Brief Wondrous Flight To Coyotes, Amaryllis, And More

This is a transition post and the title reflects my trying to cover a lot in a short post.  Back to LA for a mom visit.  She seems to be doing better, but ultimately, old age is a terminal disease.  We flew late and I read a bit more of Junot Díaz' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao  before sleeping and again before landing.  Non-stop is nice, even if it's overnight.

Oscar Wao has made me realize that Dominicans have not been on my radar.  I'm going to use living in Anchorage as my excuse, though we have Dominicans and I recall a long conversation with someone from  Dominica, but I really hadn't ever concentrated on the Dominican Republic and its culture(s) ever before.

And I'll use Oscar Wao as the beginning of a new awareness.  Yes, I knew about the Dominican Republic and Trujillo, and Dominican baseball players.  I knew that there are trees on the Dominican side of the border with Haiti.   But Oscar grabbed me hard and pulled me deep into the Chabral family and its story.

Díaz was given the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for  Oscar Wao.  I didn't know anything about the book or Díaz before reading the book and am only just now getting my first glimpse (other than what the book itself suggests) as I'm writing this post.  It's a surprisingly original piece of writing and that it got the National Book Award and the Pulitzer is also a pleasant surprise.  It would have been interesting to sit and listen to their discussions on the book.  Here's a short paragraph from an MIT News article on Díaz and the book (Díaz is a professor at MIT):

Dí­az spent 11 years writing the tale of Oscar Wao — a Spanish pronunciation of Oscar Wilde — a teenage Dominican who buries his broken heart and frustration in sci-fi novels and Star Trek action figures. Oscar's family lives much as Dí­az' own family did, the author has said, balancing two lives, two cultures, in New Jersey and their native Dominican Republic.

I fell asleep as Oscar's grandfather's well-respected and comfortable life came crashing down with his arrest and torture by Trujillo and when I woke up I moved on to New Jersey in the Clinton years.  I'm still too involved in the book to write with any perspective, but I've been surprised (yes, the book is constantly surprising me) by the way Díaz tells one story, then suddenly you plunge down another layer of complexity in your understanding of Oscar.  And I'm surprised by the sparkle of the unique (at least in modern American fiction) voice that tells this story.

Meanwhile outside the plane it was getting light as we flew past 6 am and I could the army of clouds invading from the sea,  exploited any low breaks in Southern California's  in the coastal ranges.






As we circled from the ocean (I only know this from past flights because today you could only see clouds) to downtown LA, we could see some gaps through to the land.







Then back toward the airport and thicker cloud cover,  to finally break through over the San Diego freeway.

By the time we got the shuttle to the bus station and were on our way to my mom's, the sun was destroying the invading clouds.   We walked the 20 minutes from the bus stop to my mom's street - just carry on makes this doable - and then I saw a paper posted to one of the Italian Stone Pines that line the street.  There have been terrible root problems buckling the street in the past, but that's been taken care of, for the time being anyway.  But I wondered, since I saw signs on other trees, what the city had in mind for these trees.  But the sign was about something totally different - local coyotes.

My mom's had problems with possums and racoons, but coyotes in the past were limited to the more natural areas in the hills.  I later talked to a neighbor who had seen two coyotes the other night on the next door neighbor's lawn.  We decided J needed to do her after dinner walk before dusk.  Even so, she took a stick.  She saw lots of other people out walking, but no coyotes.

Later I read a story in the LA Times about skunks taking up residence at Dodger stadium. 


But I didn't know that when we saw the amaryllis blooming past their prime in my mom's front yard.  Even though I wasn't near them, I could imagine their delicious sweet scent.

When I tried to find something about amaryllis online, I discovered that there were some people who can't stand the scent.  I don't like the scent of most lilies, but these pink amaryllis have a wonderful scent, enhanced probably, because they evoke my childhood.  Some others like the scent. 

