Why I Live Here - Fall Walk On Beach - Plus a Bear, a Dog, Swans, Mud, and Fiber Optic Cable

In 30 years, my definition of a beach has stretched beyond sand and palm trees.  There's a spot of rocky beach and mudflats that we like on days with sun and no wind.  Today qualified.

Looking South Down Turnagain Arm

Looking North

First we stopped where cars were parked along the side of the road.  Not unusual when the Dall Sheep are around.  But the sheep we saw was black and looked a lot more like a bear. 

He's up there top, left of the middle.  Ignoring all the people and stopped cars below.  We went years and years seeing less than a handful of bears in the Anchorage area.  This was my fifth bear this summer in Anchorage.  (Anchorage stretches a long way south along Turnagain Arm.)

 

 

 

I made a self-portrait out of Turnagain mud and rocks.

One train went by headed north and another south while we were on the beach.  We walked  back on the tracks, which was a lot easier than the rocky beach.  We kept a close lookout for trains, but we didn't see another one until we were 15 minutes down the road in the car.

I found a long description of this cable line on a 2006 post at Diesel Generator:

"Fiber optics involves the transmission of laser signals along glass fibers at the speed of light. In the case of the ANC/WCIC cables from Whittier, communications equipment connected to the fibers enables signals to be transmitted at 10 billion bits per second. These 10 billion bits per second will encompass voice, data, and Internet traffic, at a rate equivalent to 128,000 simultaneous telephone calls.

"In some respects, the companies putting up the facilities are competitors. On one side of the railroad tracks on the upper side of town, a facility is being installed by General Communications, Inc. (GCI). GCI will service submarine cables laid to Valdez, Juneau and Seattle. WCI Cable, Inc. (WCICI), will operate submarine cables laid to Valdez, Juneau and 2000 miles on the North Pacific sea bottom to Portland and Seattle via a "landing site" at Tillamook, Oregon. . .

"Worldnet Communications, Inc. Alaska Fiber Star (AFS), WCI Cable, Inc., and Alaska Northstar Communications (ANC) are companion units in a family of communications companies that are owned by an Australian insurance and investment company, AMP Ltd.

An existing AFS "backbone" - terminology for the routing of a fiber optics system - emanates from Anchorage and runs to Fairbanks with ADMs (add/drop multiplexers) at Wasilla, Talkeetna, Cantwell, Healey, Clear, Nenana and Fairbanks. At these sites, traffic can be added to or dropped from the backbone system to provide communications access to local carriers. The fiber optic signals are also regenerated and passed on to the next site. Presently these stations are sited about every 60 miles.

From the Anchorage NOCC, the backbone runs south along the Alaska Railroad route to Whittier. A 100-mile submarine cable runs to Valdez.

 The friend enjoying the sun and sea with us said that WCI no longer exists.  While trying to check that out online, I found a 2002 Bankruptcy Court opinion (pdf) regarding the fee they paid for this cable to the Alaska Railroad:

"The WCI Group has installed, maintains and uses its fiber 26 optic cable between Anchorage and Eielson Air Force Base (the “Northern Route”) and between Anchorage and Whittier (the “Southern Route”) in Alaska pursuant to two “Transportation Corridor Permits”  (the “Permits”) with the Alaska Railroad Corporation, which owns the rights of way. Under the Permits, the fee for the WCI Group’s use of the Northern Route right of way is $150,220 per month, or a total of $1,802,640 per year, and the fee for the WCI Group’s use of the Southern Route right of way is $297,320 per year, payable in quarterly installments of $74,330. The WCI Group’s payment obligations under the Permits represent a heavy financial burden that the WCI Group would like to lessen."

But we weren't thinking about any of this as we walked.  Rather we were absorbed in all the colors.  Like this fireweed.

At the parking lot, I found an answer to a question in yesterday's post.  Yes, there is a dog.

This calm reflection of sky and fall colors at Potter Marsh belies all the cars and highway noise as people returning to Anchorage slowed down and stopped to watch the seven trumpeter swans getting ready to head further south for the winter.

