Been Busy - New Kitchen Floor, Not Yet Winter, Fog

It's November 11, 2019.  We haven't had any snow in town.   Friday when I went to my OLÉ Homeless class, it was sunny and comfy and the snow was disappearing on the mountains.

And this yarrow flower is hanging in there outside in the yard.

A few times things have gotten frosty,

like Saturday when I rode over to UAA for the Citizens Climate Lobby meeting.







It was also foggy that day.

Our delayed winter has me not wanting to stop biking and Saturday didn't offer any problems, but I decided to break down and get studded tires for my old mountain bike that I've used for winters.
 I didn't realize how speedy [spendy] studded tires are.  It cost more than the old bike, which I'd gotten at a YMCA auction maybe ten years ago.  But if they keep me from breaking an arm, they'll be worth it.  This bike's old wheels were perfectly fine in packed snow, but as winters have gotten warmer, there are a lot more icy days.  We'll see how often I actually use the bike and how well the studs work.

This morning was probably the coldest this fall - about 27˚F outside.












Meanwhile, inside has been rather chaotic.  Our old carpet is wearing out, very noticeably in spots.
And the linoleum in the kitchen was getting yellow, so we went for a new floor there too.  But they said to do the kitche/dining area first.  And that had to be shipped up from Outside.  We've been waiting for a few months now,  It looked pretty bad from time to time as TK determined that the old floor had to go so the kitchen wouldn't be higher than the carpet with the new bamboo panels.  

But he cleaned everything up pretty well each evening.  But there are tools all over the place.









But we're almost done.  This was actually Saturday night when we put up a temporary folding table up.

This side was finished today, but there's a little more on the kitchen side where a wire to two outlets got cut.  Fortunately, the electrician is scheduled for Wednesday to do some work on our old fixtures and putting in LED fixtures and other trickier jobs.

So we've juggling things a bit this last week.  And I'm working on more film festival posts.  The documentaries look great.  I'm just going through the features and they look interesting too.  My enthusiasm has been renewed and I'm looking forward to the festival which begins Dec. 6.  There's a new AIFF 2019 tab under the header.  Good night.

Pushing Around Leaves

The cottonwood trees in the back have been acting as personal trainers, giving me a certain number of new leaves each day to sweep up off the deck.  I think they used up their supply finally.

In front the mountain ash leaves have been dancing with the wind into different patterns on the driveway.

Looks a little like a map.

They tend to crowd together against steps and in corners.

And this October has allowed me time to procrastinate gathering up enough leaves to cover the various flower beds.  Yesterday was a record 54˚F in Anchorage, today was balmy again.  The low temperatures have been regularly higher than the normal lows.  You could say, well, it's just a blip, except we've had the 'warmest month ever' regularly this year.  

Cottonwood leaves covering the back yard.  I just need to rake up enough to get the flower beds covered.  There are some decaying amur maple leaves in the mix too.  

 And here's a small bed that I just used mountain ash leaves to mulch.

It's so wondrous that the trees give us this free mulch to protect the wintering plants from the cold and then this all goes into the compost heap where it becomes compost to fertilize everything next year.  

After all, that's what happens in untended forests every year.  Somehow they manage to maintain exquisite gardens without humans to take care of them.  

On The Edge Of Snow - And OLÉ Classes Continue

It was in the mid 30s when I went to Pecha Kucha class yesterday, but the streets were good, so I biked.  My presentation was ok, people said nice things afterward.  Here's the first of the 20 slides.

and I tried to make the case for how learning another languages let's you escape the confines of English (or whatever your first language is) as you learn that the words and grammar of one language reflect the world differently from other languages.  This shows most concretely in the fact that words of one language don't translate exactly into the words of the other language.  Even concrete objects might not translate right.  Banana would seem an easy translation, but in Thailand there are about 20 kinds of bananas that regularly show up in the market and many people there pick bananas off trees in their garden.   And that, say, a black cat, has meanings in one culture that it might not have in another.  And words that describe relationships get even trickier.

