Citizen Group on Election Meeting Now with Assembly Attorney

I'm at the City Hall listening in a a meeting between the Citizens Group that ponied up the $1500 to pay for the recount of 15 precincts from the April Municipal election.

This post is being written on the fly.  So bear with they typos.  Plus I got to this meeting late because I had a previous meeting so I might have missed something that happened before I go here.  The meeting is still going on. 

People here include  most of the Citizens Group folks,  the Assembly attorney Julia Tucker, the Municipal Clerk-to-be Barb Jones, and two other employees of the clerk’s office who have worked on elections, and two Assembly members - Harriet Drummond and Dick Traini - and a representative of the ACLU.  








The citizens group presented a 110 page report of concerns and recommendations to make future municipal elections more secure.

It will be interesting to compare this report created by volunteers who paid, as a group, $1500 to have the election recounted, to the official report the Muni is paying up to $30,000 for.  I understand the two reports aren't reviewing exactly the same thing.  

There were six different topics identified in newsprint on the wall:

1.  Accuvote issues


2.  Protocols for
    a.  recount
    b.  ballot accountability
    c.  Precinct stamp to track ballots and questioned ballots by precinct
    d.  determining # of ballots by precinct
    e.  Training
    f.   procedure for hand count






3.  Title 28
    a.  ballot accountability report
    b.   determining # of ballots by precinct
    c.   Election worker/trouble shooter training
    d.   28.50.090  suspect qualifications
    e.   % of precincts that should be counted by hand
    f.    Recount - absentee and Questioned ballots 
          28.90.040C  needs to conform and make sense with the code
                 clarify “separate precinct” when they are pooled
4.  Questioned Ballots
    a.  to be counted by precinct or race
    b.  if precinct, then machine count or hand count?
    c.  what is NOT a questioned ballot?
    d.  numbering questioned ballots envelops
    e.  if by precinct, then
        1.  where voted
        2.  where actually reside

5.  Value Issues
    a.  Security, space, organization
    b.  Ballot bag review
    c.  Public observers/Tech for machine programming
    d.  Ballots should be numbered/ not stub only

I must say that the tone in this room is very open and people are listening to each other and asking serious questions about the problems being raised and how to resolve them in the future.   I've got some video which is not comprehensive, but which does give a sense of the tone of the meeting.

How Creatively Do You Lose Things? Disappearing In Plain Sight

I think I should get a prize for how well I lost this punch card to the Spenard Jazz Festival.  We came home from the poetry night.  I knew I'd put the card in my shirt pocket.  But the next day I couldn't find it.  I called the Organic Oasis to see if anyone had found the card.  No.  It wasn't in the car.  Not on my desk.  Not in the cubby hole I put things from my pockets. I couldn't find it anywhere in the house.  We at least got two punches used up of the five.   When I finally find things, I usually try to note where they were, so that I have a list of places where to look for, say, the keys, or other items that I can't find.  So, this is a note for all of you.  A place where a small card can disappear in plain sight. 

Yesterday I was sitting on the bottom stair putting on shoes.  Now look at this picture and see if you can find the punch card. 

You can see (above) why I couldn't find the card.  But let's look a little closer - which I was able to do when I was putting on my shoes.

All I can imagine is that I pulled the various pieces of paper out of my shirt pocket at the stairs and the card somehow flew out and, against the odds,  got caught in the molding.  There are a lot of things that I misplace, and fret that I should have been paying better attention.  I feel no guilt over this one.  It was just a freak event.  Now, if the card had slipped in there facing the other way around, I would have found it easily as you can see in the next picture.

I'll just have to chalk this up as a donation to a non-profit that does a lot with very little.

[UPDATE 10:00am:  In the comments, Barbara says she's reminded of Beethoven's Rage Over a Lost Penny, Vented in a Caprice.  So, here, via Fledermaus1990's Youtube you can vent over whatever you've lost today.





In an untitled piece in Notes (June 1950) retrieved through JSTOR, Jacob Avshalomoff writes that Rage over the Lost Penny, Vented in a Caprice is 

“a title made up by the first publisher, Diabelli, when he issued the work posthumously in 1828 from the same manuscript used by Dr. Hertzmann.”  

