Trouble Sleeping? Try These Dreams

I'm not sure how I got to this website.  I heard wind blowing and started looking through my tabs until I found it.  It wanted me to turn on my webcam.  I'm glad I did.  This is another amazing website that demonstrates yet another way a great imagination can play with this medium.  I don't want to say too much, but you do play a role in all this.  And when you think things are getting carried away, remember you are part of it all.

I checked.  You don't have to have the cam on, but it's cleverer if you do.  Click on the image to get to the website or here.  (The screen shot definitely does not do it justice.)

Summer (?) in Anchorage - Lots of Airport Runs

Technically, it's summer.  But except for the sun and relative warmth of half of April, it's been more like the summers of the late 70s and early 80s.  Cool, clouds, rain.  But it is summer - because summer is when you drop off and pick up friends at the airport a lot. 





Tuesday night I had two trips.  Here I am waiting at Arrivals while J goes inside to find our friends.

And still there waiting. . .








We got them home and then I went out again to drop another friend at the airport.





By now - on the way home again - it's almost 11pm, but it's summer and still light, even though it's been cloudy and raining all day.  Turning left at Lake Otis and Tudor.  Despite the strip malls and signage, I can still see the Chugach and all is well.

Packaging - Good, Bad, Ugly (Tofu, Bagels, Raisins, Dates)

There is a wide variety of terrible packaging - the worst offender being all the unnecessary plastic garbage that's so difficult to open and mostly just gets thrown away.  I've only picked four items for this post, I'm sure you can pick hundreds more.

We'll start with The Ugly.

Tofu containers.  Terrible!

These are so, so bad.  They're packed with water, which tofu needs.  But they're sealed with the water bulging over the top of the tofu.  So full that once you open them, the tofu is so high in the container, that you can't keep it under water without spilling it - to, from, or in the refrigerator.  If they made the container just a little higher than the tofu, it would make more sense.  There's a better a better way to package tofu waiting to be discovered. 

Costco bagels.  Do the people that designed this ever open Costco bagels?  Do the people at Costco who make these decisions ever open them?

The bagels are in a plastic bag which is sealed with a piece of scotch tape like stuff.  When the sealing machine works right, it says to tear the two ends apart and it opens.  But usually, like in this one (which is already opened) the tape isn't on right and there is only one way to open it - tear the bag open.  And even when the seal is on right, the tape isn't good for resealing.  Even though this picture is focused on the tape, you can't even see it.


The Bad

These raisins used to be in zip lock bags.  That was pretty good.  But they dropped that and added a piece of red tape to reseal the bags.

In theory this could work, but after resealing once or twice, the adhesive gets lazy.  And since there are two pounds of raisins in the bag, you're going to have to reseal it a lot more than once or twice.



The Good

This is an old tray that was used originally to pack California dates.  A cellophane like material covered the dates.  We have two of these trays.  They have to be at least 50 years old - they were in my father's things.

This is great packaging that gets reused over and over again.  I thought about doing this post this morning when I was preparing breakfast for my wife who was slow getting up today.

I'm sure these are from the 1960s or 1950s.  When I looked to see if there was anything on California Date Palm packaging, I found someone offering a tray like this one (well, the etching looked less worn) for $14.99!

What packaging do we see today that will be used so well for 50 years and then be for sale for more than the cost of the product itself?

[I don't know how long Ebay pages are available, but I linked the picture to Ebay if someone wants to buy one.]

And while I was looking up the trays, I found this information about dates from J&J Distributors:

The date is one of the oldest tree crops - records go back over 5,000 years.

Nomads and people of the desert from the Middle East and North Africa consumed dates for survival, and royalty for many generations (dates were considered a delicacy) served this terrific fruit. Spanish missionaries introduced dates to the West in the 18th and 19th centuries, and some of the original palms can still be found in Southern California and Mexico.

The Medjool variety is considered the gourmet of the date family - originating in Morocco, it arrived in the US in 1927. Eleven immature palms were given to the US by the Chariff of Morocco - this was an attempt to save the Medjools that were threatened by disease there. The eleven palms were quarantined for seven years in Nevada, and the nine that survived were relocated to Southern California. Note: the Medjool date is the only date that is harvested fresh and eaten fresh, and is the most labor intensive date to grow and harvest.

Dates provide energy in the form of natural invert sugars - important for those who cannot tolerate sucrose - Medjools have an above average invert sugar content. Date palms flourish in dry heat and minimal rain, and do very well in the Bard Valley of California where the Colorado and Gila rivers allow abundant irrigation for their root structure - 70% of the Medjool dates in the US are produced in the Bard Valley.

The date palm (Phoenix Dactylifera) is known as the tree of life, and there are approximately 22 million palms in Iraq today where approximately 600,000 tons of dates are produced annually.

