Overnight in the Farmers House

Monday, February 18, 10:50pm [I decided to leave blogger to do its own time stamping and that I would try to add my local time and date at the beginning of the posts.]

[You can see the details on the pictures much better by double clicking on them.]


After the fair we walked back to the house we were going to stay with the honor, who had whiskers on his chin and a warm smile with bright eyes. He opened the mats where we were going to sleep, pulled out some sheets and blankets, pillows, and giant green mosquito net. I was pretty wiped out and climbed into bed. But the wife brought out a tray of food at 11pm. You can see Doc and the Farmer eating, shot through the green mosquito net.

We laughed because Doc was cold and I said I was warm. We guessed at the temperature - it was 25C or 77F. Outside that sea of air we walk through hit us now and then with a cool current. But I got up first in the morning and you can see Doc still snoring in the mosquito net.

You can slso the wife (sorry I don't have her name and would probably not use it if I did - and yes, I did ask permission to post the pictures) cooking breakfast - the one in the video a couple of posts ago. Across is a picture of her grand daughter getting ready to ride her bike to school. I got a couple of her drawings which were pretty remarkable for a seven year old. I gave her the camera and she took the picture of Doc sitting alone at the table.



Finally there's a picture of one of the villagers sitting with Doc. M had collected surveys for Doc's doctoral dissertation about the villagers and their relationship with the new factories.




I took a short walk and got this rice paddy, the corn that is being grown for Cargill Coporation, this weed which they all said was medicinal, and the viscious guard dog on the bridge.


I'm really tired and need to go to bed. I'll do more about Friday morning in another post. But I do want to say that going out there was both personally and for work, a great thing to do. I have a much better understanding of the sophistication of the farmers as well as how well the organization is doing. Doc was clearly a favorite of many of the people we saw. You'll see in the next post on this the posters they had made which show their way of life, all the different vegetables and herbs they grow, what things the women of the village do, and even the seeds from all they grow.

As I close this off, J should be at the airport, even on the plane in LA for her long, long trip here. Just got an email from my mom who is back from taking her to the airport.

The Fair

The fair was put on to raise money for the school on whose football field the fair is being held. Everyone had to pay to get in. And then there was food and drinks. Lots of drinks.




We're in Northern Thailand so there is a lot of Northern food, including roasted beetles.

Doc is getting some of the food to bring back to our table.













This guy brought along his own stash of Shark brand liquor.











There were only a few fireworks and by the time I got the fireworks setting on my camera, they were over. So this shot gives you an alternative view.



In the background you can see the dance stage. The band played loud Thai songs, I wouldn't even hazard a guess what I would call the style. How about electified Thai. As part of the fund raiser, people paid Baht 10 per dance to go up on stage to dance. Each time masses of people went up the ramp for the privilege. The people around me were urging me to go up too and I agreed on the condition that Doc does as well. He said he didn't dance. I did have thoughts like, "I wonder how many people that stage can hold without collapsing?" and "Is it close to capacity?" Doc said that they have collapsed because there were too many people.







I generally do not use the flash, because it totally changes the atmosphere. The darkness of these pictures captures what it was like much better than a flash, even if you can't see all the details. But on request I did take some flash pictures too.

Note the red and blue ice buckets. One of my thoughts - sorry that's just how my brain works - was, who's going to clean all this up? This is a Thursday night. I asked if people had to go to work in the morning. They did. And would there be school? There would.






Doc got hold of the camera for a bit.





They kept persisting I should go up and dance. Being pestered to drink and dance and such things was common when I was a young peace corps volunteer, but the last few times I've been in Thailand people were told by my 'handlers' to not insist and they didn't. But here I was with farmers and factory workers who were, in some cases, drinking themselves sily - see below - I was the farang in the crowd. "I said I would dance if Doc dances." "He is going to dance." They said triumphantly. The picture with the squiggly lights gives you a much better sense of the night and the dancing stage than had I used a flash.



You think they've had enough? Back in the old days - yeah I know that phrase gets tiresome to hear - at least the places I was, the women, at the very most had a few sips of weak beer. If women's liberation is measured by drinking with the boys, some of these women were liberated.



Remember the blue and red ice buckets. Well, here are all the lids together, the water buckets together, and the buckets together the next morning.

When are we? Time Zones and the Blog

My blogger account is set for Alaska Standard Time. So the last post, for example, says on the top "Saturday February 16" and on the bottom of the post "8:28pm". But I'm in Thailand and I just posted it. Here it's Sunday February 17, a little after 2pm now.