He goes on to say that Dr. Hertzmann’s edition after the manuscript resurfaced in 1945 is far superior to the Diabelli edition.  He also tells us more about the piece itself:

Dr. Hertzmann demonstrates quite convincingly that the piece was not a late work, but was probably sketched by Beethoven between 1795 and 1798.  He thinks that Beethoven did this as some preparatory “homework” for his frequent public demonstrations of ‘improvisation,” and that this is why the composer did not finish up the piece and have it published.”

Thanks Barbara for the tip here.

What New Faculty Need . . .

First, each new faculty member is unique, so each will have different needs, but I think they all need a support system of other good local faculty across disciplines and they all need ways to make the best use of the time they have.   They'll need some straight talk on how the tenure and promotion system works and how they can best prepare.  And an introduction to this campus and to Anchorage and Alaska.  Beyond that, some will want help with teaching issues and others with research issues. 

I met with some folks at UAA yesterday to talk about setting up an informal group of new faculty for the fall semester.  As someone who has taught for many years here, it seemed like something I could do.  I used to go to the new faculty reception and look for the most interesting new scholars and get a small group together at lunch.  It gave them a chance to meet people in other fields and me a chance to connect with interesting new scholars.   I went to the library after the meeting and pulled out some books just to see what others are saying on this topic.

The black book on the bottom was a nasty piece of work.  Anonymous - he said he had to be anonymous so he wouldn't lose his job - trashes everything about universities.  The faculty don't do any work, the students don't either, and the administrators are former faculty who couldn't teach or do research.  If it really was a faculty member, he would have been the kind he was complaining about.  But if it really was a faculty member, then the reason he had to be anonymous was because the book was so bad, no documentation, and totally unbalanced.  The tone starts off with a dedication to Hubert Humphrey:

"who, AFTER LOSING IN 1968, BECAME A PROFESSOR - AND THEREBY PROVED THE CORRECTNESS OF MY VOTE FOR RICHARD NIXON"

That's probably the most objective part of the book.   It was published in 1972.  The publisher, according to Wikipedia, 

Arlington House, Inc., (dba as Arlington House Publishers), now-defunct, was an American book publisher of jazz discographies, as well as conservative and anti-communist titles.

This book seems to be part of the early anti-public university movement.

I could tell you lots of things wrong with universities - but for the most part, faculty work incredibly hard.  Yes there are those who abuse the system, but the others more than make up for them.  So, I've got to write up a little more on this project.  If we can make it work, maybe next year we can bring in some other retired faculty to work with more faculty.  The other books have more useful content. 

When I first came here, all the faculty were pretty much in one building and people in different disciplines had offices near by and we all went to the faculty senate meetings.  But nowadays, it's harder for new faculty to find the people they ought to know in other fields.

Trouble Sleeping? Try These Dreams

I'm not sure how I got to this website.  I heard wind blowing and started looking through my tabs until I found it.  It wanted me to turn on my webcam.  I'm glad I did.  This is another amazing website that demonstrates yet another way a great imagination can play with this medium.  I don't want to say too much, but you do play a role in all this.  And when you think things are getting carried away, remember you are part of it all.

I checked.  You don't have to have the cam on, but it's cleverer if you do.  Click on the image to get to the website or here.  (The screen shot definitely does not do it justice.)

Summer (?) in Anchorage - Lots of Airport Runs

Technically, it's summer.  But except for the sun and relative warmth of half of April, it's been more like the summers of the late 70s and early 80s.  Cool, clouds, rain.  But it is summer - because summer is when you drop off and pick up friends at the airport a lot. 





Tuesday night I had two trips.  Here I am waiting at Arrivals while J goes inside to find our friends.

And still there waiting. . .








We got them home and then I went out again to drop another friend at the airport.





By now - on the way home again - it's almost 11pm, but it's summer and still light, even though it's been cloudy and raining all day.  Turning left at Lake Otis and Tudor.  Despite the strip malls and signage, I can still see the Chugach and all is well.

