"Decisions in the sound are creations, not selections from a menu of choices."

Author Charles Wohlforth and his orca studying hosts in Prince William Sound leave their boat anchored  to paddle ashore in small kayaks to pick blueberries:

The silence of deep moss rendered hypnotic the repetitive process of grasping one bright blue orb and then another and the gradual increase of the blueness in a plastic bag - the only contrast from universal green.  The sound erases the rest of the world in a few days  Being is different here.  Time smoothes, pulsing slowly with the tide, losing the quantized, mechanical tick it has in the city.  Decisions in the sound are creations, not selections from a menu of choices.  Cognition, or thought, is different here too.  It's continuous, not suited to boxes.  Whole ideas grow up, long thoughts leading to unexpected destinations - unlike the flitting of city thinking, which is mostly reactions to questions, messages, lines and squares.  From this perspective, the city life, if remembered at all, looks like a mechanical complex of herky-jerky activity, as incoherent as a hazily remembered dream.  Both mental frames are real - urban or outdoor - but the continuity that arises in this environment makes it easier to feel connected to other living things.

I'm reading Wohlforth's The Fate of Nature for my next book club meeting.  He writes with a magic wand that lets complex ideas shine through stunning wordscapes.

It's easy to be seduced by his prose, so I've copied the paragraph above to think it through.

Does one really think so dramatically differently in nature than in the city?  Minute and hour hands organize time very differently than tides and migrating birds.  Alarm clocks regulate our lives differently than sunrises, crowing cocks, and cats mewing to be fed. (I had to look up the word 'quantize.' (see below))

"Decisions are creations . . ., not selections from a menu of choice"

This sounds beautiful, but how much is this more novelty, than a condition of man in nature?  If one is in a new environment one has to create ways to cope. One hasn't yet made habits of living in the new surroundings. This includes a person used to living in the wilds learning to cope in the city.  True, you don't choose your meal from a written menu, but you do choose it from a natural menu of what's available.  And just like you have to know where that great little Korean restaurant is, you have to know where the caribou or moose are likely to be found.

Uninterrupted time does give one space to think deeper and longer.  But I had that luxury as a child walking 20 or 30 minutes each way to school.  I'd hone fantasies or trace possibilities to fill the time.  I think on the whole, though, I agree.  The natural world affords longer more frequent uninterrupted moments for the brain to spin out ideas.   Nature, not the newspaper,  offers the weather and other news necessary to survival.


Below, he paints a profound ecological cycle tapping every human sense in three breathtaking paragraphs. [Update:  I found a good way to describe this passage.  It's like filming for Imax from a helicopter, swooping down the mountainside into the sound and down under the water and then back up again - all on this giant screen.  But he does it with words.]  I'm skipping an opening paragraph that moves the water from the skies to the mountain top glaciers, and downslope where "the perpetually damp temperate rainforest grow enormous trees" and eventually flows back into the sea.

"There are mountains and canyons under the sea also, along the ragged-edged continental shelf, the fringe between land and the abyss.  At the center of the gulf's arc, vertical rock confuses the waves and wind, with contradictions offered by fjords, islands, channels, and spires, and within the unfathomably complex inland sea of Prince William Sound, which encloses a world of its own, water-floored corridors walled by brooding spruces leading to secret, fecund gardens of mud and flashing fish, prey for eagles.  Winds funnel and focus through these mazes.  Currents twist in baroque patterns, changing with each turn of the tide or season.  Intricate forces, entangle ecological stories into as many digressions and surprise endings as there are eddies and tide-pools.  But the tempo of every tale comes from the beat of the storms and the timing of the moment in the spring when the sun emerges warmly on stilled waters.

"The prodigious biological productivity of the Gulf of Alaska owes everything to that moment when the surface's crop of phytoplankton is perfectly prepared for growth.  The winter storms have stirred up organic nutrients from the seafloor, mainly nitrogen;  few other waters in the world are as rich.  The rush of fresh water from the mountains, more than the Mississippi River's annual flow by half, and all in a few months, disgorges atop the heavier saltwater.  Iron and other mineral nutrients arrive with the fresh water to mix with the nitrates.  As the storms die and the fresh water spreads, a surface layer develops to hold blooming plankton near the sun (when the sea is mixed, the plantlike organisms fall into darkness).  Now, in May, sunshine is high, gaining every day until it lasts almost all night, brightness reflecting off still-snowy shores.  Water is calm and rich in fertilizer.  Everything is perfect for an explosion of photosynthesis, and the phytoplankton blooms.