2000 As Seen in 1910 And A Few Other Goodies

I offer you few examples of human imagination to remind you there's always a better - or at least different - approach.  (They all have images, though in respect to the creators of the images, I've limited my use of them severely and altered the ones I used.)


1.   How about a pocket garden?  Literally, a garden in an altoid tin?

2.   Get a quick nap in a sleepbox at the Moscow Airport.

Click to enlarge and read small text

3.   Then there's this great poster.    Click on the image to go to the original and read the all important small text. (The image info says it's from Motifake.com, but I can't seem to use the search there successfully.)

4.    If you've ever wondered what those initials stand for, you can find out at Mental Floss.

H.G. Wells
H.P. Lovecraft
J.D. Salinger

F. Scott Fitzgerald

J.K. Rowling

E.E. Cummings

W.B. Yeats
T.S. Eliot

P.G. Wodehouse

There are nine more.

5.  How about the year 2000 as envisioned in 1910?  Here's one of French artist Villemard's  visions - teleconferencing. 

See more the images with descriptions at Sad and Useless.

The Paris Traveler has posted some of these and others from the National Library in Paris.

Death of the Adversary

"The papers published in this volume were given to me some time after the war by a Dutch lawyer in Amersterdam."

So begins Death of the Adversary.

The narrator asks some questions but the Dutch lawyer is evasive.  We learn the papers are written in German. A page and a half later, we're reading the papers themselves.

"For days and weeks now I have thought of nothing but death.  Though I am normally a late riser, I get up early every morning now, calm and uplifted, after a night of dreamless sleep." 

I was having trouble at this point, but the book was supposed to be a masterpiece.  My mother had alerted me to an LA Times obituary of the author Hans Keilson who died this past June at age 101.   

"Hans Keilson was a newly minted physician in the mid-1930s when the persecution began. As a Jew in Hitler's Germany, he was stripped of the right to practice medicine. A writer, he soon lost that identity too: His autobiographical first novel was pulped soon after it was released because of a Nazi ban on Jewish writers.

"He fled to the Netherlands, where he wrote the beginnings of two more novels and buried the pages in his garden. After the war's end, in 1945, he dug them up and finished them. "Comedy in a Minor Key," a darkly humorous story set in Nazi-occupied Holland, was published in Germany in 1947, the same year as Anne Frank's diary. The second, more philosophical work, "The Death of the Adversary," earned enthusiastic reviews when it was published in America in 1962.

"That was the last that American audiences heard of Keilson — until last year. After five decades of literary obscurity, he landed on bestseller lists when both books were published again. It was a miracle of literary reclamation all the more remarkable because the long-forgotten author had lived long enough to witness his rediscovery."

Fortunately, Loussac had a copy.  The book is about a man whose life is dominated by his enemy whom he learns about overhearing his parents talking.

My enemy - I refer to him as B. - entered my life about twenty years ago.  At that time I had only a very vague idea of what it meant to be someone's enemy;  still less did I realize what it was to have an enemy.  One has to mature gradually towards one's enemy as towards one's best friend.

I frequently heard Father and Mother talk about this subject, mostly in the secretive, whispering voice of grown-ups who do not want the children to hear.  A new kind of intimacy informed their words.  They were talking in order to hide something.  But children quickly learn to divine the secrets and fears of their elders, and to grow up towards them.  My father said:




"If B. should ever come to power, may God have mercy on us.  Then things will start to happen."
My mother replied more quietly, "Who knows, perhaps everything will come out quite differently.  He's not all that important, yet."

This book mixes abstract ideas of the nature of 'the enemy' and the relationship between adversaries and very concrete detailed incidents as he grows up and learns more about the enemy.  He's excluded by classmates, he meets others with the same enemy,  he runs into the enemy in the flesh on two occasions. 

He never mentions Hitler or Jews by name.  It's all sort of vague.  It took a while for me, reading it, to figure out this was not some personal family adversary.