The Thai words closest to brother and sister really focus on the older/younger relationship more than the gender relationship, or even the blood relationship

People without any blood connection use the terms for older and younger about each other all the time. (And it's different from the more recent US use of 'Bro'.)  At one point I asked somebody, after he'd introduced me to his sixth or seventh 'brother', how many brothers did he have.  Oh, they aren't that kind of brother, he said.

The class liked the blue and red circles I used to show how much the English and German or Thai words overlapped.  I didn't think of that until I was finishing the last slide, the night before the presentation.  Then I went back and put in circles for the different slides that compared English and German or English and Thai words.  Good thing I did.  I argued that when the words don't overlap completely (usually the case) is when you learn what your own language doesn't capture about the world.  And the less the words overlap, the more you learn about yourself and the world.

It was just starting to rain when I returned yesterday.  It was more a light drizzle, and the drops were tiny specks of hail.  Much better than raindrops, not as good as snow.  I could feel them on my face.  But I got home fine, but I was expecting snow on the ground this morning.

There wasn't any and the street in front of our house was wet, but not icy.  And large chunks of sky were blue.   So I biked.  For the most part it was ok but then I saw a police car's lights flashing ahead and this car on the side of the road.

The culprit seems to have been a piece of light brick colored cement at the intersection.  While all the other surfaces were fine, that piece of cement was really slick.  Was there a second car involved?  I don't know.  A stop sign had been flattened.  (I thought I took a picture, but it's not on my phone.)  I walked the bike around the debris and down the hill.  Back on the flat I rode carefully to the church where today's OLÉ classes were held.

By 2:30 when I came back, the sun was out and any ice or frost that had been there was either a puddle or dry pavement.  But I did have two voices in my head this morning.  One said:  "Don't be such a wimp.  You can't let a little weather threat keep you off the bike."  The other said, "A broken arm would really be a pain.  Don't be stupid."  Stupid beat wimp today, but I know I should be more careful.

The classes today were good.  The Innocence Project class was a continuation of last week's list of reasons innocent people are convicted.  I'll put that into another post.  It's interesting.  And this class is a great one after seeing "When They See Us" the Netflix series on the Central Park Five case.  Everything they talk about in the class happens in the series.

The afternoon class was on Pebble Mine.   We've had a representative from Pebble. A person from the Army Corps of Engineers, whose in charge of the Environmental Impact Statement, and today, was someone from Bristol Bay Native Corporation who are strongly opposed to the mine.

Once Upon A Time I Thought I Might Catch Up. Fat Chance.

As I wrote the title, I realized we never can catch up in life, but I was referring to little things like writing blog posts and paying the bills.  Today was my wife's birthday.  We went for a movie and dinner.   It seemed like a good day to spend the early afternoon in a movie, but the rain had stopped and there were even breaks in the clouds when we got there.

 And the snow was mostly gone from the Chugach.


I've already  written about my mixed feelings about going to see Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.   Now that I've seen it, if I hadn't, I wouldn't have missed anything important.

Even though I've eaten at Musso & Franks, went to movies at the Bruin theater when I was a student at UCLA, and even interviewed George Putnam (there was an ad for his newscast on a bus stop) for my junior high school newspaper.  Putnam arrived in a gold limo - a Rolls, I think - and he smoked through the interview even though his bio said he didn't smoke. (At least that's what my memory tells me.)

The movie began in a Pan Am 747, which set alarms off right way, since the date posted was 1969.  I'd read that the period details had been carefully done.  And yes, I know some odd details.  In this case because I first flew on one of the early Pan Am 747 flights - from Honolulu to Tokyo - in March 1970. (I was flying from a Peace Corps training program I worked at in Hilo to the second part of the training in Thailand.)  Pan Am 1 and 2 had just started flying. I think it was Pan Am 1 that flew around the world toward the west and Pan Am2 to the east.  Did it start earlier in 1969?  I've now had time to look it up and the first commercial flight was in January 1970.

