Flocking Bohemian Waxwings, Signs of Moose

I went out yet one more day to shovel snow off the driveway.  It feels like I'm doing this every day.  The sun was nice and the air so crisp and clean.

Here's a spot in the snow in front where a moose must have crashed for a while.  The footprints are all around the mountain ash tree.  (Where the Bohemian Waxwings end up on the video.)




And while I was clearing snow, a flock of Bohemian Waxwings flew in.  I love to watch how they swarm.  If you make the video full screen and watch closely, you can see them most of the way from the beginning in the lower right then as they fly out around the tree and then back on the left to roost in the tree.  It was so quiet that I figured I needed some music, so I borrowed some from Waldemaar "The Bohemian" Music Video.  His has much different and much better video, unless, of course, you're a bird freak.  I hope he doesn't mind my borrowing.

"as a scientist, I should not be undertaking research on something if I didn't understand the ramifications of what the results could do."

Alexandra Morton is a biologist who moved to a small British Columbia community to study orcas,  who writes a blog about salmon.  From her blog bio:

In 1987, the first salmon farm appeared and I thought it was a good idea. I hoped it would help bring more people to the area and keep the little town alive. But from the beginning there were problems. First, the government put the farms where they promised us they would not. Then the farmers used underwater sounds that drove the whales I was studying away (Morton and Symmonds 2002). Then there were bacterial epidemics (furunculosis), toxic algae blooms (Heterosigma), escaped Atlantic salmon (Morton and Volpe 2002) and then the sea lice epidemics began (see references below).

From the beginning, I expected government to recognize the problems and explain how they would remedy them, but I was naive. Today, Echo Bay has no school and very few residents. There are 27 Norwegian fish farms operating and the companies are loosing money. They do not hire local people and use drugs to try and deal with their pathogen problems with no notification to the local people who fish for food in the area.

Today she has a post that begins:

I just finished reading the approximately 450 pages of transcript of the last three days of the Cohen Inquiry. I highly recommend them, they can be found at www.cohencommission.ca Go to Calendar and Transcripts and see dates December 15, 16, 19.

The basic message I got from reading the post was:   the hearings have shown that the Canadian government has been overseeing the fish farms with the aim of making sure information that could jeopardize the business was unavailable.  

Her blog post is a summary of the transcript with some quotes such as:

McDADE (Lawyer examining aquaculture): … as of the 24th, senior people in DFO were aware that the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo was finding ISA?
DR. MILLER: By the 24th, they were aware of my work, yes.
MCDADE: And so when statements were coming out from DFO after November 24th, and in particular, the statement from the Minister on December 2nd, saying they were not aware of any ISA, that would have been a surprise to you, wasn't it?
DR. MILLER: Yes, it was, but nobody was speaking to me at that point.

ROSENBLOOM: Did he say anything in terms of how positive findings might be consequential in terms of our relations with the Americans?
DR. MILLER: I think he just intimated that I, as a scientist, would not understand the complexities of these issues and that, as a scientist, I should not be undertaking research on something if I didn't understand the ramifications of what the results could do.

I'm not a fish expert.  I haven't read the whole report, and so I'm not really sure what all this means.  But,  if you're interested in fish policy, fish farming, or even the openness of the Canadian government, this is well worth your reading.   The sense conveyed in Miller's blog is that the government is suppressing data that would jeopardize commercial fish farming. 

Thanks to David Ottness' FB post for this.  Again, Andrea Morton's post is here.

Alaska Governor Should Borrow Bradley Manning to Help Release Palin Emails

The ADN reported Wednesday that Governor Sean Parnell's office was given more time  to release the rest of the Sarah Palin emails that have been sought in various freedom of information requests. 

An extension, until at least Feb. 20, was requested by Randy Ruaro, deputy chief of staff to Gov. Sean Parnell, in October. Ruaro maintained that without an extension, responding to requests for the emails would "substantially impair" the other functions of the governor's office, as well as the ability to properly and thoroughly review the messages.

