AiFF2025: Witty Youngman, Saturday Thoughts, It's Cold!

 Friday night (really went into Saturday morning) I was too tired to upload my video of Witty Youngman, especially knowing I was getting up early Saturday.  

Witty played after the movie Burt.  She'd been asked to play an original song from the movie Burt but said she got it fairly late and what she got wasn't too easy to listen to, so she made her own adaptation.  

But then she went on to play for another 40 minutes or more.  The combo of her exquisite voice and guitar work was enchanting.  I couldn't help but capturing some of it for you.  (And for me.)  So far, she has been the highlight of the festival for me.  

It's Sunday morning and I dropped our film maker houseguests off at the Alaska Experience Theater for bagels, networking, and the morning filmmaker panel (anyone can go to these.)  Yesterday I stayed because the panel was for first time feature makers and Nikolas and Katrine were on the panel for their

Katrine, Nikolas, Richie, Emelio

film The World Outside (Draußen die Welt) (the ß is a German letter for double ss).  The other two panelists were Richie James Rollin, whose film Crystal Cross plays tonight (Sunday) at 8:30pm at the Museum, and Emilio Miguel Torres, whose film The Ladder plays at the Museum at 6pm.  I think the moderator, on the left, was Joe Burke, who made Burt. 

This link gives more background on all the features being shown today (Sunday).

I have a bit of time to reflect on the Festival so far before I head back downtown.  

1.  This is the coldest festival I remember.  While the temperature yesterday wasn't terribly low - around 14˚F (-9˚C), the strong and constant wind made it feel (according to my weather app) like -6˚F  (-21ºC).  But at one point we took a bus home and waiting in the wind was brutal.  Fortunately Katrine and Nikolas are much younger and enjoyed the adventure of being in Alaska cold.  But I have to say that -6˚F without a wind is not as cold for me as it was yesterday.

2.  So far I haven't seen a movie that blew me away.  I enjoyed  Brut  on opening night very much.  It's quirky, the characters are great. I liked a lot of the images.  Even though views of cars driving along highways are pretty common in movies, there was one shot of the car going along a winding road that was just exactly right.  

 SPOILER ALERT:  The story is one that happens to a lot of people, particularailly older people (not the specific details, but the idea of a scam).  A plot flaw, in my mind, was Sammy's car.  He was supposed to have come to LA for a few days from New York.  It's unlikely he would drive his own car to LA for a few days.  But if he did, he would have had a New York license plate.  And even Burt would have noticed that he had California plates.  

2.  In The Wake of Justice Delayed was a well-made and effective film focused on the impacts of violence against Native women in Alaska.  Survivors  talked about the impact on them  of losing someone this way.  We joined them in their own space to share that impact.  

Remaining Native was another important film that followed the great grandson of a survivor of Indian Boarding schools.  There were two related stories.  The first was about the boarding schools ("No school should have a cemetery.") and how his great grandfather had run away three times.  The third time he ran 50 miles home.  So Ku Stevens decides to set up a 50 mile run for people to remember their ancestors who had been in boarding schools.  The second story was Ku's own life as a long distance runner on his rural tribal land high school, and trying to get the attention of college recruiters.  While the two stories are clearly related, I would have liked to see them better integrated in the movie.  That said, I don't have suggestions so I don't know how to do it better.  

Both these are important movies.  But I'm waiting for the films about what motivated the school teachers and administrators to treat the Native American kids so badly.  And what causes the men to commit terrible violence on Native women?  Because I think those stories would help us understand what motivates people to join ICE, and a lot of the people who support Trump.  What happened at the boarding schools is happening today to immigrants, transgender folk, women,  and everyone else who doesn't support those in power.  And what kinds of childhoods did the men who torture women have that led them to their evil deeds?  

That isn't the responsibility of the filmmakers of In the Wake of Justice Delayed and Remaining Indian, but I'm hoping someone steps up to address those questions.  (Yeah, I know, I should do it.  I'll put it on my todo list.)

