Anchorage Airport - pre-tourist, Bears in Boxes, Euphemisms

J got home this morning at 1 am. She's been in California for a week so she's had time to deal with the jetlag from Asia. I'm just up now (3:15pm) after a couple of very short nights. While I waited I looked around with my camera.


It's early May, not quite tourist season yet. The airport will be crowded at 1am by the end of the month. It seems that the airlines send their planes up here in the middle of the night so they can get them back to the lower 48 for the day flights. But for now it was pretty empty. Only one security line was open and there was no line.



In the past I've noticed that the bears in boxes at the airport were all shot by dentists like this one. What is it about dentists? They have the money to go out on expensive hunts? They have the ego to want everyone to see they killed the biggest bear around? Torturing people in their offices isn't enough, they have to go out and kill animals too? They have to prove they're as good as 'real' doctors? Do they get a tax write-off if they put it in the airport? I have a great dentist who I'm sure doesn't kill animals for fun. Actually the last time I went I got the new dentist and he plays rock guitar on the side. So, it's probably only a few who have this need to display their trophy kills at the airport.



And not all the bears at the airport (outside security) were killed by dentists. And notice the euphemisms. The dentist's bear 'was taken." This bear was 'harvested.' Why not just say "killed?"

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary does not include hunting in the definitions of harvest as a noun.

1. har·vest
Pronunciation: \ˈhär-vəst\
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English hervest, from Old English hærfest; akin to Latin carpere to pluck, gather, Greek karpos fruit
Date: before 12th century

1: the season for gathering in agricultural crops2: the act or process of gathering in a crop3 a: a mature crop (as of grain or fruit) : yield b: the quantity of a natural product gathered in a single season 4: an accumulated store or productive result

But it does include it in the definition of harvest as a verb.

2. harvest
Function: verb
Date: 15th century

transitive verb
1 a: to gather in (a crop) : reap b: to gather, catch, hunt, or kill (as salmon, oysters, or deer) for human use, sport, or population control c: to remove or extract (as living cells, tissues, or organs) from culture or from a living or recently deceased body especially for transplanting2 a: to accumulate a store of b: to win by achievement intransitive verb.

The etymology shows the word originally comes from old English and German for 'autumn':

O.E. hærfest "autumn," from P.Gmc. *kharbitas (cf. O.S. hervist, Du. herfst, Ger. Herbst "autumn," O.N. haust "harvest"), from PIE *kerp- "to gather, pluck, harvest" (cf. Skt. krpana- "sword," krpani "shears;" Gk. karpos "fruit," karpizomai "make harvest of;" L. carpere "to cut, divide, pluck;" Lith. kerpu "cut;" M.Ir. cerbaim "cut"). The borrowing of autumn and fall gradually focused its meaning after 14c. from "the time of gathering crops" to the action itself and the product of the action. Harvester "machine for reaping and binding" is from 1875; harvest home (1596) is the occasion of bringing home the last of the harvest; harvest moon (1706) is that which is full within a fortnight of the autumnal equinox.

The airport also seems to have copied the Singapore (and many other) airports by adding a transit hotel. With blankets even.

Kona I want you to know that unlike the Singapore airport, dogs are allowed to come greet the arriving passengers. And this dog was VERY happy to see his owner when she came out!

Back in Time for the Sandhill Cranes

I took Dennis Z up on his offer to show me the good craning spots when I got back. So at 6am this morning I drove out to Palmer. In the clip you can see, and even better yet hear, the sandhill cranes as they fly. For better pictures go to Dennis' site. (I can't find the cranes, this link takes you to his photos and maybe he'll see this and make it clear how to find the cranes.)






The Singapore Bird Park cost me S$18 admission (about US$13). With gas at $3.71 a gallon at Costco, I figure the trip to Palmer and back means my admission to see the cranes was about US$15! I wonder if folks had a little meter in their car like the odometer that you could set at $.00 when you start a trip and it would calculate how much it cost you in gas money at the end of the trip, people would start changing their driving patterns radically.

Anyway, I haven't driven a car in two and a half months, so my gas cost whatever it cost back in December or January so it was probably a little cheaper.

Note: I intended the title to mean that I got back to Anchorage in time to see the cranes before they moved on. But as I read it now, it reminds me that when you see the Sandhill Cranes you go back in time millions of years with this prehistoric species. For incredible descriptions of these birds, see the section beginnings of Richard Powers' The Echo Maker.

Two and a half months of junk mail

I guess it could be a lot worse.

Savoring Anchorage on Foot

The customs people smile in Anchorage. I was out on the street at 10. No taxis at the international terminal. The number 7 bus won't be by for 45 minutes. As I walk to the domestic terminal, I'm thinking about walking home. We did it in Chiang Mai and here it's delightfully cool, almost chilly 45°F (7°C). I know lots of people in Anchorage would say, "You can't walk home from the airport." Well, I like doing things you can't do. And I've been revved up not having a car in Chiang Mai and all watching how some people in Taiwan are passionate about reducing global warming and their concern for Alaska's ice and polar bears. Let's do it. But is there a way to walk out of the airport?

