In the Meantime, Here's Some Devil's Club

When you have a big event, a lot gets done in preparation, but a lot of other things get put aside until after the event.  My daughter's been graduated and my son's been married and now that everyone who came here for the events has left, I'm reviewing what needs to be done in the various facets of my life.

So, in the meantime, I was going to put up some devil's club photos I've taken.  But they really aren't that good.  So, I deleted most of them and settled for a couple that are just barely ok. Sorry, I've got things to do. 

 From an old NPR story:

Devil's club, or Oplopanax horridus, is a plant with an unmistakable presence. It has leaves like palm fronds, spines like daggers and red fruit that's candy for bears. It sticks its long neck out as far south as Oregon, and to the east, has even surprised a few Michigan hikers with its cloak of vicious thorns. But the plant is perhaps most common to the bear, deer and salmon habitats of Alaska's Tongass National Forest.   [Well, we aren't near the Tongass, but we have lots up here in Southcentral Alaska too.]

 "The Tlingit have turned to devil's club for a list of ailments you wouldn't wish on an enemy: from coughs and colds to stomach ulcers, tuberculosis and hypoglycemia. 

Tribe members steep it into teas, mash it into salves, chew, sip and steam it. It's also used to ward off evil. The plant, dubbed the "Tlingit aspirin" has not been approved for medicinal use by the Food and Drug Administration."

From Drugs.com:

"Externally the prickly outer bark sometimes is scraped from the stem, leaving the cambium for use in the preparation of decoctions and poultices; however, others use both the cambium and stem together. Poultices were applied to sores and wounds to prevent or reduce swelling and infection. The cambium sometimes is softened by chewing prior to being placed on a cut or burn as an emergency analgesic and local antiseptic. In many cultures, the plant is believed to possess “magical” powers that impart great strength."

Devil's Club superficially is similar to Cow Parsnip - in the size of the plant and the leaf shape and size.  An older post on cow parsnip compares devil's club and cow parsnip.

Playing-with-Your-Head Art

It's been a great week with lots of people in town for the wedding this past Sunday.  The last few days we've had doing Anchorage things with our visitors.  I've tried to post every day, but my attention has been elsewhere.

Here are some websites I've been wanting to share that visually play with the notions of reality and not-reality.

The Wondrous - This post features Belgian artist Ben Heine mixing drawing and photos (I think.)

When I sent my friend Tómas the link to Heine, he offered back this link to a post on chalk sidewalk art by Julian Beever at Cecilitaa’s Blog.  More playing with how we see reality.  In many cases I can't tell where the art ends and reality begins.  Is the photographer in this picture a real person or drawn on?  It looks obvious in this one, but after seeing some of the others I'm not sure.








Both sites have LOTS of examples of these artists' work and most are amazing.

Deer Fly? Maybe.

This blog is called "What Do I Know?"  But I'm probably more interested in "How Do I Know?"  Since my camera does a decent job of taking macro shots, I've been able to take fairly close-up pictures of bugs.  But that leaves me with the problem of identifying them.  So, I bought Dominique M. Collet's Insects of south-central Alaska. Sometimes it gives me a pretty clear id, like for the birch shield bug. But other times it leaves me still uncertain, but it narrows down the possibilities and then I can start googling.

The book has 29 families of flies. (He includes mosquitoes and midges.

"The most distinguishing characteristic for these insects is a pair of well-developed forewings and hindwings (halteres) reduced to stubs.")

Most of us probably can distinguish 'flies' from 'mosquitoes', but now we have 27 more different specific families.  And then each family can be broken down - though he doesn't do that for most.  You can see, though, how the more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know.  And if you're honest with yourself, you'll realize that what you don't know dwarfs what you do know.  And this should lead to humility. 

Going through the pictures, I decided the deer fly seemed the most likely.  Especially this:

"These . . . flies have gold and green metallic eyes . . ."

So I googled deer fly (family Tabanidae).

Bugguide offers a lot more detail. [my comments in brackets below]

"Medium to large flies, females take blood, and some are pests. Typical characteristics:

• stoutly built flies with large squamae (scales above the halteres, also called calypters);
  [It is stout.  I'm not positive about the squamae.  If you click the links to halteres it tells you
  

  "calypter noun - a small membranous flap at the base of the hind edge of the wing in some flies; it covers the halteres."

  but I can't tell from the pictures they provide and this one I took. There is a lump at about where the wing comes in.]

• feet with 3 pads (as opposed to 2); [My picture doesn't show the foot pads]

• 3rd antennal segment elongated, clearly made up of several fused parts; [???]

