Drummers, Tai Chi, More At Japanese Summer Festival

It is summer.  It's light out.  The low 60˚F temperature and grey skies don't bother me, especially when I read about 100˚plus temperatures in the Lower 48.  I biked to Sand Lake Elementary yesterday.  The parking lot was jammed (but not the bike racks) at this event sponsored by the Consular Office of Japan, the Japanese Society of Alaska, Tomo No Kai, and the Japan Relief Fund of Alaska Foundation. 


Sand Lake is an appropriate spot because it's the elementary school with a Japanese language immersion program.

The Tai Chi demonstration was my reason for going.  My wife, who's been practicing tai chi for a long time now, invited me.  The discipline, art, I'm not sure the right descriptor of tai chi, fascinates me.  There is something so opposite to how we usually do things in the West.  There's an inward focus, a controlling of one's thoughts and breathing and movements that is both beautiful to watch and, I'm told, powerful for the person doing it. J has gotten very good at this and teaches a group at a local assisted living home.  I made a video of yesterday's performance. But it raised one of the conflicts I deal with on this blog and which I'll  post about in more detail in a future post.  Tai Chi should is reflective and I think of it being quiet.  I imagine the ideal tai chi in a natural setting with a flute or other gentle Chinese music in the background.  My video of yesterday reflects the brutal reality of tai chi in a noisy school gymnasium.  Should my videos and photos reflect reality or our stereotypes of reality?  So much of the world reflected to us over the media is edited to conform to our stereotypes, which merely reinforces those stereotypes.  In the discussion with Doug (see below) he mentioned that he uses photoshop to get rid of power lines from his scenic shots.   I even thought about deleting the crowd noise and replacing it with a flute.  But part of what I'm doing is documenting life today, and such modifications would merely play into people's stereotypes.  And imagine historians of the future pointing to pictures where the power lines have been edited out.   And there was no way I could disguise the gymnasium background.   Note:  I'm not opposed to playing with reality (just the idea of thinking about a video or photo as reality shows how 'created' our reality has become)  to find new meaning - as artists do.  Just when the purpose is to conform to people's stereotypes rather than challenge them.   For those who would like to see the slow-motion flow of the tai chi can see the short video here. 

J introduced me to Doug whose wife is also in the tai chi group and who posts a photo a day on flicker.  He has takes lots of pictures and just puts up one a day.  I looked.  Trust me.  He's got great shots. (Even if they don't have power lines. :) )  Yesterday he put one up of the drummers at the festival and other recent ones include a wolf and an angry goose.  I need to go out in the woods with this guy.  I also need a camera that has a good telephoto.

 


I was waiting for the drummers. (Don't tell my wife.)  I posted about this group last year on the  Fourth of July when they were at the Park Strip.  From the very first time I heard the Taiko drummers from Japan at West High maybe 25 years ago, I was hooked.  The energy and power of the drummers and precision of their playing, and, of course, the way the drum beats go through your body.  This is the complete opposite of the tai chi.  (Is it really?  I have to think about that.  On the most obvious level, yes, but maybe they have more in common than it appears at first glance.)  And the local Anchorage group Tomodachi Daiko gives lessons.  I'm tempted. 

Watch the video.  I've got part of two pieces.  The third one is complete. It starts at 50 seconds.  I find it totally riveting.  Though the video is a pale reflection of actually being there.  These are local Anchorage folks of all ages.  Mesmerizing. 

There were a lot of folks selling things including Bosco's with lots of manga.  I know one of the festival goals was to raise money to help people still recovering from the Tsunami in Japan.  I assume that part of the sales went for that cause.  But I'm not sure how it worked.  (My son spent a large part of his income at Bosco's when he was younger.)

Editor Feedback - ADN Press-Release Post Follow Up

Nut Shell:  Printing verbatim press releases with minimum citation is NOT Anchorage Daily News policy.