At the end, when the narrator is returning the papers to the Dutch lawyer who says,

"I received them from the author with the assurance that they contained not a single word that could endanger me, if I kept them."
"Did you believe him?"
"In the beginning, yes, but that was before I had read them.  Later I did read them."
"And then?"
"Then I buried them. . ."

What struck me throughout wes the wrestling of the narrator of the text (rather than the narrator of the intro) with his relationship with the adversary.  First it was understanding what it meant to have an adversary.  Then there was the denial of the serious impact the adversary would have on his life.  Here's an example of fellow victim of the adversary who feels he's being too complacent:

"At bottom you know as well as I where you belong, nor do I believe that you are rebelling against it.  That's not what worries you.  What you're after is something impossible:  you are trying to plaster up the crack that runs through this world, so that it becomes invisible;  then, perhaps, you'll think that it doesn't exist any more.  You are right in the centre of a happening and are trying to render an account of it to yourself, and at the same time to alter the situation so as to allow you to extricate yourself from it with a single leap and to look at it from the point of view of the man in the moon.  You're trying to look at something that concerns you as though it both concerned and did not concern you.  Am I right?"

Today we are all struggling with the adversary.  People are denying reality, trying to either maintain their life as it has always been, or trying to analyze it abstractly and objectively.  We do this with the crashing economy.  We do this with politics.   Some take things seriously and act.  Others carry on as though  things will just pass. Jews in Nazi Germany - the most scientifically and  technically advanced nation in the world at the time - responded in many different ways.  Some realized the danger and got out if they could.  Others thought it would pass and things would return to normal.    The book gives a very intense, and from what I can tell, pretty much contemporary account of the mental processes people struggled with. 

"Self-deception is the pleasantest form of lying.  It is a panacea for all personal ills and injuries, it can heal even metaphysical wounds.  The experience with my friend had been a hard blow, of course, [A good friend had declared his allegiance to the enemy and their friendship ended] but it had not brought me to my knees.  On the contrary.  This first and severe disappointment had strengthened me and prepared me for all the future ones.  I no longer confronted them unprepared.  Had my loss not brought me a gain, or was this the beginning of self-deception?"

I think this is an eternal dilemma.  How does one know when there is imminent and serious danger and when it's no big deal?  While Tea Party members seem to be certain they must act now, and ruthlessly, to prevent the US from collapse, so too there are those who see the Tea Party as being manipulated by rich conspirators who are the greatest threat to American democracy.

And in the land that Keilson wrote about there was a similar sort of dichotomy.  Many Germans were spellbound by Hitler's charisma and demonizing of Jews, Socialists, and others.  It wasn't till many people died - not just those who died in concentration camps, but also those who died on the battlefield - that the bubble burst and they recognized they had been deceived.  Though there were many who continued (continue) to believe in Hitler. 

Father Oleksa on Culture and Bagpiper Plays Alaska Flag Song

Talking about cross-cultural communication problems isn't easy.  No one does it more effectively than Alaska's Father Michael Oleksa.  With lots of stories about his own German-Russian background and his wife's Yupik background and his many stories of teaching around Alaksa, he uses humor and a lot of thoughtful insight to get audiences to see how embedded our own cultures are in our brains and that there are reasonable alternatives to what we've grown up believing was 'the correct way' in any number of situations.

[UPDATE 9pm - Whoops.  I forgot the photo of Father Oleksa.  Here it is.]

He spoke today at the Alaska Federal Executive Association's Civil Rights Committee had its Multi-Cultural celebration Wednesday at Loussac Library. 

There's no way I can convey all he said, but I can give his overview of culture.  If it makes sense - you should try to find an opportunity to hear him spell it all out.  If it doesn't make sense - you should try to find an opportunity to hear him spell it all out.

Basically, he offered three definitions of culture:

1. Your view of the world - your culture's stories about how the world works
2. Your 'ballgame' of life - every culture has rules about how to play the game of life.  He discussed the conflict between his mother's German and father's Russian sense of time.  One was strictly tied to the clock, the other was more flexibly related to the natural flow of things.
3. The story into which you were born - these are the family stories you grew up with, which slowly get added to over your life, not necessarily in any chronological order, and not necessarily told the same way by everyone.

