Taking Advantage of My Air Drop Working Again

 My phone asked me to log in with my Apple ID today.  On a whim, I tried Air Drop after and it worked.  So, in what I hope is a long window, I'll put up some pictures.  

Grow North is the farm in Mountain View where the Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service of Anchorage Catholic Social services grows food for the summer and operates a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with once a week pick ups and sells fresh vegetables and some baked goods as well during the week.  You can't get much fresher food in Anchorage unless it's from your own garden.  

The garlic and the picture of the farm are from last week.  

This week's box includes:

• Classic cauliflower,
• Crunchy kohlrabi
• Unique malabar spinach,
• Tasty bok choi,
• And some lovely sage for the herb of the week!

From the email that CSA subscribers get:

"Malabar spinach seems like it would retain similarities to that of regular spinach. The plant uses the name spinach in it, yet the ironic part of that the two could not be more different. Malabar spinach grows on a vine, granting it the nickname of vine spinach, whereas regular spinach grows from the ground (like many leafy greens)."  

This Goose Lake as I rode by  The ducks hang out here because its's  spot where people feed them.

On a completely different bike ride, out past Taku Lake, they've had the big blue sign up much of the summer, but the little one just popped up.  If you can't read the small sign (which I'm guessing you can't) it says, "We are upgrading the skatepark!"  It also says the construction budget is $1.2 million. I know we've had inflation over the years, but really?  $1.2 million for curved concrete?  Curious how much profit the contractor, also listed as "Street Maintenance and Grindline Skate Parks LLC" is making.  I realize they may be doing more than just the skateboard park, but it would be nice if there was a watchdog group which gathered all the data on summer construction projects and evaluated how the money was spent.  

In other construction news, the ACS fiber optic team was out on Crescent in Geneva Woods today.  We're on the Lake Otis side, but all this area is getting wired.  That bright orange wire is popping up all around the neighborhoods.  

And it's mushroom season.  Here are some making appearances in my yard.

Don't have time now to research these.  The orange one is an amanita - hallucinogenic and al over Anchorage now.  It can also make you really sick.  Not planning on eating any, though I'm waiting for the King Boletes and the Shaggy Manes.  

But I have started eating the olive bread I made last night.  It came out well.  The one in the back is a dill experiment.  (We got lots of fresh dill from Grow North Farm last week.)

Meanwhile J got off the phone this evening with her long time friend (does 45 years count as long time?) who lives on the Haleakala foothills in Maui.  Her house is far from Lahaina, but there is also a fire up in that neighborhood as well and she's been evacuated and is staying with friends.  If I recall right, Maui has its share of eucalyptus trees, and their oil burns easily.  May the fire be quickly extinguished and your house survive.  

Trying Out My Wife's New Phone's Camera In The Yard

 

My wife just upgraded her iPhone at High Fidelity (a phone repair store) because ATT has told her that her old phone isn't going to work much longer.  My interest was in how much better her camera might be than mine.  

Much.  

Here are some pics I took in the yard today.  

Something took a chunk out of this amanita.  Hope it had a good trip.

These are astrantia.

A small broccoli.

High Bush Cranberries

Lysimachia, or loose leaf.

Snapdragon

Snap pea.

These are sub-arctic tomatoes.  Tomatoes require a lot of work in Alaska - the nights drop down below 50˚ F (10˚C) and the fruit doesn't set.  But these are supposed to set down to 40˚F.   

I've got some inside the house, these in the old greenhouse in the backyard, and one plant out on the deck. There are some tomatoes in all three locations.  The earliest were in the house.  But these in the backyard greenhouse are doing ok.  There are lots and lots of flowers, but not that many tomatoes.  Will the redden before it gets too cool?  This is an experiment.  I ended up with lots of plants because every seed I planted seemed to sprout two or three plants.  That part was successful. I don't think I'll be gathering that many tomatoes in the end though.

These are still very small cherry tomato size.

Without a doubt, J's new camera is significantly better than my old one.

Avoiding The Dark Because It's Too Nice To Stay Inside

Yesterday, after watching Dark Money at the Bear Tooth, the sun came out.  Not so dark.  So I did a bike ride around the Universities bike trail.

South fork of Chester Creek runs through the UAA campus.

Goose Lake was telling the sky, Backacha.

And even though the sun was getting down low on the horizon, the amanita mascara were brightening up the groundscape everywhere.

And this morning when I took the kitchen scraps up to the compost, I picked my morning raspberries.

