Alaska Botanical Garden - Civilizing Wilderness

The Garden is a lot like Anchorage - a tiny bit of attempted civilization hidden in the middle of the wilderness. A chunk of natural forest with a few clearings with flower beds showcasing plants that can grow here.
This weekend was the 10th Annual Garden Fair & Art Show at the Anchorage Botanical Garden.





For people trying to figure out what to plant in their gardens, all the different plants with their labels are a great resource.










The Peony is for Lyrica - Des, be sure to show it to her. Lyrica and her mother took us to the Coal Hill Garden in Beijing a couple of years ago just as the peonies were blooming. That's when peonies finally got my serious attention.






We got to the garden an hour before closing on Sunday, but just in time to hear the bagpipes - a dubious pleasure.








I have mixed feelings. Every bit of 'civilizing' here reminds me that the whole North American continent was once as wild and natural as the environment around Anchorage and if we continue what we're doing, Alaska will lose its special natural splendor. On the way to the garden we stopped at that epitome of American civilization - Costco. Convenient? Yes. Natural? Beautiful? Not even close. And Costco appears to be one of the more thoughtful big box stores - good pay and benefits for the employees, etc.

Leak and Dryer

It started raining sometime late Saturday. It's almost done now. But there was a big wet spot in the living room rug this morning (Monday.) The roof guy is supposed to call back.








I did get an email back today from our Craigslist ad and someone is calling a friend to help pick up the dryer. We've figured out the new washer and how to keep it from dripping onto the floor. The new dryer works fine. (Unfortunately, we can't stick the wet carpet into the dryer.) So, it's time to get the old one out of the garage.

Moby Dick the Musical

West High School's drama department's production of Moby Dick the Musical will be performed at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival in August according to the

Anchorage Daily News.

Last night we saw it at UAA.

We had a lot of fun watching these great high school kids sing and act and dance. But they are going to the big time so here are a few things I hope they can nail down by the time they get to Scotland.



This is a campy play. It's kitschy and makes fun of musicals in general. But spoofs are done best by people who are really good, otherwise the audience isn't sure if it's parody or a weak performance.

The biggest issue - and I'm sure they are on top of this - for me was voice volume. The singers all had good voices and the words were clear, but most of them just didn't have the power to project. Ahab and Elijah were the exceptions. Esta was pretty strong. The rest sounded like the volume knob was turned too low much of the time and we were not too many rows back. I'd consider mikes.

A number of the actors seemed like they were acting. Well, sure, they were. But the best performances happen when everyone 'is' their part. The audience no longer sees an actor, but rather sees real people living their lives on stage. Justin Birchell (Ahab and the School Head) and Aaron Eberhardt (Elijah and Coffin) were fine. Stacia Sutherland (Esta) slipped in and out, mostly in. I'm not a theater person and I don't know how to get people to move over that line from being an actor playing a part to actually being the part. I'm guessing it's all in one's head. Are they thinking about their lines or are they mentally actually the role? It makes all the difference.



Finally, I was never sure if the whale - who was on skates - really knew how to skate. Were the awkward little steps taken to turn around part of the spoof? They did get laughs. Or was the actor really wobbly on those skates? I'll assume it was part of the spoof. In that case, just to let the audience know he can really skate, when he skates across the stage at the end, he should show his real skill.

Overall, it was a fun evening. The various actors handled the music well. And it's fun music. I wish the cast lots of fun at the Festival.

Spittle Bugs and Aphid

My first blog post - July 9, 2006 - was on spittle bugs. I didn't have my digital camera then. So now that they are back, I can show you. As I said, it looks like really clean spit. Inside is a little bug that creates all this stuff to keep wet and protected. It's easy to spray off with a hose and apparently the little guys don't do much damage.






















However, aphid are a different story altogether. Here the larvae (at least I think these are aphid larvae) cover the soft, green shoots of our thalactrum. Well this plant is pretty easy to deal with - I just use the jet level on my hose attachment and blast the plant. It's hardy enough that the water doesn't break it, but the aphid are gone. When they get into the birch trees it's another story. There were a few years back when the yard was covered with black syrup dripping from the birch trees. It wasn't so bad last year and so far this year seems ok.