Packaging - Good, Bad, Ugly (Tofu, Bagels, Raisins, Dates)

There is a wide variety of terrible packaging - the worst offender being all the unnecessary plastic garbage that's so difficult to open and mostly just gets thrown away.  I've only picked four items for this post, I'm sure you can pick hundreds more.

We'll start with The Ugly.

Tofu containers.  Terrible!

These are so, so bad.  They're packed with water, which tofu needs.  But they're sealed with the water bulging over the top of the tofu.  So full that once you open them, the tofu is so high in the container, that you can't keep it under water without spilling it - to, from, or in the refrigerator.  If they made the container just a little higher than the tofu, it would make more sense.  There's a better a better way to package tofu waiting to be discovered. 

Costco bagels.  Do the people that designed this ever open Costco bagels?  Do the people at Costco who make these decisions ever open them?

The bagels are in a plastic bag which is sealed with a piece of scotch tape like stuff.  When the sealing machine works right, it says to tear the two ends apart and it opens.  But usually, like in this one (which is already opened) the tape isn't on right and there is only one way to open it - tear the bag open.  And even when the seal is on right, the tape isn't good for resealing.  Even though this picture is focused on the tape, you can't even see it.


The Bad

These raisins used to be in zip lock bags.  That was pretty good.  But they dropped that and added a piece of red tape to reseal the bags.

In theory this could work, but after resealing once or twice, the adhesive gets lazy.  And since there are two pounds of raisins in the bag, you're going to have to reseal it a lot more than once or twice.



The Good

This is an old tray that was used originally to pack California dates.  A cellophane like material covered the dates.  We have two of these trays.  They have to be at least 50 years old - they were in my father's things.

This is great packaging that gets reused over and over again.  I thought about doing this post this morning when I was preparing breakfast for my wife who was slow getting up today.

I'm sure these are from the 1960s or 1950s.  When I looked to see if there was anything on California Date Palm packaging, I found someone offering a tray like this one (well, the etching looked less worn) for $14.99!

What packaging do we see today that will be used so well for 50 years and then be for sale for more than the cost of the product itself?

[I don't know how long Ebay pages are available, but I linked the picture to Ebay if someone wants to buy one.]

And while I was looking up the trays, I found this information about dates from J&J Distributors:

The date is one of the oldest tree crops - records go back over 5,000 years.

Nomads and people of the desert from the Middle East and North Africa consumed dates for survival, and royalty for many generations (dates were considered a delicacy) served this terrific fruit. Spanish missionaries introduced dates to the West in the 18th and 19th centuries, and some of the original palms can still be found in Southern California and Mexico.

The Medjool variety is considered the gourmet of the date family - originating in Morocco, it arrived in the US in 1927. Eleven immature palms were given to the US by the Chariff of Morocco - this was an attempt to save the Medjools that were threatened by disease there. The eleven palms were quarantined for seven years in Nevada, and the nine that survived were relocated to Southern California. Note: the Medjool date is the only date that is harvested fresh and eaten fresh, and is the most labor intensive date to grow and harvest.

Dates provide energy in the form of natural invert sugars - important for those who cannot tolerate sucrose - Medjools have an above average invert sugar content. Date palms flourish in dry heat and minimal rain, and do very well in the Bard Valley of California where the Colorado and Gila rivers allow abundant irrigation for their root structure - 70% of the Medjool dates in the US are produced in the Bard Valley.

The date palm (Phoenix Dactylifera) is known as the tree of life, and there are approximately 22 million palms in Iraq today where approximately 600,000 tons of dates are produced annually.

Campbell Creek Nature Minutes from Busy Lake Otis & Tudor

We biked over the old Campbell Creek bridge just east of Lake Otis (and the newer bridge).  This is in Campbell Creek Park.  The salmon aren't running yet.  Here's a view to the west.

Here's a view to the east.