It's taking quite a while.  Palin left office in July 2009 and it's already 2012 now.  Meanwhile Bradly Manning is sitting in prison for releasing a large number of government documents to Wikileaks.  He knows how to do this and I'm sure he's got some spare time. 

Perhaps the Governor's office could show some initiative and a little uncharacteristic cooperation with the Feds by working out a deal to let Manning help his office get the Palin emails out.  
  

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/04/2245579/state-gets-more-time-to-release.html#storylink=cpy

Websites As Art And 3 Other Specialized Artish Blogs

 Can you sell a website as a piece of art?  See Newrafael below.  How about interactive websites?  Newrafael again and myoats allow you to participate in what's on the screen.  The other two are specialized blogs one focusing on tentatcles, the other on beauty and decay. 

From Tentacle Spectacle Dec. 29,2011

Tentacle Spectacle There's a new picture posted each day.  The subtitle is:

"If it involves tentacles in art or nature, it's here."

And each picture, sometimes three a day, has tentacles.














Myoats.com - this is a site where you can make your own geometric designs. Some of the 'favorites' are very representational and I'm not sure how they did them. A couple, you can see are mirror imaged. The one above I did after trying out a few times and watching the tutorial videos.  Go in and try some yourself.

These are screenshots of 5 dynamic, interactive pieces at newrafael

RR(newrafael)   This site sells digital art pieces and the medium is whole websites if I understand it right.  The pieces are in motion.  Here's a sampler of a few of about 40 pieces, and of course, the sampler has no motion or sound (I'm listening to lapping waves of one piece as I write this.) There's a discussion of digital art on the internet vs. more traditional media.  There's even a contract for purchasing an art object website - here is part of it:

Obligations Collector: The Collector shall:

• renew the domain, being part of the Artwork, always in time in order to have the Artwork accessible;
• as long as it is technically feasible, keep the website, being part of the Artwork, on-line and accessible to the public;
• always show the Artwork on the latest and most appropriate technologies;
• ask Artist through written consent if the Artwork is to be exhibited in commercial spaces, being any space other than public and art spaces;
• ask Artist through written consent if the Artwork is to be reproduced for purposes other than catalogues and art magazines, such as reproductions for advertisements, movies, photo’s, merchandising etc.; and
• not use the Artwork for the promotion of any services or products of any kind.

If you go to the artwork sites (this is really a collection of websites) be sure to look at all the links along the top of the page.  And play with your mouse.  Some are definitely interactive, others I wasn't sure about.


Beautiful/Decay  - This one is hard to pin down, but I'd say that beauty and decay can be found in most of the posts.  It's connected to a publication described on the website:

 Publication

From Beatiful/Decay

Beautiful/Decay began as a humble, black and white, DIY photocopied ‘zine while founder Amir H. Fallah was just 16. Over time, the publication grew into a full color, internationally distributed magazine. Today, Beautiful/Decay takes the form of a limited edition, hand numbered, advertising free art book series. Though Beautiful/Decay has grown into an internationally recognized design-driven lifestyle brand, the publication still carries that same youthful sense of rebellion and experimentation that influenced the very first issues.

The post that caught my attention was on the best of street art.   Perhaps street art, including graffiti, is one of the original 'occupy' movements. 

Thinking, Boxes, Smart Phones, and Grandmothers (Really)

The phrase "Thinking outside the box" is so overused, that as soon as someone says it, I know they're NOT doing it.

The only way a truly active brain can use a phrase like this today is to play off of it, showing that you know it's now a hackneyed cliche. [Taco Bell] Burger King's "Think outside the bun" does it with a b[p]un.

And Vitamindesign's "Outside the Box" project does it by adding new meaning to the term by using it literally in their clever combination of packaging and instruction manual to help older folks better adapt to smart phones.

Watch this video! It will remind you that there is always a better way to do things.



Out of the box - book from Vitamins on Vimeo.