More Anchorage Airport Railroad Depot Background

This comes from Andrew Halcro's website. Halcro was a Republican state representative from 1999-2003. On his site his biography says he is

President, Avis/Alaska (Statewide Family business owned and operated
since 1955) 2002-Present

He ran for governor of Alaska in 2006 as an Independent. He's sharp and talks straight. Below is his account of how the depot got built from a discussion of a candidate forum in Seward in March 2006. He's discussing John Binkley, then a Republican primary candidate for Governor.

Basically this is consistent with what I wrote earlier and fills in a few more details.

But the most amusing comments was his defense of the $28 million dollar cruise ship passenger depot at the Anchorage Airport. In fact, reconciling his comments to the audience on Friday with history, is a great lesson on how some politicians tend to lose memory when they run for office.

In the spring of 2001 while I was in the legislature I had my first conversation with John Binkley. He came to my office to address my concerns as a vocal critic of the railroad spending $28 million dollars of taxpayer money to construct a facility that was going to serve a limited use (cruise ship passengers) and be closed for 8 months a year.

During that conversation, Binkley who was the Railroad's Chairman of the Board and supported the rail depot, told me that the reason they went ahead with the project was that they didn't want to embarass Senator Ted Stevens by giving back the money. Even though the railroads own feasibility study raised questions about the project.

However on Friday, the rail depot turned from a "must do" to a "must have".

In his comments on Friday, Binkley defended the depot as a vision for the future. We built this so we could encourage commuter transportation and not have the roads clogged up with rental cars, eliminate the need for $56 million dollar parking garages (referring to the new Anchorage Airport car rental facility under construction) and to eliminate the need for expanding the Glenn Highway to four lanes. [Although Halcro has his rental car background on his biography on his webpage, and may assume that people know this about him, it would be nice if had made that clear for people who find this on the web and don't know. It doesn't change anything, but letting people know your connection to an issue a good habit to get into.]

Now lets stop here.

First, when the railroad board gave the rail depot the green light there was no car rental garage planned yet. Even so, would you rather have a $56 million private structure that generates millions in revenue or a $28 federally subsidized rail depot that's closed eight months a year?

Second, those rental cars clogging all the highways (unlike the tour buses from cruiseships) actually pay local and state taxes that reduce tax burdens of Alaskans. In Anchorage alone, the industry contributes almost $10 million dollars a year. Not to mention another $5 million dollars a year to the Anchorage Airport in concessionare and lease fees that help keep the airport open.

Third, I'm sure the 40,000 Alaskans a day that commute from the Mat-Su would love to know that John Binkley's vision for improved transportation in the region is based on them giving up there vehicles for a train ride.

Ironically, the railroads own economic feasibility study panned the idea of commuter rail to the airport due to a lack of railroad infrastructure, a sparse population base and the reality of infrequent trips.

But then again, anybody who would have taken the time to read the airport rail depot's feasibility study would have known that. But this was never an issue of what was best for taxpayers, this was about self interest.

In December 1998, a month after being elected to the State House I was invited to lunch with former Governor Sheffield who was head of the railroad at the time. I brought up the subject of the proposed rail depot. At the time, the railroad was still in the process of having a local firm conduct the feasibility study.

I told the governor I thought the project had a limited appeal and was a bad use of taxpayer money. However, it was very clear from his response that regardless of what the projected economics concluded, his was going to spend $28 million on the depot.

In December 2002, Sheffield and others sipped champagne as they celebrated the grand opening of the Bill Sheffield Airport Railroad Depot complete with a bronze bust of the former governor.

Today the rail depot is open on a regular basis only for cruise ship passengers from mid-May to September who pay nothing for the facility. The total yearly passengers are less than 50% of what their feasibility study projected they'd be by this date.

At least the next generation of taxpayers won't have to look down the tracks very far to see why they're inheriting an $8 trillion national debt.

All aboard.

Arti-Circle Picture Framing - Hidden Oasis in Anchorage

Catherine had told me to go to ArtiCircle Framing to frame the painting I had from Luang Prabang. (I can't believe I didn't take a picture of it so I could post it now, you'll just have to wait til it's ready.)