Campbell Creek Nature Minutes from Busy Lake Otis & Tudor

We biked over the old Campbell Creek bridge just east of Lake Otis (and the newer bridge).  This is in Campbell Creek Park.  The salmon aren't running yet.  Here's a view to the west.

Here's a view to the east.

And this peaceful scene is about 1/4 mile from one of Anchorage's busiest intersections - Lake Otis and Tudor.  When the street was widened years ago and this massive retaining wall was put it, Sheila Wyne's mystical art project transformed (for me at least) what would have been a sterile corner into a favorite spot.  It's easy to find a list of of 1% for the arts projects done by the Municipality of Anchorage.  Wyne's piece isn't on the list so I guessed that it was instead a state project.  But I can't find a state list.  I did find a DOT document which referred to more recent construction (already completed) which refers to Sheila Wyne's raven sun moon and stars and how the finishing work on the new project was intended to complement it.

 

The sun is out of sight past the upper left corner.  There are stories among Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Southeast Alaska and Canadian Native peoples about the raven stealing the sun, moon, and stars from heaven, and I'm assuming that this piece represents a version of that story.   It's best just around sunset when the light catches the stars and casts a multicolor reflection. 

Coincidence? - Documenta 13 Opened Today in Kassel

At the National Gallery of Art's East Wing two years ago, I saw this Max Ernst sculpture and told J that I'd once sat on it.  Back when I was a student in Germany, at big art exhibit in Kassel, Dokumenta 3.  I thought.  And somewhere there is a picture of me on it.  Maybe.  Possibly it was just a similar piece. I was tempted to sit on it again and have her take my picture, but the guard was watching me.


Today, June 9, 2012, I have been cleaning up downstairs.  Throwing away old papers I no longer need, resorting the ones I'm not ready to toss, and thinking about converting some old papers into articles.

When I ran across, finally, this picture.

OK, so this isn't such a big coincidence.  Eventually I was going to find this picture.

BUT, then I looked up Documenta.  This exhibit happens every five years.  And it turns out, (from the Daily Beast):

The twice-a-decade show is launching Saturday, June 9, in Kassel, Germany, in its 13th incarnation.

From Deutsche Welle:

The German President Joachim Gauck has opened one of the world's biggest contemporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary art in Kassel, central Germany.

The thirteenth edition of one of the world's biggest and most ambitious contemporary art fairs opens in Kassel on the Fulda River in the northern part of the state Hesse in Germany.
Held every five years since 1955, the fair exhibits works by artists over a period of 100 days. This year's event features works by nearly 300 artists from 56 countries. Exhibits include cottages brimming with strange objects, sounds of the Brazilian jungle and a West African theatrical performance.
Artistic Director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, a US-born Italian-Bulgarian, explained the festival's role at the opening: "Documenta is dedicated to artistic research and forms of imagination that explore commitment, matter, things, embodiment."

And here's a video from Documenta 13 from Newsweek and Daily Beast art critic Blake Gropnik:


There are some questions though. If it's every 5 years, and this is 2012, how did I see it in September 1964? Wikipedia answers that quickly.  Its entry has a list of the 13 Documentas since 1955. The second one was in 1959, and the third one in 1964. They don't seem to have gotten onto a regular five year cycle until 1972.

People like to attribute events like my finding this picture on the day Documenta opens this year on something more than coincidence.  With 365 days in a year, and with there being a Documenta every five years, the odds of my finding the picture on this particular day is a bit more than 1800 to 1.  You had a much better chance of picking the winner of the Belmont today.  1800 to 1 is roughly 50 chances in 100,000, which is about twice as likely as dying from Alzheimers in the US in 2009.   (Some of you may think that's a strange relationship, but it is important for people to think about numbers and statistics with rationality and with facts.  The odds were high, but these coincidences do happen.)

The Deutsche Welle piece says that there will be three other Documenta locations this year:

Kassel is not the only venue for Documenta; this year a fifth of the works are being shown in other locations including Kabul, Afghanistan, Kairo, Egypt and Banff in Canada.

 So, Alaskans driving Outside this summer, can stop by in Banff.   And those stationed in Afghanistan might be able to partake as well.