• 3rd antennal segment with a prominent tooth at base in some groups [????]

• wing veins R4 and R5 fork to form a large 'Y' across the wing tip." [Yes! you can see the Y pattern of the veins on the wing.  Look at the tip of the wing on the left.]

So, I'm not certain, but at this point I'm tentatively identifying this as a deer fly until I get more evidence one way or the other.

Horsetail: One Person's Weed is Another Person's Scouring Pad

Writing for the blog often makes me question things I think I know.  I took these pictures of horse tail at the Helen Louise McDowell Sanctuary, but is that really what it is?  Or just the name we tend to use?  It does seem to be horse tail. 


 
My first stop on the google express got to this at gardenstew:

"I have a weed growing in a bed in my yard (Horsetail). From my research I have found out that this is a very hard thing to get rid of. Unfortunately it has begun to spread in my lawn and into another vegetable bed that I have. I don't want it to get much further, but from what I am reading most weed killers do nothing for this. Has anyone ever dealt with this weed before? Any suggestions? (I have pets and don't want to expose them to anything toxic in my yard.)

Thanks"

 (You can find suggestions for getting rid of horsetail there at gardenstew and also at the UBC botanical garden site.)

But horsetail has beneficial properties too. 

Alaska Herbal Teas tells us:

"Horsetail is edible, but not choice. It must be boiled, as it is toxic raw. Some Athabascans use it as a seasoning. A fluidextract of the sterile stems and ashes from the burnt plant are used for medicine against kidney and bladder trouble, stones, ulcers or wounds in the bowel, and externally on sores. Horsetail has historical uses for cleaning and polishing. Its high silica content makes it good for scouring and soap preparation."

There's overlapping info at  Wikipedia:

The Water Horsetail has historically been used by both Europeans and Native Americans for scouring, sanding, and filing because of the high silica content in the stems. Early spring shoots were eaten. Medically it was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans to stop bleeding and treat kidney ailments, ulcers, and tuberculosis, and by the ancient Chinese to treat superficial visual obstructions. Rootstocks and stems are sometimes eaten by waterfowl. Horsetails absorb heavy metals from the soil, and are often used in bioassays for metals.

According to Carolus Linnaeus, reindeer, which refuse ordinary hay, will eat this horsetail, which is juicy, and that it is cut as fodder in the north of Sweden for cows, with a view to increasing their milk yield, but that horses will not touch it.

Sometimes a Bug is Really a Bug

Not long ago, I posted this picture of a bug.  I've been excited that I can get pretty good macro shots with my pocket sized Canon.  So, when I discovered the book Insects of south-central Alaska  by Dominique M. Collet, I went to Title Wave and bought it.  

I looked under beetles first, but then found it under 'true bugs.'   A birch shield bug.











Then last week at the botanical garden I caught this shot of a bumble bee (page 169). 

Then Sunday I found this fly. 

Click to enlarge

Using Collet's book, I decided it might be a tachinid fly.  Google got me to cirrusimage which gave me lens envy, because they had such incredible photos.  It also said there were 8200 different species of tachinid flies.  They all lay their eggs either in, on, or near the larvae of other insects.  The young then act as parasites on their hosts.  These are actually beneficial.

"Many tachinids parasitize major agricultural pests of food or timber crops, and have potential for use as biological control agents, but most attempts at using them in such wise have been dismal failures.

Among the methods tachinids use to infect their subjects are the oviparous species that place large, macrotype eggs directly on the body of the host, the micro-oviparous, which place tiny, microtype eggs on foliage or other foodstuffs being consumed by the host, or the larviparous, which retain their eggs until maturity; these eggs hatch immediately upon being laid on or near the target. Some female tachinidae that attack bugs or beetles have piercing ovipositors much like wasps in the Hymenoptera family Ichneumonidae."

I recommend checking out cirrusimage because those photos are incredible!

Aside

There's a semipermeable membrane that keeps my family out of my blog.  Sometimes, though, they slip in as an aside. 











Keeping blog and family separate this last week has been hard.  Some things are just too good and too big to leave out completely.





A small contingent of relatives and friends of my son and his betrothed converged on Anchorage for their wedding.

Clouds crowding low on the mountains and the beauty of emerging vegetation embraced us with mystery, hope and joy. 

No Bikes: Owen Told To Take His Money Elsewhere

A friend was by the other day and told me his tale of woe at Alaska USA Credit Union.  The lobby of the credit union was closed for renovation, so he took his bike around to the drive through lane, put several hundred dollars into the tube to be deposited and waited. 