What makes more sense? To just leave it? Or to change it?

Blogging Comments on Immigration and Education

I made a comment over at Independent Alaskan. It got fairly long and required a fair amount of time, so I thought I'd post my response here too. Independent Alaskan wrote about Gil Sanchez running for the Anchorage School Board. Rocknak commented:

Well, if this happens, I'm sure he will do whatever he can to make it easier for the illegal children in the district to make it through the system. Thank you NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND. Let's see how dumbed down our schools can get!

Here are some facts for taxpayers:

The ASD bilingual department currently serves about 4,700 students, plus there are another 2500 that "exited" the system last year who need to be monitored for two years. The current budget for this year is $11,015,820. It goes up to $11.77 million next year.

That 11.77 million would be a great help to the thousands of underpriviledged American children in this state.

It's pretty common for humans everywhere to divide people into us and them and then to pick facts that reinforce the how them are screwing over us. So here was my response to Rocknak:

Rocknak, here are some different facts for taxpayers:

The average home value in Anchorage is $275,999. We pay about 7/10 of one % of home value for ASD. I calculated this from the How to Read a Tax Bill page on the muni website.
So the average household that pays direct property tax (not people renting who pay it through their rent) pays about $1,855 a year to the School District. I would also note that a portion of the bilingual education money is federal money, not from Anchorage property taxes. So the $11 million that you cite, Rocknak, wouldn't all be available if you cut the program to use the money elsewhere.

Now, if you have kids or grandkids, and most households in Anchorage do, that's an incredible deal. The Northern Academy tuition in Anchorage ranges around $12,000 (varies by grade levels). I couldn't find the tuition for Anchorage Christian Schools on their website.

But even if you don't have kids, the community advantages of kids having a public education available are significant, even if we only talk about the crime rate if large numbers of kids never went to school.

And let's remember that when comparing costs of private and public schools, that private schools don't have to admit the most expensive kids (one's with various severe disabilities - physical, mental, social, or emotional). And when comparing test scores of private and public students let's also remember (in addition to not having to keep 'problem' kids) private schools have kids whose parents care enough to pay more for them to go to private school and parental interest is a big factor in how kids do in school.

And some more facts. Rocknak suggests that we should reallocate the money we spend on "non-American" kids to "American kids." The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that Anchorage households spend an average of $529 a year on alcoholic beverages. That's 28%, or more than 1/4, of what my calculations above show they pay for ASD through their property tax. But I guess Rocknak thinks that it's better to take the money from the bilingual program rather than dipping into his beer money. I'm not saying we shouldn't consume alcohol, but when we compare how money is spent, we often restrict our comparisons. Why just look at other ASD expenditures? Why not look at all the other uses of our money? According to the same BLS list, Anchorage per household expenditures on entertainment were $4,297, more than twice the national average, and more than twice what we pay ASD through taxes.

Another way of responding to Rocknak is to ask: what is the difference between an American child and a non-American child?

What causes someone born in the US to be worthy of special privileges that someone, say born in Brazil, shouldn't have? Maybe Americans shouldn't be allowed to listen to Bossa Nova music since they weren't born in Brazil. It's just an accident of fate that one human soul gets born in the US as opposed to somewhere else. A human child is a human child. Why should a selfish, lazy American citizen (no I'm not saying all Americans are like that, it's an example) have more opportunities than a public spirited, hard-working non-American? (Nor am I suggesting all non-Americans are saints.) I'm just pointing out that in terms of human rights, national boundaries are completely artificial and change frequently over history. The US took most of California, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona by military force from Mexico, for example. That raises other questions about who the illegal residents of those states really are.

And in your calculation Rocknak, you didn't distinguish between the American kids (legal US citizens born in the US) who get bilingual aid. I would guess that many if not most of the kids in the program are American citizens. So, the money spent on them IS money spent on underprivileged Americans. Though not all of them are underprivileged, just like the kids in speech or other special ed programs are not necessarily underprivileged.

The issue shouldn't be, take the money from these kids and give it to another group. The issue should be how do we pay for a reasonable education for all the kids. And it isn't just the kids that 'get' the education. We all get the collective benefits of kids who do well in school, feel good about themselves (and thus aren't as likely to cause trouble), and who can eventually make positive contributions to our community and society. If you don't believe that look at the economies of countries where kids don't get access to education.

