, DR, FR, FL, GR, GL etc.  They also work as the first letter in a consonant cluster with many letters:  scaRF, chaLK, fauLT, smaRT, etc.  
3. Words that have the same letter twice are tricky.  They aren't frequent, but in February it happened three times with vowels and a number of times with consonants. So remember that possibility.  They're tricky because once you get a green one, you think you're done with that letter.  And because to check you have to get the second one in the right spot, otherwise you'll think it's the one you already found. Would a blue square for a letter used twice be helpful?  Yes, but what happens when it's in the right place and would normally be green?  Something to think about.  Did the original inventors rule that out or just not think about it?
4. Sometimes you get stuck with three or four correct letters and with LOTS of letters that could fit, but not enough rounds to try them all.  That's when using a strategy is really important.
5. Wordle doesn't seem to pick plurals (CRABS, FORKS) or 3rd person verbs (JUMPS, FLIES). I think there'd be a lot more S's if they did.  

Strategies

1. First word should be mostly or all words made up of the most common vowels and consonants.  Words like ROAST, LATER, TRIAL, STEAR, etc.  This helps in two ways:
1. Increases your odds of getting one or more correct letters
2. It eliminates frequent letters, thus improving the odds when picking the next words
2. Second word will, of course, depend on the first word results.  You want to go for another word with as many frequent letters as possible.
1. If the first word gives you one green letter, that's really helpful.  More green or yellow letters is useful.  You can use the letters a couple of ways:
1. Think of words with the green letters in the right spot.  If you can only think of one or two, then try one of them as your next word.  It might be the right word or it might force you to think of more possible words.  Ideally you will eliminate common letters or change some yellow to green.
2. If you can think of lots of such words, then try to use the most common letters again to 
1. figure out which letters are in the word or NOT in the word.  If you pick your words well, you'll find that a lot of words won't work because you've already eliminated one or more important letters. 
2. For example:
   
   
   If the T were yellow, I might just go for a totally different word with as many unused common letters as possible. Or keep the T in the word to try to make it green.   But with a GREEN T, I made a list of words ending in T.
   
   
   MOIST   COUNT   CLOUT  MOUNT  FOUNT  FLINT  STINT
   BLUNT   UNLIT   BUILT   SCOUT  JOINT   POINT  SWIFT (but not ERUPT because E and R were eliminated in HEART)
   
   
   Then I counted the letters: N9, O8, I8,  U7, L5, S4,  C3, M2, B2, J1, P1, W1
   Then I picked the word that had the most frequent letters.
   
   But there are 8 Os and you have no O, you say.  If you look, all the words with O also had U or an I.  UNLIT got rid of ALL the words I'd guessed at. Got rid of words with L and I, words without U or N, and words where U or N were in the wrong place.  So I had to think of new words - ones with a U in the 3rd or 4th spot. The closest word I had was SCOUT.  But N is the second letter.  So my next word was
   
   

   

   
   

   I was lucky that they hadn't picked another word I hadn't thought of. 

   You don't want to get in the position where you have three or four green letters but there are ten possible letters for the missing space(s).  You don't want to find yourself picking for row 4 with green - -OWN at the end.  Your options would be:

   BLOWN, BROWN, CLOWN, CROWN, FLOWN, 

   FROWN, DROWN, GROWN, SHOWN

   This is why you want to confirm or eliminate Rs and Ls early. 
3. Try to be clever or go for broke?
1. Should you try to guess the word on the second try or use a longer term strategy. like the one above?    If you can only think of 1-3 words that work with the letters you've discovered in round one, go for it.  Ideally one of the possible words will help eliminate all or at least most of the others.  
2. Should you keep a GREEN letter where it is?  In the HEART case I did because there were so many possible words and I could get a word that might eliminate all the others.  And it could be the right word.  If it's yellow, keep it to find its proper spot, or at least eliminate ones where it doesn't fit.   But sometimes it's better to cast your net for as many letters as you can, and you already know where the GREEN letter goes.  

Does this sort of strategy eliminate all the fun?  I guess it depends on how you define fun.  Just finding the right words without thinking too much is great fun.  But for me, going beyond the sixth row is to be avoided as much as possible.  And so far I've only gotten to row 6 twice.  And both times got the WHEW that goes with it.

So to answer the title question about luck or skill, I'd say it's a combination of both.  

You can increase your odds by using the most common letters - either finding out they are in the word, or eliminating them (and many possible words that have them.)

According to wordmom, there are 6445 five letter words in the English Scrabble dictionary.  I don't know how many are plurals or 3rd person singular verbs, but for ease, let's say there are 6000 words you could choose from.  Your odds are one chance out of 6000.  Way better than most lotteries.  But not anything I'd bet money on.  Wordmom also lets you do other interesting searches.

"Five letter words with S - 1745

Five letter words with T - 1630

Five letter words with E = 2960

Five letter words with A = 2845

Five letter words with L = 1760"

Getting rid of the letter E cuts your odds in half almost.  And getting rid of A does almost as much.  If you get rid of words with all those letters, you improve your odds greatly.  

I haven't made a list of March words yet, but I'd like to just to see if it changes the most used letters significantly.  I suspect not.  

When I Google "good luck happens" it gets me to  “Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity,"  That's a little moralistic for my taste, but I do think that doing a little exploration can increase your odds in WORDLE.  

Doing posts like this is why my todo lists never get done.  But it's fun to figure things out.  

I'd note that my Chilean friend says there's a Spanish version and I guess a lot of other languages have it too.  What about languages like Thai or Hebrew where the vowels can go above or below the consonant?  Or Chinese that use characters?  I'll let someone else check that out.  

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.  

Ways To Make Sense Of The Redistricting Supreme Court Hearing

There is one indisputable fact that came out of the hearing on Friday, March 18, 2022.  The Chief Justice told everyone that they will have a decision by April 1, 2022.  I'm guessing it will be made before that because it's generally a good idea not to announce significant decisions on April Fool's Day.  So I have about ten days to offer my thoughts on what happened in trial prior to the decision.  

In this post I'm going to outline how I'm organizing my comments.  (It took a while to even get to this point.)

In the meantime, go look at James Brooks' overview in today's Anchorage Daily News.  With the benefit of a deadline and an editor, he's been able to write on what the trial was about.   And it's a good starting point.  I've got several false starts for posts and I'm trying to figure out where to grab hold of this story.  

Alaska Supreme Court Judges Walking Into the Chamber

Basically there are several stories.  

1.  PRACTICAL/POLITICAL:  WHAT WILL THE LEGISLATIVE MAP OF ALASKA LOOK LIKE FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS?

There are 40 house districts and 20 senate districts (made up of two house districts each).  There were five law suits challenging the board's maps.  

• The 'East-Anchorage' plaintiffs challenged the pairing of the South Muldoon district with an Eagle River district into one Anchorage Senate seat,  arguing the were paired this way by the Board to give conservatives in Eagle River an extra Senate seat at the expense of a district being called 'south Muldoon.'  Changing that pairing will also affect a second Senate seat.
• The Skagway plaintiffs challenged the Board decision to put them in a House district with the Mendenhall Valley in Juneau instead of with downtown Juneau with which they are much more 'Socio-Economically Integrated'  (SEI).   SEI is one of the Alaska constitutional requirements for districts.  

