Moshe's Eagle

Monday at Primrose Campground, Moshe had his camera out when a bald eagle flew over us not too high and he got these great shots.  Not bad for a guy on his third day in Alaska with a borrowed camera. 

Blue Sky to Matanuska Glacier

I checked to see what Moshe was up to today.  Monday was great, but it was a black and white day and he didn't really get to see a big glacier.  But the sky was cloudless today and I was up for getting him to the Matanuska Glacier. 

But it was windy, windy enough for there to be lots of dust.  There wasn't that much snow out of Palmer and the wind funneling down the river bed from the glacier picked up, as you can see, plenty of dust. 

 

The river with King Mountain in the background.

As we got closer to the glacier, there was more snow and the wind sculpted it.

 

 I guess with all the snow here, there wasn't any dust to blow into the air.

24 Hour Movie Clock - Playing With Time

Not very many people would have thought up this project. And few of those would actually execute it. But Christian Marclay has. He's put together a movie made up of thousands of film clips which, collectively, become a 24 hour clock.

Here are three videos on this.

The first a news report.


The second a 3 minute segment of the movie itself.


The third, asks Christian himself about the work.




I haven't seen much more of this that you. But this has to make viewers think about how important clock time is in movies, which roughly reflect our lives. I wonder what venue in Anchorage could show this for 24 hours a day.  Bear Tooth?  Museum?  Out North?

Thanks L for the tip.

Cain and Lin in 2012

OK, in 2008 the Republicans nominated McCain and Palin.

So, as Herman Cain is stepping into the Republican primary spotlight, does this mean the Republicans think the last candidate's name was good, but a bit too long?

If they nominate Cain, should they also nominate a vice president that reduces the 2008 candidate's name by the first two letters? Someone named Lin?

This could lead to some interesting possibilities.  Let me offer some prospects.

The only Governor Lin (since Palin was a governor at the time, let's start there) I could find is Governor Junq-tzer Lin of Taiwan. This, at first, seems like insurmountable odds, but given that so many Republicans think that Obama is a Kenyan citizen, I really don't see the problem. They can tell their followers his Taiwan birth certificate is a fake and he was really born in San Francisco. Or better yet, that Taiwan is the 51st US state. That, of course, won't go down well with China. But they could show this is the chance for the US and China to reach unprecedented cooperation. I'm sure the people who come up with all the Republican talking points can work this out.

It's hard to find American politicians with the last name of Lin. So we should consider others, who, like Cain himself, is not a politician.

There's Sherry Lin, an investor.  She should fit right in.  She could pull in the female and Asian vote.  Though she has degrees from Columbia and Northwestern which may pose a problem for anti-elitists. 


 Maya Lin, also could appeal the female and Asian vote.  The sculptor who designed the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial offers name recognition that Sherry Lin doesn't have.  And she was born in Ohio, an important state in the next election.  An artist as VP doesn't sound too Republican. Maybe she can be in charge of a jobs program that would build long monuments to freedom, perhaps a modern version of the Statue of Liberty, along the Mexican and Canadian borders. 

True 'Lins' are hard to come by in the US, so what about settling for a spelling variation, like Lynn?

There's Alaska's Republican State Rep. Bob Lynn.  That allows the Republicans to try again with an Alaskan VP candidate, gives them a proud veteran of the Air Force, a blogger, and a musician who played the alto sax six times in the Rose Bowl Parade as a member of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Boys Band. Lots of pluses here.

Kansas' State Senator Julia Lynn has blond hair, is a Republican, and supported  a conference report that prohibits any individual or group health insurance policy from covering elective abortions, which I'm sure helped her get her 100 rating from the Americans for Prosperity - Kansas Chapter.

Wait, here's a perfect one:  Former Tennessee Representative Susan Lynn.  She now works for ALEC - the Koch brothers supported group that writes model legislation for state representatives who want to dismantle government.  And she's a civil libertarian - she sponsored legislation that  

"would prevent Tennesseans from being coerced or required by either the private sector or the government to have an RFID chip inserted into their body. Similar legislation passed the Georgia Senate last week, it is being voted upon in Virginia and it has already passed in several other states."

Republicans might like the state being restricted there, but it seems an unfair intrusion into the rights of businesses to do whatever they want.  But an earlier quote Lynn made cited by Tennessee reporter Jeff Woods clears this up.  There's a reason for her passion here:

As the bill's sponsor, Rep. Susan Lynn, explained to Pith when her proposal first came up a couple of years ago, "In the Christian religion, and I'm a Christian, in the book of Revelation, there was a reference to, you know, the Mark of the Beast. Some people interpret that to be one of these microchips." Lynn concedes "it's hard to say" whether microchips are actually Satan's stamp. "Other people think it could be some type of tattoo," she explains.