It wasn't a bad movie - though I generally skip movies with lots of violence - but it felt artificial throughout.  Cardboard.  I assume that was intentional since it was about Hollywood and all the phoniness of that life, but as the birthday girl said over dinner at the Thai Kitchen, with all the really good stuff we're seeing on Netflix, it just didn't cut it.

So I'm reduced to writing filler pieces like this because I just haven't had time to finish my thoughts on the Joseph Maguire hearings and several other drafts that probably will never get beyond that stage.  

And tomorrow I start a slew of OLÉ classes.  (Continuing ed classes aimed at retired folks at UAA.  I think they pay for themselves so maybe they won't disappear next year.)   I have an actual project in one that I need to spend extra time on and I haven't figured out what I'm going to do.  It's a Pecha-Kucha class - you present 20 pictures in seven minutes with narration of the story they tell. Well, I've got plenty of pictures, but organizing a compelling story is the challenge.  As I see it now, though I'll probably discover that was the easy part once I get the story figured out.

Other classes I enrolled in include:

• An Overview of the Pebble Copper-Molybdenum-Gold Prospect 
• The Innocence Project
• State and Federal Courts and Current Legal Issues
• Homeless, Homelessness and Finding "Home"

And a one time short class that's a trip to an Escape Room.

I'm hoping the classes will provide plenty of fodder for the blog.

The US Department of Compassion Announced A Growing Shortage Of Thoughts And Prayers

That was my reaction to the Odessa shooting.  The rest of this is me thinking out loud while my nieta* is off with her mom for a bit.

But I've also been thinking about what we're going to need globally as climate change forces people out of their traditional homes through floods, droughts, disease bearing mosquitos and other critters expanding their range.  Normal crops in areas will fail as conditions change.  Refugees will be on the move for more hospital climates.  Well, for food and water and relief.

That's already happening in places.  Alaska native villages are being forced to move from their coastal locations because heavy waves are eroding the shoreline.  The waves are there because normally sea ice prevents the formation of waves most of the year.  No longer.

The Syrian civil war was caused in part by a years long drought that led farmers to move to the cities.  That led to many refugees trying to get to safe countries.  That's a taste of the future.

Even those who profess to not believe climate change is real talk about mitigation rather than prevention.  They think that we should take steps to adapt.  Yes, of course.  Where we can.  Are you listening South Pacific nations?  Are you listening  South Florida?  I guess people in Manhattan can make the third floor of buildings the new entrances and work with Venetians on gondolas.

Of course, there will need to be technical fixes.  People are creating floating cities in the South Pacific for nations that will be underwater soon.

But one thing I haven't heard people talk about is lessons in civilization and community.  There are organizations working with indigenous peoples around the world to help sustain their languages and cultures.  Others working with poor farmers and others.  But their stories don't generate clicks for new media they way violence and fear-mongering do.  But we do hear after many disasters that communities pull together and help each other.  After fires, floods, mass shootings, there are outpourings of volunteers and of money to help the victims.  But what happens when everyone is the victim?

Tapping Into People's Natural Goodness

We need to learn how to tap into that love we see in times of crisis. The love parents have for their children.  The camaraderie we're told soldiers feel during war.  What is that and how do we grow it? We need to study it and find out how it works, who does it, and how to nurture those kinds of reactions in the hearts and minds of everyone.  What is the difference between those who come after disasters to loot and those who come to help?

Disaster movies are a very popular genre, but how many teach people community survival behaviors?  (That's a sincere question, because those aren't my top choice of entertainment.)

We have a Department of Defense (which should more truthfully be called the Department of War as it once was.)  And we also need a Department of Compassion, or, if you prefer, a Department of Peace.  Humans are capable of both good and bad.  Under the right conditions - child rearing, schooling, national values, and role models - more people will be peaceful, caring, and happy.  Under the wrong conditions, more divided and violent.