OK, one more bit of trivia.  While I was looking for the Max Ernst piece on my blog, I found him mentioned in one of my posts in honor of Claude Lévi-Strauss' 100th birthday.  Lévi-Strauss is being interviewed in 1940 or 41 about his time teaching at NYU:

D.E. You were a young, unknown university professor, and you became part of a group of famous artists - stars, even - Breton, Tanguy, Duchamp...
C.L-S. And Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Matta, Wifredo Lam. . . Masson and Calder were living in the country. I went to see them on a few weekends.
D.E. Did you like the members of the group?
C.L-S. Some of them. I liked Max Ernst right away, and he is the one I stayed closest to. Tanguy, whose painting I admired a great deal, was not an easy person. Duchamp had great kindness, and for awhile Masson and I were very close. I also became friends with Patrick Waldberg. Our friendship continued after the war ended.
D.E. Peggy Guggenheim was financing the existence of the group?
C.L-S. She helped this or that one out financially, but Max Ernst, whom she married, was more affluent than the others. They were leading the Bohemian life in Greenwich Village. Until Max Ernst left Peggy Guggenheim. One day, Breton called to ask me if I had a small sum of money to buy back one of his Indian objects from Max Ernst, who was now broke. This historic object is now in the Musée de l'Homme.

 And things mentioned in here lead in a thousand more directions which I'll leave for any of you reading this to pursue on your own.

Spenard Jazz Fest - Poetry and Dance Night Thursday

Sitting in the Organic Oasis was like beiing into another world.  Musicians, poets, dancers, and their friends were gathered.  I would say the performances varied greatly in quality, but the vibe of the evening was comfy, warm,  and I was impressed with all the work people had done to put the evening together.  We saw some people we knew and made new friends as well. 

After the post on the lack of women's voices in the media the other day, I've been much more conscious of whether I've got the camera on men or women. I do have to say that sometimes leaving a picture or video clip out is a favor. But that's because I'm not doing a good enough job with the camera.

The video will give a pale sense of things.  It sounds much less on the video than it did in person.







The Spenard Jazz Fest continues Saturday.  From their website:

Sat June 09
Jazz at the Market | SPENARD FARMER’S MARKET  | 10 am – 2 pm
Free
Stop by the Festival booth for some live music, free refreshments and tons of cool SJF merchandise!
Plus other SJF surprises! You never know what could happen at the market or who you’ll discover.
.

“Altered Arts” Jazzy Mural Painting | BLAINE’S  |  10 am – 6 pm
Free
Time for the annual mural painting at Blaines.
SJF band stand to be filled with an array of local jazz heroes


Originals {Day 2} | ORGANIC OASIS | 4pm – Late
$15/$10 (student/senior/youth)  | Punch Card
Come out for the new music! Great artists, great food, great atmosphere.
4pm: Phil Beckett
5pm: Alex Cruver trio
6pm: Elite 9
7pm: Lee Pulliam
8pm: John Damberg
9pm: Tyler Desjarlais
10pm: Phil Knowlton
.

Bear Tooth Valet Parking for Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Bicycle Commuters of Anchorage (BCA) had free valet parking for bikes at the Bear Tooth last Monday.  (But they did take donations.)

We were there to see Jiro Dreams of Sushi - part of the Alaska Food Film Fest.  




This was a long, but thought-provoking movie about what the movie touts as the greatest sushi maker in Japan.  At 85 he's still making sushi at his restaurant where reservations must be made at least a month in advance.  He's got three Michelin stars.  And his two sons are working for him.  The younger son has opened his own restaurant, but the older son, over 60 now, is still waiting to take over from his father.

Two Screenshots from Jiro Dreams of Sushi Trailer

Jiro left home as a child and made his way to this position.  So clearly he didn't have much of a model for how to father. 

This film is one more case study for us to ponder the sacrificing of personal life to become 'the best' of something.  He says he left for work before his kids were up in the morning and got back when they were already sleeping.  But he has had his son's working for him for 40 years.  But as depicted in the film, he is clearly the boss, even with his sons are old enough to grandfathers.  Is perfect sushi that important?

I did wonder at one point why the Alaska Center for the Environment was sponsoring this movie.  But then Jiro talked about how good fish are disappearing and the importance of sustainable fishing. 

I think the movie could be edited.  But overall it introduced me to the world of a Tokyo restaurant and the now common worldwide food known as sushi.

And so we found ourselves headed toward Yamato Ya for a little sushi after the movie.

We got a mix of sushi and sashimi.

For the photographically curious, I'm using Aperture now (instead of iPhoto) and I experimented with curves on the first and third images here.

What Percent Of People Quoted On Women's Issues In Print Are Women?

A friend sent this link from 4thEstate.  

They are looking at 2012 election coverage and how many women are quoted compared to men.    And since we've been hearing about the gender gap in the Presidential race, it would seem to mean that coverage, of at least that race if not many others, is badly skewed. 

It's particularly telling how men are the predominant commenters on issues like abortion, birth control, etc.  It makes me wonder about my own blog.  How many of the sources I cite are male or female generated?  In a lot of cases I just don't know.

A quick look at my Viddler videos shows a lot more male than female subjects.  I didn't count, but I clearly need to pay more attention to the balance. 