3. Drink And Be Merry:  I'm not a fan of movies that feature alcoholics and bars.  I don't drink more than a glass or two of wine and that not very often.  Watching alcoholics drinking and doing stupid things is like watching a kid playing much too close to a cliff or someone driving a car way too fast.  I'm uncomfortable the whole time.  But Nikolas and Katrine thought it would be better than most such films and so we went.  I could have skipped it. But if that topic is your thing, then you might well have enjoyed it.  My cynical self thought, "The Bear Tooth is playing it because people watching others drink will sell more wine and beer in the theater."

4.  Nikolas and I went to the Alaska Experience Theater to watch Fucktoys.  I'd looked it up and thought it might offer us some insights into people's sexual hangups, but I didn't catch any insights.  We didn't learn anything about the motivation of the men who were paying to be sexually hurt and humiliated, for example. And it seems the curse was never lifted.  But then she substituted a goat for a lamb and I'm not sure it was ever sacrificed.  

5.  Finally, the Thriller shorts.  Again, this is not my genre at all and I should have stayed home.  Most, if not all, appeared to be scenes of a future feature film.  None told a whole story.  The acting in Confidential Informant was strong, but I wasn't thrilled watching a female cop coercing a reluctant informant by threatening to place her child into foster care.  It seemed abusive and while that technique may yield some names (it didn't get that far in the short film), it causes a crisis for the child.  Do cops have the moral right to do that to mothers and their children?  Maybe getting people to ask that question will be the point of the feature film if it gets made.  I like Charon because as I was watching I remembered that Charon

 "is the boatman who ferries the souls of the dead across the waters of Hades to the judgement which will determine their final resting place." (From World History Encyclopedia)

6.  I got to talk to Tony Sheppard- the man who started the Anchorage International Film Festival 25 years ago.  He's here until Monday.  I should have taken a picture and if I see him again, I will.  

At film festivals you see so many movies and meet so many new people from all over that time warps.  Already yesterday (Saturday) the opening night movie seemed to have happened a week ago.  And so not having seen my favorite dilm yet isn't a big deal.  It's only been one day plus an evening show.  

But Witty Youngman's guitar and voice stand out as my highlight so far.  

Parts Of LA Are Burning

 It was very foggy several days ago, from what I could tell, mostly within three or four miles of the coast.  

So, this afternoon, as we were driving home from errands that got us as far east as Beverly Hills, and we saw a wall of clouds off to the west, I assumed it was a fog bank.  Though it looked a bit odd, and it seemed to be more north and to the south was still clear.  

When we got home, I walked around the block to take some pictures.  

We were listening to KJZZ, and didn't hear any news of the Palisades fire.  It was pretty windy, and I thought the off shore wind was keeping the fog to the coast.  

It was much later that we heard about the fire.  And then, as I was reading about the fire, almost midnight - an alarm went off on my phone.  

We're about six or seven miles, as the crow flies from the Palisades.  Malibu is even further.  When I bike to the beach and then north through Santa Monica and to Will Rogers State Beach (back in Los Angeles), Pacific Palisades is above the ocean.  Those areas are up in the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains.  We're down in more city area.  

Here's a picture of a couple of houses up on the bluff at Pacific Palisades from my bike ride along the ocean the other day.  

But I did just go outside and while the moon is bright, the air is starting to get smoky.  

And we've had three more alarms go off on my phone.  The last one is for folks in Topanga Canyon to be ready to get out.  

And another alarm just went off but I didn't get a screen shot.  The alarms really screech.  It's 1:15am.  I really don't think we're in any danger.  When I was growing up, we would see the red glow up in the hills, but it never got out of the hills.  

But these are different times.  I probably should leave my phone on, just in case.  But I don't think I'll get much sleep if I do.  

Our tickets back to Anchorage are for Friday night.  

