Hairy (not Downy) Woodpecker Makes Brief Visit

I was surprised to see the mask that hangs on our deck bobbing so wildly in the wind.  I'd just been out front and there was no wind.  But then I saw there was a woodpecker checking it out.  I pulled out the camera quickly and took a picture.  Then a Steller Jay chased the woodpecker off and it landed on the railing, so I got another shot just before the Jay swooped once more and off it flew.

Then to the bird book. It was down to a Downy or a Hairy Woodpecker.  They look alike.  But the key difference is the Downy "has a stubby bill, obviously shorter than the head."  And this one has a long bill.  Also, the Downy is about 6 1/2 inches and the Hairy is 9".  This one was big.  And when I measured the mask after looking at the photo, it was clearly about 9 or 10 inches.  I also emailed the pictures to my bird expert, Dianne, who confirmed.  Unfortunately my other bird expert, Catherine, is no longer with us, but I'm sure from somewhere she's nodding her head that it's a Hairy.

Oh yes.  Where's the red on the woodpecker's head?   Only the mail has the dark red on the back of the head.

Checking my "Guide to the Birds of Alaska" by Robert H. Armstrong, I notice that I wrote on the Hairy page "11/23/01 or Downy backyard."  I didn't get a picture that time so wasn't able to check the key characteristics.  But today is October 19, so it seems that this is a good time for woodpeckers in our yard. 

For those who have always wondered, I did a post on why woodpeckers don't get brain damage in July this year.

Note to self:  Add wash the kitchen window to the todo list. I really wasn't trying to prevent this woodpecker's friends from knowing where he was this afternoon by blurring his face.

Red, Red Mt. Ash

This tree in front of our house has always kept its leaves longer - sometimes through the winter - than the other trees.  It's the second half of October and the temperatures were moderate - into the low 40˚ F (4.4˚C) range today - and the sky was blue after Monday's grey. 

I also noticed that this tree and the one to the left (a few reddish leaves are still near the top) don't have many berries this year.  The Bohemian waxwings will be disappointed when they show up in the winter.

Yamato Ya Moves North 2 Blocks

Yamato Ya restaurant has moved from its spot on the south end of New Sagaya on New Seward and 36th, across the street and north into the old Yen Ching restaurant building at 3501 New Seward.

Here's their new sign. 


While lots of chi chi sushi bars open up all over Anchorage, Yamato Ya, even with new owners in the last couple of years, has kept its food real and its prices reasonable (by Anchorage standards.)

Today I got to check out their new digs over lunch and it reflects the tasteful but low key fixes they did in the old spot. 

Our cards keep filling up. 

Mohs Surgery: Why You Should Use Sunscreen - Not for the Faint of Heart

I grew up two miles from Venice Beach.  I spent a lot of my school years at the beach.  We didn't have sun screen in those days.  It was called sun tan lotion.  I had a great time in the sun and surf.  But today there was some payback.

I had a basal cell carcinoma on my left cheek.  That was confirmed a couple of weeks ago and today I went in to have it cut out ("removed" is too benign sounding.)  The Mayo Clinic website says:

Basal cell carcinoma is a type of skin cancer. Basal cell carcinoma begins in the basal cells — a type of cell within the skin that produces new skin cells as old ones die off.
Basal cell carcinoma often appears as a waxy bump, though it can take other forms. Basal cell carcinoma occurs most often on areas of the skin that are often exposed to the sun, such as your face and neck.
Most basal cell carcinomas are thought to be caused by long-term exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from sunlight. Avoiding the sun and using sunscreen may help protect against basal cell carcinoma.

I decided not to put up photos the normal way today.  Two of these are pretty gross.  So I'm embedding a Slide Show that you can view or not.  But if you think, as I did, that a basal cell was a minor issue, then look, and use your sunscreen.  What you see in the slide show is:

1.  Outpatient surgery room - leave your clothes on, lie back.  In five minutes or less he'd sliced out the cancer cells using something called Mohs Micrographic Surgery.  The description is from the college where they teach doctors how to do this, so I'm guessing it's not totally unbiased.

The Mohs procedure involves surgically removing skin cancer layer by layer and examining the tissue under a microscope until healthy, cancer-free tissue around the tumor is reached (called clear margins). Because the Mohs College surgeon is specially trained as a cancer surgeon, pathologist, and reconstructive surgeon, Mohs surgery has the highest success rate of all treatments for skin cancer – up to 99%.