The energy that plankton capture from the sun over a few weeks will feed zooplankton by the billion - tiny creatures like krill and copepods, which look like shrimp, and larval forms of many other animals, such as crabs, barnacles, and other shellfish.  The water clouds with them, especially where tidal currents meet, fronts between waters of different temperatures or salinity that concerntrate matter like invisible walls in the ocean.  Forage fish such as sand ance and herring gather to feed on zooplankton in crowed schools.  Gulls find the schools from the air and dive on the water, wheeling and dropping straight down, as violently as spears, then hurriedly climbing up the air again to protect a catch.  Humpback whales lunge through the schools, bursting diagonally from the surface, occasionally catching a bird, too, before rolling over and sinking back again with a giant slosh.  Salmon, lightning fast and bright, blaze through the schools of forage, fattening for a single spawning journey upriver.  Rivers along the gulf cost reaching hundreds of miles over the mountains will receive salmon eggs and carcasses.  Salmon flesh will feed bears, birds, and scavengers, whose waste will fertilize the trees, moss, and grass.  Long before that can happen, during the spring, phytoplankton bloom subsides, having consumed the winter's mixture of nutrients, but that energy flows on through the system, from mouth to mouth, up the trophic levels of the food web, and up to the floppy tops of towering hemlock trees fertilized by bear scat.

Wow, he's woven a vivid word movie of the interrelationships that hold together the Prince William Sound ecosystem.  For those unimpressed, consider the stodgy prose of a text book explaining all this.  In comparison, these words fly off the page and take a (at least this) reader up in the flight.  [I wouldn't normally take such a long citation, but it needed to come  full circle.]

Does it help that I've kayaked in Prince William Sound and seen the whales leap, and camped in the fecund gardens - thick with ferns and skunk cabbage and countless other greens - dripping with recent rain?  Oh, I'm sure that helps light up his words for me.

In contrast, I offer a bit from a NASA website on a workshop held last week on similar topics. 

"NASA’s carbon cycle and ecosystems research provides knowledge of the interactions of global biogeochemical cycles and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems with global environmental change and the implications for Earth’s climate, productivity, and natural resources.
There are three major research objectives:
1)		Document and understand how the global carbon cycle, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and land cover and use are changing
2)		Quantify global productivity, biomass, carbon fluxes, and changes in land cover
3)		Provide information about future changes in global carbon cycling and terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems for use in ecological forecasting and as inputs for improved climate change projections."

Of course, they have different purposes, but in any context, Wohlforth's prose and ability to conjure up words that make complex systems into a wild adventure leave me in awe and, as a blogger, enormously jealous.

I'm not even very far into the book, so you may be getting more samples as I go along.  But if I take too much time with individual pages like this, I'll never finish.  

_____
 Below
quan·tize
verb (used with object), -tized, -tiz·ing.

1.

Mathematics, Physics . to restrict (a variable quantity) to discrete values rather than to a continuous set of values.

2.

Physics . to change the description of (a physical system) from classical to quantum-mechanical, usually resulting in discrete values for observable quantities, as energy or angular momentum.  [from Dictionary.com]

Close Your Bank Accounts? - Follow Up

Yesterday I posted about moving your money - if you have any - from a big bank to a credit union.

Today there's a NY Times article which gives some details about the behind the scenes of checking accounts at big banks and credit unions.  Here's a bit:

But even as Bank of America and other institutions are adding fees and other restrictions, a company called PerkStreet, which you may have read about in this column before, is hoping that those Bank of America customers will run to its Web site. PerkStreet gives checking account customers as much as 2 percent back on their purchases when they use its debit cards.
Meanwhile, a company called BancVue works with community banks and credit unions to offer checking accounts that can yield more than 3 percent in interest on deposits for people who use their debit cards a lot. Soon, the company asserts, the total number of branches among all of the institutions that offer its rewards checking accounts will equal that of the 10th-largest bank in America.