This week research was announced that attempted to find a homosexual gene.  It's more complicated than that.  Genetic disposition for sexuality, they say, is all over the genome, and environment plays a role as well.  I suspect the same is true for sainthood as well as sociopathy.

The Netflix series Mindhunter, which added new episodes recently, follows two FBI agents, helped by a university professor, who decide that interviewing imprisoned serial killers to find out why they do what they do.  That start out doing this secretly and are chastised when they're found out.  But they already have enough insights for catching other serial killers that the Bureau lets them continue.  In a basement office.  The most persuasive argument is something like "who knows why serial killers do what they do better than serial killers?"

We should be doing the same thing with mass shooters (and I'm sure there are people who are already doing this.)(I looked.  Didn't find much, but here's a 2018 article about a project tthat was going to start interviewing mass shooters.)  (And here's Dr. Jillian Peterson, the head of that study doing a Ted Talk May 2019.)

And I suspect they will find out the same thing that the Mindhunters learned (this is based on a true story):  that they all had serious self image problems due to absent and/or abusive parents.

This trail leads to lots of different areas - rights of parents, education of parents, birth control, abortion, foster care issues . .  just as starters.  The Department of Compassion - as I write this I realize we need both the Departments of Compassion and Peace - one more on the individual scale and one on the national scale.  But they overlap, because ultimately, 'nations' don't make war, the individual people in control of the military make war.

That sentence took an abrupt turn and never got finished.  The Department of Compassion would work on all these micro and macro environmental factors that impact how kids learn to feel good about themselves and how they learn to work with and for others instead of against them.

That's enough for today.  Remember that every human you encounter is, surprise, a human, with a whole history trailing them.  And a mind, and feelings, and a sense of self.  Imagine what that person doesn't know about you, and there's just as much you don't know about them.  Try to connect to all those people in a way that makes them feel better for having interacted with you.  Just a genuine smile as you pass someone on the street.  And I guarantee you'll discover the people around you have rich and interesting lives that will make you feel better too.  99.9% of the people you pass are NOT people you need to fear.  (I just made up that number.  I don't know if it's true.  I suspect it's definitely not if you are a person of color or a woman.  But even the people who might do someone harm, probably won't do harm most of the time or to most of the people they encounter.)


Glossary
*nieta is Spanish for granddaughter

We Did A Little Hike The Other Day

We've been buying State Park parking passes every year.  It's sort of like signing up for a gym.  I want to get my money's worth, so I have to get out into the woods regularly.  On the other hand, I don't like driving a lot.

But Prospect Heights isn't far.

Photos are a bit fuzzy.  I'm going to blame it on low clouds and high humidity.

Devil's club berries.

Fireweed's almost gone.  

And at a couple of points the trail was obscured by the grasses.  

It's good to be back in Alaska.  

Warmish, Smoky, Then Rain. First Raspberry

They're early.  Like most things this summer.  But I'm late on a lot of things I need to do, so that's all you get today.

More Cordoba and French Bike Riders

Here are some more Cordoba shots from the Free Tour as well as a few others.

The building in the middle was pointed out as the narrowest building in South America -  3 meters at the widest.  It had to do with land issues.  It’s got some businesses and apartments.

These folks were standing there, but the tour moved on before I could find out exactly who they were and why they were there.  Are these Anonymous supporters?  Don’t know.

The cabildo is the government building.  It was in a back section of this building wh ere the  detention and torture center was located.

This is the Museo de Marques de Sobremonte. It’s an old building you can find out more (with video) here.

This is a much newer apartment (I think) building we passed a few times.

This is  Paseo de Buen Pastor and  was once, as  described by Lonely Planet  ‘a combined chapel, monastery, and women’s prison.’  That sounds like a strange and suspicious combination of institutions.  Today, though it is a community center with lots of activities for people of all ages.