"Amaryllis belladonna brings scent and color to the garden when it is least expected. After its leaves die back in midsummer, it sends up a bare 18-inch tall stalk topped with fragrant pink trumpet-shaped flowers, hence the common name, naked ladies. Amaryllis belladonna is a drought-tolerant plant native to South Africa, great for hot dry spots in the garden. It is long blooming, attractive to butterflies, and lovely as a cut flower." [from Great Plant Picks]

It did occur to me that this is a rather eclectic post that could have been several posts all by themselves.  But as i thought about it, I realized that this is more reflective of life - where things happen, intertwined with other things.  And to me the juxtaposition of the coyote notice and the article on skunks and the fragrance of the Amarylis is meaningful in a way that seeing each as a unique isolated post would be.  And the backdrop of a comfortable Southern California setting is shadowed by the life of Oscar's grandfather who was suddenly snatched from his life as a wealthy doctor by Trujillo's police, tortured,  and thrown into a filthy prison for the rest of his life.  We don't appreciate the wonders of a life where one expects that law and order is the norm and people can expect their lives won't be arbitrarily disrupted because of the whims of a psychopathic dictator.

But then not everyone has such an expectation in the US.  Parents of black young men fear arbitrary violence done to their sons every day.  Parents of young women of any race, if they know the statistics, would be less comfortable.  I wonder whether sometimes those of us who are not confronted with these realities regularly, tend to dismiss the experiences of other people because we don't want to believe our lives are less secure than we think.  And in denying the pleas of kids who are bullied or women who are beaten by their intimate partners or raped, and people whose skin color or 'look' causes them to be stopped by the police more often, we deny justice for them and make our own lives less secure.  It takes a good government, not a private sector, to provide such safety and security to all.  The private sector can do other things well, but only the wealthy can afford to hire their own security guards, and if the society as a whole isn't reasonably safe, the security guards offer more a sense of security than real security. 

Democratic Challenge To The Redistricting Board's July 2013 Plan

Here's the Democratic Party's suit against the Alaska Redistricting Board.  It identifies the locations the plaintiffs feel are problematic:  Fairbanks, Kenai, Matsu, and some rural areas.  (The complete document is at the bottom.)

• For Matsu and Kenai, they are arguing that both boroughs have enough for five and three (respectively)  districts wholly within the each of those boroughs, but that the Redistricting Board unnecessarily broke the boroughs and added population from outside the boroughs.  In Matsu's case in districts 9 and 12 and that this fails to give proportional  representation of the voters. 
• It complains that House Districts 6, 37, 39, and 40 are not socio-economically integrated.
• In HD 37 they argue Anvik, Grayling, Holy Cross, McGrath, Nikolai, Shageluk, and Takotna are not socio-economically integrated with the rest of the district.
• In HD 39 they argue that Galena, Huslia, Kaltag,Koyuku, Nulato, and Ruby are not socio-economically integrated with the rest of the district.
• In HD 40  they argue that Alatna, Allakaket, Bettles, Evansville, and Huslia are not socio-economically integrated with the rest of the district.
• HD 6, they argue, is comprised of two distinct regions that are not socio-economically integrated. 

[Socio-economic integration is one of the Alaska constitutional requirements for the districts.  And yes, it's a vague term.]

• Further in Fairbanks, they argue that HD 3 and HD 5 are not compact (another constitutional requirement of districts.)

They ask the Court to set aside this third Plan and appoint a master  or masters to recommend a final plan.   And to be awarded costs and attorney fees.

The official plaintiffs are the Alaska Democratic Party, Wasilla resident and the secretary to the Alaska constitutional convention Katie Hurley, and Chickaloon resident Warren Keogh.  Keogh the Matsu Borough Assembly member who challenged the Mayor for speaking for the Assembly when he told the Redistricting Board that the Borough supported their plan to break Matsu boundaries twice in the new districts.  

This document is simply a list of the charges and presumably it will be followed up with detailed backup.  I'm sure the Board will argue that while Fairbanks, Matsu, and Kenai, did have enough seats for their own districts, that there were adjoining areas that needed population and it made sense to take it the way they did.  Stand by.  This may not be over yet.  About 15 months until the November 2014 election.

Democratic Party Court Challenge To Alaska Redistricting Board's Third Final Plan

Was Fairbanks Gerrymandered? Riley Challenge to Alaska Redistricting Board's 2013 Plan Part 1

[I started on this a couple of weeks ago, when I got a copy of the Riley challenge to the Redistricting Board's newest plan.  Since then the Board has also issued a response which you can see here.  Basically it affirms that the earth revolves around the sun, but denies most everything else. I'm not going to discuss the Board's response in this post.  I got it late and the post is already too long.  My point is to help people understand the challenges, but not decide the case.]