"Mohs surgery is unique and so effective because of the way the removed tissue is microscopically examined, evaluating 100% of the surgical margins. The pathologic interpretation of the tissue margins is done on site by the Mohs surgeon, who is specially trained in the reading of these slides and is best able to correlate any microscopic findings with the surgical site on the patient. Advantages of Mohs surgery include:

• Ensuring complete cancer removal during surgery, virtually eliminating the chance of the cancer growing back
• Minimizing the amount of healthy tissue lost
• Maximizing the functional and cosmetic outcome resulting from surgery
• Repairing the site of the cancer the same day the cancer is removed, in most cases
• Curing skin cancer when other methods have failed" [From Mohscollege]

2.    The surgeon sliced through the tissue to where he thought he got it and I was bandaged up until they could check that the tissue was cancer free.  That was about 30 minutes.This second picture was right after they took the bandage off to do the reconstructive surgery.

3.  The third picture is after they cleaned the hole.

4.  The last one is after they stitched it up.  When I saw the hole, I asked how they were going to pull the skin back together.  He said he would enlarge the hole to make it more a straight line and then he was sewing it up.  First he would sew up inside - and those stitches would dissolve on their own, and then he'd sew up the outside.  I go back Friday to remove those stitches, which you can see in the picture. It's covered by a big bandage now.

As I say, not for the squeamish.  But a good reason to use your sunscreen. 

Basal Cell Removed [UPDATE Dec. 17, 2011 - Two months later] Here's the scar now. (Compare to last picture on slide show above.

[UPDATE February 22, 2012: Here's what it looks like 4 months later:

Why Farming In Bethel Make Sense

Saturday I was able to talk a bit to Tim Meyers at the Bioneers Conference.  He's the farmer in Bethel who is showing that it's possible to farm in rural Alaska.  In fact, it's a great place place to farm.





He showed me a National Geographic world soil map. (The inset came from Geology.com)

He pointed to the area that I've highlighted in red in the upper left.  The dark green is the most fertile soil, as I understood it.  You can see in Alaska that dark green goes along the Kuskokwim River through Bethel and it's also on the Aleutian Chain.  Coincidentally, the Kuskokwim drainage is colored green in the inset of Alaska.  [Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to what issue of the National Geographic it was.  I couldn't find the map online, but I did find a soil article here from September 2008. ]


The key here, he said, is that while agriculture has been focused around the Matsu, it's Bethel that has the good soil.  In Matsu they soil's not great and they have to use a lot of fertilizer to grow crops whereas in Bethel the soil is already very rich.  [Will there be a comment on that from Matsu farmers?]

Photo of a photo

Tim also emphasized the difference between gardening and farming.  Farming is much easier than gardening because you can make good use of a tractor.  His five acres wasn't that hard to maintain. (I'd just been to a session where Matt and Saskia - I'll try to post on that soon - talked about how much work it was to keep up their urban garden where they are growing much of their food for the year.)  Tim said he hoped that Alaska's Cooperative Extension would add farming to their efforts rather than just focus on gardening advice.  Raising food in a home garden is nice, but, he said, it's not going to seriously increase the level of Alaska's food independence.

Tim had a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program where people paid in advance for a set amount and selection of vegetables.  It was too much food for most people, he said, so now he has a vegetable stand twice a week in Bethel.  People are lined up an hour before he opens and he sells out.  The prices are lower than in Bethel's super market and his food is fresh and organic. 

He pointed out that Bethel has a number of flights headed for Anchorage every day, and they go with empty cargo holds.  Setting up more farms like his could give Alaskans a steady supply of Alaskan grown vegetables, but it will take people with the skills and the determination to do all the work. 


Visit the farm's website here.


You can hear an APRN interview with Tim here.

Origami Trash to Smal Scale Poultry at Bioneers Book Table

At the Bioneer Conference at UAA in Anchorage, among the, the book table. Here is a sampling of what was for sale.

Lovins delivered a keynote via video conference Saturday afternoon.

This one is about China.

Rachel, from the UAA bookstore, always chooses carefully for this kind of special event.

Josh Fouts Imagination as the Foundation of the Future

Another of the national bioneers speakers via teleconferencing, Josh Fouts talked about the kinds of work he's been doing exploring imagination as the important commodity of the future (well, we need it now already.)  He gave various examples from the work he's been doing in a variety of situations.
There's no way I can cover this all and keep up with what other things are going on, except to alert you to some of his work through other websites.