Below are the leftovers of the tour who had lunch together at the place the tour guide recommended.  It turned out to be us two US folks and four French folks.  The two on the right were wrapping up a year long bike trip that started in Calgary and took them to LA down the west coast.  From there they flew to Ecuador and biked down to Argentina.  They were on their last leg - to Buenos Aires.  They met the two French women, who are studying civil (I think) engineering in Argentina for five months., on the tour.

  

 That’s enough for now.  We’re in the Cordoba airport waiting for our last inside Argentina flight - to Buenos Aires.  We were supposed to leave at 5;m, but the flight is delayed to 6:35pm now.   We’ll have three more full days in Argentina, then we fly back to LA for a couple of days before finally making it home.  I’m ready for an Alaskan vacation.  When we left I told people that while I hated to leave Alaska in the summer, I didn’t wish them rain or a bad summer at all.  But I certainly wasn’t wishing them the record high temperatures and fire  smoke, or the failed veto override.

Though reading the Alaskan complaints about the heat reminded me of how Alaskans scoff at Outsiders who complain about the cold.  True Alaskans should be able to handle heat as well as cold without whining.  (I know, easy for me to say, I wasn’t there.).

Güemes Died, The Clouds Cried

Martín Miguel de Güemes (8 February 1785 – 17 June 1821) was a military leader and popular caudillo who defended northwestern Argentina from the Spanish during the Argentine War of Independence.

If you read the quote from Wikipedia  carefully, you might realize that today is the 198th anniversary of his death.  And it’s a national holiday in memory of his heroic fighting against the Spanish and British. (At least that’s how he’s portrayed here and now.  So our Spanish class doesn’t start til tomorrow. So we went off to do errands and some sightseeing.  

Our host went with us at the beginning because she was walking the dog.  First stop the emergency room to get J’s stitches out.  But they only do emergencies and it’s a holiday.  Fortunately our host was with us and will try to make an appointment tomorrow.  We went on and she went back with the dog.  

Claro - the kind of phone chip we have - was closed for the holiday, so we still don’t have cell service.  Then by subway to Plaza de Mayo.  Our first time in the SUBTE (subway) and we had to figure out how to tap our card to get thru the turnstile.  

Subway is easy, clean, and fast.  But that could be because it’s a holiday.  The train we returned on was brand new, or so it seemed.  People come down the aisle and put little packages on people’s laps - a bunch of pocket tissue packets one time, pens another - and once they’ve done the car they walk back to collect a fee or the item.  I didn’t notice anyone buying, but people were nicely handing them back.  

I had my big camera with me today.  I also have my old Powershot since I can’t download from my phone yet.  It’s nice to have a piece of equipment I’m completely familiar with and it’s much easier than dragging my big camera out of the bag in the rain.  I used it for one picture, inside the Cathedral.  

Subway and rain pictures first.

The Cabildo - 

The Cabildo de Buenos Aires was the site of Spain's colonial administration in the city. Originally constructed from adobe and thatch in 1580, the current building was constructed over the second half of the 18th century, witnessed the Argentine Revolution in 1810, and served as an important administrative building during the first century of Argentine independence. MuseumThe building now houses the National Museum of the Cabildo and the May Revolution, and displays original artefacts and documents as well as interactive exhibits on the Spanish colonial era, the British invasions of 1806 and 1807, and the early days of independence. The museum was renovated in 2016, and now includes access to the former jail and more historic documents.

And then the Cathedral.

And then the Rosario - where Evita Peron spoke to the people from the balcony.  (There were two different balconies, but this one is more in the middle.

But mostly it rained today.  

Winter starts in a few days, but I know it can’t get too cold because there are palm trees and banana trees all over.

Denali Day Two - More Bears, Some Ducks, Weather Change

We've been comparing how little snow there was this year compared to last year.  But now that I've checked last year's posts, it's clear.  Yes, last year was a heavy snow year and this year it was lighter and warmer.  But last year we were there May 3 and  May 4  and this year May 17 and 18.
You can go to the links to see the differences.

After Friday's magnificent day, Saturday gave us a contrast.  Clouds started coming in and by the time we were walking back up from the Teklanika bridge, the first drops began.  But even a rainy day in Denali is a treat.  So here are a few more pictures.

