Why Powerline Pass is Named Powerline Pass

This shot,  from 'the other side' looking back toward the trail toward the south along the pass, doesn't answer the question.

 

Nor does this one, also from the other side, this time looking west toward Flattop and the Glen Alps parking lot.  

And here's the reason for the name.  I tried to find some history online, but found nothing that really said too much.  Mostly it was hiking and biking sites.  There was a little bit about fiber optic cable that had been laid along the trail around 2005, but nothing too specific, and, of course, that was well after the powerline poles were put in.  

I also learned this was 'world-famous' as a place to see moose.  I knew that moose were out there, particularly in the evening, but I didn't know it was a favorite with photographers from around the world. From ADN piece  Powerline Pass famous for viewing moose:

High above Alaska's largest city, fall has sparked an annual mating congregation of majestic bull moose. Thousand-pound animals sporting antlers as wide as a man is tall, they gather along Campbell Creek to joust for mates. The area, once something of a secret among wildlife viewers but now increasingly well-known, offers some of the best moose viewing Alaska has to offer within an easy, half-hour drive from downtown Anchorage.

Photographer Stefan Meyers came all the way from Germany to witness and photograph these animals. . .

A professional photographer in Germany, Meyers said that among photographers in that country there is widespread knowledge of Powerline moose.

Do you think photographers go to Moose Pass to shoot the powerlines?

After lot had emptied a bit, about 11pm

What I do know is that parking has gotten bad.  I've seen it a couple times on summer weekends where cars were parked down the road.   Wednesday night, last week, when we visited,  cars lined the road next to the "Fire Lane - No Parking" signs.  Maybe 60 or 70 cars.  (We luckily found someone just pulling out of a space in the parking lot.)  There was publicity about all those cars getting tickets one night last August.   I guess there's been a truce.

And I've never seen so many people roaming around - and this was a weeknight!

This year legislation was passed to enlarge the parking lot and the governor didn't veto it.  It originally sounded like the parking lot was going to be put in where the trail goes to Powerline Pass - a long time favorite trail passed miniature trees that my kids loved to play in when they were little.  As I read the plans, they could well take out this field of lupine that was at it's perfect moment Wednesday night.

I don't think there is a perfect answer.  And I'm still not sure why the Governor signed this bill and vetoed the bill to purchase the Waldron land south of Tudor.  That's beauftiful green land that is accessible to far more people right in the middle of town.   It's certainly not the same kind of land.  And you can see that I too, fell into comparing one park land bill to another instead of comparing it to a road project or other expenditures in the operating budget that once spent are gone.  Whereas the money for Waldron will save that precious spot for future generations. 

Waldron Lake from prior post

Why some people hate cottonwood

[UPDATE June 8, 2020: There was a picture of seeds flying but it's no longer working, so I took it down.  I'll see if I can get another in July this year when this is happening again.]






They make summer snow.














Eventualy, the whole seed pod drops down to litter.

But I don't hate cottonwoods.  They're the biggest trees we have in the Anchorage area, they provide lots of green, noise muffling, air cleaning leaves.  Everything good comes with a cost.  Cars get us places fast, but endanger us - quickly through collisions and gradually  through pollution.  Chocolate makes our pants tighter.  The companionship of pets, requires care in exchange.

And I believe there is great potential in cottonwood cotton, the right person just hasn't focused on how to make it profitable.  Here's an earlier post exploring what people have already  done with cottonwood cotton and catkins. 

It all depends if you see a problem or a potential.

The First Space Shuttle Launch April 12, 1981

I had a one year fellowship in Washington DC and we'd planned a trip down the east coast to Disneyworld for the kids for spring break.  My son and I had taken a parent-child workshop for about seven weeks at the Air and Space Museum which had us building a space station.  It was a great class.  Even though J1 was just under their cutoff age, since he wouldn't get another chance the next year, they let us in.