They discuss methodology but I don't understand enough to know how to check it.  But even if their data is off by 10%, the imbalance is staggering.  But given my own gender gap here (at least in the videos) I suspect they are pretty accurate.

Guided Venus Transit in Anchorage at UAA

I'd been hearing the stories, but wondering if Alaska would have a good view and how to watch without burning my eyeballs. It's been cloudy so we probably wouldn't see anything anyway. But I saw an announcement that telescopes and viewing glasses would be available on the garage roof behind the Integrated Sciences building at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Alaska and Hawaii are the only two states where the whole transit would be visible.  We're west enough that the sun wouldn't set before it was finished. And it was sunny.  And I had a nearby viewing spot with experts to guide me.  How could I not go?   But better go before it clouds over. (There were thin clouds, but I think you could see it the whole time.)  Told a friend to go and grabbed a neighbor who was reading in the sun.

There was a variety of telescopes - from the University and from local astronomy buffs.    I got there a little before midpoint.  There was a line to look into the fattest telescope.  People guessed they were there because there was a line.  Someone else suggested that 'bigger is better.'  The other telescopes didn't have lines.  And there were different ways to see Venus crossing the sun.

If you look closely you can see the dot that's Venus in the upper left and lower right images.   Here's another view with Physics/Astronomy post-doc Michelle Wooten answering people's questions.

Venus is the black dot near the bottom of the sun here.  With the telescopes that didn't show the sun directly, the images were flipped over.  Venus was actually going across the top.

Here I put my camera into the eyepiece of a telescope. (The telescope had a dark filter on it so people wouldn't hurt their eyes.)  The dot of Venus is near the top.

Then we went to the planetarium nearby to hear a talk on the phenomenon we were watching live.

I forgot to check the program at the door when I left to get the astronomer's name and I couldn't find a program with names on the UAA website.  Sorry. [UPDATE June 7:  Dr. Andy Puckett, the Planetarium Director and an Asst Prof of Astronomy at UAA introduced himself in a comment below.  Thanks, Andy!]  In the brief video below he shows Venus transiting across the sun and talks about the four contact points - as Venus first touches the sun from the outside, as it touches the edge from the inside, then after crossing the sun, as it touches the edge from the inside (third contact) and from the outside (fourth contact.)  The video ends when he says, now I'll tell you why this is important.

It's important, he goes on to say, because by measuring this transit time from different places on earth, by calculating the small differences in time of the four contact points, you can calculate the distance Venus is from the sun.  He asked us all to stick our arms out with our thumbs up and to close one eye as we put our thumb over some object.  Then switch eyes.  There's a jump and if you know the distance between your eyes, you can calculate the distance to the object.  I remember back to geometry being amazed at the ways you could figure out the third side of a triangle and I think that's what this does.

He also pointed out that when scientists went around the world to watch the second (1761) and third (1769) known transits (a couple of  people saw in 1639) there was no photography yet and the best time keepers were grandfather clocks with pendulums.  So they took grandfather clocks to keep track of time. 

This was a neat illustration on the ceiling of the planetarium.  It shows, if I understood this right, the orbit of Venus (the circle), the sun (the orange dot in the center) and the location of the earth (the blue 'earth'). Actually there are two earth locations - one on the upper left and one in the lower right (harder to see).  These would be on opposite sides of the earth's orbit around the sun.  There's a point on each side of Venus' orbit, where Venus lines up between the earth and the sun so that a transit is visible.  The white lines bounced back and forth to show where Venus would be in relation to the earth.  I think he said 13 orbits of Venus for every eight of earth.  So Venus hits the sweet spot, then misses for eight years, then hits it again.  Then it's over 100 years before it hits it again.

There are lots of places online where you can get more details.  Here's a site that looks at the history of sightings of Venus transits.  

State Buys Nino's Italian Eatery

I passed through Nino's parking lot yesterday on the way to the Bear Tooth.  Being on a bike means you go slower and you can see things you'd miss in a car.  They looked seriously closed, but I didn't have time to stop.  But on the way home I checked more closely.

Why would the State Department of Transportation own this?  Did they owe the State money?  Maybe the state is going into the restaurant business?  Weird.

When I got home it was too late to call anyone, but I did google.  There's a thread in city-data Anchorage on Where did Nino's go?  but no answers.

So this morning I called Nino's phone number.  Busy.




Then I called the Department of Transportation and Public Facitilities and within a few seconds I got the answer.

Nino's was for sale and DOT bought it because it is near where they will be doing work in the future (New Seward and 36th) and they feel they got it for a reasonable price.

They are working on the New Seward Highway from Tudor to Dowling  this summer and next, so it will be at least a couple of years before they start to seriously work at 36th.  I wonder if they would rent it out to a restauranteur in the meantime? 


[UPDATE April 28, 2014:  Here's a picture of the Nino's lot I took today.]