Straying a bit further, they may want to allow someone with the first name of Lynn. I offer:

 Gov. Lynn Frazier of North Dakota. The biggest negative here is that he's been dead since 1947, but if you believe that, you probably believe that global warming is real and caused by humans. Another possible negative is that he founded the Bank of North Dakota, the only state run bank. Did I mention that he was the first US governor to be recalled? And he wasn't really a Republican, but ran in their primary as a Non-Partisan League candidate, whatever that means. Maybe that could be used as a cover to show the Republicans want want to work across party lines like they are trying to do with Obama, but he just blocks all their proposals. And Lynn (Frazier) was elected to the US Senate after he was recalled. Given the popularity of zombies, today, I think there's real possibility here.


And a first name that actually preserves the Lin spelling:

Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.  This may be a stretch.  I don't even know if anyone calls him Lin.  But an advantage is that he's only been governor since January 2011, which would mean he'd have about as much experience as governor as Palin had when she was nominated.


As you can see, the possibilities here for the Republicans are endless.  Cain and Lin in 2012

Giving the Gift of Alaska - To Seward On A Black And White Day

We met Moshe at Congregation Beth Sholom Sunday where he gave a talk about how his community of Jews in Ethiopia walked for three weeks through Ethiopia to Sudan where they were in a refugee camp for 2 years before being able to complete their trip to Israel.  He's in Anchorage because of the PACT (Parents and Children Together)  program - which helps Ethiopian Jews get pre-school preparation to be ready for school.  Moshe himself benefited from this and is now a PACT coordinator in his town.  He was here, in part, to thank the people of Anchorage who have contributed to make this program possible.  He mentioned after the talk that he very much wanted to see a glacier and we offered to help him find a glacier Monday.

See the whole strip at REOiv

We decided to try for Exit Glacier and left in a light snow.  The day reminded me of one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons.  Here are the key two panels from it.




                                                                                                                                                   Well, our world Monday was back in those old days when you could use color film, but the world itself was still black and white with only a few traces of the early colors showing.

Even without color, the drive to Seward is spectacular and our guest bubbled over with delight.  Sharing Alaska is such an easy gift to give. 

The roads were a bit tricky - and the drivers were getting used to the second day of snow.  And the clouds were really low as we left Anchorage.  Turnagain Arm was better, and things improved a bit as we went over Turnagain Pass.  Eventually, we saw our first hint of sun after the Hope turnoff. 

We took the turnoff to Exit Glacier, but didn't get very far and the road was closed.  That would have been a much longer walk than we were prepared for, especially in several inches of fresh snow.

So back to the main road and into Seward.  A stop at the harbor.

Then lunch at the Apollo.  (There was color still inside.)











Then off to Lowell Point to do a little beach walk on the world famous white 'sand' beach.

(Didn't I say up top this was a black and white day?)










We decided there had to be a lot of fish in this location.  Gulls were predominant, but there were cormorants and what appeared to be loons as well.

Then to the southern shore of Kenai Lake at Primrose campground.  We could see sun on the distant mountains.

And Moshe got a spectacular shot of a bald eagle that flew low over us before taking a tree top perch.  He was rightfully proud of the picture and I'll put it up when he sends it to me.  [UPDATE Dec. 26: I posted the eagle pictures here, but forgot to add a link here.]
 

A short walk through the woods from the Primerose campground trail in the fresh snow.  The trees seemed to be dancing.

A little reflected sun and even some blue sky on the way back. 

And then off to Portage to see if we can find some glacier.  You could see about 30 feet out into the fogged in lake.  So we took the trail to Byron Glacier.  It was after 6pm and the sun had set and the snow was coming down thick.  I hadn't been to Byron in many years.  There isn't much left.  But there was an ice cave on the lower right side of the dark front of the ice and other glacial shapes in the oncoming evening light and falling snow.

It was still not quite dark when we got back to the car.  But once the car lights were on, it was, for all intents, dark out.  And on the highway back, the snow was blowing hard toward us.  Reflected in the headlights, it made it really hard to figure out where the road was.  The rumble strips were great, but it wasn't easy to tell if you were too far to the left or the right.

I didn't quite get it from the back seat, but this does give you the sense of how hard it was to orient to the road.  For once, the headlights of oncoming cars were helpful.

I hope there weren't too many typos.  I'm tired.

Why Brent Scarpo Switched From Casting to Inspiring

Brent Scarpo was a casting director for The Shawshank Redemption and other Hollywood films, but switched to what he calls 'transformational' engagements on the topic of hate and how to end it.