I still remember that first day.  Maybe 15-20 pairs - mostly dads and sons, but a few daughters.  We were in a small museum classroom before opening hours.  The instructor was asking the kids what you would need if you were going into space.  As the kids answered, he made a list on the board.   Then we went downstairs into the museum itself and looked at the display cabinet to see the actual items taken in the first trips to space.  Pretty heady stuff.

By the last session we'd all created model space stations - fortunately I had my son to help me with that since even at that age he understood those things better than I did. 

The very first shuttle launch was originally scheduled for spring 1981.  I don't remember the exact date, but it was early enough that I never considered scheduling our trip to catch it.   But I did joke that if it got delayed enough, we might. 

And then I realized that if we boogied down south a day early, we might just make it.  We drove all night and got to Titusville about 5 am.  It was a carnival atmosphere.  People were all over the place.  We need a word in English to describe the sort of event where lots of people - strangers - are out, together, communally enjoying some great event.  Sort of like going to a college football game, or watching fire works on New Years Eve community celebration.  That's what it was like. 

There was the launch pad, out across the water, as we mingled with the crowd. 

It's that vague box to the right of the reflected rising sun. 


And then came the disappointing announcement echoed over thousands of car and portable radios.  The launch was scrubbed.

Should we stick around or go off to our reservations at Disneyworld?  With two young kids, we drove the short distance to Orlando to visit Mickey and his friends.  But, the next morning (I think, hey, it was 30 years ago - and the NASA site doesn't mention the delays) we were up at dawn, on the balcony, and watched the white streak in the distance as the Columbia made its first successful launch. 

J1 and M on the right

A few days later we were back at Cape Canaveral as it was then known, to tour the Space Center.  This time we were able to get closer to the launch pad. 


So, when the last space shuttle launch took place yesterday, I couldn't help but think of those days in Florida 30 years ago. 



From the NASA website today:

Shuttle Crew Completes Inspection, Prepares for Docking

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 01:49:54 PM PST

Space shuttle Atlantis’ crew is wrapping up a busy day filled with preparations for Sunday’s docking to the International Space Station and a detailed survey of the shuttle’s heat shield. Video from the survey, which used the Orbiter Boom Sensor System attached to the shuttle robotic arm, has been down linked to Mission Control in Houston, where imagery experts will review it to determine whether the heat shield sustained any damage during Friday’s ascent. Atlantis’ crew goes to sleep at 7:29 p.m. EDT.

Flight Day 3 begins with crew wake up at 3:29 a.m. Sunday.

Still Don't Know After 5 Years - Blog Retrospective Part 1

My first post was on July 9, 2006.  It was short.  But as I look back, there was some hint of what was to come.  It was about spittle bugs.  And I'd googled enough to figure out what they were and gave some short background. I didn't have a digital camera so there were no pictures.  I didn't know how to make links so there were no links.  There were two posts that month.

This blog has covered a lot of ground in five years - in terms of geography, media, and content.  I've met a lot of people through blogging.  People I blogged about.  People I met while blogging (at the political corruption trials, the Anchorage International Film Festival, for example).  I met people who commented on my blog, and other bloggers.

While blogging has been around a lot longer than five years, when I started few people had a clear idea of what a blog was.  Since then, lots of people have started blogs.  Other Alaska bloggers have supported each other as our world exploded in August 2008 and we tried to figure out what we should be doing.  Thanks for you kindnesses to me.

Anniversaries are good times to take stock, to rethink, to make changes.  But one of the consequences of blogging is that a lot of things I should do, don't get done.  ('Should' there is, of course, relative.)  So, the serious analysis of blogging is on a pile of other unfinished things to do.

Therefore, I'm treating this like a birthday of sorts.  I shouldn't have to work, I can just sit back and chit chat with friends.  And maybe I can use these ramblings later for something more profound.  But I have to do some heavier thinking this week, because fellow blogger Peter Dunlap-Shohl has invited me to a Hometown Alaska show he's hosting about Social Media, as he put it in a reminder email, "2:00 on July 13 also known as 'Next Wednesday.'"  That's on KSKA, and those of you outside of Alaska can probably find it online eventually.