My July 4 post on a Department of Transportation press release that was printed in the Anchorage Daily News almost verbatim picked up a few comments including one that linked to a blog post about a columnist fired by the Kansas City Star.

"[A]fter editors discovered he had submitted more than a dozen columns that were nearly verbatim copies of press releases. Now, Penn is suing McClatchy Newspapers Inc., the Star's owner, for defamation. He's seeking $25,000 and punitive damages."

Since McClatchy also owns the Anchorage Daily News, this was becoming a bigger story.  Actually, I had started to write with questions about how the new airport development in the press release related to the proposed landswap between the airport and the Municipality that would give the airport part of the Coastal Trail.  Before posting I saw the press release published as a news item in the ADN, I refocused the post to the issue of handling press releases as news. 

But when I learned, through the comment, about the other McClatchy paper firing a columnist over this, it seemed I should contact the ADN and ask them about their policy on this and any comments they might have about the Kansas City Star columnist.  I emailed editor Pat Dougherty mentioning the post and the comment with the link to the Kansas City Star firing.

Even though I'd emailed him after 5pm, Dougherty responded in detail within a couple of hours.  He pointed out, legitimately, that it would have been nice if I had contacted him before posting.

He wrote that he agreed that

"the attribution in that story should have been higher and more precise. . .

 I also agree that all the composition should have been our own, except
for something used in direct quotes.

If we had done that, I don't think the generic bylining would have
been an issue. After all, in choosing to publish it, we are taking
responsibility for it. That's why we would include a byline. "

He also wrote:

"Prompted by your column, we discussed this issue among editors here
today and agreed that we would have a specific discussion about
appropriate and inappropriate practices with the reporter involved in
this case, followed by a general written reminder to the staff about
our standards and expectations."

He wrote that there are cost factors in using staff time to rewrite and fact check press releases so that they are really ADN created news articles.  One option they considered was an online space for press releases:

". . .we created a spot on our website called "Bulletin Board." The idea was to
post raw press releases that we thought were of interest to at least
some of our readers but that did not meet the threshold for use of
staff time. The fact is there are a lot of lesser tidbits of news we
get that don't justify journalistic handling. Here's an example: press
release says the road to Wonder Lake is open to private cars. It's
unfortunate that the general public may not get that information from
the newspaper if we can't have a reporter spend the time to say
essentially the same thing, to the same level of depth, in different
words. Now if we did make that effort in that example, you are smart
enough to understand what it really represents. The newspaper story
isn't saying the road to Wonder Lake is open -- we don't know that
because we haven't gone to Denali to check the road. What the
newspaper is saying is that someone who works for the park service
says the road is open. Whether the park service says that in a press
release, a phone call or an email is pretty much a distinction without
a difference.

Primarily because of tight staffing with summer vacations etc., the
Bulletin Board effort has languished. If I conclude that the benefit
to our readers is worth the effort, I may revive it. It's just one
more small way in which we newspaper people are having to solve
problems today that we could have solved more easily in the past with
more staff or money."

[I couldn't find anything about the Denali road being open to Wonder Lake, but the Park Service did post last week its "Final Vehicle Management Plan for Denali National Park & Preserve."  Comment period until July 30.]

I like the Bulletin Board idea.  It seems best to just identify items as press releases and print them verbatim.  The idea of rewriting them seems a waste of time, since it's the same unevaluated content the organization submitted, just in different words.  The key is to let the reader know the source and what you did with it.