Judge Thomas Matthews, the Superior Court judge who heard the challenges during round one, agreed and ruled that the Board should go back and fix these two.  The Board has appealed these decisions, so everyone is back in court to argue their points before the Supreme Court.

• Matsu-Su and Valdez both challenged District 29 in which they were paired.  They argued they are not SEI and that the Board didn't seriously consider them until all the other districts were completed and so they just got shoved into one unconstitutional district.  
• Calista Corporation challenged how several villages in Western Alaska and asked the court to swap some villages between the two districts. 

Judge Matthews did NOT ask the Board to make changes in these cases, but Mat-Su and Valdez both appealed the decision.

Calista is NOT appealing the decision but is arguing before the court that ANCSA boundaries should be  legitimate factors to consider in redistricting.  

2.  LEGAL:  WHAT LEGAL PRINCIPLES ARE THE ATTORNEYS AND JUDGES DEBATING/WEIGHING AND HOW DO THEY IMPACT #1 AND FUTURE BOARDS?

This is the section that is slowing me down the most.  I've got a couple of important issues on my list so far are:

• The Hard Look Doctrine - If this came up in trial, or even Judge Matthews' ruling, I missed it.  I'm guess I took the words 'hard look' literally and just didn't know that that is a legal principle that sets up standards for the way the Board makes their decision.  Basically, as I understand this, the court is to not simply defer to whatever decision a government agency or board makes, but to take 'a hard look' at how they made it.  Both the East Anchorage and Skagway attorneys are pushing this and the judge agreed.  The Board seems to be saying this may be a standard for permanent federal agencies, but it's too high a standard for a temporary board with few staff.  

Skagway attorney Robin Brena listed key points for evaluating a decision:

• Deliberation - have to engage the evidence before you decide
• Transparency - have to be transparent in deliberation on why Board took decision
• Rational - treat like situations the same.  (They can't emphasis one criterion (say compactness over Socio-Economic Integration) for one district and then switch emphasis for another)
• Evidenciary propriety - have to explain and apply evidence before them

[I need to go back and review my notes and the video and the briefs so I get this right - the four points above are from my notes in the courtroom.]

• The Role of Public Testimony - I think this actually falls under the Hard Look Doctrine - it seems to be relevant to all four points just mentioned.  Judge Matthews pointed out in his ruling that since the Constitution requires 60 days of public testimony, there's an implication  there that the testimony shouldn't be ignored.  The Board argues that Matthews is saying that the Board must substitute the majority of public testimony for the Board's own reasoning and that this will result in political parties packing the hearings and getting followers to send in testimony.  
• Should ANCSA boundaries be used when making districts?  While Calista is not contesting Judge Matthews' decision, they are asking the Court to rule that ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act} boundaries can be used in redistricting - particularly in unincorporated boroughs.  I have some questions about this, though no firm opinions.  I just don't know.  But there was only one party arguing for this and no counter arguments so I hope the judges act cautiously on this until it's clear what the impact might be.  It's important that Alaska Native voices are heard and respected by redistricting boards.  But I also have unanswered questions about the role of for-profit Native corporations in this process. 

These are the key issues I've got picked out so far, but there may be more

3.  PERSONAL:  HOW DO THE SKILLS, STYLES, MOTIVATIONS, AND EXPERIENCES OF THE ATTORNEYS (AND TO SOME DEGREE, THE JUDGES) IMPACT THE DECISION MAKING?  

This is probably the easiest category for most people to understand.  In the trial (and pre-trial) process, it became clear that the individual attorneys representing the plaintiffs and the board play a big factor in which way the decisions fall.  Without understanding these dynamics the public is missing out on a key factor that influences the decisions.  I have developed some thoughts on some of the attorneys and I want to write about this in a way that is reasoned, is backed with evidence, and isn't just a gossip session.  

I would note that throughout the trial and again Friday, the Board's attorney, Matt Singer, had to participate in every part of the trial.  He had to defend the Board in all five cases against the Board.  (Mat-Su and Valdez were paired together, but each had its own attorneys.) During pre-trial meetings, he could make a point, but then there were a bunch of other attorneys to challenge that point and to back each other up.  They all had time to think through what was said, but he was essentially 'on' all the time.  That is a heavy burden.  Intervening attorney, Nathaniel Amdur-Clark, did argue for the Board, so Singer had a bit of backup.  

Alaska Redistricting Board: About The Maps And How To Make Sense Of Them

[NOTE:  Board is meeting in Anchorage this afternoon:  

October 4, 2021: Anchorage Public Hearing: 4:30pm-6:30pm: Dena’ina Center 

 Kahtnu Rooms 1 & 2 (up escalators and to the left)

http://notice.alaska.gov/203893  from what I understand the Board will have maps up on the walls and people will be able to talk directly with Board members and staff, ask questions, make suggestions.  Whatever you say, also submit it in writing so it gets on the record.]

The Board's been meeting in SE Alaska and I read their announcements literally that they would simply have maps posted on the walls and the board members (at least two were going to attend these workshops)  who attended would be there to talk to attendees and that nothing would be broadcast.  I didn't look too carefully, because I was more than happy to be doing other things. 

But redistricting has been weighing on me and so let me share some thoughts about how people can figure out what's going on and weigh in on the maps, the heart of redistricting.

1. How many maps are there?
1. Depends on what you mean by 'a map.'  The Board was required to approve a draft map within 30 days of the Census Bureau giving out the official census numbers.  The Board produced two draft maps which they called version 1 and version 2.  (v1 and v2).  Then five other groups (the board calls them 3rd Parties) submitted alternative maps.  
2. After hearing public testimony, the board replaced v1 and v2 with v3 and v4.  The board approved of four of the five 3rd party maps (Doyon, AFFR, AFFER, and the Senate Minority maps.  They rejected the Democratic party map.) The approved maps have been posted on the Board's website along with v3 and v4 and are being shared with the public as the Board gets feedback around the state.  (Rejecting the Democratic map looks bad to casual observers, but it had a lot of issues. When questioned by Board member Borromeo, for nearly every district she asked about, they'd say, "This district has particular problems..."  The public has lots to digest and having one less set of maps map will make it easier for the public and I don't think anything important will be lost.  The Democratic Party is still free to point out aspects of their map that are better than any of the other maps is they feel it's important.)
3. So, there are two board maps and four 3rd party maps.
4. BUT, these are maps of Alaska and there are 40 state House districts.  So each proposal has 
1. a map of Alaska
2. maps of of key cities and regions (ie Anchorage, Fairbanks, Matsu, Kenai, SE, etc.)
3. maps of all 40 districts
5. You can get links to all the maps on the Board's map page.  The maps of Alaska in each plan are interactive - you can move around and enlarge them  to see details.  The individual district maps are pdf files.  If you have the right software and skills, there are also shapefiles.  If I understand this right, these have all the data on them and you can use them to make your own maps, as the 3rd parties did.
6. There's also a link to  an interactive map that overlays all the district borders of all the plans. Below is the AFFR map. The white lines outline AFFR District 25-M in Anchorage.  You can switch maps in the far left red bar (see blue arrow).  