He began and ended with this quote:

The creative adult is the child who has survived.
Ursula K. Le Guin

Here's a blog he does with his partner Rita King.

Here's the Bioneer's website's description of the presentation (Rita wasn't there.)

The Emerging Imagination Age

Visionary media innovators Josh Fouts and Rita King call this time “The Imagination Age.” From sudden revolutions in the Middle East to “unimaginable” natural and human made technological and economic disasters, our world is in a state of radical transformation and readjustment. At the same time, powerful new media are emerging that could presage a hopeful new global culture and economy. Josh and Rita illuminate how extraordinary new tools — virtual worlds, games and the worldwide web — can leverage global cultural empowerment and educational reform, amplified by creativity, collaboration, art and music.

About the Presenters:

Joshua S. Fouts, a writer, journalist, gamer and technologist, is a Senior Fellow for Digital Media and Public Policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, a Next Generation Fellow at The American Assembly, and Executive Producer at Dancing Ink Productions. Fouts has an extensive career on the cutting-edge of journalism, online media, games, culture and foreign policy and a history exploring the impact of new technology tools for media years before they are adopted by the mainstream. In 2005 he was the first person to propose and direct a project illuminating how virtual worlds could be used for cultural relations.

Rita J. King is the Founding Director of Dancing Ink Productions, a company that works with major clients focused on the emergence of a new global culture and economy in the Imagination Age. King is Innovator-in-Residence at IBM’s Analytics Virtual Center, a former Senior Fellow at The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Then there's Science House

Welcome to

Science House has a simple mission: bring people together to promote and advance science.
We have three primary components:

	NETWORK
The Science House Network brings scientists together with people outside their normal circles - like journalists, film makers or entrepreneurs. We'll be holding informal talks and educational sessions and helping start discussions on all things science.

	CAPITAL
Science House Capital invests in early stage science-driven ventures and provides ongoing support to help create startup companies. From business plan drafting to intro-ductions to potential investors, Science House Capital is here to help.

	FOUNDATION
Science House Foundation helps share the excitement of science with kids all over the world. We fund educational programs, buy equipment, sponsor prizes, competitions and more. Let's talk about helping kids discover the wonder of science!

Something else is happening. There's another day of this tomorrow, and tonight at Wendy Williamson there's a talk. From the Alaska Bioneers website.

October 15th Saturday Evening 7:30pm-9:30pm Keynote with Thomas J. Elpel The New Era of Self-Sufficiency It is easy to be overwhelmed at the magnitude of the challenges we face as a species, when the whole world seems to be careening towards economic and environmental collapse. How can we adapt to a rapidly changing world, build a sustainable civilization, and put the brakes on climate change? Thomas J. Elpel, author of Participating in Nature: Wilderness Survival and Primitive Living Skills, suggests that we can start by taking our shoes off and getting back in touch with the earth. We can rediscover our connection to nature through the traditional knowledge of our ancestors. By living close to the earth we can gain the physical grounding necessary to re-examine the challenges we face as a society and find answers to some of the most vexing problems that face our species. Thomas Elpel is the director of Green University® LLC and Hollowtop Outdoor Primitive School LLC in Pony, Montana. (www.hollowtop.com). He has authored six books and produced six videos on topics ranging from wilderness survival and botany to green building and consciousness. Elpel connects the dots from wilderness survival to sustainable living, showing how the quest for survival in nature functions as a metaphor for living that empowers us to see new solutions in the modern world. Keynote with Tamarack Song Remembering: a Key to Weathering the Changes

Paul Stamets - Mycologist Extraordinaire

The afternoon sessions at the bioneer conference are teleconferenced into the national conference.  There have been several speakers and I can't quite keep up.  But the last speaker was Paul Stamets.  

Stamets has a knowledge of fungi that pushes us to think way beyond how we think today to protect fungi that play a critical role in the ecosystem of our planet and offers amazing medical potential for humans. 

The best I can do is offer you this TED video of him.

Sustainable Home Heating (Wood) at Bioneers

I'm at the bioneers conference in Anchorage.  Valerie Barber and Meg Burgett from the Cooperative Extension are doing this workshop.  I went to the Alaska Food Challenge workshop first, but didn't pull out the computer.  I have pictures and notes though and will put it up later.   [I'm not going to proof this carefully so I can get it up and go to the next session, sorry.]