And this peaceful scene is about 1/4 mile from one of Anchorage's busiest intersections - Lake Otis and Tudor.  When the street was widened years ago and this massive retaining wall was put it, Sheila Wyne's mystical art project transformed (for me at least) what would have been a sterile corner into a favorite spot.  It's easy to find a list of of 1% for the arts projects done by the Municipality of Anchorage.  Wyne's piece isn't on the list so I guessed that it was instead a state project.  But I can't find a state list.  I did find a DOT document which referred to more recent construction (already completed) which refers to Sheila Wyne's raven sun moon and stars and how the finishing work on the new project was intended to complement it.

 

The sun is out of sight past the upper left corner.  There are stories among Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Southeast Alaska and Canadian Native peoples about the raven stealing the sun, moon, and stars from heaven, and I'm assuming that this piece represents a version of that story.   It's best just around sunset when the light catches the stars and casts a multicolor reflection. 

Coincidence? - Documenta 13 Opened Today in Kassel

At the National Gallery of Art's East Wing two years ago, I saw this Max Ernst sculpture and told J that I'd once sat on it.  Back when I was a student in Germany, at big art exhibit in Kassel, Dokumenta 3.  I thought.  And somewhere there is a picture of me on it.  Maybe.  Possibly it was just a similar piece. I was tempted to sit on it again and have her take my picture, but the guard was watching me.


Today, June 9, 2012, I have been cleaning up downstairs.  Throwing away old papers I no longer need, resorting the ones I'm not ready to toss, and thinking about converting some old papers into articles.

When I ran across, finally, this picture.

OK, so this isn't such a big coincidence.  Eventually I was going to find this picture.

BUT, then I looked up Documenta.  This exhibit happens every five years.  And it turns out, (from the Daily Beast):

The twice-a-decade show is launching Saturday, June 9, in Kassel, Germany, in its 13th incarnation.

From Deutsche Welle:

The German President Joachim Gauck has opened one of the world's biggest contemporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary art in Kassel, central Germany.

The thirteenth edition of one of the world's biggest and most ambitious contemporary art fairs opens in Kassel on the Fulda River in the northern part of the state Hesse in Germany.
Held every five years since 1955, the fair exhibits works by artists over a period of 100 days. This year's event features works by nearly 300 artists from 56 countries. Exhibits include cottages brimming with strange objects, sounds of the Brazilian jungle and a West African theatrical performance.
Artistic Director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, a US-born Italian-Bulgarian, explained the festival's role at the opening: "Documenta is dedicated to artistic research and forms of imagination that explore commitment, matter, things, embodiment."

And here's a video from Documenta 13 from Newsweek and Daily Beast art critic Blake Gropnik:


There are some questions though. If it's every 5 years, and this is 2012, how did I see it in September 1964? Wikipedia answers that quickly.  Its entry has a list of the 13 Documentas since 1955. The second one was in 1959, and the third one in 1964. They don't seem to have gotten onto a regular five year cycle until 1972.

People like to attribute events like my finding this picture on the day Documenta opens this year on something more than coincidence.  With 365 days in a year, and with there being a Documenta every five years, the odds of my finding the picture on this particular day is a bit more than 1800 to 1.  You had a much better chance of picking the winner of the Belmont today.  1800 to 1 is roughly 50 chances in 100,000, which is about twice as likely as dying from Alzheimers in the US in 2009.   (Some of you may think that's a strange relationship, but it is important for people to think about numbers and statistics with rationality and with facts.  The odds were high, but these coincidences do happen.)

The Deutsche Welle piece says that there will be three other Documenta locations this year:

Kassel is not the only venue for Documenta; this year a fifth of the works are being shown in other locations including Kabul, Afghanistan, Kairo, Egypt and Banff in Canada.

 So, Alaskans driving Outside this summer, can stop by in Banff.   And those stationed in Afghanistan might be able to partake as well.