As Dougherty went on to discuss the Kansas City Star situation,  he elaborated on the problems of working with press releases:

I am skeptical of the claims of the former KC Star person. You
describe him here as a reporter. I thought he was a columnist. [I used the wrong word, Dougherty was right.]  The difference between those two jobs matters hugely. The issue of rewriting press releases, or rewriting anything, should never come up with a columnist, whose job it is to write his own opinions or
observations. If he was a columnist and he was re-writing anything, he
ought to be fired. Period. If he was a reporter, the situation could
have been somewhat less black and white. Lots of low-level news
stories start from press releases. Reporters are constantly under
pressure to determine just how much time a given story is worth, and
to spend just that much time and no more. That can put a reporter
close to the line. Every newspaper editor is well aware of that
pressure and the proximity of that line -- but editors expect a
reporter to know better than to cross it.The pressures at the Star,
I'm sure, are not materially different from those at the ADN or, for
that matter, Channel 2, the Anchorage Press or the Alaska Dispatch.
There may have been some corner-cutting by KC reporters, but I don't
believe that was a condoned practice at the newspaper. I guess we'll
have to wait and see how that case turns out.

As a blogger without a journalism background, I'm continuing to learn.  I've generally not been good about calling people about stories beforehand.   I can see how someone  could call the original post  'gotcha' blogging, which isn't my intent.  Adding Dougherty's response - that this isn't how the ADN wants their reporters doing things - to the original would have made a better post.   Watching ADN reporters - particularly Lisa Demer during the Alaska corruption trials and in Juneau - I know that she's on the phone a lot calling and checking.  That's something I need to do more often.  While interviews are often used in academic research - my background - in the actual writing, one tends to cite written sources mostly.  That's an explanation, not an excuse. 

I also appreciate Dougherty's quick and thorough responses to my emails.  Dougherty also sent a Kansas City Star article on the firing of their columnist which adds more information than the original link that Anonymous left in the comment section.

Penn alleged that using press releases without attribution was a common practice at The Star and even was part of his training.

That sentence was in both links to the KC Star firing, but the next ones, which raised red flags for me, were new.

“The widespread practice in journalism is to treat such press releases as having been voluntarily released by their authors into the flow of news with the intention that the release will be reprinted or published, and preferably with no or minimal editing,” the suit alleged. “As such, attribution as to the authorship of such news releases is typically not expected by the author, nor offered by journalists who receive them.”

If this were true, the widespread practice would be to deceive the public into thinking press releases from various organizations are actually news stories written by the paper's reporters and columnists.  A friend reminded me of the controversy six years ago when television stations played, as news stories, corporate and government made video news releases (VNRs) without attribution.  The FCC ruled TV stations playing VNRs "must clearly disclose to members of their audiences the nature, source and sponsorship of the material."

Dougherty's discussion on how much time it takes reporters to rewrite press releases also brought to mind last weekend's This American Life episode on Journatic,  a company that creates local news stories for newspapers, using outsourced reporters as far away as the Philippines.  Readers have no idea that the stories aren't written by local reporters.  The piece discusses the economic reasons smaller papers are tempted to buy cheap, outsourced, local stories.  Journatic claimed papers got more local coverage that way.  But a Journatic reporter said he found he wasn't as careful about fact checking because of the low pay he gets per article and because he's so far away from the towns he's writing about.

I also asked Dougherty if the ADN had its editorial policy publicly available.  His response was:

We don't have a written ethics policy. We expect good ethics and good
judgment. What we have said in writing is that any issue that raises
ethical questions, in which the right course of action is not clear,
should be brought up with editors. In cases where precedent is not
instructive, the editors will sort out what course of action is
appropriate.

I would note that the Daily News has gone decades without an ethical
scandal. To some degree, that's probably a matter of good luck, but to
a far greater degree it's the result of good judgment by the staff,
from top to bottom.

Presumably, that's why the ADN hires people with degrees in journalism - they learned the skills and the standards in school.  They come with the code of ethics already embedded as  Henry Mintzberg writes about employees who come to organizations already trained:

"Standardization of skills (as well as knowledge), in which different work is coordinated by virtue of the related training the workers have received (as in medical specialists - say a surgeon and an anesthetist in an operating room –responding almost automatically to each other’s standardized procedures)"

Journalists should already know ethics codes such as The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics with its four main headings:

• Seek Truth and Report It
• Minimize Harm
• Act Independently
• Be Accountable

Presumably a newspaper like the ADN can rely on a code like that.  But the New York Times has its own, very detailed Policy on Ethics in Journalism.   Some would argue that the NYT rules are so detailed that they restrict flexibility. 