In this post I'm going to list some of the key allegation made by the plaintiffs about the redistricting plan along with their complete filing.  In this post I'm focusing just on the Fairbanks part of the challenges. In the end I left some things out and some in though they are speculative. 

1. The specific problems with the Fairbanks districts listed in the Riley court challenge.
2. Explanations of the terms (in red) 
3. Fairbanks maps so you can see the districts
4. Discussion of the claims made by Riley, though I'm leaving the truncation issue to a later post. 
5. The complete court document

1.    Specific Problems  (I'm quoting here from the Riley challenge; I've added the red.)

"FAIRBANKS HOUSE DISTRICT 3

14.  The Third Final Plan establishes the boundaries of House Districts [sic] 3 which fail to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution in that it is not relatively compact.

FAIRBANKS HOUSE DISTRICTS

15.  The Third Final Plan establishes House Districts 4 and 5, which unnecessarily divides the campus of the University of Alaska and fails to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution by drawing a boundary that unnecessarily divides an area that comprises an integrated socio-economic area. 

16.  The Third Final Plan fails to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution by establishing House Districts 1-5 with unnecessarily higher deviations from the ideal district population and do not contain populations as near as practicable to the quotient obtained by dividing the population of the state by forty. 

FAIRBANKS SENATE DISTRICTS

17.  The Third Final Plan establishes Senate District B which is  unnecessarily non-contiguous and non-compact territory as required by prior Alaska Supreme Court cases.

18.  The Third Final Plan fails to comply with Article VI, Section 8 of the Alaska Constitution by drawing boundaries with unnecessarily higher deviations from the ideal district population and violates equal protection of voters rights to an equally weighted vote and the right to fair and effective representation.

TRUNCATION

25.  The Board's Truncation Plan for Senate Districts improperly considered improper factors (a) substantial changes from an unconstitutional Interim Plan as opposed to the prior Final Plan in effect for the 2010, b) incumbency protection relative to Senate District B; and (c) previously considered partisan voting patterns of persons within the Ester/Goldstream Area. 

2.  Explanations of Terms

What does this mean?  The US and Alaska constitutions require one-person-one-vote, thus there should be minimal deviation between districts.  The Alaska Constitution requires that house districts be compact, contiguous (all connected, not separated), and socio-economically integrated.

Deviation - The one-person-one-vote principle means that every district should be equal in population.  The 2010 Alaska Census counted 710,200 Alaskans.  There are 40 House districts.  Dividing the population by 40 yields 17,755 people per district as the ideal.  Deviation is the number (or percentage) of people in a district above or below that ideal number.  In the urban areas the goal is to keep deviations at or below 1% (177 people).  In the rural areas, in the first rounds of this process, when the Voting Rights Act required pre-clearance from the Department of Justice, the Board followed a rule that 10% was an absolute maximum allowable (but to be avoided if possible) total deviation in the state from the district with the highest positive deviation to one with the lowest negative deviation.

The general rule is that deviations should be as low as possible to achieve the other goals.

Compact - Districts should be as small and concentrated in area as possible.   One problem in achieving this in Alaska is that we have a lot of land and relatively few people.  Since all the districts need the same number of people, where there are lots of people (urban areas) it's easier to draw compact districts.  In rural areas it is harder to find 17,755 people and also keep the district compact.  It could get larger and/or have strange protrusions to capture villages here and there to get the population up.

Here's a table to show what this means more visually.

Examples of District Maps	House Districts	Senate Districts
	6 imaginary districts, each compact and contiguous	Made up of two house districts. Ideal options = 1&2      1&2     1&3 3&4      4&6     5&6 5&6      3&5     2&4   (The Board wanted the Senate districts to be made up of House districts in numerical order - 1&2, 3&4, etc.) Technically, 1&4 could be contiguous, but would be questionable and then 2 & 6 would be isolated.
	6 is the only  compact district. 3 & 5 have those extensions. 1, 4, & 2 are ridiculous. 1 and 4 are not contiguous. 3 is iffy.	The pairings would have to be as compact and contiguous as possible.  But I think the House districts are so bad, it would be impossible to create constitutional Senate districts.

Contiguous - Basically the districts should be one area without any breaks. In the squiggly map in the table, districts 4 and 1 are not contiguous, because there are areas not connected to the rest of the district.