I think this shows great ingenuity.  It shows people thinking about who their potential customers  are.  But did they actually sell phones in these boxes?  From the website it wasn't clear so I emailed them.  Here's what Adrian emailed back:

As for the project, it was a research project, to learn and discover insights and opportunities. This means that the outcome was a prototype, not a fully manufactured product, however Samsung, or any other manufacturer could potentially make this if they saw fit. It was a small part of a much bigger research project in to how we could provide existing smartphone services to ageing adults. 

So what can you do better today - for clients at work, for your spouse or kids, for yourself?

Quadrantids Meteor Shower Tonight

I've been getting hits from people googling 'meteor shower tonight.'   They get to an old meteor shower post, so I thought I should check out what's happening.


From ABC News:

If you're up early Wednesday morning and the weather is promising, bundle up and go outside. The Quadrantid meteor shower, the first of 2012, should be at its best between 3 a.m. and dawn, Eastern time. If you get lucky, you may get a silently satisfying sky show.

Screenshot from Space.com

FOR ALASKANS that means 11 pm.  One site says it ends at about 7 because of dawn.  So it might last longer here.  The sky is clear out now (7:30pm).  But it's nippy (-4˚F). 



 Space.com has more, including this:

While the plus side of this annual shower is its ability to produce fireballs, and its high hourly rates, the downside is its short peak. Quadrantids has an extremely narrow peak, occurring over just a few short hours. The Quadrantids are also well known for producing fireballs, meteors that are exceptionally bright. These meteors can also, at times, generate persistent trails (also identified as trains).
Those living in the northern hemisphere have an opportunity to experience a much better view of the Quadrantids, as the constellation Boötes never makes it above the horizon in the southern hemisphere. This is great for those living in North America, much of Europe, and the majority of Asia.

The Christian Science Monitor has a long article.  Here are some excerpts:

The Quadrantids (pronounced KWA-dran-tids) provides one of the most intense annual meteor showers, with a brief, sharp maximum lasting but a few hours. Adolphe Quetelet of Brussels Observatory discovered the shower in the 1830s, and shortly afterward it was noted by several other astronomers in Europe and America.

The meteors are named after the obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis the Mural or Wall Quadrant (an astronomical instrument), depicted in some 19th-century star atlases roughly midway between the end of the Handle of the Big Dipper and the quadrilateral of stars marking the head of the constellation Draco. The International Astronomical Union phased out Quadrans Muralis in 1922.  .  .

. . . Observers located in the western portions of North American will have lower rates but will also have the opportunity to see Quadrantid 'earthgrazers,'" Lunsford added. "Earthgrazers are meteors that skim the upper portion of the atmosphere therefore lasting much longer than normal and producing long trails in the sky. These meteors can only be seen when the radiant lies close to the horizon. As the radiant rises, the meteor paths will become shorter with shorter durations."

Pho Jula - Decent Lunch Option

J got me out of the house early Monday to see an 11am movie (more on that in another post) then to get a toilet tank flapper and a new ice chopper (the old one broke after a month) and check on garage door blankets.  So, it was home or out for lunch.  It was still officially a holiday and we weren't sure who was open.  Spaghetti got into my head so I drove over to Arctic and International Airport Road to see if Villa Nova were open.  They weren't.

But next door was a Thai-Lao place with Phos.  (Most, if not all, Thai restaurants in Anchorage have Lao connections.  People know Thai food, as Refugee Nation pointed out here a couple of years ago, but they don't know Lao food, or even Laos, so Laos in the US often hide behind a Thai facade.  I just realized the potential confusion there - Laos - La-os - two syllables, the country, and Laos - laoz - one syllable, the people.)

It had that bleak Anchorage strip mall in winter look (not a lot better in the summer)  outside, that we've learned is not necessarily a good indicator of what's inside.

I'd assumed Thai Kitchen would be closed for the New Year holiday since the University is still closed.  But here we were and I didn't want to drive around looking for something else, and we should always be ready to break our routines, so we went in. 