Well, I've tried to create an appropriate post here but there's just too much to say.  I had to trash most of it.  So I'll do a series of retrospective posts looking at different topics - including the struggle to discover what blogging is.  (Of course, once we 'nail' it, then we stop learning, while blogging will continue on its merry way escaping our labels.)

So for now, I'm going to settle for identifying a few favorite and, I hope, representative posts from the first year.

My 'manage posts' page says I have 3025 published posts.  Even remembering them all is hard.  I get reminded of older posts as I watch where sitemeter takes people.   And what makes something a favorite post?

Sometimes because it reminds me of a really good day, like when we visited Swe's Karen village outside of Chiangmai. 

Sometimes because I thought the topic was interesting, profound, or off-the-wall. The key ingredient was always that it rearranged my brain cells a bit so I saw the world a little differently. 

Here are a few from the first year of What Do I Know?:

India Road Motto: Blow Horn and companion post Awazdo - The creative signs on Indian trucks and the culture of blowing horns.

Blind Colors - What Food is Like Blue?  - this is one I want to repost now that there are more readers and I might get more comments. 

How Did Carnival Cruise Lines Get US Taxpayers to Buy them a $28 million Railway Depot?  - This was one of my earlier crossovers from blogging to something like journalism.  (I don't claim to do journalism here, but that's another long topic.)  There are links to two follow up posts.

The Sierra Leone Refugee All Star Band Rolls Anchorage - This was coverage of a concert as I struggled to interpret the changing rules for video and copyrights in the age of Youtube, and how to use my tiny digital camera to take document events.  I ended up editing what I had into short vignettes of different songs.  But their music triumphs even my poor equipment and editing. This video has gotten almost 15,000 hits on YouTube, which for me is a lot. And because Anchorage is not too big, we got to meet the band members after the show.

Beyond the Headlines - Covering the Tom Anderson trial was my first intense immersion into one topic.  Mostly I had to report what I saw going on, because I really didn't know enough to intelligently comment.  But this post was a chance to reflect, just before the verdict was announced, on how it all might be impacting the various players involved. [Wow.  I just reread this and it cries for an update now that we know what has happened for many of these players.  While I didn't have a clue where things would go, at least I left things open ended enough to allow for what has since happened.  Anderson has a few weeks more of home detention at his parents' place and then he's free and has work lined up with a family related business.  I think he's going to be ok.  The prosecutors had their days of glory in the three Alaska trials only to have it all come crashing down after the Stevens trial.  Marsh committed suicide and Bottini and FBI agent Keppler are still subject to an ongoing investigation.]

Cow Parsnip - Heracleum - The blog gives me a chance to combine pictures and some research to show and tell about things I come across.  This post continues to get hits and led to me to the Southeast Alaska Science Fair, where David Mendivil did a science project on Cow Parsnip and used (after asking for permission) some photos from this post.

Why I Live Here - Birding at Elmendorf Air Force Base -   Out with an expert birder friend on an evening so beautiful you couldn't take a bad picture.

Blogging is Like Fishing - After a year of blogging, I had some reflections.  How little I understood things then.  And still today.

I want to do more retrospective posts.  Linking to old favorites is the easy part, but I also want to explore what all this blogging means, how it affects my life, and how I can clean up the clutter that has accumulated as I've tried out widgets to make things accessible.  Some worked better than others and some definitely need to go. 

And thanks for dropping by now and then.  Without you, this would simply be my private journal - which isn't a bad thing.  But without you, I surely wouldn't be so faithful to the blog.

"If the mayor and complete council were wiped out..."

I was in the UAA/APU Consortium Library Archives the other day looking something up and got to reading the Anchorage Charter Commission minutes of March 2, 1959. They had a consultant from Lansing, Michigan - George R. Sidwell - and over several evenings of four hour meetings they discussed everything from collecting taxes to magistrates to the powers of the city council.

On page 13 of the March 2 meeting, they had a discussion on succession in case something happened to the mayor.