   

   Click on image to enlarge

   
   
7. The Board offers a way to do your own maps.  All the current Alaska data are loaded there.  You can get there here.
2. How do you make sense of the maps?
1. Ah, that's the rub.  My suggestion is that you focus on your own district.  The Board's website has the 2013 plan too on the map page.  Go there.  Find your own district.  Print out that map.  Then start with v3 or v4 and find the district you'd be in with that map.  Print it out and then compare.  Then look at the districts the 3rd parties created for where you live.  
2. You can also go to the public meetings page.  This page lists all the meetings along with the minutes, audio recordings, and the testimony from the public.  You can listen to the tape of the meeting to hear what others are saying about the maps or read the public testimony.  This is where people have raised issues with the maps.  As I write this, they are only caught up to the September 20 meeting.  But there's enough to keep you busy and give you a sense of the key problems people found.  
3. If you notice a problem, how do you let the Board know?
1. Go to a meeting near you and testify.  I try to post info on upcoming meetings current here.  You can also subscribe to notices from the Board here.
2. Call in to a meeting. The meeting notices have a link to the information for calling in and testifying.  You can call in and just listen.  Testimony has been taken at the beginning and end of the meetings.  So if while listening, you can indicate to the operator that you want to testify at the end.
3. Speaking at meetings means you know the Board members heard you.  But if you want your message to be accurately captured, you can write it up at this link.
4. Ideally you do both so you know they heard you and there's an accurate record of your testimony.  
5. If the final plan is challenged in court, all the testimony can be used to show that the Board was informed of problems.  And if the 3rd party maps may be able to demonstrate that the Board's map  has NOT met the Constitutional requirements as well as other possible maps.  
4. But it's still so overwhelming, isn't it?
1. Yes, there's a lot there.  But if you focus on your district and nearby districts, then you can supply information about local issues and concerns.  
2. The 3rd party groups who submitted maps are also paying close attention to the map making and they represent different interests.  They've gotten mapping software in advance and are much more intimately knowledgeable than anyone else will be.  And if they think there are serious problems at the end, the will file a law suit challenging the maps.  The groups are:
1. Alaskans For Fair Redistricting (AFFR) - "Alaskans For Fair Redistricting (AFFR) is a coalition of Alaska Native groups, organized labor, public interest and community organizations. AFFR was created amid the 2000 redistricting process to ensure an equitable map for the people of Alaska"
2. Alaskans For Fair and Equitable Redistricting (AFFER) - This group looks out for Republican interests.  Randy Ruedrich (former Republican Party chair) and Steve Culligan presented the plan.
3. Coalition of Doyon, Ltd., Tanana Chiefs Conference, Fairbanks Native Association, Sealaska, and Ahtna. - This is a consortium of Interior Native Corporations and Sealaska.  Their ostensible interests are making sure that Native Alaskan interests are represented in Juneau.  And presumably they are looking for a map that will favor the various business interests of the Native Corporations. 
4. Senate Minority Coalition - Made up of the state Senate minority caucus and led by Sen. Tom Begich.  Begich has been involved with all the redistricting efforts going back to 1991 I believe and has been an expert witness and testified before the Supreme Court on redistricting.  This is group compensates for the loss of the Democratic Party proposal to some extent.  
3. Find the 3rd Party groups you think most aligned with your interests and contact them. Ask them for more information about the maps and how you can support their positions.  

Of course this is just one slice of what's happening, but the maps are the heart of redistricting so this is a good place to start.  

". . .forced labor camps that were politely called plantations," From Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

As I'm reading Caste I'm struck by so many things I never saw before.  The title quote is probably the most profound.  Of course, plantations with slaves were forced labor camps.  The workers had no choice of anything - when to work, what work to do, how hard to work.  They had no control over their own bodies or their spouses or children.  All those decisions were made by their owners.  And, of course, they didn't get paid.  How come I never thought of that before?  But our history books never use that description.  Plantations are such genteel places with pretty green lawns, magnolia trees,  white columns and mint juleps.  But that was all cover up.  But Wilkerson rubs off the cosmetics our historians have applied to what happened in the United States.  

This is an important book.  I'm not yet finished, but I've already been changed.  This is one of several posts I expect I'll do on the book.  For those who haven't read the book, consider this an appetizer.  

I'll start with some quotes from the early part of the book Caste by Isabel Wilkerson.  After researching and writing a previous book, she decided that focusing on race doesn't capture the extent of the conflict that's usually depicted as a racial conflict in the United States.  Race is relevant, but the real issue, she tells us convincingly,  is CASTE.    

"Caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone based on their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy." (p. 70)

The rest of the book defines caste, looks at caste systems in India, the US, and Nazi Germany.  Outlines the 'eight pillars of caste' and more.  It's a very thorough explanation of how the hierarchy - with white on top and black on the bottom and shades of gray in between - permeates how we think even if our caste system is not explicit like the Hindu one.  

In this post I want to look at a few quotes from the beginning and relate them to police treatment of African-Americans.

"The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master," wrote William Goodell, a minister who chronicled the institution of slavery in the 1830s.  "What he chooses to inflict upon him, he must suffer.  He must never lift a hand in self-defense.  He must utter no word of remonstrance.  He has no protection and no redress," fewer than the animals of the filed.  They were seen as "not capable of being injured, "Goodell wrote.  "They may be punished at the discretion of their lord, or even put to death by his authority."

"This fact is of great significance for the understanding of racial conflict," wrote the sociologist Guy B. Johnson, "for it means that white people during the long period of slavery became accustomed to the idea of 'regulating' Negro insolence and insubordination by force with the consent and approval of the law."

The vast majority of African-Americans who lived in this land in the first 246 years of what is now the United States lived under the terror of people who had absolute power over their bodies and their very breath, subject to people who faced no sanction for any atrocity they could conjure.  

I think these quotes should help us understand some of the videos we've seen in the last couple of years of police beating and killing Blacks who have done little more than ask questions about why they were being stopped, who have hesitated when told to do something by the police.  If you watch many of those videos again, you'll see cops who totally lose it the moment there is any resistance whatsoever by the person they've pulled over.  There is little or no tolerance for the slightest disobedience.  

"He must never lift a hand in self-defense.  He must utter no word of remonstrance.  He has no protection and no redress."

That was the rule throughout slavery and very much the rule in the post civil war South.  Whites expected blacks to be polite, to get out of the way if they met on the sidewalk, to accept what the whites told them without question.  To not even question the change they got from a white cashier.

Studies of why people become police officers show that " social-capital motives (i.e., power and authority, prestige, influence by media & friends)" (from Motivations for Becoming a Police Officer)  regularly play an important role. 

I would argue that for a number of police the authority of the badge and a gun plays a big role.  And for them, respect from suspects - obedience and subservience - is important.  And if these people come from families that have historically expected such obedience from Blacks, then their behavior can be better understood.  

Just watch this video of how these officers speak and act compared to the black man they have stopped.  It's consistent with the expectation that Wikerson says whites had for Blacks during slavery and Jim Crow.  

This is a black military officer who has not actually stopped until he's pulled into a gas station nearby so that there would be light and other people around.  While the cops seem to be reacting to his not instantly getting out of the car, the suspect is clearly worried he's about to be killed by out of control white cops.  