Brief Thai lesson

This started out as a post on the village fair I went to Thursday night. But the intro seems worthy of a separate post all its own.

All Thais have nicknames. The person at work who took me to the village is nicknamed 'Doc'. Actually, I think I've spelled it 'Doc' in English because he's a doctoral student, but I don't think it means that in Thai. I'm not sure how it's spelled in Thai so it's hard to look up. I think (I started to write 'know' but I realize most things that people have told me in Thai, it's safer to think of as "might be') someone said his nickname starts with the letter ต rather than ด
The ต has a little dip on top and is pronounced as though you were saying Tea, but without breathing out a puff of air. If you put your hand in front of your mouth when you say Tea out loud, you'll feel a little air coming out. Linguists call this an 'aspirated' sound - because breath comes out. Now try to say it without the air coming out. (Unaspirated.) That's the ต sound. The ด is like the English letter D. The two letters are very similar, but not the same. Listen here to the difference. NOTE: Click on the yellow arrow NOT the link which will take you to jamglue.

Thai letter ต imported by AKRaven

Thai Letter ด imported by AKRaven

(In the second audio clip he says the Thai sound of the letter - is we would say "dee" - and then the word that starts with the letter that is used when kids are taught the alphabet. In this case the word is 'dek' or child.)

It can be pretty hard to hear the difference, but think how people learning English must feel. We have so many more different sounds and some with very subtle differences. This is no more difficult than the difference between, say, "rode" and "wrote". And if you listen to how people actually say these in a sentence, they often don't even say the sounds. The difference is really that you hold the 'o' in rode but you stop it quickly in 'wrote.' Or bead and beat. Or 'slip' and 'slipped'. We barely make the sound. For Thais who don't have a final 'd' sound or a 'pt' sound it is very hard to hear the differences.

Another subtlety of Thai are the loops in the letters. I didn't look closely enough and instead of ด, I typed ค, which is one of the aspirated K sound letters. Can you see the difference between the two letters?*

Attribution and Technical Note: I got the sounds from http://www.thai-language.com/ (You can go to each letter through the purple box on the left panel.) But to embed them in the blog so you could listen to them here instead of finding the right buttons on the website, I uploaded them to www.jamglue.com and then took the embed code and put that in my post. It is pretty incredible what tools are available to do this with. Thanks to the invisible techies who make all this possible.

*Difference between the letters: Look at the direction of the loop in the middle of each.

Breakfasts

There's lots to post about, I'll start slow. This was a typical breakfast at the Pooh Guest House for me. Rice soup with fruit and vegies. You could order eggs or whatever. Comes with the tab of about $30 per night. I think this was Thursday morning.
Friday lunch I was taken to a vegetarian center. If you only have one item with your rice the price is 0 Baht. I had several different dishes so it came to 25 Baht. The official exchange rate is about 32 Baht to the dollar.

This was Friday's breakfast which was sticky rice and four other dishes of greens and fish.
. Doc and I spent the night at this home in the village about an hour out of Chiang Mai. Below is the video of part of the breakfast talk. My understanding is that it is Northern Thai dialect, which is pretty close to Central Thai just pronouncing the words a little differently and some different words altogether.


[February 18: I was going to give a brief synopsis of the conversation at breakfast, but decided that given the Northern dialect and the rustiness of my Thai, that I better not. Good thing. I did get bits and pieces, but I put them together wrong. The guy was complaining about how the factories are not hiring workers over fifty now.]

Guest Post by Catherine Senungetuk

Since Guest Posts are hot these days and I'm already hot because I'm in Thailand, which is why I can't post about Anchorage, I thought I'd put up a guest post taken from an email from my friend Catherine Senungetuk.


February 14, 2007

This morning I'm meeting with Deborah Schildt about the possibility of collaboration... she's a filmmaker (maybe you saw her film about roasting little ground animals in Mongolia a year ago "How to Roast a Boo-Dog" I think it was called) we were both so inspired after seeing that performance [Bridgman and Packer] - she was at the same one and that's where we hatched this idea... I was so moved because I wanted to do something for my show in Cordova that was more multi-dimensional than a painting on the wall....

Joe has been attending the AK Forum on the Environment Conference, today he'll participate in an elders circle. I'll be seeing my acupuncturist and then checking out the new chocolate store in town that a friend has recommended.