 But it's not all that simple.  The perks to people with checking accounts and debit card holders at small banks and credit unions come from higher fees to merchants.  Read the rest of the article here.

Close Your Bank Accounts?

From Josh's FB. Then to The Atlantic (for bigger version) which said it came from Mother Jones Jan 2010

I used the word 'predatory capitalism' recently and I should explain. Market economists tell us the market works because it is efficient, but only when there is competition. If your bank  and credit card company seem to treat you more as prey than as a customer - always looking for ways to take money from you - late fees, finance charges that never let go and lots of other automatic fees - then you know what I mean.  What about airlines?  Why can't you just buy a ticket at a fair price without looking all over the internet?  Why can't you give/sell your ticket to someone?  It seems the main reason is so they can charge you change fees. And cell phone companies?

This bank consolidation chart, which you can see better here, explains some of the reason - lack of competition. You don't have a lot of choices. And if you ever want to rent a car or buy an airline ticket online, you have to have a credit card. But scanning Facebook - I do this now and then - I found one feasible response.

Found this on Kelly's FB

Credit Unions are a great option.  We've been members of Credit Union One since they've been the Teachers Credit Union.  Ours doesn't mess with us.  They're local and they treat us well. But I have an Alaska Airlines B of A visa card.  Can I give up my Frequent Flyer miles?  Maybe I can limit my Alaska Airlines Visa use just to airline tickets.  What about you?

The way to make the market work is to not do business with companies that don't treat you well.  That may mean giving some things up that you think you can't live without.  But you can.

Make a list of the companies that you patronize that treat you badly.  Then start planning your exit.  Find alternatives.  The market doesn't work if consumers have no choice, or think they don't.

By the way, using Google's reverse image function, I was able to put the chart into the image box and trace my way back.

Comments on Alaska Redistricting Board's Submission to DOJ Voting Section

Alaska is one of 16 states required to submit its redistricting plan to the Department of Justice (DOJ) Voting Section for approval before the plan can be implemented.  I followed the board closely this spring (see the Redistricting Board tab above for a guide to the posts).  So, when the filed their submission, I was interested to see what they wrote.

The DOJ's main interest here, as I understand this, is whether the Board's plan complies with the Voting Rights Act (VRA).  I suspect that they will be approved on that level for three key reasons:

• They managed to have "no retrogression" meaning they came up with the same number of Native districts Alaska had in the previous plan, 
• Their Voting Rights Act consultant who works closely with the DOJ on VRA issues who guided them and then wrote an opinion saying she found the plan in compliance.
• No one filed suit over the plan based on VRA issues.

The section entitled "Publicity and Participation" caught my attention.  I'd had issues with the Board over this topic throughout the session.  Their attorney's job is to write a description that puts them in the best light.  I think their attorney did an excellent job.  But I thought it would be useful to fill in the shadows and other features that the attorney left out.


In that section of my comments, I take direct quotes from the submission and then offer my interpretation of what happened.  Here's the first quote:

1.  “. . . the Board conducted the most open redistricting process in Alaska history. The Board took full advantage of technology, social networking tools, and new methods of online outreach to ensure the public had unprecedented access to the redistricting process.” (p. 15)

a.  I heard this claim about the most open process several times.   I have no doubt that it’s true.  The bar was very low.
b.  “took full advantage of technology, social networking tools, new methods of online outreach. . .”  
The board had a website and a Facebook page, but used only the most basic functions.   It was like having an iPhone but only making calls on it. This was not a high priority of the Board chair and the sites were (more so in the first two months) not consistently updated and never gave the public a clear overview of the process.   A lot of data accumulated on the site.  But it was short on information useful to the general public.  There was nothing that succinctly and clearly explained key issues or would educate someone so they could testify usefully.  Their computer expert (Eric Sandberg) was a GIS expert dedicated to the plans and maps, not the website and Facebook pages.   They got their toes wet in new technology, but they were a long way from taking even partial advantage, let alone full advantage.   I’ll elaborate below.

There were 14 such quotes.  I've uploaded my letter to the DOJ at Scribd and it's below where you can read it if you're interested in all the details.