You can hear Owen tell his own story below.





Even though the money was already to the teller, he was told he couldn't use the bike in the drive through. When he pointed out that the lobby was closed, he was told to go to another branch.

I called to check on their policy. Dustin told me that it varied from branch to branch. In some you can walk through the drive through.  Dustin figured it was the C Street branch because they've had some construction. He called them and they said they do not allow bikes in the drive through.

I called my own credit union - Credit Union 1 - and Kendra said she knew that people were able to walk through the drive through and didn't think there would be a problem with a bike, unless, of course, it was very crowded and the lobby was open.

I would add that Owen has been a member of AlaskaUSA for over 30 years. Since CU1 has no problems with walkers and bikers using the drive through when the lobby is closed, and other AlaskaUSA branches allow it, methinks this is one person who is just inflexible and unreasonable.

Anchorage Behaves for Guests

A squirrel* on the Winter Creek trail

We took some visitors to dinner last night at the Double Musky in Girdwood. The cloudiness was clearing up as we drove to Girdwood, stopped at the restaurant to put our names on the list and checked the wait time.


 *everything I could find through google suggests it's a red squirrel, but I'm not certain. 

Sated exit from Double Musky

We had 45 minutes to wander the area around the Prince Hotel and get back. A dinner that brought approving comments from our guests

and then a drive home into 11pm setting sun.  The picture just doesn't do justice to the water color quality of the water and sky.

And a short stop to watch the terns at Potter Marsh.

Denali was out and clear was we made our way home. (I was driving, no pictures.)

Making Policy Behind Closed Doors - Port and Planning

KSKA had a report on the Mayor's State of the City speech and developments with Title 21 at the Building Operators and Managers Association luncheon last week and today's ADN has a story on the Port Authority.  The common factor - as I see it - is that both represent policy development by the Mayor behind closed doors.

The Port 

Lisa Demer at the Anchorage Daily News writes, 

Mayor Dan Sullivan, trying to find a solution to the troubled Port of Anchorage expansion project, brought shippers, government officials, and other interested parties to a closed-door port summit Tuesday at City Hall.
"This is a project that's too big to fail, too important to fail," Sullivan said.
City officials said ahead of time that the meeting was closed to the public so that parties could speak freely. The mayor said restricting access would also allow proprietary business information to be discussed.   (emphasis added)

Title 21

This one's a little more complicated.  The Municipality of Anchorage went through a long, eight year process to develop a long term plan for city development including changes to Title 21 - the Muni's land use planning code.  A local citizens group - Anchorage Community Council has a timeline of the process (from their point of view, of course):

• The Title 21 Rewrite Project was started in 2002 to implement the city’s adopted comprehensive plans.
• There have been five drafts, each of which has been reviewed by the public. Thousands of staff hours and volunteer hours have gone into reviewing
  and amending the various drafts.  The extensive public process has been open to anyone who desired to participate.
• There have been multiple public hearings at the Planning & Zoning Commission and the Assembly. 
• With each draft, input from the public, including the development community, has led to changes and improvements.
•  By the summer of 2010, all but one of the fourteen chapters had been provisionally adopted by the Assembly. (Not counting the separate Chugiak-Eagle River chapter.)
• “Provisionally Adopted” means that the Assembly Title 21 Committee had thoroughly reviewed, discussed, and frequently amended at least two different drafts of the code, and the final draft was found to be generally acceptable by the Assembly. 
• Dan Coffey was a member of the Assembly’s Title 21 committee and he voted FOR every single provisionally adopted chapter.

But then,

• On July 25, 2010, the Mayor entered into a sole-source contract with Mr. Coffey (who was no longer on the Assembly) to review the provisionally adopted chapters with an assignment to select the top ten most controversial issues in the rewrite and work with interest groups and municipal staff to resolve the identified issues.  In a political letter in late 2010 urging support for certain Assembly candidates, Mr. Coffey wrote that the mayor asked him to “re-work” Title 21.
• In the Fall of 2010, Mr. Coffey held private meetings (planning staff was not allowed to attend and they were closed to the public) with various interest groups.  Instead of identifying and working on the top ten issues, Mr. Coffey submitted to the Planning Department redlined drafts of chapters 1 and 2 of the rewrite. [emphasis added]
• At a meeting with Anchorage Citizens Coalition representatives in November of 2010, Mr. Coffey showed redlined drafts of chapters 1 and 2 of the rewrite.  He made it clear he is rewriting the code following his own personal opinions and biases.  He expressed disdain for planners and discounted studies that did not fit his opinions.
• In November 2010, the Assembly Title 21 Committee stopped meeting after Mr. Coffey convinced the chair to discontinue the meetings until he finished his work.