I remember reading in my first graduate class, that some organizations want to give employees as much flexibility as possible by not having rules.  The effect, the author wrote (I think it was Amatai Etzioni in Modern Organizations), is that the organizations still have unwritten rules in the heads of the managers, and the employees are more constrained in these organizations.  They have to guess what's allowed. They don't know when they will get in trouble for violating the unwritten rules.  That's not the intent of managers who don't have rules, but it's often the effect.   

Blogging is different from mainstream journalism and bloggers are creating their own standards for how to do things.  Some blogs are meant to be more entertainment or personal reflection or even ranting than news.  Here at What Do I Know? I want readers to clearly know what is my original work and what comes from other places, with links to the sources.  I also want my newsy pieces to be fair to the subjects, accurate, and to offer various perspectives that would help the viewer understand what happened.  I also want to use the story to illustrate larger issues and principles, like a case study.  I want this not to be an isolated incident, but to show it as part of a larger pattern of how things work.

Contacting the subject of a story is something I should do more frequently.  That may slow some stories down, but as I think about it, when I've done it in the past, the stories have always been better for it.  I hope though, that even when I don't get in contact with the subject, my work offers reasonable possibilities of what they might have said on their own behalf when that's appropriate. I don't think I did that in this case.

What City Has More Than A Dozen Bagpipe Factories?

People are constantly saying they'd like to hear some positive news instead of the constant din of negative stories.  But it also seems most people really read the appalling and shocking stories more than the feel good stories.

Here's a bit of news that came via email from a friend.  It's a bit unexpected.  The city of Sialkot, Pakistan is one of the world's biggest exporters of bagpipes.  From CNN:

Sialkot is located in north-east Pakistan, some 125 kilometers from the capital Lahore. Legend has it that the city started making bagpipes during the British Raj, when a Scottish businessman came to town and set up a factory.
More than a century later Sialkot is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of bagpipes, with more than a dozen bagpipe factories, both big and small. 

The video shows a different side of Pakistan than we normally see.




It seems they also make vintage footballs and basketballs, new soccer balls, musical instruments, and  and even replica US Civil War uniforms. 

William Lynch Acquitted of Beating Priest Who Abused Him

Last week I asked readers if they would convict an abuse victim who years later beat up the priest who had raped him and his brother (ages then 7 and 4).  The abuse wasn't disputed by the prosecutor (though the priest denied it), nor was the attack, years later, at a retirement home for priests (yes, he was still a priest).

It just seemed to me that the jury wasn't going to punish the man who had been abused for attacking the priest who still denied it happened.

And the jury just acquitted him.  From the Daily Mail.

A jury acquitted a man Thursday of assaulting a priest he says molested him more than three decades ago during a camping trip and left him with tormented memories that led to alcohol abuse, depression and suicide attempts.
The verdict came after defendant William Lynch took the witness stand during the two-week trial and acknowledged punching Jerold Lindner several times on May 10, 2010.
While previously pleading not guilty, Lynch said he hoped to use the case to publicly shame Lindner and bring further attention to the Catholic Church clergy abuse scandal. . .

Lynch refused to discuss a plea bargain with prosecutors, even when he was promised he could avoid prison and would serve no more than a year in exchange for a guilty plea.

Prosecutors said they were left with little choice but to take the case to trial and ask the jury to find Lynch guilty of felony assault and felony elder abuse. Lindner was 65 at the time of the beating.

You can read the whole article including photos at the Daily Mail.

Despite my strong belief in the rule of law, this decision makes sense to me.  Of course, that conclusion includes the details of the case in which the abuser had never been reported to the police, and was still a priest living in a retirement home for priests.  And still denied he'd done anything wrong. 

I hope this public affirmation helps Mr. Lynch get on with his life and leave this terrible part of it behind now. 