Here's the LA County Emergency map for right now.  We're about where the black star is.  That looks much closer than I realized.  But that orange blotch along the ocean is the evacuation area, NOT the fire area.  There is all of Santa Monica between the evacuation area and us.  As you can see there is another fire to the east.  But I'll leave my phone on.  It's 1:30 am as I post this.  

Mike from Iowa - How Are You Doing With All That Water?

The title is pretty much the post.  Mike's been a frequent commenter here.  He's warned me about the danger of bears, but his state's been pounded with tornadoes and now flooding from rising rivers.  Hope you're doing ok.  

Biking Stories This Week - Moose, Innocence, Post Cards, Bike Lanes, Big Leaves

 The moose are out this week.  Tuesday, walking toward Goose Lake we ran into a cow and calf.  Two bikers and a runner had already alerted us, as they were looking for alternate routes.  We got close enough to see them through the trees and walked back.  

Thursday, biking to up Campbell Airstrip Road, I passed a young bull with a nice growing rack.  It was the part of the trail that separates from the road.  Where I'd been warned by a driver a couple of years ago that they'd seen a bear on the trail.  So when I get to this part, I ring my bell a bunch to no one is surprised I'm there.  And down below the trail was the moose.  On the way back, I looked for him down below and there was nothing there.  Then there he was right next to the trail.  Turned back and took the road down.  Where I was able to get this picture.   You can see he's almost on the bike trail.

Then I stopped in the Botanical Garden.  They have a great plant sale.  Well, they sell plants all summer.  There's a good selection of interesting plants - local and not - that do well in Anchorage.  The plant sale is right at the front so I think you can buy plants without paying admission.  But the whole garden is worth some exploration.  And things change in there every week as different flowers start to show.

Here's some Shieldleaf Rogersia at the Garden.   These are very large leaves - the sign says China, Korea.  

They grow in the shade and my yard has lots of shade so I bought one about three years ago.  Bugs have been eating at it each year before it gets real big.  But this year it's looking better.  

Friday I had a couple of stops to make downtown.  First I dropped in at the Alaska Innocence Project.  They help prisoners who claim they were wrongly convicted and have evidence to back their cases.  They helped get the Fairbanks Four freed several years ago.  

I took an Óle course  several years ago, taught by Bill Oberly the (now retired) director and was highly impressed with their work.  

Prisoners don't get a lot of sympathy from the public, and innocent people behind bars is one of the biggest injustices in our society.  Since

Since it was a beautiful day we met in their conference room on the roof.

That's Francisco on the left and Jory on the right.  Here's a short video - under 2 minutes - that I recommend.  It talks about why people are wrongly convicted and how many there are.  

On the way to their office I found the new protected downtown bike lane.  I'd read about it in the Anchorage Daily News, but forgot about it until I came across it.  What an improvement.  No dodging pedestrians on the sidewalk or cars in the street. I could relax and just ride.  But there's not much of it - less than 1/2 mile I'd guess.  And then to get to the office I had to go back to the streets.  It even has its own street light with red and green bikes.  

Next stop was at Tim's to pick up some postcards to mail to voters.  This is probably the least painful way for introverts to be actively working to save Democracy.  [If you think I'm being alarmist, let's talk.  The mainstream media are treating the election as if Trump were a normal candidate.  He's not. Mainstream media only look reasonable in comparison with Fox.  With the Far Right capture of the Supreme Court, a Trump presidency would be the end of democracy in the US.] In this case the Environmental Voters Project combined with the Citizens Climate Lobby.  Tim's in a log cabin downtown, but this one has been modernized a bit.  It even has a touchpad to unlock the door.  

I have some work to do.  

Today was a spectacular day.  I picked up a book that was on hold at the library for me.  I think I requested it six or more months ago - The Sympathizer by Viet Thang Nguyen.  It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the first 15 pages pulled me right in.                                           I'm still working on Many Things Under a Rock - a book about octopuses.                                                           From the library to the post office to get post card stamps and to mail a letter to my grandson who is away at camp.  The post office was closed, but I could mail the letter.                                                        Finally I could bike on.  As I said, it was a beautiful day - our warmest of the year I'm sure.