It was a pleasant surprise.  Lunch specials looked like the best deal.  While I think $9.99 is a lot for lunch - I can make a pretty good lunch at home for significantly less - there was a lot of food.  This was going to be a dinner. 

Tom Kha soup, green curry had green beans in it, spring rolls (I ate one already), salad, rice. 

I liked the green curry and soup, though neither had much of a spicy kick.  A good deal, though too much food really.  J took her pad thai leftover home. 




Our waiter, Phas, told us they'd been open about seven months.  That it took a long time and a lot of work to clean the place before they could open.  Phas came to the US at age 5 and has lived a number of places around the US, including living through Katrina near New Orleans. 

Does Peace Corps Matter? Reflections 40 Years Later

Some time last year the head of Friends of Thailand (a group of former Peace Corps Volunteers) emailed members of Thai 19 (the 19th group of Peace Corps Volunteers to go to Thailand) to ask for something written to go into a book for the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps Thailand in 2012.

I volunteered.  It took a while to finally do it, but eventually it got done.  I'd like to share it here.  Especially with people serving in the Peace Corps somewhere around the world right now.  Have a great year.

A Few Thoughts from a Thai 19 Peace Corps Volunteer

The bus hurtled around mountain curves through the black night, the red dirt road and dirty green jungle revealed by the ghostly glow of lightening. Then the rattling of every part of the bus would be swallowed by the head piercing boom of the thunder. After a week in Bangkok, then a few more days in Chiangmai with the other volunteers assigned to the North, I was now wondering if Iʼd survive to reach my teaching assignment in Kamphaengphet. After all the dialogues weʼd memorized and the lesson plans weʼd written and practice-taught to each other, the real thing was about to begin. If I survived this bus ride through the mountains.    “Mai ben rai” I chanted. My favorite Thai phrase covering a lot of English situations in the general category of ʻno big deal.ʼ Mai ben rai, mai ben rai until the many grisly ways this bus ride could end faded and I fell asleep.

That was the end of phase one - preparing to be a Peace Corps volunteer. Weʼd spent two summers in DeKalb, Illinois learning Thai, learning TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), how to eat hot food, dance the ramwong, and survive temperatures and humidity in the high 90s. Back then - our first summer training was 1966 - Peace Corps was training college students between their junior and senior years, in hopes of snagging them before other recruiters did. That was when students got jobs when they graduated, and when the army was drafting males for Vietnam. The Peace Corps wanted to get us first. Then we returned to school, graduated, and returned to a second summer of training. While we lost a fair number of people during the school year, everyone who went to Thailand stayed the full two years (except one volunteer who was kicked out because she got married) and about a third of us stayed longer. Because we had one summer of training before our last year of college, I was able to become friends with several Thai students at UCLA and even to learn to play (badly) one song on a kind of Thai gong the ethnomusicology department had.

I could write volumes about the mistakes I made and less about the things I learned, but as someone whoʼs been a returned Peace Corps Volunteer for 40 years now, perhaps what I can contribute most is perspective on the burning questions most volunteers have: Am I doing any good here? After all that work, has anyone besides me gotten anything out of my being here? So let me tell you a couple of stories.

I had a student, letʼs call him Somsak. He was a bright student, but very poor. He was awkward with others and didnʼt have the fun loving demeanor and smiling face of most Thais. I helped Somsak study for national exams that would qualify him to go to an excellent private high school in Bangkok that would improve his chances of getting into college. He passed and was accepted at the school. When Iʼd first arrived in Bangkok, the well-to-do family of one of my UCLA Thai friends ʻadoptedʼ me and insisted I stay with them when I was in Bangkok. And Khun Mae and Khun Paw truly took care of me. I asked if Somsak could stay with them in Bangkok, and they agreed he could stay in the servant quarters when we was going to school. I left money for the schooling before leaving Thailand when my assignment ended.