[I reworded the original title which I thought too clunky.]

The ADN's Press-Release Journalism - Kulis Airport Story

[Update, July 7: Followup post here]

Yesterday I got an email from the Department of Transportation.   Somehow I got on their email list and I decided to keep it to see how many of their press releases get picked up and published and how  various media handle them. Do the reporters identify the stories as a press release or publish it as 'news.'

Today we get a good example of Press Release Journalism.  Today on page A-4 the Anchorage Daily News has essentially published the press release with just minor cosmetic changes.

The by-line is Anchorage Daily News/ adn.com.

It starts off like a story written by a reporter.  It's not until the third paragraph (of five) that it says, 'according to the Department of Transportation.'  It's not until the fourth paragraph that it mentions a Department of Transportation statement.  As though everything before that had been gathered and written by a reporter.  Not all the press release is there. A few words have been changed or omitted, but it's basically the DOT's press release almost verbatim.

Here's an example.  I've copied the original sentence from the press release and then used strikeout and brackets to show the ADN changes.

Northern Aviation Services, a division of NAC, has reconfigured the building that once served as the mess hall and kitchen, transforming it into a first class charter terminal for the use of their client, Shell Alaska Exploration [by Shell's employees and contractors.]" 

Essentially, the whole piece is from the DOT press release with most of the language intact.   The byline should read "Department of Transportation" not "Anchorage Daily News."  Although they take paragraphs (actually almost everything) verbatim, there are no quotation marks.  You can see the ADN piece here and the original press release here.

If the ADN wants to publish a press release, that's their business.  But they owe it to their readers to identify it as such.  They shouldn't disguise it as news. 

If they treat it as news, they need to clearly identify what came from the press release and what value the reporter has added. They should relate the story to other stories.  They should raise questions about how this fits into the bigger picture of Anchorage development. 

Essentially DOT announced that Northern Aviation Services (a division of Norther Air Cargo) has remodeled the old mess hall at  Kulis Air National Guard Base (127 acres total) into

"a first class charter terminal for the use of their client, Shell Alaska Exploration. The facility will be supporting transportation of Shell’s employees and contractors during the summer offshore exploration season. NAC has also chartered a Boeing 737-400 passenger aircraft from Miami Air which will be based at Kulis as well."

They also mention that there is still space to lease:

Approximately 230,000 square feet of building space remains available for lease. This includes three C130 hangars, four office buildings, and a large warehouse. Existing improvements also include approximately 15 acres of aircraft parking apron and three acres of vehicle parking lots. 

I couldn't help wondering about the link between the proposed land swap the ADN reported in June where the airport wanted to take land from one of Anchorage's most loved parks - the coastal trail - and swap it for other land.  The move caused widespread protests.

To some people, natural, untouched land that isn't generating income, is wasted land.  The value of the land as watershed, wildlife habitat, noise buffer, aid to mental health, or recreation space,  isn't factored.  For more depth on this idea see an older post on E.O. Wilson's The Future of Life.  or this one on "What makes an Empty Lot?"

The press release says they have 18 acres in the old Kulis land for parking - 15 for planes, three for cars.  The June ADN article doesn't say how many acres would be in the swap.  An Anchorage Press article on the swap doesn't either. (At least searching for 'acre' didn't locate the information.)  But the City Planning Department's West Anchorage District Plan 2011 Chapter 4.3 gives us some numbers:

Ultimately, the Assembly developed and approved a compromise land exchange in 1994 similar to the ballot initiative. Under the exchange, the school district received 40 acres of state land at the southwest corner of Caravelle Drive and Raspberry Road, the airport received 130 acres of HLB land west of its then existing boundary and 191 acres of HLB land were transferred to the Parks and Recreation Department. The land transaction received final approval in 1995, which formally dedicated Point Woronzof Park.