                                                                                      I doubt  the official temperature,
which is measured at the airport, was 77˚F (26˚C), but it was a nice, nice day.  

I went up Arctic to the Campbell Creek bike trail near Dimond and then back down the  trail past Taku Lake and eventually home.  I've gone, as of today, 475 kilometers, this summer.  (That means since the trails were clear enough of snow to ride.)

We had salmon on the deck this evening - with loud rumbles of thunder in the background.  That's not something we get often in Anchorage - sometimes none in a year or three.  

So keeping it fairly light today.  Happy Fathers' Day to all of you lucky enough to have this awesome responsibility. 

Denali Was Out In Full Glory

Here was the view from the mile 135 Denali Lookout point last Tuesday afternoon.  The mountain was magnificent.  The tallest mountain in North America.  All 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m) were showing, just about.  Aconcagua in Argentina is 22,831 feet (6,959 m).  But Aconcagua is one of many peaks in the Andes range.  The whole of Denali can be seen from 3000 feet and up.  And Tuesday it was all out and clear.  

After about four years in Alaska, I wanted to make a post card of clouds, labeled "Denali as most tourists see it."   There was a couple from Toronto there taking in the sight and I wanted to let them know how lucky they were to see this great view.  And we became friends for the next couple of days, enjoying the park together.  

Below is that same view on Thursday afternoon on our return to Anchorage.  My postcard view.  You'd never know North America's highest mountain was hiding behind those clouds.  You can also see that a lot of snow melted in those two days.  

And below is a picture of Denali from the North (on the right), on the road in the National Park.  Still clear.  

Our Canadian friends got great views of the mountain.  Below it resembles a full moon just rising.  

But as lucky as they were with the Mountain, they were unlucky with animals.  I don't remember a trip to Denali when we saw so few big animals.  The few we saw were not particularly close. There were plenty of ptarmigan, gulls, and ground squirrels.  

First we hiked along the Savage River trail.  We've learned from past experience that this early in the season, the trail on the east side is still full of snow and ice in parts, so we hike to the bridge along the west side (right side in the photo) and returned the same way.  

As you get closer to the bridge (about one mile each way) you start to see these Tolkien rocks.  

And excuse me for putting all these photos up extra large.  Denali National Park is extra large and even this effort doesn't do it justice.  

We stopped at Sanctuary campground for lunch, where we saw this giant head in the rocky mountain across the way.  Anyone else see it?  Two of us did.

Just before Teklanika campground, there is a pair of small lakes, ponds really.  One had buffleheads and pintails and a kingfisher.  The other had northern shovelers.  

We parked at the Teklanika overview - which is as far as you are allowed to drive - and walked down to the bridge below.  You can drive in the first 30 miles only until May 20 when the tour busses start.  (Well, they already had some tour busses for the benefit of cruise line passengers, but not too many.)  Beginning May 20 you can only drive as far as Savage River (12 miles in.)  The road is still closed at mile 40 due a a huge avalanche a few years back.  So 20 miles further to Eilson, and then the next 30 to Wonder Lake aren't accessible. An Anchorage Daily News article say it won't be done until 2026.

It was only as we were headed back after a long day, that we saw the first large animal - a caribou.  There were two moose after that.  Denali - being far north with a short growing season and a long winter, is no Serengeti.  There just isn't enough food for the large herds in Africa.  But three large animal sightings is pitiful.   It was a VERY windy day, and perhaps that kept the animals hunkered down.  

Our new friends headed to their hotel outside the park and we got back to our campground.  I'd brought a bunch of the broken tree limbs from the back yard post winter clean up and some nice dry pieces of firewood and we quickly had a dinner cooked in foil.  First on the grill while the flames were high, and then on the coals a little longer.  