Meg Burgett

This one is on how to be sustainable with a wood stove.  

Natural gas prices make natural gas the cheapest way to heat, but it's a finite resource.
Fairbanks is using a lot of wood, but they also have air quality issues.

When is Wood Cost Effective?  Oil about $37/MBTU .  Gas is about 4/15/MBTU
Wood about $15/MBTU, Electricity about $44/MBTU

Other factors to consider
1.  The stove and cost to pay back
2.  Size and quality of insulation in home
3.  Wood fuel availability
4.  Costs, including transportation
5.  Storage space for wood - needs to be stored properly, needs a cover but open on the side to dry out properly

More costs than $ - exercise


Cost comparisons - (gas on chart 2X the chart)  but gas still much cheaper.

Rich Siefert chart -

Availability and costs of wood fuel options
Cords,  chips, pellets - Fairbanks has a factory, most in Anchorage coming from Georgia or Canada?

Why Burn wood:
Can be cost/efficient
Reduces use of fossil-nonrenewable fuels
Supports local jobs and local economy
Reduces impacts from green house gases
Personal choice more independence for you and family - especially off the grid
Enjoy activities


Best Practices
Choose the right applicance for you and your home

Understand how to properly use your appliance
Properly locate and install appliance
Use only high quality food
Clean and maintain your appliance regularly - if using <20% moisture, burns much cleaner

Choose the right appliance
Pre 1991 before regulations
EPA certified non-catalytic
EPA ertified catalytic
Wood/biomass
Masonry stores

Old stoves - less than 20% efficient, safety hazard.  Post 1991, required to meet EPA standards.  All certified stoves labeled.

Catalytic Wood stoves - Large, well insulated fireboxes
Costs more to start - $2200- $5000  - only can burn wood.  maintenance costs up, have to replace every 2 or 3 years, tho less if more efficient.







Non-catalytic - $1800 , not counting the pipe - hot short fires, nice flame for watching, most efficiently with short hot fires.
Wood or Biomass Pellet - good, but you do need electricity.  Extremely efficient @ 90%.  About $2-3000.  No local pellets, yet in Anchorage.  Fairbanks and Delta have them.

Outdooor Woodburners, least efficient, but lower fire risk to burn house.  Buring hot for long periods, large logs, but people burn garbage.  Surrounded by water that goes to house.  Low efficiency.  Up to 12 cords a year and can produce a lot of smoke.  Neighbors not happy at all.  Not good for dense urban areas.

Masonry stoves - hold and radiate heat for a long time.  Massive heavy structures, best to plan building new home and plan house around the stove.  $5-15,000 for the cores and not made here.  Can use brick, cement, tiles, etc.

Locating your stove
Put as close to center of space to heat.
Account for space between stove and walls and traffic patterns
Maximizing the Heat - best against an interior wall with masonry around it.
Avoid exterior walls
Avoid external chimneys, straight up,
Proper installation
Insurance costs more.

High Quality Wood
SCentral - cords most available.
Support local wood collected within 50 miles from harvest
Right moisture content <20%

Cordwood Primer
128 Cubic Feet (not counting spaces in between)  4'X4'X8'  - standard pickup holds 1/2 a cord

Moisture meter

Moisture content - there's a moisture meter - internet - $40, maybe a stove store has one
Split into 6" pieces, stacked off the ground, not rotting bottom.  Cover, tarp isn't great.
In Anchorage about 6 months to get green wood to 20%.  Away from structures - rodents and insects into the wood.

Valerie Barber

Look at wood - lighter in color, feels lighter and should have cracks and splits
Distinctive clank, not a thud when you hit it
Not all trees the same
Best is birch, worst aspen and cottonwoods.  Works ok if dry and in masonry stove.
How Wood Burns in your Wood Stove
1.  All the water in the wood heats up and evaporates off
2.  Wood begins to burn or 'break-down" at around 400˚F and release....

Clean and maintain yearly

Wood's renewable, but only when trees replanted and regeneration is encouraged.

Problems here because of climate change - the warmer it gets the less some of the trees grow.  Related to drought stress.  We can produce new trees, but not natural gas and oil.

We're watching a Canadian movie now on the best way to burn wood in your stove.  The content's really good (did you ever make a knotted piece of newspaper?), but the actors are awful. 

Need to do homework before buying - check emissions to see efficiency.  Lower the emissions, higher the efficiencies.  Catalytic stoves not designed for long fires.  Hot and quick. 