As long as the judge or jury only had the word of the cop versus the word of the suspect (just the word suspect raises questions about the person's truthfulness), officers could pretty much do what they wanted with impunity.  The rapid growth of small videos recorders and then phone cams, changed all that.  And that's where we are today.  

These behaviors and reactions are probably unconscious for most cops.  They haven't been aware that they were treating white and black traffic stops differently.  Or if they were, they believed that the blacks they were stopping were more of a threat and thus justified being tough or pulling out their guns.  

So I urge people to look at the videos - old ones, and ones that will be shown next week and beyond on social media - to see what triggered the cop to become violent.  And compare that, if you can, to how cops treat whites.  

That's the key connection I wanted to make in this post, but I offer some other quotes from this same section - pages 44 or so to 49, where Wilkerson is trying to demonstrate the extent to which Blacks were considered a subservient class, lesser human beings, than whites.  

"What the colonists created was "an extreme form of slavery that had existed nowhere in the world," wrote the legal historian Ariela J. Gross.  "For the first time in history, one category of humanity was ruled out of the 'human race' and into a separate sub-group that was to remain enslaved for generations in perpetuity."

"The institution of slavery was, for a quarter millennium , the conversion of human beings into currency, into machines who existed solely for the profit of their owners, to be worked as long as the owners desired, who had no rights over their bodies or loved ones, who could be mortgaged, bred, soon in a bet, given as wedding presents, bequeathed to heirs, sold away from spouses or children to cover an owner's debt or to spite a rival or to settle an estate.  They were regularly whipped, raped, and branded, subjected to any whim or distemper of the people who owned them.  Some were castrated or endured other tortures too grisly for these pages, tortures that the Geneva Conventions would have banned as war crimes had the conventions applied to people of African descent on this soil."

"Before there was a United States of America, there was enslavement.  Theirs was a living death passed down for twelve generations."

"The slave is doomed to toil, that others may reap the fruits" is how a letter writer identifying himself as Judge Ruffin testified to what he saw in the Deep South.  

"As a window into their exploitation, consider that in 1740, South Carolina, like other slaveholding states, finally decided to limit the workday of enslaved African-Americans to fifteen hours from March to September and to fourteen hours from September to March, double the normal workday for humans who actually get paid for their labor.  In that same era, prisoners found guilty of actual crimes were kept t a maximum of ten hours per workday.  Let no one say that African-Americans as a group have not worked for our country."

"For the ceaseless exertions of their waking hours, many subsisted on a peck of corn a week, which they had to mill by hand at night after their labors in the field.  Some owners denied them even that as punishment and allowed meat for protein only once a year.  "They were scarcely permitted to pick up crumbs that fell from their masters' tables," George Whitefield wrote.  Stealing food was 'a crime, punished by flogging.'"

"Your slaves, I believe, work as hard, if not harder, than the horses whereon you ride,"  Whitefield wrote in an open letter to the colonies of the Chesapeake in 1739.  "These after their work is done, are fed and taken proper care of."

"Enslavers bore down on their hostages to extract the most profit , whipping those who fell short of impossible targets, and whipping all the harder those who needed them to wring more from their exhausted bodies."

"Whipping was a gateway for of violence that led to bizarrely creative levels of sadism," wrote the historian Edward Baptist.  Enslavers used "every modern method of torture," he observed, from mutilation to waterboarding.  

"Slavery made the enslavers among the richest people in the world, granting them "the ability to turn a person into cash at the shortest possible notice."  But from the time of enslavement southerners minimized the horrors they inflicted and to which they had grown accustomed.  "No one was willing," Baptist wrote, "to admit that they lived in an economy whose bottom gear was torture."

Slavery so perverted the balance of power that it made the degradation of the subordinate case seem normal and righteous.  "In the gentlest houses drifted now and then the sound of dragging chains and shackles, the bay of hounds, the report of pistols in the trail of the runaway," wrote the southern writer Wilbur J. Cash.  "And as the advertisements of the time incontestably prove, mutilation and the mark of the branding iron."

"The most respected and beneficent of society people oversaw forced labor camps that were politely called plantations, concentrated with hundreds of unprotected prisoners who's crime was that they were born with dark skin.  Good and loving mothers and fathers, pillars of their communities, personally inflicted gruesome tortures upon their fellow human beings." 

"This is what the United States was for longer than it was not.  It is a measure of how long enslavement lasted in the United states that the year 2022 marks the first year that the United States will have been an independent nation for as long as slavery lasted on its soil.  No current-day adult will be alive in the year in which African-Americans as a group will have been free for as long as they had been enslaed.  That will not come until the year 2111."

Another example of this still today, Blacks are considered inferior, less mentally capable, we have this recent story From the AP:  Retired Black players say NFL brain-injury payouts show bias

"PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Thousands of retired Black professional football players, their families and supporters are demanding an end to the controversial use of “race-norming” to determine which players are eligible for payouts in the NFL’s $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims, a system experts say is discriminatory.

Former Washington running back Ken Jenkins, 60, and his wife Amy Lewis on Friday delivered 50,000 petitions demanding equal treatment for Black players to Senior U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody in Philadelphia, who is overseeing the massive settlement. Former players who suffer dementia or other diagnoses can be eligible for a payout.

Under the settlement, however, the NFL has insisted on using a scoring algorithm on the dementia testing that assumes Black men start with lower cognitive skills. They must therefore score much lower than whites to show enough mental decline to win an award. The practice, which went unnoticed until 2018, has made it harder for Black former players to get awards."

This Is So Cool - Radio.Garden Offers You Easy Access To Any Radio Station In The World

David Pogue (@Pogue)  tweeted a link too Radio.garden.  You get to a page. Click open and 

you then  get the world, literally.  Each green dot is a radio station.  And when you zoom in you get

told the location and many more local green dots.  Put the circle on the dot you want and start 

listening.  I'm listening to music from Kerala on the southern tip of India right now.  

Have fun.  And if there's something happening in some distant (from you - remember you are also in a distant part of the world from others) part of the world, you can quickly tune in to local or nearby stations to get the new direct.  Many capitals, at least, have an English language station.

It's Hard To See The Handwriting On The Wall When The Wall Once Made You Rich

The decline of Alaska's oil wealth has been predicted for a long time. It's why the Alaska Permanent Fund was established.  Knowing it was a finite resource and believing that one generation wasn't entitled to use it all up, the Fund was set up to help fund government forever.  Note:  help fund, not pay all the bills.   Even before climate change became a household word Alaskans were being told to diversify.  Even before the price of oil dropped precipitously.  Even before the recent refusal of some the country's biggest banks to fund any more Arctic oil projects.  Then the oil companies didn't bid on the ANWR lease sales.  

But the oil diehards, like Governor Dunleavy, even proposed legislation to get Alaska agencies to boycott those banks.  And to offset the apparent lack of interest in bidding on the ANWR leases, The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state owned entity, was the biggest leaser in the auction, bidding about $12 million of the $14 million total bids.   This, from a strong supporter of Donald Trump and the Republican Party that is constantly attacking Democrats with the label "socialist."