But it didnʼt take long for me to be certain that Iʼd really screwed up. Somsak wasnʼt going to be happy in the servant quarters. How was he going to handle the much more affluent kids at this school? How was he going to get along with the family members? He wasnʼt a sweet and easy-to-like kid. It took a bit to get past his armor and tease out his sly humor. And I regretted what I now regarded as me playing God. After a few years, writing letters in Thai became too difficult and the family had never said anything about Somsak. My connections to Thailand faded.

Flash forward. Iʼd first gone back to Thailand 17 years after I left, with my wife and two kids. I went to my Bangkok familyʼs home, but it had been replaced by a shopping mall and I couldnʼt find out where they were.    The reception in Kamphaengphet was fantastic - as though I hadnʼt left. My family was taken in like, well, family. Somsakʼs name never came up. I had occasion to return to Thailand a few more times over the years, and one time I asked about Somsak. I was told he lived in Bangkok and worked for the post office but no one had his phone number and I returned to Anchorage (my home in the US since 1977) without getting to see him, and not completely unhappy about that since I still was sure my meddling had led to no good.

About a month after we got home, I got a phone call. It was Somsak calling from Bangkok. Heʼd heard Iʼd asked after him and was very sorry he missed me. He went on to tell me how grateful he was for everything Iʼd done. It had changed his life for the better and he was saving money to set up a scholarship to help poor students like himself. He was still close to my Bangkok family. Wow, Hollywood couldnʼt have written a sweeter ending. We did get to meet in person a few years later when I attended the 45th Anniversary of Peace Corps Thailand. He also remembered the first and last name of Khun Jim, another volunteer from my group who was at the anniversary, whoʼd been in Maesod and whom he had first met in 1969 at the English Summer camp weʼd held in Lan Sang National Park in Tak.

On one of these trips I also got to meet another former student Somprasong, who was the headmaster of a school in the very remote border town of Umphang (past Maesod). The night before, at a dinner in Kamphaengphet, the regional supervisor had complained that Somprasong had scored first in all of Thailand in the test for school headmasters and could have had any school, but heʼd chosen this remote little village school. Visiting the school the next day, I was totally amazed. It was the most beautiful school Iʼd seen in Thailand. The grounds were full of trees and flowering plants - every one had the name of the student who was tending it - and he had dormitories for 200 students. Most of the students were hill tribe kids. When he first took over the school heʼd gone into the mountains to ask villagers why their children werenʼt going to high school. It was too far away, they couldnʼt afford to pay for housing. Somprasong managed to raise the funds from the local businesses and the international NGOʼs (non-governmental organizations) in the area working at the Burmese refugee camp. He said it was all due to his ability to speak English to raise money, which, he said, had never been an interest until he took English with me. He was upset because the supervisor wanted him to leave for a bigger school. We talked a long time about how to deal with this.

About a year later I got an email from Khun Jim, who lived in Bangkok, with a link to a Bangkok Post article. “Is this your student?” he asked? Somprasong had been named one of four Thai teachers of the year.

I mention these two stories not to brag, because, really, what I did was typical of what all Peace Corps volunteers do as a routine part of their assignments. My actions werenʼt any more noteworthy than anyone elseʼs. The only difference is that I had the chance to go back and find out, 40 years later, that some of what I did actually had tangible positive results. Even, in the case of Somsak, where I thought Iʼd made a huge mistake.

I know these experiences were not exceptional because at the 45th Anniversary of Peace Corps Thailand, other former volunteers gave similar accounts of learning that their name still lives on because of things they did years ago, things theyʼd long forgotten, which had turned out to have had a significant impact on a person or on a whole community.

Measuring the impact of Peace Corps volunteers by the number of students taught or wells dug may have some meaning, but the real impact is in peopleʼs hearts.    And the way to know about those changes is through stories, not statistics. So I offer these stories for people who want to know if the Peace Corps is doing any good. And particularly for current volunteers who wonder whether they are doing any good. Yes, I assure you, that you are having an impact that will grow over time. Hang in there and yes, take that extra effort. People are watching and noticing and it will make a difference that you probably will never know about.