Joe and I went to the opera Sunday - our neighbor's brother directed it and they had some comp tickets. Oh my goodness, I might be an opera fan now. It was the most amazing thing I've ever heard. I'm still awestruck. I didn't know the human voice could do those things. The set was also quite well-designed.

There are Short-Eared Owls out by the airport - we saw one on Sunday before we went to the opera. It's fun to see such a large bird, and they're fairly uncommon to have around in the winter.

Plans Change

Bing's grandmother is ill and he left for Petchbun last night. I got invited to lunch at a vegetarian restaurant, then we went to a bike shop, then to the one I'd gone to first and rented a bike. Back at work Doc invited me to go out to some villages tonight. Not sure what that means but it sounded like we might sleep over in the village. So I biked to the new place and put down the deposit. Then home. Quick shower and I'll go back in a few minutes.

House Hunting in Chiang Mai

Spent a little time each day looking for places to stay. Here's a glimpse of things I saw - first day in a car, second day walking to work and on the back of a motorcycle. There are houses and some turned out to be more like private dorms for students. Apartment houses. But finally someone in the office brought in a brochure that turned out to be the perfect place. Well, pretty good. It's in a quiet pocket, but a few minute walk to a main road. It's also about a 20-30 minute walk to my office. As you can see, I found my card reader to download the pictures.






Here's the place I liked, I've described it to Joan and she says to take it. So I'll go by today again. They are decent sized rooms, great windows, lots of trees around and view of Doi Suthep, the mountain next to Chiengmai.






They don't expect people to cook.



It's on the 4th floor, so we won't have to go to the gym, just up and down the stairs. It includes tv, internet. Electricity and water are extra. That makes sense since I'm sure farang (foreigners - actually I've heard people say "people from other countries" mostly rather than 'farang" this trip)tend to use a lot of water and electricity. Altogether it should be around $325 per month I'm guessing.

Mauer and Kizzia's Story on Seward

Jetleg had me awake at 4am yesterday and as I tried to go back to sleep, Monday's ADN story on Seward's part in the FBI investigations by Rich Mauer and Tom Kizzia wandered back into my consciousness from when I had quickly read the story on line a couple days earlier.

I have a couple of observations and a couple more details on the story.

Summary:

1. Rich and Tom did a fine job of reporting.
2. In this case the City of Seward public administrators (the career bureaucrats) courageously fought the decisions of the politicians, even putting their jobs on the line.
3. The case of Tylan Schrock again shows the corrupting power of power.

1. Rich Mauer and Tom Kizzia's good journalism.

Rich and Tom have been holding this story for a long time. I know Rich was interviewing people in the Seward city government back in August. I have two former students in Seward and I talked to one of them about all this back then. Rich was trying to get interviews. Would the student's job be in jeopardy for speaking to the press? The prospect was strong. The student had been warned by the then City Manager not to raise issues (just in the office, let alone the press.) So I only mentioned the story obliquely not wanting risk my former student's job. So while Rich had much of this story back in August, he held onto it until he got all the corroborating evidence - the documents he requested from the city, the key interviews (while the ex-student was already talking to the FBI, the student did also agree to talk to Rich.) And Rich has been respectful of the people he interviewed recognizing that they were taking risks just talking to him. So, all in all, this is some outstanding journalism that the people of Anchorage should be appreciative of. And it's part of a growing collection of pieces that the ADN, Rich particularly, has been offering the public on these topics. (I don't mean to downplay Tom's part in this, but I have talked to Rich about this story, but not to Tom.)

2. Public Administrators vs. Politicians

This is a distinction that is often lost on most people when they complain about government. It's really a story for another post. But I would point out it is the career politicians who do the daily work of government, who carry out the laws that politicians pass. And in the Seward story, it was the public administrators who strongly opposed the City's purchase of the earmarked property. What isn't mentioned in the story is that the public administrators put together a powerpoint presentation for the City Council that showed point by point the contractual relationship between the City and the Sealife Center and why, if I remember the details correctly, they shouldn't even allow the Sealife Center to purchase the property. The hope was that while enough Council members had personal interests in the property, at least the public would see what was going on when the powerpoint was shown at the meeting. But the Council decided to show the powerpoint in a closed session. At least one of the public administrators had foreseen this possibility and had distributed CD's of the powerpoint to some key Seward citizens, and the city manager approved posting it on the city website. The council (or maybe just the mayor) had it removed soon after, and the city manager was removed as well. The good news is that the fired city manager was elected mayor of Seward in the November election as were some less conflicted council members and the jobs of the public administrators who fought this are now much more secure again.