But I am still thinking about Dark Money.  It's not that I didn't know the basics - how Citizens United has made it possible for large corporations to invisibly support candidates with tons of unmarked campaign dollars - but the details of the movie's example of stealing seats in the Montana legislature is still disgusting.

I'm not sure how many hurdles would have to be overcome, but what's bothered me about politicians getting to office through various undemocratic shenanigans is that no one really gets punished.  Laws that get passed by such politicians stay passed, benefiting their shadowy supporters and screwing everyone else.  (OK, the guy in the movie got fined about $60,000, but I doubt his supporters didn't help him out there.  He didn't resign, though his term was up shortly.)

 Besides murky campaign help, I include gerrymandering as well. Today's ADN had a Washington Post  article about how a federal appeals court had found - once again - that North Carolina had illegally gerrymandered the state so that while Republicans had 53% of the vote they got 77% of the state's delegation to the US House.

“I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats,” said Rep. David Lewis, a Republican member of the North Carolina General Assembly, addressing fellow legislators when they passed the plan in 2016. “So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.”

He added: “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”

To say this out loud, in public, shows that he knows there's nobody who's likely to hold him accountable.

At least the judges understood that the Republicans had essentially stolen that last three elections and weren't inclined to let this next election go as is - despite how late it is in the election cycle.  After all, it's late because the Republicans kept appealing the decision and making more mischief.

"He said the court was leaning against giving the North Carolina legislature another chance to draw the congressional districts.
“We continue to lament that North Carolina voters now have been deprived of a constitutional congressional districting plan — and, therefore, constitutional representation in Congress — for six years and three election cycles,” Wynn wrote. “To the extent allowing the General Assembly another opportunity to draw a remedial plan would further delay electing representatives under a constitutional districting plan, that delay weighs heavily against giving the General Assembly another such opportunity.”

This sort of stuff is a threat to the whole idea of democracy.  The movie made it clear how corporations can set up shell organizations to hide money and then spend tons of money on last minute ads that lie about  and smear their anointed candidate's opponent.  And once they have them elected, the movie narrator said, there's no longer even the need to lobby, because they own that official.

I don't think removal from office, prison terms, even nullification of ill-gained legislation are too harsh a punishment for the both the corporate manipulators and their elected stooges.  And people like Rep. David Lewis.  These are domestic (well not all the corporate funders are necessarily domestic) terrorists, taking over our democracy.

Have some fresh raspberries.

Posts Are Piling Up While I'm Getting Other Things Done

The Amanitas are starting to pop out of the ground.  I've searched my blog here to find a post I did on the more mystical properties of the Amanita.  As I did that I found that four of the five  previous  posts with an Amanita were put up between August 6 and August 19.  One outlier was on July 15, 2016.  [The post with the most information - including the warnings of the dangers and the praises of the flights - is the first one you see in the link.  And there's one more that you need to click on "Next Posts" at the bottom to get to.  There are lots of mushrooms on those pages, plus other surprises.]

Here's one that's a little further along, with a budding one in the background.

These two little white mushrooms were poking up in the woodier area of our yard where I've been experimenting with a hugel.  This link will get you started on "hugelkulture".   I've been trying to solve two gardening issues at once:

• excess soil
• lots of trimmed branches

In hugel gardening (Hugel in German means hill), you take branches of various sizes and pile them up and then put soil on top of them.  You get a hill with lots of organic material and air pockets below.  Go to the link for details.  

The new steps in front exacerbated an old problem that began when I dug out soil along the garage so I could put in some insulation.  Dug up soil is not nearly as dense as soil that's been packed down for years.  Even after spreading some of the extra soil around the yard, I still had a garbage can full of dry sandy soil.  So now I've taken care of about 70% of the pile of branches and twigs and the garbage can full of dirt.  There's more dirt from where they dug to put in the new front steps - which expanded into areas I'd had plants before.  

Another interesting white mushroom.  In the past I would have spent an hour going through my mushroom field guide to tell you what these two mushrooms are called.  But this is a post about not having time to put up other posts.  It was only supposed to be a few picture - like throwing your back pack to the ground when you're being chased by a bear.  To keep you (and the bear) busy while I gain some ground. (Fortunately, despite being in a state full of bears, they aren't really interested in interacting with humans and so we've had relatively few encounters while on foot and usually they run as soon as they see us.)

I went to the Covenant House BBQ Thursday for lunch and to touch base.  I hadn't been to the new facility which is really nice.  I was a mentor for several young men there in the past.  But the last guy I mentored is still in my life and I decided he's enough.  And all this reminds me I want to follow up on the ADN's editorial about homelessness.  