But here are my final thoughts on this from the letter:

Final Thoughts

The Board’s attempts at publicity were minimal.  Their participation efforts were ‘quantity, not quality.”  This is reflected in their report which tells you they logged 60,000 air miles, but offers you no materials that were used to prepare citizens to understand the process at hearings, and no summary or analysis of the feedback they got.   There are some notes - some handwritten, some typed - with data on 23 of the 32 public hearings.  I understand that they were only done for those meetings where only part of the board was present, so the other members could have an idea of what they missed.  This (and the correspondence log) is the only attempt I witnessed to document feedback.  But even these are just notes or the pile of letters, and there is no summary of the feedback or analysis.

The Board’s citizen participation efforts do not reflect the sophisticated techniques that have been developed in this field in the last 40 years.  Some examples of the very rudimentary way this was undertaken:

Determining where to visit was ad hoc.  They began with the places the previous board had been.  Then board members suggested other places and they agreed.  Or communities invited them and they agreed.  No suggestion for a new location at a public meeting was turned down.  Individual board members sometimes offered reasons - PeggyAnn McConnochie said they needed to visit Southeastern communities because they would be losing a seat and so there would be special problems.  But there was never an organized look at possible sites to visit, they just added and added and added new sites.



Notice to communities they were visiting was minimal - the state public notices website, an obscure and hard to use site was the key location.  As things progressed there were regularl, but not completely reliable, notices on the Board’s website.  The board placed no ads in newspapers, sent out no mailers to the public, except to those who subscribed to their email list.  There was attendance at hearings only because interest groups notified their constituents and/or small communities themselves put out ads.  The media did cover local hearings, but no traditional media regularly covered the Board and  when they did, not in depth.



There was no attempt to educate the public on the process.  While a fair amount of data accumulated on the Board’s website over the three months, there was almost nothing that gave citizens a useful overview of the process, the issues, and particular questions for specific districts.  All that work was done by the special interest groups.  I tried to do a little of that on the blog a few times. Here’s my post for the Kotzebue public hearing for example:
http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2011/03/kotzebue-today-bethel-tomorrow-then.html

And there was no analysis of the feedback they received.  So, when they were doing the maps, a board member might comment about someone who said they should do this or that.  But they had nothing to refer to which might show how many people agreed or not.  But even that would have only been the tiny percent of people who went to the hearings.

In sharp contrast the State Department of Transportation, for example, hires consultants to run their public hearings.  They come prepared with professionally designed visual aids that clearly outline the problems faced, the possible options, what those options would look like and cost, and how the participants can usefully participate.  They post notices in the newspapers and on the radio, send fliers by mail and email to affected citizens, and further information is available on their website for the public to study before the meeting.   They study all the feedback and publish  it using tables and charts. 

Nothing like that happened.  Instead they spread out across the state at great expense in money and time where they were met with generally small groups of people.  Often these were the professionals hired by the communities and Native organizations to represent their interests.


For example, they flew to Unalaska (pop, @3800) and Cold Bay (pop. @ 75).  Airfare to Cold Bay, via Unalaska, from Anchorage is about $900 round trip.  Three people went, so that’s about $2700.  Their notes say that nine people attended the Unalaska meeting and six the Cold Bay meeting. But only three people actually testified at each hearing.  The nine attendees in Unalaska were the Planning Director, seven people representing the City of Unalaska, one person representing himself, and the Legislative Information officer, where the meeting was.  The three people who testified were the planning director and two council members.

That’s $180 per attendee, not counting pay for the board members and staff,  and six hours plus roundtrip to Unalaska and Cold Bay and waiting time.  Or $450 per person testifying. 

There’s no doubt it is beneficial for the Board to see the different parts of the State and hear from people there how redistricing impacts them, and presumably the local attendees were pleased they took the effort, even if they were only in the hearing space and then quickly left town.  

Given the time and money they spent on these 15 people, six of whom testified, they could have sent a DVD with an explanation of the process  and maybe highlighted local issues and then called all the households in Cold Bay for feedack.  Would they have gotten less feedback?  I’m guessing they would have gotten more.  This is far beyond anything the Board considered.

How much of the board’s budget was spent on travel?  How much was spent on getting people to the meetings, on educational materials for the public, and on reviewing and analyzing the feedback?  I’d argue that 95% for the travel and 5% for the rest probably overestimates ‘the rest.’ 