In Alaska, there are islands connected to other land over water. They called this contiguous over water.  But the islands were too small to be a whole district.  See House District 32 in the new plan.  HD 32 connects Kodiak to Cordova and Yakutat.   When the Board decided to use the AFFER Matsu map instead of the Calista map, they were troubled that the Calista map connected north Anchorage to the rest of the district (Valdez and the pipeline corridor) over glaciers and uninhabited mountains. 

These two criteria are relatively easy to determine.  If you start with a squarish district, you may need to stretch it or have protrusions off the square to get a pocket of population here and there.  The question down the line will be whether those deviations from a tight compact district were necessary to meet other criteria, reflect geographic features (like a meandering river), reflect quirks in the census blocks,  or are done to include or exclude particular people or groups of people. 

Socio-economic integration - This is a little harder and more abstract.  In Alaska, keeping political units together is important.  A city, like Anchorage, or borough like the North Star Fairbanks Borough, is considered socio-economically integrated.  So combining Muldoon and Eagle River is considered ok since both neighborhoods are in Anchorage, even if they are economically different.  (They were combined in the previous plan, but not this one.)

The Board's job was to create equal  districts (minimal deviation) while balancing compactness, contiguity, and socio-economic integration.  When judging that, the Court has to determine if anomalies were due to the geography and population distribution or attempts to gerrymander.

Truncation:   Senate terms are for four years, while house terms are for only two.  Senate seats are also staggered.  Half (10) are voted on in one election and the other half (10) in the next election two years later.  If redistricting significantly changes the constituency of a senate seat, then a large number of the voters of the new district are represented by someone they didn't vote for.  Thus, senate seats with significant changes are subject to truncation.  This means that regardless of when the term is up for the sitting senator, the population should be able to participate in choosing their senator in the next election.

So, all the new districts whose terms expire in 2016 with a significant change will be up for election in the next election (2014).  Those up for election in 2014 will be up again anyway so they don't need to truncate.  But this messes up the staggered terms, so some have to be designated as two year terms and others as four year terms to get ten up for election one year and the other ten the next election. The 2012 election used a new redistricting plan in which all but one of the seats were truncated and then the Board assigned two or four year terms to them. And now they have to do that again. 

3.  Looking at Fairbanks

Click for bigger and clearer map

The numbers indicate the House District and the letters indicate the Senate District.  Two contiguous house districts make up one senate seat.  



The map shows districts 1, 2, and 3 completely and parts of districts 4, 5, and 6. In fact, HD 5 is large, and HD 6 is huge.  Here's a map that shows all of 4, 5, and 6.

Unfortunately the colors switch from map to map.  Fairbanks is in the center.  You can see 3B, 4B, and 5C.  (1A and 2A are too small to see in this map.)  House District 6 is that huge sea of blue along the Canadian border, around Fairbanks and back down the other side.  You might also note 9E.  It goes from Fishhook Road near Wasilla, to Valdez and then up the pipeline corridor to the edges of Fairbanks. 

4.  The Riley Challenges regarding Fairbanks

The Riley challenge's first complaint (14 in the court document) is that "House Districts [sic] 3 is not compact."  While it doesn't look all that big, HD 3 is long and stretched out, so they are claiming that people are further from each other than is necessary.  If this were the only available population in the area, this might be unavoidable, but I'm told there were plenty of people available to make a more compact district.

Yellow is HD 5 and dark blue is HD 4

The second complaint (15)  is that the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) is unnecessarily split between two house districts (4 and 5).  Political units are supposed to be kept intact if possible, but I'm not sure that the university campus qualifies.  Yet, common sense would keep the campus together unless there was a compelling reason to split it.  College campuses tend to vote more liberally than the general population.  I was told that the two precincts  (in the new 5) that voted Democratic in the 2012 election have been disrupted. One was put completely in the already Democratic leaning District 4 and the other (the University) was split between 4 and 5 . I don't know Fairbanks and I had trouble matching up the Board's maps to University maps, but I think the map gives a reasonably close approximation of where the University is.

I don't know where the dorms are and how they are split up, if at all.  And I don't know how many students register with their University address rather than their home address.  So I don't know how many actual voters are affected.



The third issue (16) raised is that districts 1-5 have unnecessarily high deviations.   Let's look at the Fairbanks deviations.  I've included HD 6.