Happy New Year on a Sunny and Cold New Year's Day

A little photoshop to start the new year.  Clockwise from upper left:  original; cutout filter; colored pencil filter; and I'm not sure how the last one came about. 

Here's the view from our living room window.

And out back.

And the kitchen indoor/outdoor thermometer
showing a chilly -4˚F (-20˚ C) outside.

A Wabi-Sabi Home

I first became aware of 'wabi-sabi' last spring reading Lynn Schooler's  Walking Home [fixed the link, sorry] where he's writing about building a house in Juneau. 

The woods I was using - spruce and hemlock for the cabinets, fir for the timbers and frame of the house, rot-resistant cedar for the outside decks and siding - were soft woods, without the defenses against marring offered by hardwoods like oak and maple or “engineered” products like laminated bamboo.

But this was part of the plan.  In time, I hoped, day-to-day wear, weather, guests, and rambunctious children or grandchildren would eventually mark and smooth the various parts of the structure into what the Japanese call a wabi-sabi home.  At it’s simplest, sabi can be defined as the beauty that comes to physical things with the passage of time, such as the way an old wooden door weathers into striking colors and patterns, or the grip of a tool develops a glowing patina after years of respectful use.  Wa, the root of wabi, means “harmony” and connotes a life of ease within nature.  When applied to objects,  wabi-sabi  implies the beauty of simple practicality.  More important, the phrase carries a Zen overtone of living in the moment and accepting the inevitability of decay.  It might take decades, but years of good living would transform the assemblage of wood and concrete into a comfortable wabi-sabi  home, where my wife and I could grow old together graciously.  pp. 25-26

There's a lot packed into that.  The obvious is the idea of cherishing the scratches and dents as like a physical photo album of the family.  These marks are when Billy was 6 and tried to eat the door.  This reddish spot is from our 1st Thanksgiving when we spilled the cranberry sauce on the tablecloth. Marking a kid's growth on the wall is almost a movie cliche.

The positive flip side means not getting so hung up about making a spot or dent. 

But it goes deeper than just family history.  Schooler was building a not just a house, but a home that was going to last for generations.  Most people today build or buy homes as investments as well as places to live.  Our economic system promotes that by turning everything in our lives into commodities.  And by encouraging people to move around in pursuit of higher paying jobs.  Toward this end, the house is to be kept as 'new' as possible.

I copied down the passage, but left it to settle.  And then eight or nine months later my wife showed up with a book simply imperfect by Robyn Griggs Lawrence.  The subtitle is "revisiting the wabi-sabi house."

It's clear that wabi-sabi is more than marks in the dining room table and scuffs on the floor.  One of Lawrence's attempts to describe wabi-sabi:

...wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay and death.  It's simple, slow and uncluttered - and it reveres authenticity above all.  Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores;  aged wood, not Pergo;  rice paper, not glass.  Minimalist wabi-sabi reveres age and celebrates humans over involnerable machines.  It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the marks that time, weather and use leave behind.  It reminds us that we are all transient beings - that our bodies and materials world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came.

We'd learned about feng-shui while we lived in Hong Kong before it came to be hip in the U.S.  So I look at books like this with caution.  They offer us a glimpse of a view of the world from another culture.  That's good.  But we shouldn't think we understand it just from this one book.  After all, how wabi-sabi can a book with a bar code on it be?

I grew up in a family where things were to be treated with care and respect.  Wabi-sabi was not in anyone's vocabulary or world view.  On the other hand,  only a few of my grandparents' possessions survived Nazi Germany so there was always the understanding that mere things were transitory and not to be overly valued.

It seems that in the end there's a balance between caring for things so that they last, yet recognizing that things age with use and to accept and cherish those age marks. Including those on my wabi-sabi body.

The last day of the year seems to be a good one to wrap one's head around the idea of wabi-sabi.  A good time to consider how things have aged this year and how we'll think about them next year. 

I also have to mention that Schooler's marriage never got wabi-sabi.  His wife left pretty early on.