Another contrast is to the huge amount the Board spent on the VRA expert and on the staff attorney who also had expertise in the VRA and the general redistricting process.  They had no one with any specialized expertise in publicity and public participation. 

I’ve gone into considerable detail here to make my point.  The submission’s facts are pretty much accurate, but the missing facts make the story they tell less glowing.  I’ve focused on the Publicity and Participation because it’s the section I know most about.  The submission makes the Board’s actions look very professional, when, in fact, they were ad hoc without any real expertise in this field.   I would suggest that those reviewing the Alaska Redistricting Board’s submission, carefully read between the lines in all the sections.   They did hire a VRA consultant and their staff attorney had experience with these things, plus they had a GIS expert.  But they were the only people who were applying professional technical knowledge and skills to this process.  The rest reflected a lay person’s understanding of modern management and analytic skills and techniques. 


Sincerely,

Steven E. Aufrecht, PhD


Note:  While these comments have focused on what I see as shortcomings of the Board, I must also reiterate that the staff were very cooperative and helpful throughout the process.  They worked hard under the pressures of deadlines,  of the grueling travel schedule, dealing with complex systems and voluminous data, and all this with a very short learning curve in an organization that did most of its work in a three month period.  I appreciate their responsiveness to my questions and requests during the process.

Letter to DOJ commenting on Alaska Redistricting Board Submission Sorry this took so long to get up. While the main thrust of my comments are directly relevant to Voting Rights Compliance, since they'd written out their version of the publicity and participation, it seemed like an easy way to address the subject and leave a record for the next Board to consider. Though ten more years of social media technology means that it will be a whole new world next time. But it was a whole new world this time compared to last time, but the Board just barely nodded to the new technology, and never attempted to seriously inform the general public about what was going on. At least that's how I see it.

Thanks Steve

Why Should You Spend $220 for the Bioneers Conference Oct. 14-16?

Why you should:

Because, as someone on the video linked below says, you'll engage "the hottest topics our culture doesn't want to talk about."

• Clean Energy Opportunities for Alaska by Chris Rose

Because as the world struggles out of the old human era of fossil fuels and predatory capitalism [hey, I'm not saying all capitalism is predatory, I'm identifying the kind of capitalism on the loose these days as embodied by big banks and telecommunications companies with all sorts of hidden gotchas that suck up your money in ways you didn't know they could] we need to be creating the new era where we live in harmony with nature and with each other. 

• Alaska Food Challenge by Saskia Esslinger & Matt Oster

And one of the organizations that I've had my eye on as doing this well is the bioneers.  Their weekly show on KSKA and KNBA (here's a national list of stations) offers a practical consciousness of how to envision better social and economic alternatives.  So if you've got the money, pay the full fare or more to help support this organization.


Why You Shouldn't

1.  Because they have discounts

If you've already cut out $5 beers and $3 coffees, or you've gotten rid of your car for a bus or bike because your budget is shrinking uncontrollably, then you should look at other ways to get to this conference. 

•  Transitioning your Neighborhood: Building Resilience into your Community by Cindee Karns

If you're really desperate, you can contact them to work for attendance.

If you sign up online, the full show is only $180.  Besides an intensive two and a half days of stuffing your mind, meeting others who are thinking like you are, they also serve lunch on Saturday and Sunday.  So if lunch is $10, then you're down to $160.  (You were going to eat anyway, right?)

You don't have to go to the whole thing.  Daily prices are Friday:  $15;  Saturday $100;  and Sunday $65  (if you buy online, walk-in is a little more.)  So, just check out Friday and decide then if you want more. 

•  Tumbleweed-inspired houses: Building and Living in a Tiny House on a Trailer by Kevin Cassity & Dave Mortensen

If you're a student, a senior (can't find the cutoff), or have special needs, you get a discount.  Of course, there are financially comfortable students, seniors,  as well as those who need help.  I think special needs probably stretches to cover anyone who really wants to go, but can't afford to.  Call them and negotiate, but don't be a cheapskate.  If you can afford it, pay it.  They need to cover their bills for the conference and if they have some left over for their regular expenses that would be good. 