OK, one more bit of trivia.  While I was looking for the Max Ernst piece on my blog, I found him mentioned in one of my posts in honor of Claude Lévi-Strauss' 100th birthday.  Lévi-Strauss is being interviewed in 1940 or 41 about his time teaching at NYU:

D.E. You were a young, unknown university professor, and you became part of a group of famous artists - stars, even - Breton, Tanguy, Duchamp...
C.L-S. And Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Matta, Wifredo Lam. . . Masson and Calder were living in the country. I went to see them on a few weekends.
D.E. Did you like the members of the group?
C.L-S. Some of them. I liked Max Ernst right away, and he is the one I stayed closest to. Tanguy, whose painting I admired a great deal, was not an easy person. Duchamp had great kindness, and for awhile Masson and I were very close. I also became friends with Patrick Waldberg. Our friendship continued after the war ended.
D.E. Peggy Guggenheim was financing the existence of the group?
C.L-S. She helped this or that one out financially, but Max Ernst, whom she married, was more affluent than the others. They were leading the Bohemian life in Greenwich Village. Until Max Ernst left Peggy Guggenheim. One day, Breton called to ask me if I had a small sum of money to buy back one of his Indian objects from Max Ernst, who was now broke. This historic object is now in the Musée de l'Homme.

 And things mentioned in here lead in a thousand more directions which I'll leave for any of you reading this to pursue on your own.

Spenard Jazz Fest - Poetry and Dance Night Thursday

Sitting in the Organic Oasis was like beiing into another world.  Musicians, poets, dancers, and their friends were gathered.  I would say the performances varied greatly in quality, but the vibe of the evening was comfy, warm,  and I was impressed with all the work people had done to put the evening together.  We saw some people we knew and made new friends as well. 

After the post on the lack of women's voices in the media the other day, I've been much more conscious of whether I've got the camera on men or women. I do have to say that sometimes leaving a picture or video clip out is a favor. But that's because I'm not doing a good enough job with the camera.

The video will give a pale sense of things.  It sounds much less on the video than it did in person.







The Spenard Jazz Fest continues Saturday.  From their website:

Sat June 09
Jazz at the Market | SPENARD FARMER’S MARKET  | 10 am – 2 pm
Free
Stop by the Festival booth for some live music, free refreshments and tons of cool SJF merchandise!
Plus other SJF surprises! You never know what could happen at the market or who you’ll discover.
.

“Altered Arts” Jazzy Mural Painting | BLAINE’S  |  10 am – 6 pm
Free
Time for the annual mural painting at Blaines.
SJF band stand to be filled with an array of local jazz heroes


Originals {Day 2} | ORGANIC OASIS | 4pm – Late
$15/$10 (student/senior/youth)  | Punch Card
Come out for the new music! Great artists, great food, great atmosphere.
4pm: Phil Beckett
5pm: Alex Cruver trio
6pm: Elite 9
7pm: Lee Pulliam
8pm: John Damberg
9pm: Tyler Desjarlais
10pm: Phil Knowlton
.

Bear Tooth Valet Parking for Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Bicycle Commuters of Anchorage (BCA) had free valet parking for bikes at the Bear Tooth last Monday.  (But they did take donations.)

We were there to see Jiro Dreams of Sushi - part of the Alaska Food Film Fest.  




This was a long, but thought-provoking movie about what the movie touts as the greatest sushi maker in Japan.  At 85 he's still making sushi at his restaurant where reservations must be made at least a month in advance.  He's got three Michelin stars.  And his two sons are working for him.  The younger son has opened his own restaurant, but the older son, over 60 now, is still waiting to take over from his father.

Two Screenshots from Jiro Dreams of Sushi Trailer

Jiro left home as a child and made his way to this position.  So clearly he didn't have much of a model for how to father. 

This film is one more case study for us to ponder the sacrificing of personal life to become 'the best' of something.  He says he left for work before his kids were up in the morning and got back when they were already sleeping.  But he has had his son's working for him for 40 years.  But as depicted in the film, he is clearly the boss, even with his sons are old enough to grandfathers.  Is perfect sushi that important?

I did wonder at one point why the Alaska Center for the Environment was sponsoring this movie.  But then Jiro talked about how good fish are disappearing and the importance of sustainable fishing. 

I think the movie could be edited.  But overall it introduced me to the world of a Tokyo restaurant and the now common worldwide food known as sushi.

And so we found ourselves headed toward Yamato Ya for a little sushi after the movie.

We got a mix of sushi and sashimi.

For the photographically curious, I'm using Aperture now (instead of iPhoto) and I experimented with curves on the first and third images here.