He pointed out that most people aren't really aware of the first two.  We tend to know these things subconsciously.  Only the third one is something that people can articulate.  For that reason, he suggested that people from different cultures ask each other about their grandparents' stories as a way of starting to understand each other.

Father Oleksa's website lists his videos and writings and audio, but isn't clear about how to get hold of them.  Communicating across cultures [videorecording] / is available at Loussac Library.  I promise you the videos will be wonderful to play for your family. They are NOT dry and boring. You'll smile and you'll gain insight.

After Father Oleksa spoke, we heard an example of cross-cultural fusion - Dan Henderson of the Alaska Celtic Center played the Alaska Flag Song on his bagpipe.



I learned that bagpipes were brought to the British Isles by the Romans and were banned for 75 years after they were declared a weapon of war by the British.

Does God Exist? Out North Season Opener Part 3

[Headlines should reflect what you write.  Mine tend to be prosaic, but I try to remember they matter and to find something catchy from what I'm writing about.  So, yes, this question arises, but it's at the end (about 10:50) of the video below.]

The Out North Season Opening Event, as I said in the first post, generated (for me at least) a real excitement with the bringing together of a lot of different art, theater, dance, writing opportunities from a wide array of people and groups in the Anchorage community. Everyone was clearly pleased about their own membership in the 'club' and as the evening went on they got to see all the other neat folks they'd be rubbing elbows with in the hallways of  the former Grandview Garden library building, which before that was an electrical station.

I imagine that as the year goes by some of that excitement will be tempered by conflicts over how one group leaves the rehearsal space for the next group; over people unable to keep up with the pace; personal problems that interfere with artistic ambitions; performances that don't live up to the initial concept; and a myriad of other obstacles. But my bet is that people will overcome those problems and fulfill the promise of Thursday night.

And since I had an empty sd card in my camera and a battery that didn't start blinking its imminent demise until the very end, I just kept shooting more video. Maybe when the frustrations of making those dreams actually come true gets too heavy, people can come back to these videos to remember why they're working so hard.  And there are a couple of folks in the UK who, I'm sure, like to look in on their grandchildren, so to speak. 

So, here's the video Part 3. In it you meet the people from Focus - their connection to Out North is a little different. Their plan is to bring visual arts, theater, poetry, etc. to kids with disabilities and their families. Then one of the co-founders of F Magazine (I didn't catch the name) gives her Anchorage Arts rant. Then Scott's notion of a multi-disciplinary Art House.
Finally, the youth - Brave New Alaskan Voices. Three perform for you - in part - on the video. And you can ponder God's existence with the last performer.




To see Part 1.
To see Part 2.

I've edited a little bit, but this is much longer than I would normally do. That's why it's taking so long to get it all up.

Jobs, Oil Taxes, North Dakota, Norway, Spin, and Redistricting

When Gov. Parnell was pushing (I guess he still is) his $2 billion tax cut for the oil companies I went to the Anchorage hearing on HB 110. 

Two of the key mantras recited by those testifying in favor of HB 110 (and nearly all of the pro folks identified themselves as working for oil companies or oil industry support organizations) were:

1. We need this for jobs for Alaskans (variation:  I want my children to be able to find a job here and stay in Alaska)
2. All the jobs are moving to North Dakota where the tax environment is much better for the oil companies.

This was pretty suspect at the time - everyone seemed to be reading from the same cheat sheet.  Now we're getting more information that suggests things are a lot less black and white than those who told us it was crucial for Alaska's (perhaps they just meant their own) future.

Jobs for Alaskans Mantra

Back in April already, Patti Epler reported at the Alaska Dispatch that Parnell's Labor Commissioner said jobs were increasing and that a large proportion of the jobs were going to non-Alaskans.  Of course, anyone who has flown to Anchorage from Seattle on a Saturday or Sunday knows those planes are full of Outsiders flying back to their oil jobs.  You can't help but overhear them discussing the hassles of commuting between the Lower 48 and Alaska.