• Ancestral Celtic Knowledge for Today’s Sustainable Communities by Nancy Lee-Evans PhD

Register in advance (up to October 12) here.




Expensive is Relative 

People pay $10 or more for a two hour movie.  Plus more for popcorn and drinks.  And how much do you pay to spend a few hours in a bar?  Eight hours Sunday is $65 in advance and it could change your life as you see an alternative to the gloomy scenario we get from the media, a way to get to the next step in human social/economic evolution.  Meet people who are committed to making the world a better place. 

•  What are On- Line Food Cooperatives? By Andrew Crow.

Here's a video from 2008 by some of the local folks who have been working on this.  The production quality is low.  I'd say this is probably the best the local folks have.  If the conference is like the video, then you should ask for your money back.  Or better yet, volunteer to make them a better video.  (I don't know the person who made the video, but I applaud him for documenting what he did.  But it's not a good ad for the conference.)  The Anchorage group is small and stretched.  But in addition to local speakers, there is a panel of national speakers you'll be watching with other conference attendees around the country.

OK, I just can't bring myself to post the video here.  If you really need to see it, click here.

But here are details from some of their online listed workshops. 

Clean Energy Opportunities for Alaska by Chris Rose
Alaska is at an energy crossroads. Villagers in small, remote villages that rely almost exclusively on oil for heat and electricity are paying some of the highest energy prices in the country. In the Upper Cook Inlet where more than half of the state’s population lives supplies of already discovered natural gas are diminishing quickly. In June 2011 the local Anchorage heating and electric utilities announced that they are preparing to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the world market, beginning in 2014. But Alaska also has vast renewable energy and energy efficiency resources. This presentation will discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with developing these clean energy resources, and what Alaskans can do to expedite a clean energy future. Chris Rose is the founder of REAP, and has served as its Executive Director since October 2004. He is an attorney, mediator, and activist. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Iowa and received his J.D. from the University of Oregon, with a certificate in environmental and natural resource law

Alaska Food Challenge by Saskia Esslinger & Matt Oster
Matt and Saskia are four months into a challenge to eat all Alaskan for an entire year. Come find out what they’ve learned about growing, foraging, and sourcing local food, as well as how this challenge has affected their finances, time, and health. We will discuss the larger implications of this project and how all Alaskans might become more food secure. Saskia is a certified Permaculture designer and teacher, and has a master’s degree in Regenerative Entrepreneurship from Gaia University. She co-owns Red Edge Design with her husband, Matt, and offers edible gardening workshops, consultations, and designs. Matt is a general contractor and certified home energy rater, and has helped over 1000 homeowners in Alaska save money and live more comfortably in their home. He is certified in Permaculture design and utilizes systems thinking to analyze homes and their outside environment.

Transitioning your Neighborhood: Building Resilience into your Community by Cindee Karns
Have you heard of the Transition Town movement but never took the time to read Rob Hopkinsʼ book? Have you always felt like you should connect more with your neighbors? How DO we ride the slide with grace in a post peak world? This workshop will give you the basic ideas you need to start a transition neighborhood of your own. Be prepared to practice the tools/methods needed to be successful. Cindee Karns is owner and operator of the AlaskanEcoEscape Permaculture Center, Alaskaʼs only Bioshelter, and has been involved in Anchorageʼs Transition Movement for 2 years.

Tumbleweed-inspired houses: Building and Living in a Tiny House on a Trailer by Kevin Cassity & Dave Mortensen
In this workshop Kevin will share his experience designing and building a tiny house on a trailer, dealing with municipal requirements, and living in the house. Kevin’s house is an original design inspired by the well-known Tumbleweed Tiny houses and built with some extra attention to using non-toxic components and finishes and minimizing negative environmental impact. This workshop will include slides of the house in progress and a house tour if this can be arranged. Kevin has been an itinerate river/wilderness guide and private music instructor. He lives in a 150 sq. ft. moveable cabin on a trailer on the Anchorage hillside, getting to know the area and preparing to build a more permanent dwelling.