There is. Just stay on the sidewalk closest to the terminal and keep walking. You have to go right at the first small street and then left. Then you get back to the main road out of the airport and this sign.

After crossing the road, there's even a sign which tells you which way to walk to Anchorage, so I kept going.

While some water is out, Lake Hood (the white in the background) is still frozen. Made a pit stop at the Millennium Hotel then kept going.

Oh. Gas is a little more expensive than when we left. Stopped for pancakes at Gwennie's. I'm really in Alaska. (That picture is even too bad for me to post it.) Just outside of Gwennie's I saw a 36 bus coming. The little wheels on my suitcase are saying they've had enough and this bus goes within a block of my house. The driver stopped between bus stops to let me on. And now I'm home. Headed for the post office to pick up the mail.

Almost Home

An hour out of Taipei. I'm busy reading Maimonides for a book club meeting Sunday. I figured I could put a serious dent in it on an 8 hour flight.

For those of you who forgot what airplane food looks like, it still comes with the ticket on international flights.

Less than an hour out of Anchorage

Taipei (Taoyuan) Streets and Tzu Chi Foundation

The China Air hotel is in a suburb of Taipei called Taoyuan. I went out walking this morning. I don't have much time so I'll just post the pictures.

But I stumbled into the Tzu Chi Foundation, which is a Buddhist Charity that does some things like the red cross. They had a global warming exhibit and they found a volunteer named Alex who spoke English and spent a couple of hours showing me around.

Later, on the bus, I met a woman named Jo who's been living in Bali for the last ten years. Interesting stories, but you're lucky, I don't have time.












Bookstore at Tzu Chi Foundation.
Global warming puppet show. My being from Alaska had extra meaning for them.
Alex, my guide, with the bamboo bank. The master said every volunteer should put in 5 cents every day. I asked about other sources of funding. Alex's reply - our money is in everyone's pockets.
We had tea. The whole place was as elegant as this tray of tea.

And then vegetarian lunch.
There's even a proper way to hold the bowl.

Here's the Bali resident on her way to visit the US.

And a fancy porcelain vase on exhibit in the airport.

Singapore Hawker Markets

I made it to Taipei fine. The weather's wonderful - that means not sauna like. Here's a bit of video from the hawker stands at Newton Circle Wednesday night, before we found out Kona wasn't well.



So I ordered the barbecued stingray since it's a local speciality and some morning glory (a favorite stir fry dish in Thailand). We got home to find that Kona wasn't well, so we left the food and went to the vet. When we got back the swordfish was still tasty.

Money Laundering

It's 11:12 am Thursday in Singapore. My plane to Taipei leaves at 2:40pm. Since the Anchorage flight leaves Taipei at 4:15pm, I have to overnight in Taipei - courtesy of China Air. So even though I could make it through the next 48 hours with the clean stuff still in my suitcase, I decided to do some laundry. There is a washer and dryer in the apartment here.

It would have been better had I taken my wallet out of my pants first.

The New Peranakan Museum

One of the profs at J's program told me about this museum which just opened. Peranakan is the name for people of mixed ethnicities in the southeast Asia area if I understand it right. The descendants of foreign fathers marrying local women. Often this means Chinese fathers.

Given that the US is finally recognizing, officially in its census categories, the concept of mixed ethnicities, I thought it would be interesting to go to this museum.

The pictures of various Peranakan people were spectacular and each had a quote below it. There were also some excellent videos, beautifully placed on the walls, in frames as though they were pictures on the wall discussing the common connections that Peranakan felt with other Peranakan. But there weren't enough of these encounters with real people. Most of the displays are thiings - dishes, clothing, furniture. But there are also diaries, books, letters.


But I'd say the museum has a way to go in terms of the depth it goes into. And the museum recognizes this in the narratives written on the walls. But this point it makes things seem all so rosy and wonderful. I didn't see anything that even hinted at the problems people probably faced in the past because they were of 'mixed blood.'

I also thought having an Anglo sounding narrator in the intro video talking about the Peranakan as "They" having a lot to teach "Us" to be a terrible choice. Even in their own museum they are not "us," but "them." The narrator should have been a Peranakan welcoming guests into their house.

Kona's Better

Here's Kona back home this morning lying up against my hip as I type, enjoying being back home. She's not 100%, but she's much better than we found her last night when we got home. She was barely moving and her gums were white. The vet said bring her in. We got a cab easily - well the first one apparently didn't want a dog, but another showed up right away - and she had blood taken, an iv, and got stuck in a cage for the night. When the vet called a couple hours later she said the test showed nothing - blood was normal, though there was something that indicated the liver wasn't right.

Since it was after hours, she was at the emergency night clinic and J had to go back at 8:30am this morning to either take her home or transfer to the hospital. So I was glad to see her come running in when he got back. Oh yeah, almost S$500 or about US$400.