The Anchorage Daily News had an article last week on the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee hearing in Anchorage recently where the Senators expressed:

"dismay over a state Labor Department finding that more than half of the new hires in Alaska oil and gas jobs during the third quarter of 2010 weren't state residents."

The oil companies quoted in the article claim that most of their employees are Alaskans [possibly they are now, but were they when they were hired?] and the problem is with contractors.  But the point is the claims were about how important the tax cut was to preserve Alaskan jobs - they didn't distinguish between oil company and contractor jobs back at the hearings.

North Dakota's Tax Environment is Taking All Our Jobs

The reason people gave for the oil boom in North Dakota was a more favorable tax structure. They didn't say anything about the fact that it's a lot easier to get oil from North Dakota to the other Lower 48 states. But I noticed recently an article that suggests North Dakota's low unemployment level and general good economy has a lot to do with their state bank.

In a response to a New York Times blog article that claims North Dakota's low unemployment is based on oil, Ellen Brown in Yes! magazine compares North Dakota to other oil states:

Oil is certainly a factor, but it is not what has put North Dakota over the top. Alaska has roughly the same population as North Dakota and produces nearly twice as much oil, yet unemployment in Alaska is running at 7.7 percent. Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming have all benefited from a boom in energy prices, with Montana and Wyoming extracting much more gas than North Dakota has. The Bakken oil field stretches across Montana as well as North Dakota, with the greatest Bakken oil production coming from Elm Coulee Oil Field in Montana. Yet Montana’s unemployment rate, like Alaska’s, is 7.7 percent.

She goes on with further comparisons and points out that North Dakota has weathered the housing crisis better than other states.

North Dakota is the only state to be in continuous budget surplus since the banking crisis of 2008.

To my knowledge, Alaska has also been in 'continuous budget surplus' during that time. So that does suggest we need to check Brown's data carefully.


But she finally concludes

If its secret isn’t oil, what is so unique about the state? North Dakota has one thing that no other state has: its own state-owned bank.  [emphasis added]

Access to credit is the enabling factor that has fostered both a boom in oil and record profits from agriculture in North Dakota. The Bank of North Dakota (BND) does not compete with local banks but partners with them, helping with capital and liquidity requirements. It participates in loans, provides guarantees, and acts as a sort of mini-Fed for the state. In 2010, according to the BND’s annual report:

The Bank provided Secured and Unsecured Federal Fund Lines to 95 financial institutions with combined lines of over $318 million for 2010. Federal Fund sales averaged over $13 million per day, peaking at $36 million in June.

 This is a point that the strongly 'anti-socialist' supporters of the $2 billion tax cut haven't mentioned about North Dakota.

Talking about 'socialism' the supporters of HB 110 never talked in much detail about Norway.  But a gaggle of Alaska legislators went there this summer to study their oil policies and there's a long Alaska Dispatch story on Norway's oil policies, including this:

In addition to depositing all of its oil and gas-related tax revenues into its savings account, the Norwegian government owns 67 percent of the shares of Statoil, a publicly traded oil and gas company based at Stavanger, just north of Oslo at the center of the nation's petroleum industry. All of the government's Statoil dividends go into the savings account. [emphasis added]

The article also compares Alaska's Permanent Fund with Norway's equivalent fund:

. . . [O]ur $40 billion fund is not big enough to replace oil when oil eventually runs out. Norway's fund is big enough and getting bigger at a rate of $50+ billion per year! Norway estimates the fund will top $3 trillion before oil and gas runs out. That is enough to "pay out" $120 billion per year at their 4% pay out limit and still keep the fund inflation proofed. Calculate what that amount works out to for each of 700,000 Alaskans. Stunning. And to think they made their first deposit into their fund in 1996 while we started ours in 1977.

HB110 and the Alaska Redistricting Board

The governor (and we have to remember that before becoming governor he was a lobbyist for Conoco-Phillips) didn't get his bill passed in part because the state Senate is split 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats and their coalition wouldn't pass the bill.