What are On- Line Food Cooperatives? By Andrew Crow.
Many communities in the lower 48 have turned to on line cooperatives as a way to increase access to local food. This workshop will describe how on line food cooperatives have been organized, how they function, and will give suggestions to anyone interested in setting up an on line food co-op

Ancestral Celtic Knowledge for Today’s Sustainable Communities by Nancy Lee-Evans PhD 

Cheap oil has produced many layers of separation in our lives – from family, traditional knowledge, the land and our spiritual connection to all of life. Expensive oil will of necessity force us back together into more locally close, interdependent systems. While we mayhave the technical means for sustainability, how we negotiate the social aspects of that reconnection will have a great deal to do with the level of ease with which we live with our sustainable solutions.Nancy Lee-Evans PhD, author, Celtic scholar, permaculturist, holistic healer and director of The Anam Cara Program teaches classes on wild plant lore, the sacred relationship with all life, ancestral knowledge and lifeways that are central to indigenous traditions and which support the social fabric of sustainable communities and lifestyle.

 These are just the 9am Saturday workshops. 

Guest Post: Vet Health Issues - Depleted Uranium, Asbestos, and the Insurance Gap

Occasionally I get requests from someone to put up a ‘guest post.’  I’ve only done a couple and they’ve been from people I know who tell me I should post on a topic and I’ve turned it around and asked them to write it.  Most guest posts end at that point.   I’ve turned down a couple of unsolicited requests from people I don’t know. 

But then I got one recently and I responded by saying something like, I don’t promise anything, but send me the piece and I’ll see if it ‘feels right’ for here. 

This one is an important topic and raised some issues I hadn’t thought of, so here it is.  The writer is  Douglas Karr, USN Veteran of Operations Desert Storm & Desert Shield. 

So here's his post:

Access to medical insurance leaves much to be desired for veterans

What’s the biggest threat facing the health of those men and women who’ve served in our armed forces? Believe it or not, it’s lack of access to medical insurance. A 2003 report, authored by Harvard University and the advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen, found well over 1.5 million veterans fell in between the cracks: They earned too much money through their jobs to qualify for Veterans Health Administration (VHA) services, yet did not earn enough to be able to afford private insurance. 

In 2005, the Department of Veterans Affairs, which oversees all veteran benefits including health care, was operating at a one billion dollar deficit. By the following year, health and disability payments for veterans injured in the Iraq War had tacked on an additional $228 billion.

The healthcare costs of our Iraq veterans will only rise in the next few years. In addition to the grueling physical conditions these veterans served under, they were also exposed to a huge number of toxic substances like depleted uranium and asbestos.

 

Once considered a byproduct of the manufacture of uranium 235, today depleted uranium (DU) is prized as being an ideal weapon for penetrating heavy armor and tanks. When a DU shell is shot into the air, it bursts into flames; as the burning mass of uranium travels through the air, it releases millions of radioactive particles that have actually been transformed into ceramics because of the punishing heat, making them very difficult to excrete from the body. DU has been at least anecdotally linked to a number of cancers and other debilitative diseases, but most conclusively linked to birth defects including hydrocephalus, spina bifida, collodian membrane ichthyosis and severe malformations.

 

While asbestos has not been widely used in the United States since the late 1970s when federal agencies began regulating its use in occupational settings, it is still a popular insulating material throughout the Middle East, including Iraq which imports approximately $200,000 worth of the toxic mineral every year. Iraqi asbestos imports are used largely in construction; therefore, every time a US serviceman or servicewoman is at the scene of a bombed building, he or she is at risk for breathing dust impregnated with deadly asbestos microfibers. Once these asbestos microfibers are inhaled, they become embedded in the lungs where they precipitate inflammatory changes that over time become the precursors of deadly diseases like malignant mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer that attacks the protective lining of the lungs, the abdomen and the heart. Also referred to as asbestos cancer, this disease is characterized by a prolonged latency period: It may take 20 to 50 years before veterans exposed to asbestos in Iraq are diagnosed with mesothelioma.

I was busy when Doug first contacted me so I didn’t even try to look him up until after I’d said ok.  It turned out that he wears several hats.  He's got the MarketTech Blog and he's the co-author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies.  Is this slick marketing on his part?  Maybe, but he didn't tell me anything about the book or the website.  He did tell me that he's the Veteran Advocate for the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance, but only after I asked for more information.  And he only told me, after I asked, that he now lives in Indianapolis and how you can email him. My sense is that the Vet health issues are important to him.  I'd heard about depleted uranium bullets and the potential harm they were going to cause, but I hadn't heard about the asbestos issues in Iraq.  And see his 'infographic' poster below.