He's coming to Anchorage Nov. 7-11.  I talked to him via Skype last Monday and video taped our conversation and intend to post excerpts from that conversation this week.  Note: I've never tried to record from Skype before and this time I did it by taping the screen with my camera.  The picture on the screen wasn't that good to start with, so I played with the special effects to make it not as obvious.  A friend who saw this said the original would have been better.  Sorry.  We learn by experimenting and I found out there's software out there to record directly from Skype and that is probably part of my future.

In the meantime, find out why Brent took a year off.  And the chance phone call he got from a college student that changed the direction of his life.  

Monday, Nov. 7, 2011  (You have a week left, put it on your calendar)

East High Auditorium 7pm

Free Public Presentation

I've said in a previous post about Brent that I'm on the Healing Racism in Anchorage Steering Committee, so, yes, this is a blatant plug for people to come when he's here. But I wouldn't post this if I didn't think it was a good thing to do. There's also a smaller workshop on Tuesday night from 5:30 - 9:00 for $50 for people who want more time with him and tips for working with other people on combating hate and racism.

And, as you'll hear in the video, he still has his fingers in a lot of pies.

Oedipus Wrecks Tree or the Sweeny Todd of Anchorage Tree Trimmers

Men of London went into Sweeny Todd's barber shop for a trim, and left the shop through a trap door with their throats slit and into Mrs. Lovett's famous pies.

Images from Blue-In-AK's Democratic Underground post

Blue_In_AK suggests at Democratic Underground a few days ago that Carlos Tree Trimmers of Anchorage, on contract with an Anchorage utility to trim trees around power lines, has a Sweeny in their employ.  (Well, she didn't mention Sweeny.)

"We had an absolutely beautiful Mayday tree in our front yard [BEFORE] that was probably at least 40 or 50 years old. It was already huge when I moved in here 22 years ago. Here's a picture of it last spring in full bloom. The blossoms were so fragrant, you could smell the tree all along our streert [sic].

"This morning the tree trimmers who the electric utility hires to cut out branches around the lines came by and asked us if they could trim the tree up. We said sure, they've done it many times before when the branches go up in the wires. We then went downtown to buy me some shoes, and when we got home, the tree looked like this [AFTER].

(The trouble buying shoes gets one into.)

I learned about this because comment 148 has a link to my post on May Day trees being an invasive species in Anchorage.  Lots of people have May Day trees here, so that's not my issue in this story.  


This sort of trim is completely inexcusable.  If the utility contracts out with tree trimmers, there should be a huge penalty clause for situations like this.  What kind of a person does this?  Someone, like Sweeny Todd, who has been badly warped by past ill treatment and now takes it out on poor trees and their unsuspecting admirers?


Blue_in_AK writes (comment 171) in response to comments about a company rep's visit:

He just kept saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry,

as if that was going to make any difference. And as it turns out, he is the owner's son who we later learned from a different supervisor had taken out someone else's ornamental earlier this week. The second supervisor who came to talk to us said he had worked on that tree many times, loved it himself and was very sorry that this had happened. The guy in charge of "danger trees" at the electric company said there are some things he wants to talk to us about that he didn't want to discuss while he was at work, which leads me to believe that they may be having many complaints about Carlos Tree Service. He and Carlos himself are coming out here tomorrow to discuss what can be done.

Oedipus was beyond sorry when he learned he'd killed his father.  He blinds himself in despair.  And Freud's most famous diagnosis was named after Oedipus. What sort of father-son stories underlie this defoliation?  Maybe he really doesn't want to work in the family business and sometimes he takes out his frustration on the trees.  Of course this is pure speculation with no factual basis whatsoever, but no one who loves trees would have done this.


I have to say that Carlos' company trimmed trees in our yard once - also on contract to the utility - clearing branches around the wires to our house from the utility pole.  They carefully trimmed - at our request and with us watching - the trees in our yard and while they left no branches leaning against the wires, you wouldn't have known they'd been there.  


So this wasn't what they normally do.  This goes back to a trimmer with a problem.  


If the mountain ash in front of our house were to be reduced to naked trunks overnight, I'd be upset as well.  And it's worse if something like this happens due to someone's recklessness than natural causes.


My heart goes out to Blue-in-AK and I hope you quickly find new opportunities to enjoy the yard.  Perhaps you can grow some vegies in the added sunshine until a new tree takes hold.  Or, as others have said in your comments, the tree may surprise you with thick regrowth in a year or two.  I know rose bushes need to be severely trimmed, and I've seen other trees come back quickly from such radical trimming. 

First Snow

It's not an impressive snow. Just a very thin covering. But it's here and there will be more.