Shannon:  Mr. Sidwell, I would like to bring up a new concept that has been brought out by the office of the Defense Mobilization, which now has a civil defense responsibility, and because of the type of warfare we are now looking forward to, they are very anxious to get a liberal or broad succession of government.

Sidwell:  We have it very much in our state.  .  .  This is the only answer I have figured out.  If something happens to the mayor, members of the council, according to seniority would take over.  Now, if mayor and complete council were wiped out, you would have another situation like Galveston.

You can read more of the context below.   Click it to make it clearer.

From Frank Reed Sr. Collection at UAA/APU Consortium Library Archives

The 1950s was the height of the Cold War and the fear of nuclear attack by both the Soviet Union and the United States.  People who could afford it built bomb shelters in their back yards.

But reading this now, after 9/11 and all the security based limits on people's freedom, one can't help but think that in every age, there is a part of the population, that exploits security threats for their own purposes.  I don't even doubt that some of the people believe the threat is as great is they profess.  But the rest of us have to stand up for reasonable assessment of risks and reactions.  Making 95 year old wheel chair bound passengers take off their incontinence pads before they can get through airport security is a reminder of how extreme some security proponents become.

In this case, no one seemed too concerned, but the mention reminds us that this is nothing new.  And I don't recall any city councils getting wiped out by nuclear attack. 






What happened in Galveston?  I'm not sure.  There was a hurricane in 1900 that killed between 6,000 and 12,000, but that was 60 years earlier.  "The deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history" occurred in the nearby port at Texas City in 1947 and killed close to 600 people, but I find no mention in either case of the death of a mayor. 

By the way, the Archives are on the third floor of the Consortium library.  The staff was extremely helpful.  They have lots of rules, such as:

• On site use only
• No pens allowed (only pencils) and for some items, gloves
• Not food or drink
• Photography only with permission 
• Be careful of copyright, literary, and cultural rights 
• [The stuff I was looking at was all public documents, so no problem]
• Be sure to cite the archives when you publish something

Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Brain Damage?

Clipart courtesy FCIT 

I found myself pondering this question this morning.  Is there something we can learn from woodpeckers that might help us prevent human brain damage?  I don't know how this got into my head (my own form of brain damage?).  I checked on BirdNotes to see if they talked about woodpeckers this morning, but, no, it was orioles.

In any case, a quick internet search found that I was definitely not the first person to ask this question.  There are lots of good responses.

Tetrapod Zoology (This post is delightfully detailed.  Did you know woodpeckers  "have an incredibly long, protrusible tongue anchored to hypertrophied hyoid bones that have grown backwards around the skull base and then up and over the skull roof"?  And just because his blog is called Tetrapod his interests wanders well beyond.)

How are woodpeckers able to withstand rapid, repeated percussion without sustaining brain injury? This was looked at by Gibson (2006), and the rather disappointing conclusions were that the small size of the brain and short duration of the impacts helped the brain withstand high deceleration, as did the shape of the brain (it's longest axis is arranged dorsoventrally rather than anteroposteriorly). I say that these conclusions were 'disappointing' as I imagined that woodpeckers had evolved some sort of unique, shock-absorbing, brain-cushioning specialisations. It has in fact been suggested that the muscles at the tongue base might serve this function, but this can't be true as these muscles wrap around the back and top of the skull and don't have any contact with the brain itself.

Chris, at The Naked Scientists gives another good, overlapping explanation in answer to someone's question.  Citing a 1979 study by Philip May, Joaquin Fuster, Jochen Haber and Ada Hirschman, he gives a number of interesting facts:

• the impact deceleration when a woodpecker's beak slams into a surface can exceed one thousand times the force of gravity (1200g). 
• a tame acorn woodpecker, did take the precaution of closing his eyes prior to each strike !
• woodpeckers have relatively small brains which, in contrast to a human, are packed fairly tightly inside their skull cavity. This prevents the excessive movement of the brain inside the skull which causes so-called 'contre-coup' injuries (literally brain bruising) in humans. These occur when the brain bashes into the skull following a knock on the head. In other words the head stops, but the brain keeps on moving.
• because the brain is small it has a high surface area to weight ratio, meaning that the impact force is spread over a much larger area, relatively speaking, compared with a human. Again, this minimises the applied trauma.
• Finally, the woodpecker always ensures that he strikes his target in a dead straight line. This approach avoids placing rotational or sheering stresses on the nerve fibres in the brain. Humans involved in car accidents frequently develop the symptoms of 'diffuse axonal injury' where sudden deceleration coupled with rotation literally twists the different parts of the brain off each other like a lid coming off a jar. By hammering in a dead straight line woody woodpecker avoids giving himself DAI, further minimising the risk of brain damage. Such an approach may have implications for the design of protective head gear - such as crash helmets - which could be modified to prevent rotational injuries.  

Even the Wikipedia entry talks about this, and adds to why they close their eyes:

Many of the foraging, breeding and signaling behaviors of woodpeckers involve drumming and hammering using the bill.[4] To prevent brain damage from the rapid and repeated decelerations, woodpeckers have evolved a number of adaptations to protect the brain. These include small brain size, the orientation of the brain within the skull (which maximises the area of contact between the brain and the skull) and the short duration of contact. The millisecond before contact with wood a thickened nictitating membrane closes, protecting the eye from flying debris.[5] The nostrils are also protected; they are often slit-like and have special feathers to cover them.

Chris at The Naked Scientists warned that humans don't have these adaptations, so don't bang your head against the wall.


A Post Script:  The Tetrapod Zoology writer, Darren Naish, had an wonderfully informative and detailed post, and I just wanted to note his varied interests (which fascinated me, if not you), so I'm adding here his bio:

Darren Naish is a science writer, technical editor and palaeozoologist (affiliated with the University of Portsmouth, UK) who mostly works on Cretaceous dinosaurs and pterosaurs. He also studies such things as the swimming abilities of giraffes and fossil marine reptiles. An avid interest in modern wildlife and conservation has resulted in many adventures in lizard-chasing, bird-watching and litter-collecting. I've been blogging since 2006 and a compilation of early Tet Zoo articles is now available in book form as Tetrapod Zoology Book One. Additional recent books include The Great Dinosaur Discoveries and Dinosaurs Life Size. For more biographical info go here. I can be contacted intermittently at eotyrannus (at) gmail dot com.

Post Post Script:  I tried to get permission from another blogger to use a picture of a woodpecker skull, but didn't know how long I'd have to wait to hear back, so I made this video from a youtube video called The Tree Medic.  [As I wrote this I got back the permission.  Well, I should have looked more carefully because the blogger had given credit to the Florida Educational Technology Clearinghouse. But since the video is already embedded I'll leave it too.  And I thought this would be a ten minute post.  Dream on.]

What Anchorage Sports Facility is Named After a Former City Clerk?

I was in the Alaskana room at the UAA-APU Consortium library and came across some old City of Anchorage Annual Reports which give some perspective on today.

This one was 1959 and had a picture of downtown on the cover.

The City Council was pretty male and everyone, at least for these pictures, wore a coat and tie.  The Loussac Library they mention was downtown. 


Now, here's 1964.  It was published in 1965 so it's the year of the earthquake.

I thought this picture and caption were a bit quaint.

What caught my attention in this picture of Goose Lake ('popular in July') was all the snow on the mountains.  There's barely a white spot up there now - July 5.  Now, it's possible the picture wasn't taken in July, but I seem to recall that 30 years ago, we had a fair amount of snow on the mountains into August. 

[UPDATE July 6:  I took a picture at Goose Lake today for a comparison.  I didn't check at the time and the focus is awful, but it does show the contrast to the snow in the 1964 Year Book.   I'll try for a better shot when there aren't any clouds.]

And here's a little bit about a man most of us know about only because his name is on a building.

Click to enlarge

He did everything from elections to dog licenses - hired high school kids to go door to door for the dog licenses - business licenses, and polling Mt. View residents about liquor licenses in the area.  [UPDATE:  for non-Anchorage folks here's a link to the Ben Boeke facility.