It's hard to change habits.  Our brains even change physiologically so we can do those habits almost without thinking.  We all know that mastering all the hand and foot and eye coordination connected with driving a car safely in traffic is rather daunting at first.  But eventually most of us get to the point where we drive almost on autopilot, sometimes even getting to our destination without even realizing it.    

I think about Anchorage's legendary mall builder, Pete Zamarello.  A Greek-Italian immigrant to the US, he worked in construction and then switched to being a builder.  Anchorage is littered with his strip malls.  He'd figured a formula that made him rich.  But when the hot, pipeline economy ended in the 80's, he was still on autopilot.  Cranking out strip malls is what he knew how to do.  

The ADN wrote when Zamarello died:

"That optimism was on full display in 1984, when Zamarello pooh-poohed predictions of an Alaska economic crash. 'The gurus of financing say that we're going to have a catastrophe, but we're not," he told Alaska Business & Industry magazine then. "This downturn won't happen. The next 10 years are going to be even better.'"

But it did.  The blog Wickersham's Conscience wrote:

"In the Alaska real estate crash of 1984-1986, Zamarello helped kill half a dozen financial institutions, bankrupted construction companies and their suppliers and ended up in bankruptcy himself."

The bankers had also gotten into a pre-crash Zamarello lending habit.  

And that's where we are today in Alaska.  Those who have prospered most directly from oil - those in the oil industry, the oil support industry, and the oil supported legislators - are having a hard time turning off the oil habit. They want to keep doing what they've always done, even though the conditions have changed. And since everyone else in Alaska has benefited indirectly because oil made up 90% of the State budget, many others keep expecting to be able to go on living the good life with no individual state taxes and even a $1000 or more Permanent Fund payout every year.  

We're like the rich kid whose Dad has gone bankrupt, and she's having trouble with the fact that her credit cards have been cancelled and the mansion has been replaced with a much smaller apartment and she's going to have to get a job to help out.  

We often don't see what's directly in front of us.  I think about the story of the Japanese businessman watching how Alaska fishers just tossed all the fish eggs.  His reaction created a new product with a large market in Asia for fish roe.  (I can't find this story online, so take it with a grain of salt.  But I could find documentation that the herring fishery was revitalized by selling herring roe to Japan. And, of course, the indigenous peoples of Alaska had been harvesting herring roe for centuries.)

Alaska Constitution Article 8 - Natural Resources

§ 1. Statement of Policy It is the policy of the State to encourage the settlement of its land and the development of its resources by making them available for maximum use consistent with the public interest. § 2. General Authority The legislature shall provide for the utilization, development, and conservation of all natural resources belonging to the State, including land and waters, for the maximum benefit of its people.

And that's where we are now.  While the state's GOP keeps pointing to the State's constitutional duty to develop natural resources as the reason to keep pumping oil, they fail to see the most famous and sustainable and valuable resource of all - our huge, mostly untouched, natural beauty and our wild fauna a flora.  These are things the world knows Alaska for.  These are the things they come to Alaska to see.  Tourism is way below oil now as a source of income for the state, but it has huge potential.  

We have some of the largest tracts of nature left in the world.  Let's exploit it - sustainably - for tourism, for the health of the planet, for science, for spiritual renewal.   In a world fast becoming urban and electronic, Alaska is an oasis of peace and calm as well as awe inspiring powerful natural phenomena from grizzly bears to glaciers to giant mountains and volcanoes and earthquakes.  

We'll still produce the oil in existing developed fields.  The earth still needs oil as we move to more sustainable and less climate changing sources of energy.  But the world knows that we must reduce our carbon output.  Just as it was clear to people not living in West Virginia and Kentucky that coal mines had to shut down, it's clear to those not financially benefiting from oil, that the age of oil is over.  That's why the banks decided not to finance Arctic oil development and why nobody bid on the ANWR leases.  

Everyone knows but our governor and those whose incomes come directly from oil.  Even the large oil companies know.  

[Yeah, I'm not sure if the title is inspired or awful.]

Why Being Right Is So Satisfying, Even When You Would Prefer To Be Wrong

As those of you who follow this blog somewhat regularly know, I've been monitoring the daily changes in Alaska's COVID-19 count. (See the COVID-19 tab above.)  I've also been trying to keep up with what various people are discovering about the virus and how it spreads, both for my own personal protection as well as to be informed when I comment on our numbers.

When the Governor loosened the isolation rules for Alaska, I predicted that we would see an uptick in our numbers.  And that's happening.  Yesterday we had a new case high of 51 (not including non-residents) and today we blew past that with 64 new cases.

As the numbers have gone up I've been thinking about the internal conflict between wanting to be right, but wanting the virus to stay controlled, with low daily new case counts.

I can only speak about myself here. I  googled "Why do people want to be right?" to see what those who study this might say, compared to what I think.  But all the hits were for "Why do people NEED to be right?"  That wasn't my question.  All those articles talk about a culture of competition, needing to win, needing to not be wrong.  Much is in the context of marriage counseling - Would you rather be right or happy?  The articles talk about the complexity of issues and different perspectives which make 'being right' far more ambiguous.

But I've never been particularly competitive.  When I played tennis, I cared more about playing well than who won.   And I've figured out that in most cases, I don't NEED to be right.  My striving tends to be for understanding.  I could argue with someone about a topic and I can be pretty aggressive about it.  But it's not to 'win.'  It's to challenge the other person to show me the flaws in my thinking so I can get closer to the truth.

After that search for studies on why people want to be right failed, I remembered that BF Skinner had said that being right can itself a positive reinforcer.  And I found this: 

"According to Skinner, simply "being effective" or "being right" may be innately reinforcing."  

 Though since Skinner was usually a stickler for objective proof, this seems a little  soft for him.  He defined a reinforcer as something that causes you to repeat a behavior, when he saw people getting the right answer repeating their actions, with no apparent rewards,  he decided being right itself was the reinforcer. Not quite as objective as rats getting food by pushing a lever.  But  I think it is true for me.


A lot of this became much clearer when I took the DISC - a management personality test -  a long time ago and found out I was on the bottom of the Dominance scale.

For each of the four scales, Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness, there's a list of positive descriptors for each of the four characteristic and a negative list.  The thesis is that when you're doing well, you would exhibit the positive aspects and when stressed, the negative aspects.  For instance, if you score high in Dominance, the top of the scale was a descriptor like "Leader" on the good side and "Tyrant" on the negative side.  (I'm going by the test I took over 40 years ago.  I'm having trouble finding detailed descriptions of today's versions of the DISC - maybe because they want you to take the test before revealing the meaning.)

 I was stunned to learn I'd scored on the bottom of the Dominance scale.  My descriptor on the positive side was "Meek."  If that was the positive side, I was afraid to look at the negative side.  I felt better when I read the dictionary definition of meek.  (When I check online definitions today, their more like what I was thinking back then - spineless.)

But basically as I remember the definition that comforted me was something about not wanting to dominate other people.  So the biblical quote about the meek inheriting the earth, made more sense.   I think that's a natural tendency in me that was only strengthened by living in a Buddhist country for three years.

So, when I claim that my sometimes persistent  style is not about beating the other person, I have my DISC score to back me up.  I don't want to be right as much as to find out what is right.  If you present me with logic or evidence that is convincing, I'm happy, and I'll willingly acknowledge that you were right.  (Unless you've been a real jerk about it, then I'll do it a little less willingly.)