I don't understand how this all fits together.  But I couldn't help but wonder how this relates to the recently reported airport land swap proposal.   I'm not sure, but I think it is worth raising the question. Let's talk about it.  Maybe others do know.  At the very least we need to find out.  The obligation isn't for the journalist to know everything before writing, but to raise questions, and be clear about what is known and what isn't.

I do know that there is a lot of pressure on the city by developers to make as much land available to them with as little regulation as possible. See the current fight over the Municipality's planning document Title 21.   There is also concerted effort by the State Department of Transportation - despite overwhelming community opposition - to push what was Bragaw Road and is now Elmore Road through the greenbelt on the land of the University.  

Some might say that newspapers have been publishing press releases as news items forever.  I don't know if that's true.  It's only when you see the original press release that you see how blatant it is.  Perhaps the generic ADN by-line gives it away.  There is no reporter's name.

I realize the newspaper industry is suffering hard times and they need easy stories.  But give the byline to the source - in this case the Department of Transportation, the department that owns the airport and has a vested interest in its development.  While a state entity should have the public interest in mind, often they are staffed by people whose values are shared with only some of the public.  The readers shouldn't be tricked into thinking this was a news story.

Why I Prefer Fourth of July Over Independence Day

When I was a kid, some of our holidays were celebrated on different dates.  And one has been eliminated.  For example, Memorial Day used to be on May 30.  And then was moved to the last Monday of May.  While I can't find any particular meaning of the May 30 date, there are some who feel moving it to Monday to make a long weekend has diluted the significance of the holiday.

A US Memorial Day website says:

Many feel that when Congress made the day into a three-day weekend in with the National Holiday Act of 1971, it made it all the easier for people to be distracted from the spirit and meaning of the day. As the VFW stated in its 2002 Memorial Day address: "Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day."

Veterans' Day was observed on November 11, a day with historical significance.  It was the day of the armistice in World War I.  But it too was moved to Monday.  (And then changed back.)  From the US State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs:

• Veterans Day (November 11)
The Veterans Day holiday is derived from Armistice Day, commemorating the end of the First World War on November 11, 1918. Congress proclaimed a federal holiday in 1938, and in 1954 changed the holiday’s name to Veterans Day in recognition of those who served during the Second World War and the Korean conflict. Today it recognizes all members of the armed forces, living and dead, who served during times of peace or war. (Memorial Day, by contrast, honors those who gave their lives.) While Veterans Day was among the holidays moved to Mondays beginning in 1971, Congress in 1978 restored the holiday to its original November 11 date. Among the annual ceremonies is one at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington.

We used to have a holiday on February 12 to celebrate Lincoln's Birthday and another one on February 22 to celebrate George Washington's birthday.  But a three day weekend, again is better.  I had thought they were combined to make Presidents' Day, but it turns out the official national holiday is Washington's Birthday celebrated on the third Monday of February. (It can never actually be on his birthday as some point out because the latest the third Monday in February can be is February 21.) 

I'm sorry, but for me, a birthday should be on the actual birthday.
 
It turns out that Lincoln's Birthday was never a national holiday.  It was, though, an official holiday in many states.  The LA Times has a 2012 story which discusses this and the 1968 law (it went into effect in 1971) which moved many holidays to Mondays.

The legislation did not please all. According to a United Press International report from 1968, Rep. James A. Haley (D-Fla.) called it “one of the most ridiculous bills ever brought before Congress.”

In an editorial, the Washington Post harrumphed: “Probably there is something to be said for the addition of a Monday holiday occasionally to the Saturday-Sunday weekend. But why should history be distorted in the process?”

A search of Los Angeles Times archives turned up a story from January 1968 by pollster Louis Harris, who wrote that the Harris Survey found that Americans opposed the three-day holiday bill 64% to 31%. (The brief story did not say how many people were polled.)

Harris said the survey showed that federal holidays, including Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Washington’s Birthday, “all have special meaning in their own right and are not looked upon as merely ‘another day off.’”

Harris predicted that with all the other issues roiling the country in the turbulent '60s — the Vietnam War, racial strife, cultural change — Congress would not risk messing with the holidays. Well, Congress risked it.