What The Joker Can Tell us About Occupy Wall Street -

First, I'm the kind of person who can separate the idea from the person who said it. And even take the good ideas and leave the bad ones behind. I'm taking some ideas from a crazy, freaky character, because even he, sometimes, touched on the truth.

But I'm  NOT suggesting the Occupy Wall Street people share, in any way, the Joker's crazy freakiness. Heath Ledger, in this role, made this evil character, somehow human, somehow necessary.

I am suggesting that some of what he said can help us understand why the Occupy Wall Street folks are occupying, why many Americans support them, and why some people are freaking out over it. And why some of them are trying to portray the Occupiers as low-lifes, as lazy malcontents, and in the extreme case, as agents of the Joker's brand of craziness.


 It's about control, about planning. (And I don't for a second believe the Joker when he says he doesn't plan. You couldn't have bombs in all the right places without planning.)

Here's my take on what the Occupiers are saying,

"Whoa, the banks and other corporations and their lobbyists have planned and schemed so they now control the people who make the rules, the supposedly democratically made rules, so that the rules more and more favor the rich over everyone else. 
"The rules now legitimately take money from the middle class and the poor, and legally transfer it to the rich.

"The increasing gap between the poor and the rich isn't because the rich are deserving and the poor are lazy and unmotivated, but because the rules have been corrupted. We only have the facade of democracy. It's now time to disrupt those plans."

Of course those who have worked so hard to put the plans into place - to the point where they control five of the nine Supreme Court seats so they can validate or invalidate any law they need or need to destroy - aren't happy about disruptions. 

They don't like chaos. But the occupiers are, at least unconsciously, aware of the Joker's conclusion. Some chaos in an unfair system is the means to returning fairness. But chaos, not in the Joker's terms of destroying people and property in spectacular fashion,  but small disruptions of daily life. Blocked traffic. Some flowers trampled.  Third world sanitary conditions. Confronting business as usual.  Making people stop their normal merry-go-round lives and pay attention to what is going on. 

Support among the powerful for the Arab spring was muted. "What if the radical Muslims take over?"  they worried.  They are much less interested in fairness and human rights than predictable governments with whom they can make deals. They've never been concerned that Saudi women couldn't drive or vote as long as they got their oil deals.  And they're certain that they know what is best for everyone.  They can break laws spectacularly, but Occupiers must be held tightly to the laws.

And they are now acting as if the occupiers around the country were no different from the Joker, because underneath his freakiness, he understood what made them nervous - any challenge to their plans, any spontaneity, disruption of their normal way of doing business, and the possibility that other people might begin to question their plans.  Have you noticed the complaints about the Occupiers not having a plan?  That's what really disturbs them.  They can understand plans.  They can't understand or predict this though.

And so mayors around the country are coming up with excuses to send in the police, with batons blazing.  But people like veteran Scott Olsen who served in Iraq and had a good job and place to live are the faces of the Occupy movements.  Even though the planners want us to think that the Occupiers are more like the Joker.  [I have no illusion that there are some malcontents among the occupiers.  They always show up when something is happening.  But they aren't the face of the occupation any more than the corrupt business execs are the . . .well, hold that thought.  In today's USA I'm not so sure about the business executives.]

Read the small print from the script.  "Nobody panics when the expected people get killed.  Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying.  If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics.  Because it's all part of the plan.  But when I say that one little old mayor will die, everybody loses their minds!"
Do I buy into everything the Joker says?  Of course not.  I'm not really a fan of chaos, except when the controllers have way too much control.  Remember all the Republicans who complained about the chaos demonstrators created in the Soviet bloc in 1989?  Me neither.   And the Tea Party folks use the chaos of the Boston Tea Party as their mascot.  Rebellion and revolution are good or bad depending on whose side you are on.



This is serious stuff going on.  Is the US going to be like Syria or Tunisia? 


[The excerpts from The Dark Knight script come from here.  And the video clip I did from a Blockbuster copy of the Dark Knight I rented.  Thanks Warner Brothers.  I have no ads here and I promise not to sell it or make any money off of it.]

First Play, Then Eat - The Vegetable Orchestra

Watch them make and the play their instruments.  They don't show them later eating them unfortunately.  Local foods people - certainly a vegie orchestra should perform at your farmers' markets! A more recent video shows them recording their album - Onionoise.

And on the vegetable orchestra website I found that eating is, indeed, part of the concert experience:

A concert of the Vegetable Orchestra appeals to all the senses. As an encore at the end of the concert and the video performance, the audience is offered fresh vegetable soup.

But I have to mention that hundreds of millions of people (actually more than three times the population of the USA)  around the world are going to bed hungry, even starving. Such orchestras can only exist where there is plenty of food.