3. Tylan Schrock and the power of power

Tylan was also one of my students. He was very bright, very competent, and eager to make the world a better place when he graduated. In the Mauer/Kizzia story, Tylan is portrayed as the evasive director of the SeaLife Center, who appears to have arranged for the SeaLife Center to buy the property when the City of Seward said 'no', and who has recently announced his upcoming resignation.

I know Tylan pretty well. I was one of the people who recommended him for the job as assistant to the city manager at Seward when he graduated. And it was the right thing to do. Tylan had everything right and going for him. And he did such a good job for the City that they moved him over to the SeaLife Center because it belongs to the City and was not doing well. And since he moved there it has been doing very well. But it is important to note this line from the article:

The Alaska SeaLife Center has long been a favorite of Stevens, who has steered more than $50 million in federal funds to the nonprofit facility since it opened in 1998, including more than $3.5 million in the most recent appropriations bills. Schrock has been executive director for more than seven of those years.

There's no question that the SeaLife Center would be nowhere without the initial funding and continuing support of Ted Stevens' earmarks. (But I would also add that even with money an organization can be poorly managed. In fact having lots of money can make people careless - just watch the legislature. So while the money made Tylan's job easier, it alone didn't guarantee the success of the Center.)

My point, though, is that the Center was overwhelmingly dependent on Ted Stevens' earmarks. And remember that this earmark for purchasing McCabe's building was made in 2005. That was still a time when most Alaskan's were willing to look the other way while Ted was passing them money. It is easy to jump in and criticize Tylan, but it is also easy to see how difficult it might be to say no to person whose continuing financial support has made your organization possible.

That was how you played the game back then. It would be interesting to get a list of the people who have said 'no' to Ted Stevens when he was giving out money. Tylan didn't know the unofficial rules of the game were about the change. Neither did Anderson, Kott, or Kohring.

Now, we only have Mauer's story on this, so I don't want to say that Tylan is guilty of anything at this point (though Mauer's story is consistent with what I have heard myself). I'm not sure that he actually broke any laws. But let's assume that Tylan did knowingly arrange to use the earmark to buy the property through the SeaLife Center. My discussion above is only to understand why it happened, not to condone it.

The employees at the City of Seward had, in fact, said 'no' to the deal. They knew it was a bad deal and politically motivated. While the City of Seward is nowhere as dependent on Stevens as was the SeaLife Center, the employees themselves were risking their jobs in this action. And the City Manager lost his job. And, now, three years later Tylan has tendered his resignation (apparently, from what I've heard, not under pressure from the board) anyway. Doing what is right pays off in the long term.

As I watched the three trials last year I couldn't help but think about Pleasure Island in the movie Pinocchio.

Pleasure Island serves as a haven for wayward boys, allowing them to drink, smoke, and vandalize without recrimination. One of those boys is Lampwick, a tough bully of a boy that Pinocchio befriends. He smokes, drinks, plays pool, and then gets turned into a donkey. (from Duckman)

Luckily for Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket, his conscience, helps him escape that fate. (While googling on this I found an accounting ethics book that uses the story of Pinocchio to help talk about ethics.)

Juneau is a lot like Pleasure Island. It's full of temptations, and three of the wicked boys who were sent to Juneau have been turned into donkeys. If anyone has any weaknesses the lobbyists in Juneau, like Stromboli, the puppeteer on Pleasure Island, exploit them. So far, the people who have been tried and convicted have been among the exploited. Anderson and Kott and Kohring are not wicked people, though they all had issues that made them exploitable. Three of the exploiters - Bill Allen, Rick Smith, and Frank Prewitt (and to a lesser degree Bill Bobrick) - have all made deals with the FBI and the Prosecutors. Maybe that is why they were the exploiters and not the exploited. They were smart enough to see the writing on the wall. I keep hearing rumors that more indictments are due any day (and since I'm not getting the ADN at my doorstep here in Thailand, they may have already come - I better look online before I post this.) and am hopeful that the drug lords (in this case money and power were the drugs) will be among the indicted, and not just the addicts.

This whole culture of power and money, I think sucked Tylan into a situation where he didn't thnk he could say no to the people who had made the SeaLife Center, itself a worthy institution, possible.