The Consortium library - the basically cool building with the ugly neon green tower on top on the UAA campus - allows people with Municipal library cards to check things out.  I'll do some more on this section.

Bear Tooth - and other businesses - Get Bike Racks We Can Use

We  went to Bear Tooth this evening and saw a very thought provoking movie by Werner Herzog - Cave of Forgotten Dreams - on cave paintings in France.  Too much for me to process quickly - but think: 40,000 year old paintings.

Bear Tooth had new bike racks - at least since we biked there last.  BUT - they're awful. 

WHY?  There's a little place to slip in your tire.  If you have a short lock, you can only lock that one tire to the rack.









But even if you have a longer type lock, you can't get both tires locked, and I couldn't stretch mine to get the front tire and the frame without disconnecting where I've got my lock attached to the bike on the seat.

Here's J, holding the two ends of my lock, but unable to make them meet.  Since we had two locks and two bikes, I just attached my lock to her bike.  And, in hindsight, I could have parked it with the back wheel in the rack.

But there are so many much better racks on the market.  Sturdy racks, with strong metal and placed so it's easy to reach the key parts you want to lock.

I'm sure when the person ordered this rack, he (or she) was thinking how much do each of these cost per bike and picked this one cause it's a lot of bikes for a low cost.

But that's short term thinking.  Every bike is one less parking space. (Well, maybe not, we would have only used one car between us, but you get the idea.)

I know this isn't easy, but here's a site with ideas for employers who want to encourage employees to bike to work.  It has a long list of companies that supply bike racks.

Here's just one company - creative pipe - with lots of products.  

I bet there are even metal workers in Anchorage who could custom design some bike racks so they wouldn't have to be shipped up here. 

Businesses:

1. When you order bike racks, get someone who rides a bike to help out.
2. Look at the employer commuting guide at SFBike (or other online sources) for ideas about bike racks.   
3. Check with some local pipe and/or metal shops to see what they can do for you.  
4. Find a local bike organization and ask them to help out.  In Anchorage we have Bicycle Commuters of Anchorage who I'm sure would help.

This blue rack at Providence Hospital is MUCH better for example.

Anchorage Fourth of July - Something For Everyone

We biked down to the Delaney Park Strip for the Anchorage July 4 celebration.  We were too late for the parade or the reading of the Declaration of Independence, but then I'd just read it preparing for the previous post.





This will just be pictures and a few comments of a sunny day enjoying being with others on the Fourth.

The Marines were there.















J wondered why they didn't hire vets to interact with the kids - particularly vets in wheel chairs,

and with missing limbs.  Give the kids a more realistic idea about war and the vets some work.

One of the things that makes the US great is the richness that we've gained over the centuries from immigration.  While most citizens of the world know more about the US than the average American knows about any of their countries, we can know people from all those countries. We have absorbed not only the people, but their cultures which gives us access to understanding them in a totally different way, if we choose to engage them.  




I've been a fan of Taiko drumming since the very first time I saw and heard a group from Japan perform at West High School, eons ago.  The physical strength, discipline, and group coordination necessary to do this is amazing, and the result is mesmerizing as you can sense in the video.

You can learn to drum like this in Anchorage.  Just think, you get exercise, music lessons, and cultural training all in one.  From their website:

Tomodachi Daiko offers beginning taiko classes for adults (13+ years) on Wednesday evenings from 6:00 - 7:00 p.m., starting September 1, 2010.  All classes are held in the gymnasium at Sand Lake Elementary School on Jewel Lake Road. (Please wear comfortable clothing for this activity.  New students are required to purchase bachi (drum sticks) which are available at class.)

There was lots of food.

This young lady was soliciting donations - very successfully I would say - for Alaskan Assistance Dogs. 



Their mission statement, from their website, is:

"Alaska Assistance Dogs provides professionally trained service dogs to Alaskans with special needs including mobility impairments, autism and post traumatic stress disorder. We also incorporate service dog training into therapeutic programs to improve the lives of Alaskans from pre-schoolers to adults."