I finally took it in today. The hours posted in the Yellow Pages -

M-F 9:28 - 5:35 Sat 11:00 - 4:32

- were a hopeful sign. I walked out of the clutter of Arctic (Alaskans tend to drop the first 'c' ) Blvd between 36th and Tudor into another world of plants, paintings, a glass coffee table on a beautiful rug, with comfortable chairs just begging me to relax and chat a while.

Ava came out, looked at what I had. I said I'd thought a black matte, but my friend
Catherine had said, "No." "Catherine was right. We'll take care of it. We'll call when it's ready." And while I did feel comfortable, I did ask for an approximate price range, and she gave me one, but said she'd call with the exact price when they figured out how they would do it.




Then Paul Landis came out and I was introduced and we talked about the shop - "we don't have customers, we have friends;" "we're the best kept secret in Anchorage." Well, I sure never have been here before. A customer, excuse me, a friend, came in and I was introduced to the Emperor - of Alaska, California, and Baja and the rest of Mexico. Chuck Norton turned out to be a retired Anchorage school teacher who'd been born and raised in Anchorage - Spenard to be exact. And Landis had nicknamed him the Emperor when they first met because his name
was Norton








The Emperor offered me a coffee and I sat with them around the table and we chatted about a wide range of things, including health care for seniors when Larry Flynn, Paul's pharmacist, came by to drop off Paul's meds. I could go on, but I'll stop with the offer Larry has for people who switch from their old pharmacy to his - a free ride around town in one of his two Rolls Royces.

As you can tell, it is not your every day shop.

Das Leben Der Anderen - The Lives of Others

OK, so why did I like this film? (I walked out saying something like, "It's nice to see a really good film now and then.")

1. It's a serious film about serious topics - totalitarian government, freedom, abuse of power, free speech, making difficult choices, betrayal.
2. Only one is seen in a totally negative role. None in a totally positive role. All the others are complex and tempted - to do what is right (working in a bad system) or what is wrong (to continue working in a bad system), and must make impossible choices.
3. The script was smart. The actors - well I was totally drawn in and forgot I was watching a movie.
4. The filming and editing were unobtrusively good. I didn't even notice it. Nothing glitzy, nothing clumsy, to jerk me out of the story. It just captured the action without calling attention to itself. Driving home I asked, "Was it in black and white?" but then remembered the red typewriter ribbon and the blood on the final report.
5. It was in German. I studied in Germany long ago, so I could catch much of it.
6. There were small and giant acts of kindness.
7. We saw "Knocked Up" last night. The Lives of Others absolved me of Knocked up.

This is the kind of film people should see and discuss in a country that builds secret prisons, uses torture, wiretapping and other types of information gathering about citizens, that snatches 'suspects' and imprisons them without notice to their families or access to lawyers.

Alaska Airlines Great Alaska Deals

Alaska Airlines right now (June 1-August 28) is offering travel between Anchorage and many places they go in Alaska for 5000 award miles one way.

Anchorage - Fairbanks 5000
Anchorage - Juneau 5000
Anchorage - Nome 5000
Anchorage - Kotzebue 5000
Anchorage - Bethel 5000
Anchorage - King Salmon 5000
Anchorage - Dillingham 5000
Anchorage - Glacier Bay 5000
Anchorage - Gustavus 5000

I don't see Sitka or Kodiak or Cordova, but this is a great chance to see parts of Alaska that are generally too expensive to visit.

I don't normally 'advertise' but this is one of the better deals in Alaska air travel I can remember.

Blogging Thoughts - Does Traffic Matter?

The key purpose when I started this was to get an understanding of blogging. I'm far from there, but one of the issues that I have raised and still seems to be an issue for lots of bloggers is the one about who's reading the blog and getting more readers. Wherever you look there is advice for how to increase traffic. Technorati gives ratings for blogs. My Technorati authority is 1 (0 is the lowest) and my rank is 2,202,298. Such rankings certainly increase some people's interest in increasing traffic and raising their ratings. Here are a couple examples of blogs that post about how to increase rankings. The first is more like my blog - someone who is blogging and learning. The other two look more like professional blogs with lots of ads, etc.