When are closed door meetings justified?

There is always a tension between transparency and confidentiality/privacy.  The federal Freedom of Information statute identifies specific exemptions.  The basic exemptions listed are there to protect information, which if made public, could compromise

• National Security
• Personal Privacy
• Trade Secrets
• Criminal Investigations and Litigation and 
• Physical Safety

The list has more specific items, but they tend to fall in these categories.  You can see the detailed list here.


A less legitimate reason for closed door meetings is to get things done without tipping off people who might object.  

The mayor listed two reasons for the port discussions being closed: 

1. parties could speak freely.  
2. allow proprietary business information to be discussed.

Yes, it's easier to say what you're really thinking in private where others can't hear you.  But people with opposing views don't get the chance to hear what you're saying and rebut it if necessary. 

There are situations where one might talk about underlying issues and personalities that people wouldn't say in public, but ultimately, I personally feel the danger of too much being hidden is greater than of too much being public.  As much as we've heard, for instance, about the danger of the wikileaks, so far the main fallout we've heard about is embarrassment and attitude realignment based on the new public understandings - such as the Arab support against Iran's nuclear projects. 

Proprietary business information is a legitimate reason for going into a closed session.  Companies do not want their competitors knowing their costs and plans.  But who is in on these discussions? 

Just one of the companies involved?  Then are enough voices at the table?  If more than one, how do they deal with one of them disclosing proprietary information?  It is, after all, the competitors, not the general public they are concerned about here. 

In any case, if there is proprietary information being disclosed, they can do what the Alaska Redistricting Board did when they talked about litigation - go into temporary executive session.  There's no reason to close the whole discussion to public observation. 

Unless they don't want the public to know what's going on.  It's much easier if no one is privy to what you're doing, because they don't ask pesky questions and point out inconsistencies or inaccuracies.  But it doesn't make for good long-term public policy. 


What the Anchorage Citizens' Coalition is saying is that after the whole process was essentially completed, and all parties had a chance to say their piece, and a great deal of negotiating and compromising had been done,  BOMA (Building Operators and Managers Association) gets to  step into the process and work privately with Coffey to make suggested changes that they would like to see. 

Not in open meetings like everyone else during long and exhaustive public process, but in private meetings. out of the spotlight, where people can't hear what is said and challenge inaccuracies. 

Yes, it will still go to the Assembly for final approval, but will the original, provisionally approved document be the starting point and will the Assembly vote on each of the newly proposed changes? 

Or will they be offered Coffey's changed document as the starting point?  And how much time will Assembly members have to scrutinize and discuss the changes?  And how much time will the interested members of the public who participated in the original 8 year process have to identify issues and explain them to the public and the Assembly? 

And now that the Assembly balance has changed, does any of this matter?  Has Sullivan simply waited until he got a majority of the Assembly to summarily throw out an eight year public process and substitute what the industry wants instead? 

It's hard to know whether my fears are justified because we don't know, in either the Port situation or the Title 21 situation what is being done. 

But, I'm adding the State Public Meeting statute so people can consider it themselves.  Why do we have such a policy and is it really being followed?

AS 44.62.310. Government Meetings Public.

(a) All meetings of a governmental body of a public entity of the state are open to the public except as otherwise provided by this section or another provision of law. Attendance and participation at meetings by members of the public or by members of a governmental body may be by teleconferencing. Agency materials that are to be considered at the meeting shall be made available at teleconference locations if practicable. Except when voice votes are authorized, the vote shall be conducted in such a manner that the public may know the vote of each person entitled to vote. The vote at a meeting held by teleconference shall be taken by roll call. This section does not apply to any votes required to be taken to organize a governmental body described in this subsection.

(b) If permitted subjects are to be discussed at a meeting in executive session, the meeting must first be convened as a public meeting and the question of holding an executive session to discuss matters that are listed in (c) of this section shall be determined by a majority vote of the governmental body. The motion to convene in executive session must clearly and with specificity describe the subject of the proposed executive session without defeating the purpose of addressing the subject in private. Subjects may not be considered at the executive session except those mentioned in the motion calling for the executive session unless auxiliary to the main question. Action may not be taken at an executive session, except to give direction to an attorney or labor negotiator regarding the handling of a specific legal matter or pending labor negotiations.