A lot of relatively young kids were having a great time on the climbing tower, well strapped in.

 The Bird Treatment and Learning Center had several birds there.  They were either disabled or too adapted to humans and couldn't be released into the wild.  It was a great opportunity to get some good pictures since my little camera doesn't do well with telephoto.  This is a great horned owl.  The owls that really do go Hoo, Hoo, Hoo. Hoo.

 From the Bird TLC website:

The Bird Treatment and Learning Center

is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization dedicated to rehabilitating sick, injured or orphaned wild birds and providing avian education programs to the public. Dr. James R. Scott, an Anchorage veterinarian, now retired, founded Bird TLC in 1988. Dr. Scott, along with other Alaskan veterinarians and volunteers, donate their time to treat these birds in need. In addition to medical care, Bird TLC provides a variety of educational programs to increase people's awareness of the wild birds around them and to encourage preservation of their habitat. Bird TLC is supported by education program fees and contributions from individuals, private foundations, and corporations.

Would You Have Been a Loyalist or Patriot? Or Uncommitted?

As we observe the Fourth of July, it's tempting to ponder which of us would have sided with the British, which with the new American Patriots, and which would have tried to avoid taking sides and just lived their lives.

THE QUIZ APPROACH

Allthetests offers a quiz for that which begins:

Question 1: If a soldier came up to you and asked if you would join the army to fight Britain, what would you do?
	Agree to fight for your independence
	Say that you will think about it, but never get the time to actually choose
	Yell "NO" and slam the door in his face

Question 2: If you found a spy for the Americans and he was getting caught by the British, what would you do?
	Grab your gun and fight off the British so the spy can run for it
	Try to compromise between the British and the spy
	Help the British grab him and take him into custody to reveal the Americans' secrets

But how can the typical American of 2011 honestly answer a question like that? How would you answer a question like:

If you saw a someone being robbed, would you run to help the person?

I doubt very many of us know how we would react in such a situation. Each robbery has a different context.  Are there others around?  Does the robber have a gun?  Are we in a hurry?  Have you - the bystander - been trained to fight?

So many things come into play that even if we've been in the situation before, we may not be able to predict what would happen next time.  When it comes to taking personal risks,  our emotional response doesn't always match our ideals.

With  something as abstract as what we would have done 200 years ago, where our personal standing in that society is undefined, where the 'right' and 'wrong' answers are so known, and where all the personal emotional context is non-existent, is impossible.


THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS APPROACH

Wikipedia says that Larabee (1948) has identified eight characteristics of the Loyalists that made them essentially conservative:

* Psychologically they were older, better established, and resisted innovation.
* They felt that resistance to the Crown—the legitimate government—was morally wrong.
* They were alienated when the Patriots resorted to violence, such as burning houses and tarring and feathering.
* They wanted to take a middle-of-the road position and were angry when forced by the Patriots to declare their opposition.
* They had a long-standing sentimental attachment to Britain (often with business and family links).
* They were procrastinators who realized that independence was bound to come some day, but wanted to postpone the moment.
* They were rightly cautious and afraid of anarchy or tyranny that might come from mob rule, which did cost many their property and security after the revolution.
* Some say they were pessimists who lacked the confidence in the future displayed by the Patriots, while others point to the memory and dreadful experience of many Scottish immigrants who had already seen or paid the price of rebellion in dispossession and clearance from their prior homeland.

Could we use these to better gauge where we would have been?

• Would older folks who don't text today, have been loyalists?  
• What about folks who think we need to respect the president, even if he's not always right?
• Is aversion to violence today the equivalent of aversion to the violence of Patriots in the 1700s? 
• What sort of long-term sentimental attachment today would be equivalent such an attachment to Britain back then?

Wikipedia's article on Patriots offers characteristics about Patriots that seem to overlap those of Loyalists to some extent.