These days some observers of American culture say that the law did indeed transform days packed with meaning into days to shop, barbecue or watch "Twilight Zone" marathons on cable.   [emphasis added]

 I  too worry about the special meaning of holidays and the dates they are on.  That's why I think it is important that we think of today's holiday as the Fourth of July rather than Independence Day.  It's the day the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress. 

It just seems to me it would be much harder to move the 'Fourth of July' to the sixth or third or fifth of July than it would be to change 'Independence Day' to make it fall on a Monday.  But today's Congress just might not see any problem celebrating the fourth on the fifth.

Borderland Hack and Clutter Followup

Doug at Borderlands has  been cleaning up his blog.  I got there without a warning today, but he's not sure it's all clean yet.  Turns out he found out about the hostile takeover of his blog from my post. He's done a new post about it - Hacked and Back - and set up a new blog:

"I started a new blog at WordPress.com, where I won’t have to think about server-level security issues. I plan to blog there until further notice. Just a “Hello World” post up there now. I’m going to take a little more eclectic approach to the subject matter there than I have with Borderland, and see how it goes. Might be fun."

Meanwhile, I continued with the garage decluttering with a skype session with my daughter going through a box of her old clothes.  She said "give away" to more than half.  Thanks to all those who commented on that post. 

Ptolemy Grey's Apartment Motivates Me To Renew Clutter War Efforts

In The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Walter Mosley writes about a 91 year old man whose grand nephew comes by his apartment twice a week to take him shopping for cans of tuna.  I'll skip ahead to where Reggie is out of the picture and 17 year old Robyn is now over to look out for Ptolemy.

Ptolemy's mind is not always in the present and his apartment is a mess.  No, that doesn't describe it.  In fact, reading this made my mom's garage seem eligible for a spread in Better Homes and Gardens.  Let me give you the picture.

"What is that smell?"  Robyn asked him.
"I don't know.  There's parts'a the house I cain't get into anymore.  The bathroom, half the kitchen.  I ain't been deep in the bedroom since before what's-his-name, uh, Reggie, would come."
"You got a bedroom an' you sleepin' under a table?"
. . .
"Don't go in there," Ptolemy said when Robyn opened the door to the bathroom.
"I got to, Mr. Grey,"  she said.  "If I'ma be comin' here an' looking' aftah you I got to have a toilet to go to."
While Ptolemy tried to think of some other way he could have Robyin's company and keep her out of the bathroom, she opened the door and went in.
"Oh my God,"  she said.  "What is this?"
A large wad of blackened towels flew out from the doorway and landed with a thump on the small bare area of the crowded floor.
Ptolemy covered his face with his hands.
"You got suitcases in the bathtub,"  Robyn called out.  "An' there's black stuff growin' in the commode.  There's, oh my God, oh no. . ."

The kitchen and the bedroom have similar problems.  But soon Robyn takes Mr. Grey to the hardware store and buys a bunch of cleaning equipment and garbage bags.  And some bug bombs.  They go to a motel for two nights while the bug bombs are killing the cockroaches and other vermin in the house and then she spends five days cleaning the apartment.

Five days.  That's all.  I was embarrassed.  I've been fighting the clutter wars at a downright leisurely pace.   I've even got a clutter war tag on the blog.

Five days.  I need to set some deadlines for making room in this house.  Mind you, our commodes have no evil black gunk nor are there suitcases in the bathtubs.  There's just one room downstairs which has been a staging area for things moving out of the house.  The garage is the next way station for outgoing junk.

Five days.   OK, now I'm getting serious.  And while most of you probably don't care about any of this, posting it, I hope, will force me to speed up the pace and really get the garage and downstairs storage room into much more aesthetic and usable space.





An hour tonight in the garage.  It's not a lot, but it's a start.  I find taking pictures of big jobs before I start, helps remind me when I'm done for the day, that I actually have accomplished something.  (I hope you can tell which is the before and which is the after picture.)