After the BBQ I stopped by the election office to get forms to register voters, and the instruction booklet to remind me how to do it.  I became a registrar about four years ago when I was involved in a political campaign.  

I also voted early in our primary which is August 21.  There's a lot to write about that - particularly the governor's race.  I have posted a little on that with a video of Tom Begich explaining why his brother jumped into the race.  

Outside the election headquarters the flagpole had no flag.  I remember when raising and lowering the flag were like a ceremony every morning and evening.  It would be nice if we could listen to everyone else in the US and be heard by them in return so we could make the US a country we could all be proud of.  Where we'd all be proud of our flag again.  (I say this recognizing that we're in a time when those in power (who were in charge of the flag and what it represented) rode roughshod over much of the population - women, the poor, people of color, lgbtq folks, and everyone else who was other.  But I think many of those 'others' still believed that the United States was moving forward toward equality for all of them eventually.  And thus many of them also took the flag seriously.  (I could be wrong here.  I don't think the mainstream surveys ever asked questions like that - they took the answers for granted.)

Anyway, now that laws have given more people better tools to be treated fairly, those who had the power are feeling victimized.  Equality for them, apparently meant, that they still kept their special status and privilege.  

So here's my stalling post, since I've missed a couple of days already.  I've got Friday's Stand For Salmon post to put up and lots of other themes I want to pursue.  Hope you have a good Sunday.  

Mushrooms And Other Signs Of Rain

While July was the warmest month on record in Anchorage, ever, August, while not cold, has seen its fair share of rain.



The most easily identified Anchorage mushroom is this Amanita - Fly Agaric.  It opens up and looks like a small pizza (up to about 10 inches across).  Books say it's poisonous, but I've come to learn for Alaska mushrooms that tends to mean hallucinogenic.  I included some of that discussion in this 2007 post.

These are up to about six or seven inches across.  Wasn't quite sure what they were after a quick look through my field guide to mushrooms.

Some lichens and mosses growing on the deck.

This appears to be a polypore.  It was growing out of the ground, not on a tree.  It's about five inches across.

 Some raindrops on a nasturtium leave.

Reflections in a little puddle in a garbage can lid.

What I belief is a rosy russula.  The stem is also slightly pink.

The top and underneath of what I think is a tacky green russula.  It says they're good eating.

And the worms in the compost pile are doing their job.  As I turned things over with a shovel, I could feel the heat as nature turns our kitchen waste and leaves to compost.


Some posts that haven't gotten linked to the blogrolls that you might find interesting:

Walkable Cities Circa 1669
If Women Relate Their Own Gender Battles To Clinton's, She Wins Big
Man Goes
Who Invented Inflatable Tube Guys?

". . . and the pursuit of happiness."

Folks, let's remember that life isn't just about keeping up with every tweet and facebook post or hearing the minute details of every shooting or every insult from Trump before anyone else hears it.

Yes, we need to stay informed so we can take the actions citizens of a democracy need to take to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but we don't have to do that ALL the time.  Or we won't have time to live that life, take advantage of that liberty, and find that happiness.


We can take breaks and marvel at the amazing world around us. We can explore the amazing gills of an amanita mushroom closely

Then turn it over and look at the top.

Enjoy the beauty of a pair of red dianthus.

We can take pleasure in the things my mom collected that were light enough to pack home and that we can use, like this insect blocker as we put out food on the deck for a dinner on a delightful Alaskan evening.  It was still wrapped and sealed.  But my mom saw it somewhere and thought it would come in handy.  And it does.  Though the insects haven't been nearly as bad this summer as in the past.

So get away from those computers and smart phones and go natural for a while.  Talk to the people around you about what makes you happy.  Breathe the clean air.  Ride a bike.  Bake a bread.

A Slice of Wednesday in Anchorage

This isn't even everything I ended up doing, but it's a few snapshots of some things that were happening in Anchorage yesterday.

An Alaska Common Ground committee was planning for their September 18 public forum on Corrections at the Bagel Factory. 

Someone lost their cockatiel. 

New Student orientation tours were happening at UAA.

Senator Ted Stevens was memorialized at the Anchorage Baptist Temple. 

Some bicyclist were enjoying the sun at Goose Lake.

As was a grebe.

Even this amanita found a little sun.

The UAA Masters of Public Administration (MPA) program had a reception for new students.

A family rode their bikes for pizza at the mall on East Tudor.

And this bull moose strolled along the perimeter of McLaughlin Youth facility.  (I know, I already put him in, but this is a different picture.)