(c) The following subjects may be considered in an executive session:

(1) matters, the immediate knowledge of which would clearly have an adverse effect upon the finances of the public entity;

(2) subjects that tend to prejudice the reputation and character of any person, provided the person may request a public discussion;

(3) matters which by law, municipal charter, or ordinance are required to be confidential;

(4) matters involving consideration of government records that by law are not subject to public disclosure.

(d) This section does not apply to

(1) a governmental body performing a judicial or quasi-judicial function when holding a meeting solely to make a decision in an adjudicatory proceeding;

(2) juries;

(3) parole or pardon boards;

(4) meetings of a hospital medical staff;

(5) meetings of the governmental body or any committee of a hospital when holding a meeting solely to act upon matters of professional qualifications, privileges or discipline;

(6) staff meetings or other gatherings of the employees of a public entity, including meetings of an employee group established by policy of the Board of Regents of the University of Alaska or held while acting in an advisory capacity to the Board of Regents; or

(7) meetings held for the purpose of participating in or attending a gathering of a national, state, or regional organization of which the public entity, governmental body, or member of the governmental body is a member, but only if no action is taken and no business of the governmental body is conducted at the meetings.

(e) Reasonable public notice shall be given for all meetings required to be open under this section. The notice must include the date, time, and place of the meeting and if, the meeting is by teleconference, the location of any teleconferencing facilities that will be used. Subject to posting notice of a meeting on the Alaska Online Public Notice System as required by AS 44.62.175 (a), the notice may be given using print or broadcast media. The notice shall be posted at the principal office of the public entity or, if the public entity has no principal office, at a place designated by the governmental body. The governmental body shall provide notice in a consistent fashion for all its meetings.

(f) Action taken contrary to this section is voidable. A lawsuit to void an action taken in violation of this section must be filed in superior court within 180 days after the date of the action. A member of a governmental body may not be named in an action to enforce this section in the member's personal capacity. A governmental body that violates or is alleged to have violated this section may cure the violation or alleged violation by holding another meeting in compliance with notice and other requirements of this section and conducting a substantial and public reconsideration of the matters considered at the original meeting. If the court finds that an action is void, the governmental body may discuss and act on the matter at another meeting held in compliance with this section. A court may hold that an action taken at a meeting held in violation of this section is void only if the court finds that, considering all of the circumstances, the public interest in compliance with this section outweighs the harm that would be caused to the public interest and to the public entity by voiding the action. In making this determination, the court shall consider at least the following:

(1) the expense that may be incurred by the public entity, other governmental bodies, and individuals if the action is voided;

(2) the disruption that may be caused to the affairs of the public entity, other governmental bodies, and individuals if the action is voided;

(3) the degree to which the public entity, other governmental bodies, and individuals may be exposed to additional litigation if the action is voided;

(4) the extent to which the governing body, in meetings held in compliance with this section, has previously considered the subject;

(5) the amount of time that has passed since the action was taken;

(6) the degree to which the public entity, other governmental bodies, or individuals have come to rely on the action;

(7) whether and to what extent the governmental body has, before or after the lawsuit was filed to void the action, engaged in or attempted to engage in the public reconsideration of matters originally considered in violation of this section;

(8) the degree to which violations of this section were wilful, flagrant, or obvious;

(9) the degree to which the governing body failed to adhere to the policy under AS 44.62.312 (a).

(g) Subsection (f) of this section does not apply to a governmental body that has only authority to advise or make recommendations to a public entity and has no authority to establish policies or make decisions for the public entity.

(h) In this section,

(1) "governmental body" means an assembly, council, board, commission, committee, or other similar body of a public entity with the authority to establish policies or make decisions for the public entity or with the authority to advise or make recommendations to the public entity; "governmental body" includes the members of a subcommittee or other subordinate unit of a governmental body if the subordinate unit consists of two or more members;

(2) "meeting" means a gathering of members of a governmental body when

(A) more than three members or a majority of the members, whichever is less, are present, a matter upon which the governmental body is empowered to act is considered by the members collectively, and the governmental body has the authority to establish policies or make decisions for a public entity; or

(B) the gathering is prearranged for the purpose of considering a matter upon which the governmental body is empowered to act and the governmental body has only authority to advise or make recommendations for a public entity but has no authority to establish policies or make decisions for the public entity;

(3) "public entity" means an entity of the state or of a political subdivision of the state including an agency, a board or commission, the University of Alaska, a public authority or corporation, a municipality, a school district, and other governmental units of the state or a political subdivision of the state; it does not include the court system or the legislative branch of state government.

Palin's Internet Provider?

Is it true this clothing store is in the internet business too?