House District	Senate District	Total Population	Percent Deviation From Ideal (17,755)	# Deviation
1		17,726	-0.16%	-29
2		17,738	-0.10%	-17
	A	35,464	-0.13%	-46
3		17,673	-0.46%	-82
4		17,786	0.17%	+31
	B	35,459	-0.14%	-51
5		17,837	0.46%	+82
6		17,807	0.29%	+52
	C	35,644	0.38%	134

The individual districts are all well under one percent deviation.  The total deviation from the lowest (-0.46%) to the highest (+0.46%) does come to 0.92%.  But that is still under one percent.  Anchorage, the biggest urban area (it's easier to have lower deviations where there are more people,)  has higher deviations.  On the face of it, I think these deviations should be fine.  UNLESS, it's clear that they could easily have been made lower, combined with other issues like compactness or contiguity or gerrymandering.    But gerrymandering hasn't been raised. (Well, not exactly true.  The word wasn't used but the truncation challenges suggest political intent.) And showing intent is pretty hard. 

The next two issues apply to Senate districts.

The fourth (17) is that Senate district B is unnecessarily non-contiguous.  HD 4 is a pretty large district (the first map above only shows part of it) and it's only connected to HD 3 at one little 2.5 mile spot that doesn't appear to have much population.

2.5 mile connection between HD 3 and 4

In contrast, much of HD 4 is connected in a long swath to HD 5 and they have the University split between them.  As it is, HD 5 is a strangely drawn district.  Most of it - I'm told all of it below the river - is uninhabited military bombing range.  Nearly all of the populated area is west of the City of Fairbanks.  There's a tiny jigsaw piece to the east of the City.  It doesn't appear to have much population.  And it looks like it's only contiguous with the rest because of the bombing range.  But I don't think one could drive to the main part of the district without going outside the district.

I understand that the courts have said contiguity doesn't require that people are able to drive from one part of the district to another.  But I suspect that ruling refers to rural districts with villages not connected to the road systems where it's hard to find enough population for a district.  Downtown Fairbanks is an entirely different situation.  

Here's the map of District 5. In the larger scale, the map's cut off on the left.  The inset has the whole map but it's tiny. (If they can't make a map with the whole district, does it mean it isn't compact?)

The Fairbanks News Miner has editorialized that the board should have paired HD 4 and HD 5 into one senate district  and HD 3 and HD 6 into another.

As I look at this, it seems like a reasonable idea.

• There's a long border between HD  5 and  HD 4 with connected neighborhoods.
• Pairing 4 and 5 would  reunite the university in a single senate district.  (Light blue circle.)
• Most of HD 5 is uninhabited bombing range and essentially the eastern part of HD 5 (big red circle on the lower right) is NOT contiguous with the west part in any real sense.  I don't think you can drive from one side to the other without going out of the district.  (Maybe you can go by boat along the river.)
• The real border between the populated area of HD 5 and HD 6 is a tiny little corridor. See the circle in red in the inset with an arrow pointing to where it would be if they showed the whole district on the map.  

And if you look at the deviation table, you'll see that HD 5 has 82 too many people and HD 3 has 82 too few people.  I wondered how many people lived in the east pocket of HD 5 and whether just giving that pocket to HD 3 would balance them.  Well, I was told there are about 500.  Too many. But having watched the Board move around population on the computer to find better borders, I'm convinced that there's a way to make some adjustments to get rid of this de facto non-contiguous pocket of voters.

But as it stands Senate district B (3&4) has a deviation of -51.
Senate district C (5&6) has a deviation of 134.

If you paired 3&6, the new senate district deviation would be +30.
The deviation for new senate district of 4&5 would be +113

Combined, the deviations would be lowered by 42 people.  That by itself is not much, but combined with all the other issues, it seems like these two senate seats were mispaired.

It also appears that  a senate pairing of HD4 & HD5 would have a greater chance of electing a Democratic senator than the way the Board paired them, which would be a good reason for some on the Board to prefer the HD3 & HD 4 and HD 5 & HD 6 pairings. 


TRUNCATION

There was one more Fairbanks related issue, truncation.  I think this post is already long and confusing enough without adding the truncation piece.  While the topics here are all very closely related, truncation is really a different issue and can be handled separately.  I'll do that in another post. You'll see that the Board was pretty spacy by that time.  I did post on the truncation Board meeting already for those who can't sleep without knowing more about this charge.  And that post links to a post two years earlier where I tried to explain truncation when it came up with the first plan. 

Below is a copy of the Riley challenge to the Board's most recent final plan.  As I mentioned at the beginning, the Board has replied to this challenge point by point and you can read that here.