So as I try to answer this question about why is being right so satisfying, it's not about winning.  Rather, it's about having my understanding of things confirmed.  Having the way I think and solve problems proven to be useful to successfully navigating the world.

Lots of things in the world, as the psychologists pointed out in the articles on 'needing to be right'  just aren't right v wrong issues.  There are lots of complications and shades of gray.

So when there is something where facts can bear out what your mental models predicted, it's satisfying.  I think that's one reason why sports are so popular.  At the end of the game there's a resolution.  Your predictions about the winner or the score or the nature of the game, is known fairly quickly at the end of nine innings or four quarters.

The spread of COVID-19 is also born out with facts.  Based on what the science was telling us about how the virus spread, I believed that if more people mingled in public, in closed spaces, many without masks, that our numbers would rise.  And that's what's happening.  (And it's why our president wants to stop testing - so the numbers won't prove him wrong.  I'd note that I'm sure Trump would test over the top of the Dominance scale.)

Feeling good about predicting that our numbers would go up comes from the sense of control one gets from knowing that one can examine a situation and sort through different arguments and pick the ones that predict what actually happens.  It makes me feel safer when I stay home and avoid any indoor contact with others, and limit my outdoor contact.  I can lower the odds of contracting COVID-19.  The risks I take are minimum - biking on sparsely populated bike trails, with a mask ready to pull up if someone approaches, ordering food online and having it delivered to the car in the parking lot.  Washing my hands after getting the mail or newspaper.  Probably getting a little extreme, but it doesn't take that much effort or time.

I imagine others might come up with other non-winning kinds of reasons being right feels good.

Yet I don't want our COVID-19 numbers to go up.  I guess it's like betting against your favorite team - you don't want your team to lose, but if you're going to lose, you get something positive out of it.  I wonder if those folks who bet on a steep drop in the stock market have mixed feelings when they win big on someone else's disaster.   I suspect not.  There, being right is rewarding, but mainly because it allows one to cash in.

This all gets more complicated when there are real or perceived consequence for being wrong.  Politicians who downplayed what COVID-19 would do, tend to scramble to find the right language to say they were right all along, but that circumstances had changed.

And I would say, that you needed a better model that would have considered those possible circumstances and the probability they would occur.

White Americans Who Fear Non-Whites, Prefer Authoritarian Govt - Living In White Space While Black

This certainly isn't surprising.  From NBC News:

 "Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy."

White Space - someone linked to this sociology paper in response to the Amy Cooper video calling the police saying she was being attacked by an African American male, who simply asked her to get her dog on its leash as required in Central Park as he videos her reaction.

"Abstract
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
2015, Vol. 1(1) 10–21
© American Sociological Association 2014 DOI: 10.1177/2332649214561306 sre.sagepub.com
                  Since the end of the Civil Rights Movement, large numbers of black people have made their way into settings previously occupied only by whites, though their reception has been mixed. Overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, restaurants, and other public spaces remain. Blacks perceive such settings as “the white space,” which they often consider to be informally “off limits” for people like them. Meanwhile, despite the growth of an enormous black middle class, many whites assume that the natural black space is that destitute and fearsome locality so commonly featured in the public media, including popular books, music and videos, and the TV news—the iconic ghetto. White people typically avoid black space, but black people are required to navigate the white space as a condition of their existence."

And yet one more on the same subject.  

"#LivingWhileBlack: Blackness As Nuisance
American University Law Review, Vol. 69, 2020
Rutgers Law School Research Paper
52 Pages Posted: 4 Mar 2020
Taja-Nia Y. Henderson
Rutgers Law School
Jamila Jefferson-Jones
University of Missouri at Kansas City - School of Law
Date Written: February 10, 2020
Abstract
In 2018, the powerful combination of high-quality cellphone video and social media brought to light a barrage of incidents involving 911 calls reporting that Black people were occupying spaces that the callers believed they ought not occupy. In nearly all of these cases, the targeted men, women, and children were in places in which they had a legal right to be and engaging in activities in which they had a legal right to engage. Widely circulated and debated on social media, these incidents all went “viral,” spawning a series of social media hashtags, most strikingly “#LivingWhileBlack.”
One might see in these incidents a new phenomenon in need of new legal tools. In this Article, we argue that these incidents are not emblematic of anything new, but rather a technology-enhanced incarnation of a much older tradition: the invocation of the property law concepts of nuisance and trespass to exclude Blacks from spaces racialized as “white.” This Article examines both the historical and modern incarnations of this “Blackness as Nuisance” tradition and argues that these efforts to distort property law norms arise from discomfort with racial integration and perceived Black physical mobility. The Article concludes with the suggestion that policymakers carefully consider the intersections of property law and criminal law, and the historical origins of these types of incidents, in order to craft effective responses to these highly charged and potentially dangerous encounters."

I don't think white folks can read too many of these accounts.  We can intellectually understand them, but I'm constantly reminded by friends of color how pervasive this is.  It's part of daily life for them.  

Rethinking People's Relationship With Nature When COVID Is Over

[I thought I posted this last week.  Whoops.  This is a good one.]

This has gotten too long for one post.  So here are the basic interconnected themes I'm trying illustrate.  Trees role on earth, humans' relationship to nature, science and capitalism's roles in all this, and COVID-19.

Overview

1. The natural world's value has not been understood in by human beings.  We see nature as
1. something we can use (food, energy, tools, etc.)
2. something in the way (trees to be cleared for land we can use)
3. something dangerous to be eliminated or tamed (wild animals, hostile weather, volcanoes, diseases)
2. As science has advanced we've used it to exploit nature for our own benefit with little or no understanding of
1. the ways nature - plants, rivers, oceans, and all the animals - live in a balance that filters the air and purifies the water and feeds nutrients to the soil
2. or how our exploitation of nature - destroying forests and the species in them, fishing to depletion the species in the oceans - disrupts the infrastructure that keeps the earth a  hospitable place for humans to live
3. the evolution, with science's help, of humans' separation from nature, moving from living as part of nature to humans seeing themselves as the conquerors of nature and losing their intimate understanding of the natural world around them, 
4. how capitalism has used science to accelerate humans' ability to destroy the living natural world either directly (destroying forests for wood or land) or indirectly (destroying wildlife by destroying their habitat and by changing the natural cycles such as climate) and the thus destroying the conditions that make living on earth comfortable for humans
3. The laws of nature keep working whether we pay attention to them or not.  So, when we destroy the world's forests and burn fossil fuels without thought, then we set into action natural changes in the temperature on earth and the weather patterns that threaten the survival of many life forms on earth.  And that our destroying of forests with diverse life forms means that there's more interaction with wild animals and the viruses that live in them.  

All this together suggests that COVID-19 is a natural outcome of our lack of understanding and lack of attention.  While I don't think there's intent on the part of nature, when one species gets wildly out of balance, forces eventually get unleashed to bring things back into balance.  We know that prey and predators have cycles that keep both populations from getting to numerous or too scarce.  As humans 'overgraze' their habitat, there are consequences.  It appears that this virus will only make a tiny dent in the human population on earth.  But it has also slowed, however temporarily, our destruction of the earth.  