From UPC, a personal tech blog, comes this advice:

18 Ways You Can Help My Blog [Of course you could turn that around to help your own blog]

Today, for some reason I've been imagining all of my visitors and readers as very kind and generous souls. So, in order to take advantage of this possibly true fact about all of you, I decided to compile a list of things you could do to help me and my blog. I know, you have already read thousands of posts about how to promote and help your blog, but this one is about helping my blog. As a semi-new blogger I am still spending a lot of time establishing myself, and you can help me out! As you read through this list you might be thinking, "hey, I wouldn't mind some help myself!" - if that's the case, feel free to take my list, expand upon it, customize it, and post it on your own blog. Of course, if you do use my list, I'd appreciate if you...

1. Post this list to your blog, and link back here telling everyone where you got the original list! Come back here and comment that you've used my list, and I'll come check out your entry and help your blog too. [And so I'm doing his first suggestion]

2. Give me a thumbs-up on your StumbleUpon toolbar.

3. Vote for me at FuelMyBlog.com.

4. Add me to your links page or blogroll.

5. Click this redirect to visit my site through Alexa.com (it helps to boost my Alexa ranking).

6. Comment on something I've written.

7. Add me to your Technorati favorites.

8. Give me some constructive critiCism.

9. Subscribe to my feed, or subscribe by email.

10. Ask me a tech question (so I can blog it), or suggest a tech topic for me to write about.

11. Vote for me at the Blog For A Year contest.

12. Visit 25 Peeps, and click on my picture (if you don't know what I look like, check out the "About" section of this site).

13. Bookmark an entry you like at del.icio.us.

14. Interview me for your blog.

15. Digg an entry you like.

16. Send me cash so I can buy pay-per-click advertisements.

17. Join my community on MyBlogLog.

18. Comment on this post with more ways in which people can help promote my blog.

Doshdosh offers 20 ways to increase your Alexa rating (and tells you what an Alexa rating is) Here are the first few to get an idea:

1. Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.
2. Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website. I did this a few days ago and receive a fair amount of clicks every day. According to some, each click counts as a visit even if the toolbar is not used by the visitor.
3. Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers. Be sure to link to Alexa’s full explanation of their toolbar and tracking system so your readers know what installing the toolbar or extension entails.
4. Work in an Office or own a company? Get the Alexa toolbar or SS Firefox extension installed on all computers and set your website as the homepage for all browsers. Perhaps it will be useful to note that this may work only when dynamic or different IPs are used.
5. Get friends to review and rate your Alexa website profile. Not entirely sure of its impact on rankings but it might help in some way.
6. Write or Blog about Alexa. Webmaster and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you and send you targeted traffic (i.e. visitors with the toolbar already installed). This gradually has effects on your Alexa ranking.
7. Flaunt your URL in webmaster forums. Webmasters usually have the toolbar installed. You’ll get webmasters to visit your website and offer useful feedback. It’s also a good way to give back to the community if you have useful articles to share with others.

Betabloggerfordummies gives lots of advice including this. If I understand it correctly - that he is saying to hide links in icons - I'd say this is a little deceptive.

Here is another viral idea to increase your Page Rank. Viral link building is a technique to increase backlinks to your site at an exponential rate thus increasing your blog Page Rank. This in turn will increase traffic to your blog.........

This scheme has been introduced by Ilker Yoldas from The Thinking Blog. He uses the ALT tags inside image links to increase page relevance. The keywords placed inside image links in ALT tags increase the value of the link due to the weightage given to these tags by search engine spiders.

I'm having real doubts about all this rush for traffic. Traffic doesn't matter if people don't stay and read anything. But I'm looking through these ideas to see if I can find ways to let people who might be interested find me. Of course, that's what search engines are for, and I seem to be showing up on the first page of some Google searches that get people to my site. Today for example someone got to me googling "Anchorage Airport Railroad Depot."

I guess it depends on why you're blogging. I'm just enjoying the chance to keep friends up to date on what I'm doing - especially my mother, especially when we're traveling - and it's a way to keep me doing some writing most days. So I guess a good question to other bloggers is why are you blogging and why is traffic important to you?

This Week's Blooming Flowers -2

The garden is coloring up.






The wild rose








And the Alaskan wild iris.












I don't remember what this is. Anyone know? Leave a comment if you do.








The person who gave me the cutting for this said it was Aleutian Speedwell. Since then I've seen several things called Aleutian Speedwell. Again, any clarification would be appreciated.



And the wild geranium which is blooming everywhere.




And a little less common, a white wild geranium.