I still have to figure out where to get rid of a couple of old computer printers.  OK, thanks for indulging me here.

By the way, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey isn't a great book, but it's good, and it did get inside the mind  of a 91 year old who is having troubles staying in the present.  As a youngster myself, I can't judge the accuracy, but it did make me think about what the world might look like when my brain isn't always functioning right.  

Hensley Report on Election Now Available - Form Over Substance

The Municipal Attorney's office has released Judge Dan Hensley’s review of the April 3, 2012 Election.   It's structured nicely and touches on many of the issues, but doesn't tell us anything new and doesn't take any kind of serious stand on anything.  He does say there is an additional addendum still to come on the Data Processing Review Board that used to monitor the voting machines but was eliminated. 

I've got the whole report posted (thanks Scribd) below.  And then a few thoughts of my own at the end.

From the summary:

1.    Nothing intentional was done
2.    The Deputy Clerk in charge made mistakes
3.    The Clerk should have supervised more carefully
4.    They should make changes in the rules.

In the body it does discuss the Minnery email (but doesn't mention names) and the broken seals on the ballot boxes, but just says, they happened.  For the seals, it says to tell election workers to follow the rules next time.

While he says he did some interviews, "The information I learned in my interviews did not differ in any significant respect from that contained in the Commission's summaries.  For this reason, in addition to my own interviews I relied on the Commission's summaries." But we don't know how many interviews, who, or what he asked and what they said.  And we know the Commission told the Assembly no seals were broken.  (Hensley does recognize that there were broken seals.)

Hensley Report on Anchorage Municipal Election July 2012


When the citizens group that originally called for (and ponied up $1500 to have 15 precincts recounted) met with the Assembly's Attorney and turned in a very detailed report of problems, I suggested in that post that it would be interesting to compare what they presented to the Assembly for free to the $30,000 report this retired judge presents.

The Assembly eventually voted to refund the $1500.

The contrast between the two reports raises serious questions about how money is spent for 'experts' rather than for good quality products.  This new report doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know and has none of the details that the Citizen group provided.   It would be interesting to know exactly how much time Hensley actually spent on this and who he interviewed.   As an outsider he seems to have gone over all the information that was already known and summarized it.  This is a great example of form over substance.

Clutter Wars: Old Photos - Checkpoint Charlie 1964-2010, Loussac Opening

My new strategy in the Clutter War is to get rid of things in the garage to make room for boxes from the house.  But I'm being distracted by what I'm finding - like old photos.

Here are some pictures from the year I was a student in Göttingen, Germany.  I'm in the window the day I painted my room in the Forum student housing building on Brüder Grimm Allee, on my scooter (I think it's a Lambretta, but I don't remember for sure and can't find pictures on line that match this model.  But I did find a history of the Lambretta here, beginning before it made scooters, including a 1939 declaration that the factory was  a "model of fascist establishment.") There's a picture of me at the Fasching Party and one with Claudia in Berlin at Schloss Charlottenbe[u]rg.  These are all 1964 and 1965,

In 2010 we visited Berlin and I took and posted this picture of Checkpoint Charlie which is now just a tourist attraction with a guy in a soldier suit in the middle of bustling Berlin.  But I couldn't find my old pictures until today.  The back of the 1964 picture says, "Checkpoint Charlie from ramp on Western Side looking over the wall.  Barbed wire on bottom of picture is on top of the wall."  That's me looking at the sign.   In those days the space between East and West Berlin was no-man's land and today it's just a historical footnote in the middle of Berlin at a point where you otherwise would have no idea this had been the border.

In the last set, you can see Loussac library at what I think was the official opening in 1986.  Then there are two kids preparing for Halloween (this picture is here for their spouses to enjoy).  And finally a picture my son took of his father during the red beard period.  I don't have exact dates but these are mid 1980s.  

OK, back to the garage.  I don't think I've made much room today.