New Year's Day Birds

We dropped the family off at the airport Monday.  It was a beautiful sunny day with blue skies and t-shirt temperatures. The sky was clear and you could see snow up on Mt. Baldy. We like walking along Ballona Creek, but thought since we were coming from the airport we could start at the ocean end.  

There's a bike trail along the creek that goes at least to Culver City and connects with the beach trail south to nearly Palos Verdes.  North, it goes through Marina Del Rey and then connects with Venice and Santa Monica trails.  I've marked in red our walk from the beach to Lincoln and back.  

We saw the hummingbird hovering first.  It's iridescent ruby throat flashing brilliantly.  It flew off and then quickly returned an lighted on this high bush.  I'm still fighting my auto-focus on my Canon Rebel.  I've read instructions, but the auto-focus has trouble figuring out exactly where I want to focus.  For most things it's not an issue, but for birds far away or tiny birds relatively close, it's frustrating.  I'm open to links that could help.  I left the image small because you can see how out-of-focus the bird is when I cropped it bigger.  

And I couldn't get the iridescent flash, though you can see the emerald wing suggesting it.  

The egret is much bigger and easier to get in focus.

I was fascinated by the egret's toes as it started walking.  It didn't respond to my request that it get a less difficult background.  You have to look carefully.  I counted four toes.  

I originally thought these might be sanderlings, but the legs seemed the wrong color.  Maybe a type of sandpiper.  I couldn't tell for sure.  

The water here is where the marina opens to the Pacific, not the Ballona Creek side of the trail.  You can check here.

I'm guessing this is a white pelican, but you can check yourself. 

You may have read about large waves this weekend in Southern California.  The waves didn't seem huge, but they crashed pretty much straight down.  The bike trail on he beach was covered with sand and the high tide lines were way, way up on the beach.  

 

Spices Keep You Healthy

At some point, after three years in Thailand, I was convinced that science had ignored the health benefits of capsaicin - the part that makes hot peppers so spicy.  Surely, I thought, this heat helped to preserve foods, in a different way than salt does.  

Today this 24 year old paper popped up on Twitter that confirms my assumption.  What I didn't recognize was that garlic and onions are even better at the killing and/or inhibiting the growth of microbes.  Though I did assume the high use of garlic in hot climates had some health benefits too.  

The authors write in the overview:

"We wondered if there are any predictable patterns of spice use and, if so, what factors might underlie them. In this article, we summarize the results of our inquiries. We found that spice use is decidedly nonrandom and that spices have several beneficial effects, the most important of which may be reducing foodborne illnesses and food poisoning."

Prediction 1. Spices should exhibit antibacterial and antifungal activity.

And this chart shows that 

Prediction 2. Use of spices should be greatest in hot climates, where unrefrigerated foods spoil especially quickly.

They looked at cookbooks from 36 countries to see what spices were used, how many recipes included spices, how many spices per recipe, and which spices.  The used a climate atlas to rate the climate in each of the 36 countries. 

Prediction 3. A greater proportion of bacteria should be inhibited by recipes from hot climates than from cool climates.  

". . . the mean fraction of recipes that called for each one of the highly inhibitory spices used in those countries increased significantly (Figure 8a). However, this correlation did not hold for less inhibitory spices (Figure 8b). There was also a positive relationship between the fraction of bacterial species inhibited by each spice and the fraction of countries that used that spice, indicating widespread use of the spices that are most effective against bacteria."

There are a number of other things they looked into (ie. cost of spices, lemon/lime juice increases anti-microbial power of spices).  

So one question I have relates to the fact that our bodies rely on microbes to keep us healthy.  My awareness of this came well after 1999 (when the spice article was published) and I'm not sure how well it was known in 1999 or by the authors.  Do spices harm the gut biome?  