But the key change that the Republican dominated (4-1) Alaska Redistricting Board accomplished was to put two Democratic Senators from Fairbanks into the same district, to put Democratic Senator Al Kookesh into the same district as Republican Senator Bert Stedman in Southeast, and to give Anchorage Democratic Senator Bettye Davis a much more conservative district.  Knocking out just one Democrat from the Senate makes it an 11-9 Republican majority.  And possibly enables a new version of HB 110 to pass in the future.

Photoshop with Tern Lake - Bug Bite

A trip to Seward Saturday resulted in a couple of pictures I wasn't terribly excited by.  The first was of Tern Lake and the second was my eye after a bug bite.  So I turned to Photoshop and played around.  I've marked what I did, but remember, within each option, you can play around with the sliders. 


Tern Lake

Bug Bitten Eye

Therapy Secrets Onstage, Here and Now, and Artistic Amnesty - OutNorth Season Preview 2

In part 2 of the video of the season preview you hear about Out North's dance classes, KONR - Out North Radio at 106.1 (coming soon), bringing therapy to the stage, Be Here Now - "a young artists theater group."  And then there's Corinna Delgado - a force of nature all on her own - talking about the Artistic Amnesty Project and One Soul. 




And I'll get part 3 (and there will probably be a part 4 too) up later.

Part 1 is here.
Part 3 is here.

There's Magic Happening at Out North - Season Kickoff

[Looking this over, I realize it gets a bit gushy.  But I'm convinced it's accurate.  There really is something special happening at Out North now.]

The very first time I saw Scott Turner Schofield at Out North I knew this guy was special.  That feeling's been reinforced every time I've seen him in action.  Last night the years of work that Gene Dugan and Jay Brause put into clearing the land, planting the seeds, watering, fertilizing, keeping  the wild animals from trampling it all, are now turning into the magical arts incubator and stage they cultivated.

That's not to say a lot of special performances haven't already happened over the years.  But Scott seems to have sprinkled his own magic dust on Out North.

The season preview attracted a full house to bid on silent auction items, eat and drink, and then to watch Scott emcee the preview show spotlighting Out North Art House residents he's gathered to Primrose and Bragaw.

It's an amazing collection of talent - from Hmong youth musicians, Hispanic Hip Hop, a therapy theater group from Akeela House, youth rappers, a writers' group, 20 something actors troupe, a non-profit that works with disabled students, a dance group, local arts magazine, to an FM radio license - from such a variety of local communities and media.



I have no doubt that the kind of talent we sampled  last night exists in every community.  The difference is that here everything has come together just right to provide the nurturing and mentoring to hone one's craft and confidence, the space and time to  practice and perform, and an administrative infrastructure to get the bills paid and the audience to attend.  That infrastructure includes a lot of volunteers and a charismatic performer/organizer who contributes a special energy and excitement. 

I haven't had time to edit all the video I took of last night's event, but here's part one.



I've added the second part of the video here.
Part 3 is here.

Is The 1911 Fur Seal Treaty Relevant Today? A Dozen Meet at UAA - Public Presentation Tonight

Clark Wolf

UAA philosophy professor Raymond Anthony has put together an intimate conference of philosophers at UAA today and tomorrow with the help of a National Science Foundation grant.  I've been sitting in today and the discussions - focused on environmental ethics - have been fascinating.  Clark Wolf of Iowa State discussed intergenerational ethics of climate change, relating Michele Bachman's concern (voiced in his home town recently) about the financial debt the US is piling on the next generation to the environmental harm we're bequeathing them.  He also looked at principles articulated in a 1911 Fur Seal treaty which stopped the high seas slaughter of fur seals.

Professor Paul Thompson of Michigan State University examined biofuels.

All the professors listen to all their colleagues presentations and discuss them.  They'll continue tomorrow, but tonight. . .

 these two professors plus Professors Bryan Norton of Georgia Institute of Technology and Chrisoula Andreou of the University of Utah will speak at a public discussion tonight at UAA.

UAA Consortium Library 307

7:30pm

Thursday, September 8, 2011

I'm hoping to post more on the conference, but thought I'd get this up for anyone who can take advantage of coming to hear these folks tonight.