The Overstory

This first post will focus on the natural world and our relation to it.  (Points 1 and 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3, and 3 in the overview.) The post was inspired by my reading of The Overstory by Richard Powers.  And as I read the book, lots of other articles caught my attention that reinforced the story he was telling.  

When people ask me why I live in Alaska, my feeble attempts to talk about living very close to relatively unspoiled natural settings are inadequate.  The way my body relaxes and comes to life in the forests is hard to explain.  How the dead trees covered in lichens and mosses and fungus, and teaming with life stir my mind and spirit just doesn't seem compelling as I try to describe this to people in Los Angeles, who know that they couldn't survive where the temperatures rests below 40˚F more often than not.     

In the The Overstory, Richard Powers makes my awe of nature much more understandable.  I got to rub elbows with characters far more immersed in the power of nature - particularly trees - than I am.  I felt I was with others who could get obsessed with the fecundity of the forest.  

So let's start with The Overstory.

I'll let CG Fewston get to the guts of the book, which he does well in a blog post:

"Ultimately, The Overstory is a love-letter to trees. The reader can feel the love and admiration the author has for trees and all things related to flora. There’s no question that humanity—at this time more than ever—needs a book that pays homage trees, to the planet, to Nature, to the environment, to the living-green things that produce oxygen and help in many uncountable ways to keep humanity alive. The Overstory is without question worthy of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. . .

"Richard Powers throws a spotlight onto the importance of trees and how their survival is tied to the survival of the whole human race. He brings Nature humming to the page, and the words leave a haunting effect over the reader as they learn of this sad planetary struggle.

"The villain of this story is the entire human race. Trees, far older and wiser than humans, are the heroes. Readers cheer for these green, silent heroes and cry when a single mammoth tree is cut from the heavens and comes crashing down. Richard Powers turns the tables on humanity, making them appear an ugly race of animals who lack an intelligent connection to their surroundings.

"Humans are the idiots. Humans are the fleeting species. Trees are the genius. Trees are the lasting species.

"There is a deeper message humanity needs to learn when it comes to trees. In The Overstory the trees are the patient teachers who instruct by being. If humanity could only learn to listen more closely to the planet and the environment, to Anima Mundi, we might see a better way forward than our current path of destruction, desolation and unsustainability."  (emphasis added)

Now let me offer some quotes from The Overstory.  I'll try to minimize the context so this doesn't get too long.  And this is a novel filled with interesting people doing interesting things.  But here I'm focusing more on the trees.

"The biochemical behavior of individual trees may make sense only when we see them as members of a community."  (p. 126)

"You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor .  A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways.  But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes. . ." (p. 152)

"Clicks and chatter disturb the cathedral hush.  The air is so twilight-green she feels like she's underwater.  It rains particles - spore clouds, broken webs and mammal dander, skeletonize mites, bits of insect grass and bird feather . . . Everything climbed over everything else, fighting for scraps of light.  If she holds still too long, vines will overrun her.  She walks in silence, crunching ten thousand invertebrates with every step, watching for tracks in a place where at least one of the native languages uses the same world for footprint and  understanding." (p. 154)

"The older man is on the ground, on his side, popping tiny creatures into specimen bottles.
"Ambrosia beetles?"  The two heads turn toward her, startled.  Dead logs:  the topic was

Dead trees near Portage Glacier

her passion once, and she forgets herself.  "When I was a student, my teacher told us that fallen trunks were nothing but obstacles and fire hazards."
The man on the ground looks up at her.  "Mine said the same thing."
"'Clear them off to improve forest health.'" . . .
"'Lay down the law and get the stagnant place producing again!'"
All three of them chuckle.  But the chuckle is like pressing on a wound.  Improves forest health.  As if forests were waiting all these four hundred million years for us newcomers to come and cure them.  Science in the service of willful blindness:  How could so many smart people have missed the obvious?  A person has only to look, to see that dead logs are far more alive than living ones.  But the senses never have much chance, against the power of doctrine." (pp. 158-159)  (emphasis added)

"All winter she has struggled to describe the joy of her life's work and the discoveries that have solidified in a few short years:  how trees talk to one another, over the air and underground.  How they care and feed each other, orchestrating shared behaviors through the networked soil.  How they build immune systems as wide as a forest.  She spends a chapter detailing how a dead log gives life to countless other species.  Remove the snag and kill the woodpecker who keeps in check the weevils that would kill the other trees.  She describes the drupes and racemes, panicles and involucres that a person could walk past for a lifetime and never notice.  She tells how the woody-coned alders harvest gold.  How an inch-high pecan might have six feet of root.  How the inner bark of birches can feed the starving.  How one hop hornbeam catkin holds several million grains of pollen.  How indigenous fishermen used crushed walnut leaves to stun and catch fish.  How willows clean soils of dioxins, PCBs, and heavy metals."  (pp 217-218)

The following takes place on a 7X9 foot platform in a giant redwood, twenty stories above the ground.  Maidenhair and Watchman have been living there for nearly a year to keep loggers from

Me, long ago, at the base of a giant sequoia

cutting it down.

"The subjects sit on the platform, gazing at the questionnaire and the pencils Adam gives them.  Their hands are stained brown and green, with crusts of duff under their nails.  They smell ripe and musty as redwood.  The examiner has gotten himself above them in the lookout hammock, which won't stop rocking.  He studies their faces for the strains of paranoid salvationism he has seen in so many of the activists he has already interviewed.  The man - capacious yet fatalistic.  The woman - self-possessed in a way that no one getting hammered as badly has a right to be.
Maidenhair asks, "This is for your doctoral research?"
"It is."
"What's your hypothesis?"
Adam has been interviewing for so long the word sounds alien.  "Any thing I say might affect your answers."
"You have a theory about people who . . .?"
"No. No theories yet.  I'm just gathering data."
Watchman laughs, a brittle monosyllable.  "That's not how it works, is it?"
"How what works?"
"The scientific method.  You can't gather data without a guiding theory."
"As I told you.  I'm studying the personality profiles of environmental activists."
"Pathological conviction?"  Watchman asks.
"Not at all.  I just  . . . I want to learn something about people who . . .  people who believe that . . ."
"That plants are persons, too?"
Adam laughs and wishes he hadn't.  It's the altitude.  "Yes."
"You're hoping that by adding up all these scores and doing some kind of regression analysis ---"
The woman fingers her partner's ankle.  He hushes at once in a way that answers one of the two questions Adam wants to sneak into his questionnaire.  The other question is how they shit in front of each other, seventy yards in the air.
Maidenhair's smile makes Adam feel fraudulent.  She's years younger than he is, but decades more certain.  "You're studying what makes some people take the living world seriously when the only real thing for everyone else is other people.  You should be studying everyone who things that only people matter."
Watchman laughs, "Talk about pathological."
For an instant, above them, the sun pauses.  Then it starts its slow drop westward, back into the waiting ocean.  Noon light washes the landscape in gilt and watercolor.  California, American Eden.  These last pocket relics of Jurassic forest, a world like nothing else on Earth.  Maidenhair flips through the booklet of questions, though Adam has asked her not to look ahead.  She shakes her head at some naïveté on page three.  "None of this is going to tell you anything important.  If you want to know us, we should just talk."
"Well."  The hammock is making Adam seasick.  He can't look anywhere but at the forty-nine-square-foot country below him.  "The problem is ---"
"He needs data.  Simple quantities."  Watchman waves southwest, the saw-whine song of progress.  "Complete this analogy:  questionnaires are to complex personalities as skyline yarders are to . . ." (pp 318-320)

The subjects continue to question the researcher.