The article is written in clear language that should be easy for most people to understand most parts.  It also has pictures of spices as well as straightforward charts.  

Darwinian Gastronomy: Why We Use Spices: Spices taste good because they are good for us 

Paul W. Sherman,   Jennifer Billing  Author Notes  BioScience, Volume 49, Issue 6, June 1999, Pages 453–463, https://doi.org/10.2307/1313553   Published: 01 June 1999

They use' microbe' in some places and 'bacteria' in other places.  Since I wasn't completely sure about what each term meant, I found this American Society for Microbiology page "What Counts As A Microbe?"

Clouds! (It's Been Rainy In LA)

 I was out in the car yesterday when it started raining so hard I had the windshield wipers to the fastest speed and I still had trouble seeing through the wet on the windshield.  

Sun did make cameo appearances throughout the day.  

Today it was sunny when I got up - though there were lots of exciting clouds, ranging from white to almost black.  

This iris opened since yesterday and the sun seemed like a good opportunity to get on my bike  for a ride along the beach.  

This is the last block on Rose Ave as you get to the beach in Venice.  The border between Los Angeles (Venice is a neighborhood in LA) and Santa Monica is about a block to the north (to the right in the picture).

Parts - not many - of the bike trail had a couple of inches of water and some sand.  

Headed north, Santa Monica pier is up ahead. 

There are a few wooden walkways from the bike trail to near the water.  I wanted some pictures from near the water.  Above I'm looking north.

Below I'm looking west. 

And below I'm looking south back toward the pier.  This is NOT a black and white photo.

It was at this point, as I was picking my bike up out of the sand, that a life guard in a truck came over to me and said that NOAA reported there was a thunderstorm due in the next half hour and to clear the beach.  (There weren't that many people out anyway, only a few down by the water.)

At this point I felt the first rain drops.  The temperature was in the low to mid 60s F and felt warmer when the sun was on me.  

As I rode back, the palm trees along the palisade in downtown Santa Monica were nicely silhouetted.  

And below I'm approaching the Santa Monica pier from the north.  I hadn't seen the ferris wheel turning when I passed by the first time and it certainly wasn't moving now.  Nor did I see any action on the roller coaster.  

It never rained too hard, despite the ominous clouds.  Some blue and some hint of sun if not actual sun were always visible.  

On the way home I stopped at the 99 Cents store.  But most of the shelves were empty. The cashier said January 5 would be their last day.  They did have produce.  Two avocados, an artichoke, and some broccoli cost me $2.  

When I got near home, it wasn't raining, but there was water gushing down the hill to the flat area.  It had rained very hard while I was gone, but not where I was.  Later my granddaughter took this picture when it rained heavily again and you can see some of the rain coming down, though the picture doesn't capture how hard it was raining.  

The rain seems to have fallen here and there over short periods of time as clouds moved through.  The following list shows rainfall in inches as of 7am Thursday for the five days prior.  There's a lot of variation and this doesn't count what fell yesterday and today.  

Oxnard 6.13

Porter Ranch 4.82

Culver City 3.43

Westlake Village 3.31

Downtown LA 1.98

Bel Air 3.27

Long Beach 1.24

Van Nuys 4.30

Santa Monica 1.80

Northridge 4.54

Whittier 1.51

Pasadena 1.61

Castaic 2.53

I found different numbers when I googled Los Angeles annual rainfall. (Some variation is surely due to location.)  But the range was between 12 and 14 inches!

This is all a reminder that the earth itself is doing fine.  The changes brought on by climate change, the loss of species, are irrelevant to Nature.  The landforms and oceans will survive and evolve without us.  

The coming climate catastrophes are only catastrophes in the eyes of humans.  I'm not sure what the animal and plant species that are being threatened know or feel.  The earth has experienced many changes over its billions of years.  Our hominid ancestors only appeared around seven million years ago.  And individual human lives are like flashes of lightening (which I never did see today) in comparison.   

So go out into nature and learn.