Here's a website they recommended.

Nein - Nein - Nein

Herman Cain's 9-9-9 sound bite budget plan makes a great bumper sticker, but probably not such a good budget plan.

On his website he elaborates a bit, but doesn't spell out the details of how it will affect different categories of tax payers or how much money it will raise.   You can see the expanded version and a few of my thoughts below.

Phase 1 - 9-9-9

• Current circumstances call for bolder action.
• The Phase 1 Enhanced Plan incorporates the features of Phase One and gets us a step closer to Phase two.
• I call on the Super Committee to pass the Phase 1 Enhanced Plan along with their spending cut package.
• The Phase 1 Enhanced Plan unites Flat Tax supporters with Fair tax supporters.
• Achieves the broadest possible tax base along with the lowest possible rate of 9%.
• It ends the Payroll Tax completely – a permanent holiday!
• Zero capital gains tax
• Ends the Death Tax.
• Eliminates double taxation of dividends
• Business Flat Tax – 9%
• Gross income less all investments, all purchases from other businesses and all dividends paid to shareholders.
• Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for payroll employed in the zone.
• Individual Flat Tax – 9%.
• Gross income less charitable deductions.
• Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for those living and/or working in the zone.
• National Sales Tax – 9%.
• This gets the Fair Tax off the sidelines and into the game.

Phase 1 Enhanced Plan – Summary

• Unites all tax payers so we all pay income taxes and no one pays payroll taxes
• Provides the least incentive to evade taxes and the fewest opportunities to do so
• Lifts a $430 billion dead-weight burden on the economy due to compliance, enforcement, collection, etc.
• Is fair, neutral, transparent, and efficient
• Ends nearly all deductions and special interest favors
• Ends all payroll taxes
• Ends the Death Tax
• Features zero tax on capital gains and repatriated profits
• Lowest marginal rates on production
• Allows immediate expensing of business investments
• Eliminates double taxation of dividends
• Increases capital formation. Capital per worker drives productivity and wage growth
• Capital formation will aid capital availability for small businesses
• Features a platform to launch properly structured Empowerment Zones to revitalize our inner cities
• We all know the Fed has tripled the money supply since 2008. They have been printing money out of thin air to finance the Obama spending machine. While true Fed reform that restores sound money may have to wait for my election, the best thing we can do now is to pursue policies that increase the DEMAND for dollars to help mitigate the risks associated with the increase in the supply.
• Pro-growth economic policies equal a strong dollar policy

A few thoughts  
 
 1.  How does this impact income to the government to run the various programs we depend on?  Or is the intent to gut government and give corporations free rein? People forget that the phrase "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" doesn't have the word government in it.  When corporations have absolute power - as some are close to having in their sectors - they are likely to be even more corrupt than any democratic government where at least the leaders can be voted out of office.

2.  We know flat taxes are regressive taxes which put a much greater burden on those who make less.  A larger percent of their money goes to necessities.  By making the income tax flat, and adding a sales tax (which is flat), the gap between the rich and poor will grow.  Check out this overview of a national sales taxes.

3.  End the "Death Tax."  If it were really a death tax, everyone would be taxed after their death.  This is an inheritance tax, which reverts a relatively small, yet collectively important, share of wealthy people's money back into the general kitty.  According to Wikipedia, in 2010 you had to inherit $5,000,000 before the tax kicked in.  An inheritance tax is like reshuffling the cards at the end of the game,  and we start out even the next game.  Except that we don't reshuffle the cards.  The heirs of the very rich keep most of the money and the inheritance tax is like throwing a few extra chips to the dealer. 

4.  Eliminates all payroll taxes.  Maybe he can explain how he plans to fund Social Security.  Or maybe that gets eliminated too in his plan. 




 I agree with Cain that the tax code is too complicated.  Lobbyists have gotten tax write-offs for all of their clients.  We do need to eliminate a lot of deductions, but because of the tax code's enormous impact on the economy, it does make sense - at least theoretically - to use it to give incentives that change people's behavior for our collective good.    The home mortgage deduction was instituted to encourage home ownership and has been supported by Republicans and Democrats alike.  Deductions for things like energy saving repairs on your house create jobs and lower overall energy use.  So there is legitimate use for them.  If they can be controlled, which is a big if. 


So, if Cain gives us the slogan 9-9-9, my response is Nein - Nein - Nein.