"Do you believe human beings are using resources faster than the world can replace them?"
The question seems so far beyond calculation it's meaningless.  Then some small jam in him dislodges, and it's like an unblinding.  "Yes."
"Thank you!"  She's pleased with her overgrown pupil.  He grins back.  .  .
"It's so simple,"  she says.  "So obvious.  Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse.  But people don't see it.  So the authority of people is bankrupt." Maidenhair fixes him with a look between interest and pity.  Adam just wants the cradle to stop rocking.  "Is the house on fire?"
A shrug.  A sideways pull of the lips.  "Yes."
"And you want to observe the handful of people who're screaming, Put it out, when everyone else is happy watching things burn." (p. 321)

"You can watch the hour hand, Mimi finds, hold your eyes on it all around the circle of the clock, and never once see it move." (p. 375)

"No one sees trees.  We see fruit, we see nuts, we see wood, we see shade.  We see ornaments or pretty fall foliage.  Obstacles blocking the word or wrecking the ski slope.  Dark, threatening places must be cleared.  We see branches about to crush our roof.  We see a cash crop.  But trees -- trees are invisible."  (p. 423)

"Trees know when we're close by.  The chemistry of their roots and the perfumes their leaves pump out change when we're near . . ." (p. 424)

"'If we could see green, we'd see a thing that keeps getting more interesting the closer we get.  If we could see what green was doing, we'd never be lonely or bored.  If we could understand green, we'd learn how to grow all the food we need in layers three deep, on a third of the ground we need right now, with plants that protected one another from pests and stress.   If we knew what green wanted, we wouldn't have to choose between the Earth's interests and ours.  They'd be the same!'" (p. 454)

All that above is about or from the book The Overstory.  There may be skeptics who think I should offer the counterarguments to Richard Powers.  My response to such a request is this:  99.9% of what we have learned at home, in school, in houses of worship, at work, on television and in movies, and in various other media assume the counterarguments.  You're all well immersed in those concepts.  So much so that many of you don't even realize there could be any other way of thinking.  So there's really no need for me to present that way of thinking.

As I read the book and thought about this post I kept coming across things that reinforce Wright's notions.  So here are a few.

From an interview in The Sun Magazine  Two Ways Of Knowing: Robin Wall Kimmerer On Scientific And Native American Views Of The Natural World.  (If it's not clear, Kimmerer is Native American.)

"From as far back as I can remember, I had this notion of plants as companions and teachers, neighbors and friends. Then, when I went to college, a shift occurred for me. As an aspiring botany major, I was pressured to adopt the scientific worldview; to conceive of these living beings as mere objects; to ask not, “Who are you?” but, “How does it work?” This was a real challenge for me. But I was madly in love with plants, so I worked hard to accommodate myself to this new approach.
Later in my career, after I’d gotten my PhD and started teaching, I was invited to sit among indigenous knowledge holders who understood plants as beings with their own songs and sensibilities. In their presence, and in the presence of the plants themselves, I woke from the sleep I’d fallen into. I was reminded of what I’d always known in my core: that my primary relationship with plants was one of apprenticeship. I’m learning from plants, as opposed to only learning about them."

An LA Times Op Ed

"Pathogens have leaped from animals to humans for eons, but the pace of this spillover has increased rapidly over the last century. As 7.8 billion people on this planet radically alter ecosystems and raise, capture and trade animals at an unprecedented scale, “the road from animal microbe to human pathogen” has turned into a “highway,” as the journalist Sonia Shah has written.
The growing body of scientific research is clear: Diseases like COVID-19 are an expected consequence of how we’re choosing to treat animals and their habitats."

But the wildlife trade is just the tip of the iceberg. Humans have altered three-quarters of terrestrial environments and two-thirds of marine environments. Our ecological domination, aside from risking mass extinctions, makes humans more vulnerable to disease. . . .
The human health effects of deforestation are even more devastating in global disease “hotspots,” which are tropical areas with high wildlife biodiversity. When these forests are felled — be it in the Amazon, East Africa, Thailand, or Indonesia — the mosquitos that transmit malaria become more abundant and infect people at higher rates.
And then we have the bio-catastrophes that are modern factory farms. We pack most of the world’s livestock animals, for all or part of their lives, into crammed living conditions that are hotbeds for viral and bacterial pathogens, and then we lace their feed with the world’s most medically important antibiotics, creating perfect conditions for antibiotic-resistant pathogens to develop. The public pays the price in the form of drug-resistant UTI and MRSA infections, feces in the air and water, and increased risk of deadly viral epidemics like the 2009 H1N1 outbreak that sickened an estimated 59 million people. . .
To prevent future outbreaks like COVID-19 or worse, we have to treat planetary, animal and human health as inseparable. This will require radical changes to business as usual. To date, we’ve operated under the fallacies that medicine and ecology can be understood independently and that the conditions that impact the animal kingdom are separate from those that impact humans.

From  Arundhati Roy in The Financial Times

But unlike the flow of capital, this virus seeks proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow. It has mocked immigration controls, biometrics, digital surveillance and every other kind of data analytics, and struck hardest — thus far — in the richest, most powerful nations of the world, bringing the engine of capitalism to a juddering halt. Temporarily perhaps, but at least long enough for us to examine its parts, make an assessment and decide whether we want to help fix it, or look for a better engine.
The mandarins who are managing this pandemic are fond of speaking of war. They don’t even use war as a metaphor, they use it literally. But if it really were a war, then who would be better prepared than the US? If it were not masks and gloves that its frontline soldiers needed, but guns, smart bombs, bunker busters, submarines, fighter jets and nuclear bombs, would there be a shortage?

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.  Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. 
We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. (emphasis added)

From The Guardian:

"Scientists have shown to be true what JRR Tolkien only imagined in the Lord of the Rings: giant, slow-reproducing trees play an outsized role in the growth and health of old forests.
In the 1930s, the writer gave his towering trees the name Ents. Today, a paper in the journal Science says these “long-lived pioneers” contribute more than previously believed to carbon sequestration and biomass increase.
The authors said their study highlights the importance of forest protection and biodiversity as a strategy to ease global heating. They say it should also encourage global climate modellers to shift away from representing all the trees in a forest as essentially the same." 

From the LA Times after a couple of weeks of the closure of Yosemite National Park the bears have quadrupled in Yosemite Valley with the absence of people.

And all the other forms of wildlife there are taking back their land.   

And from the EPA - a look at Los Angeles air quality 

The arrow points to March 2020 when people went into isolation.  It's the greenest (best air quality) period in 25 years.  

I'm going to trust the reader to put together the points in the overview, the quotes about and from The Overstory, and the quotes and images from other sources at the end.  The points on science and capitalism probably need more spelling out.  If I get that done, I'll put a link here to that future post.