After a few caribou driving to Savage River (where the paved road ends) we (and many others) got to watch this bear fairly close to the road.

There were lots more caribou throughout the drive.  Saturday we were pretty much headed for Teklanika.  This is a campground 30 miles into the park with an overview and lots of bathrooms.  It's a stop for the tourist buses, which don't start running until tomorrow.  Well, that turns out to be not completely true.  There were tan guided tour buses that were running pretty frequently.  In any case, the Denali road is normally closed to private cars at Savage River.  But in the spring, as they clear the road of snow and repair any damage from winter, they open the road - up to Teklanika.  So it's a chance to drive in and stop where you want and watch animals, hike, bike, picnic.  Whatever.  Friday we'd hiked the short Savage River trail (one mile each way.)  It's a loose, but we only did the west side because there was a big glaciated spot that blocked the trail on the east side.  We met people who'd climbed around the ice, but we aren't that young any more.  

We did stop at a pullout about mile 25 and I rode the bike a couple of miles, until there were trees on both sides (and it's harder to spot nearby bears.  Though I don't think there's ever been a biker attacked on the road, but I'm not sure.  Very few people - under five I believe - have been killed by bears in Denali.

So after the bike ride we got to the first small pond before the Teklanika campground which had a Northern Shoveler floating around.  (I'm having trouble focusing my Canon Rebel on objects in the distance, so that's why this bird is so small.  If you enlarge it, you'll see how out of focus it is.  I need to work on this problem.  The manual is challenging and I haven't found good sites on this particular problem online yet.)

The next pond, just past the campground, had a bufflehead pair and a pintail duck.

The Teklanika overlook area was packed with cars - so much so people were parking on the road.  And lots of people had their bikes.  And on the hill not far from the bridge (about a mile away) there was a wildlife ranger (Jake) monitoring a bear sow with two cubs that was about 150 yards below the road.  Well, he said, that they try not to intervene with the wildlife, leaving them as free as possible.  Normal distance to be kept between people and bears is minimum of 300 yards, but since the bears were down below in the river bed and they'd been there for several hours, he wasn't concerned.  Though earlier there'd been about 40 people including barking dogs (they can be on the road on a leash) so he had to quiet down the people.

They were digging for roots he said.  The vast majority of their diet is vegetation in the park.

Here you can see the mom digging.

She had her head down and her claws in the earth most of the time.

Jake noted that the cubs were making noises.  Eventually they get hungrier than roots satisfy, and they wanted to nurse.  I wouldn't know that that is what they are doing in this picture if he hadn't told me.  She's lying down and they're on top of her.









As we headed back up the hill to the car, the first drops began to fall.  Here are some contrasts to yesterday's pictures.


Here's from the viewpoint where I took the pictures of Denali.   This was an idea I had 40 years ago after our first several trips to the park - a postcard of what Denali looks like to most tourists.

Here's yesterday's view from the same spot.  You can't even see the foothills.

It wasn't all just a grey mass, mostly we could see more.

And for a contrast with yesterday's ptarmigan picture, here's one whose feathers are still more in the winter than summer phase.

And here's yesterday's ptarmigan picture again.  Much more brown, less white.

Here's one from yesterday.  I didn't put it up because she was mooning me.  But so you can see the contrast I'll post it here.

We only saw one moose yesterday - while I was on the bike and didn't have my camera.  And it was so close to the road I didn't want to dawdle.  And we see moose often enough in Anchorage, even on our street and chewing on the trees in front of our house, that moose are not that big a deal.  In fact, Friday, the first animal we saw on the tip was a moose beside the Glenn Highway still in the Anchorage city limits.

Nevertheless, they're still magnificent animals, and seeing them in more natural settings like this is still a thrill.  And this rain-dulled picture is pretty much what it looked like up on the hill.  There were a couple other moose with it.

We're back home with lots to do