Thanks Doug.

Warning:  Don't get your hopes up if you're thinking about sending in a guest post.  I suggest people (including myself) regularly break their patterns and do something they don't normally do.  So this fits in with that, but I don't expect it to be repeated too often.

To GREATLY enlarge, click on image.

Tracked Down By A Blood Hound

I never know what adventures await me.  There I was tonight, against a chain link fence, somewhat behind the bushes, knowing that a blood hound was trying to find me.  The sun was just going down.   And then I heard a dog yelping. 

Our meeting today back in the Frontier Building was winding down and a woman came in looking for volunteers for an outdoor adventure.  It turned out it was Cindi of the Alaska Search and Rescue Dogs (ASARD).  She needed a body for the training of a dog.  My colleagues volunteered me.  We went to a nearby park area and she gave me a map of where she wanted me to go. [I noticed when I got home that I didn't quite follow the route in one part.  Sorry Cindi.]

The route included parking lot, grass, woods, alongside a wet area, more parking lot, and a sidewalk.  It was somewhere between a quarter and half mile.  When I got to the destination, she picked me up in her car, gave me a gauze pad to open and wipe on my hands and neck and stick in a plastic baggie.  Then back to where the meeting was and I biked home.

Then I had to return to the scene of the crime about 90 minutes later.  This time by car and I sat and read until I got a call to wait by the fence.  That's when I saw the berries and a bunch of other plants I hadn't noticed before.  I thought about different people who had been sought by blood hounds - lost children, elderly folks who wandered off, runaway slaves, criminals and thought about how each might feel in my spot.  I leaned against the fence waiting to be discovered. And then I saw the faint moon.


And then I heard the yelping.  A big floppy dog rushed to me and a happy handler followed, delighted her dog had sniffed me down.

In the video (it's real short) Cindi explains what the exercise was about.




Want to train your dog to sniff down lost kids and hikers? Here's what the ASARD website says in answer to the question "What are ASARD's expectations of me and my dog?"

"We expect the following from all new dog team members:

• Attend at least one or two training sessions per week.
• Train in all types of weather.
• Attend outside classes (obedience, agility, first aid & specialty classes).
• Work with other handlers on practice search problems.
• Volunteer to be a subject for ASARD training and tests. [I guess that was me.]
• Have a positive and constructive attitude.
• Develop/demonstrate adequate physical fitness.
• Be willing to train up to 2 years to achieve mission-ready status.
• Be willing to train independently.
• Purchase necessary personal equipment.
• Work with your dog every day outside of unit training.
• Maintain a written daily training log."

Autopsy on 42,000 Year Old Corpse - Mammoths and Mastodons

We stopped by the Anchorage museum's visiting Mammoths and Mastodons Exhibit Sunday.  It will be here until Sunday October 9 for those of you who have been putting it off.


There are lots of pictures and replica's of mammoths and mastodons - some you could hold and others life size.  .   There are lots of "Please Touch" signs. There are also lots of videos and interactive exhibits  A good one was the cave where you can use a remote control to shine light and identify some of the drawings on the walls.

But the exhibit that grabbed me most was Lyuba.  This is a life size replica of a complete one month old mammoth found in Russia.

Click to enlarge and make clearer

Great video describing Lyuba, how she died, how she was found, and how they learned from her.

[UPDATE May 22, 2012: Here are two videos from National Geographic. I think there were parts of these two, plus another in the video we saw. The first is about the discovery of Lyuba:

Here's a link to a video of the discovery of Lyuba. (I couldn't get the embed code to work.) The second is of the autopsy:

Any idea where or when the most recent mammoth tusks were found?

3,700 years ago isn't that long a time.  There were some relatively sophisticated human societies living then in China and the Middle East.


And then we went outside, got rid of most of our clothes and went Mastodon hunting behind the museum.

Brilliant Day - Spectacular View

I had a meeting all day at the Frontier Building at C Street and 36th.  The view faced east.

That's Loussac Library in the foreground. 36th Avenue on the left. And the snow's crept down the mountains a little bit lower.