The Patriots came from many different backgrounds. Among the most active of the Patriots group were highly educated and fairly wealthy individuals. However, without the support of the ordinary men and women, such as farmers, lawyers, merchants, seamstresses, homemakers, shopkeepers, and ministers, the struggle for independence would have failed.
In 2000 historian Robert Calhoon estimated that in the Thirteen Colonies between 40 and 45 percent of the white population supported the Patriots' cause:

Historians' best estimates put the proportion of adult white male loyalists somewhere between 15 and 20 percent. Approximately half the colonists of European ancestry tried to avoid involvement in the struggle — some of them deliberate pacifists, others recent emigrants, and many more simple apolitical folk. The patriots received active support from perhaps 40 to 45 percent of the white populace, and at most no more than a bare majority.

Clearly, calculating those numbers, over 200 years after the fact, has lots of complications.


Are there members of current political groups who would have been more likely to Patriots or Loyalists?

Tea Party members and supporters, according to an Atlantic article last year, made up

• 4% of the population (actual members according to a CBS/NYTimes poll) or
• 28% identified as "supporter[s] of the Tea Party movement" (Gallup poll)
•  4%  (18% of the 20% supporting the Tea Party in another CBS/NYTimes poll had actually given money or attended a Tea Party event)

Those numbers were calculated a year ago, but the 28% and 20% number is vaguely close to the estimated number of Loyalists.  Of course, that's a ridiculous correlation.

Do Tea Party supporters have characteristics more like those of Patriots or Loyalists?

Apparently that same CBS/NYTimes poll, this time cited in the Dallas News, identifies a number of factors that are more associated with Tea Party supporters than the general public. [I've reorganized the list a bit to make it briefer.]

• Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as "angry."  Their anger is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country.
• Obama does not share the values most Americans live by, and that 
• he does not understand the problems of people like them.
• More than half say administration policies favor the poor, and 
• 25 percent, compared with 11 percent of the general public, think the administration favors blacks over whites. 
• Tea Party supporters offered three main concerns: 
• the recent health care overhaul, 
• government spending and 
• a feeling that their opinions are not represented in Washington.
• More than eight in 10 hold an unfavorable view of him personally, and 
• 92 percent believe he is moving the country toward socialism - an opinion shared by about half the general public.
• Most describe the amount they paid in taxes this year as "fair." 
• Most send their children to public schools; 
• do not think Sarah Palin, who spoke at a Tea Party rally in Boston on Tuesday, is qualified to be president; and, 
• despite their push for smaller government, think that Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost. 
• They are actually more likely than the general public to have returned their census forms, despite some conservative leaders urging a boycott.

How would you compare this list (assuming it was even accurate a year ago) to characteristics of Patriots and Loyalists?


Even though they are named after a quintessential Patriot event, one interpretation of this list could be that many Tea Party supporters are more like the conservatives who were resisting change to the status quo.  People who thought that they had something to lose from radically changing the system.

CONTEXT TODAY?

But I'm not willing to make such a conclusion.  Tea Party supporters are probably a pretty varied group.  And just as 'older, and better established' is listed as a Loyalist characteristic, leaders of the Patriots were also from the wealthier classes.

But, as we observe Independence Day, it's useful to question ourselves carefully about the kinds of risk we would be willing to take and under what conditions.  (To what extent is risk-taking genetically inherited and to what extent is it environmentally shaped?  Do people take risks in some areas, but not other areas of their lives?) 

What are you willing to risk today to protect democracy?
How many of us use lack of understanding of how to effectively protect democracy as an excuse not to do something?
How many of us are working at understanding what roles we can effectively play?
How many of us would not have understood the right path back in the 18th Century? (Was there only one 'right path' or did it matter who you were.  For instance many black slaves fought for the British after being promised their freedom.)

None of this is easy.  But I urge you to go out and listen to someone you disagree with.  Assume that the person is rational and sincere in his or her beliefs.  Then ask the person to explain the position taken and how he knows he's right.  (I tried hard to make that sentence work without gendered pronouns, but finally gave up.)  Don't contradict.  Don't challenge.  Just ask, respectfully, to better understand.  It's hard to do.  but worth it. 

Happy Fourth of July.