Riley Challenge To July 2013 Alaska Redistricting Plan

PART II on Truncation is here.

Where Can You Get Good Somali Food In Anchorage?

    Probably the best Somali food, like most other international foods, is made in private homes of Somali people in Anchorage. 


 But we do have a Somali restaurant where you can try some interesting (that's not a euphemism for weird) and tasty food.





The two above are  appetizers both were  terrific. The samosa is a familiar Indian dish, but the filling was unique.  The second one was made of something like mashed potato with an egg in the middle.  I'm not sure what the crispy red coating was.  I forgot about taking pictures until we'd eaten half of them.


The Safari Restaurant is easy to miss.  It's on Dawson Street, between Northern Lights and Benson.  That's two blocks west of "C" Street.

I talked to our chef and hostess Sainab after the dinner.  She said the recipes were her own.  She left Somalia as the violence began to get bad in 1991 and spent time in a refugee camp in Kenya until finding her way to Ohio and eventually to Anchorage. 

The Anchorage Daily News and the Anchorage Press have both given this place great reviews.

I'd certainly encourage everyone to drop by for a meal.  Running a restaurant isn't easy.  Fortunately, Alaskans are pretty adventurous, so I hope enough people eat here to keep this place in business.  It adds to the food diversity we already have.  I asked Sainab if she knew of any other African restaurants in Anchorage and she didn't.  I recall that there was a place, run, I think, by Gambians, in what used to be called the Post Office Mall downtown, but it's been long gone. 

Aside from a good meal for a reasonable price, it's a chance to meet people from Somalia and to help support these people who were forced to leave their country.  I have a soft spot in my heart for refugees because my parents too were forced to leave their home country to escape persecution. 


Halalfoodnation gave Safari a good review and said, aside from a couple of pizza places, this is the only Halal restaurant in Anchorage.  So, if you have observant Muslim guests, this is a place you can take them. 


Last year the ADN cited a trained psychologist originally from Cameroon, Peter Igwacho, who estimated there are between 3,000-5,000 Africans in Anchorage, the largest groups being from Sudan and Somalia. 


The food below is shawarma.

Why I Live Here: Sunday Hike At Bird Ridge On Drizzly Sunday Afternoon

The clouds were low and the windshield wipers were on, and Turnagain Arm is still spectacular. 

Driving south, the mudflats are on the right and the rocky slopes are on the left. 

I knew the Bird Ridge trail went up, but I'd forgotten just how steeply.   We took our time and enjoyed the wet and green vegetation and the views when there was an opening through the trees.

 

very green and shiny devil's club leaves and red berries

The trail

Even though it was wet, it wasn't muddy or slippery. 

The ability to slip out of town and get out into this relatively wild and absolutely magnificent space in half an hour is one of the things that ties me to Anchorage.  Even though we've been here over 35 years, it never gets old, never ceases to amaze.

Why You Should Fly Jet Blue And Virgin Air Out Of Alaska This Summer

Jet Blue flies to Anchorage this summer from Long Beach and Seattle.  Virgin flies non-stop from San Francisco.  Their entry into the market caused Alaska Airlines to drastically lower their fares to the LA area and to Seattle.

But I've got an Alaska mileage plan and because of family obligations outside the last couple of years we've flown enough to qualify for MVP, so we have been pretty loyal to
Alaska.

But I waited too long to book a trip to Seattle in July and the Alaska Airline price was around $250 each way.  I checked Jet Blue and it was $119.  That's a no-brainer.  There were two of us going round trip.  It would have been over $1000 with taxes on Alaska for both of us and it was under $500 on Jet Blue.

I understand the hesitation of people to switch.  Besides the mileage, I know the whole routine for Alaska.  But for $500 I was going to get out of my comfort zone.  (We're all supposed to do that all the time anyway.)


You can check in one bag for free on Jet Blue, but we were just doing carry on.

It was an Airbus 320 or 321 and seemed to have more legroom, plus there were tv monitors in the back of all the seats.  AND, on this red eye flight, they gave everyone a sleep mask and ear plugs.  If you had your own ear buds you could plug in and find your tv entertainment.  I had a book so that wasn't an important for me.

JetBlue isn't perfect.  Coming back they moved us up front to the 'even more space' seats because my original seat was broken.  (They did this before we even got on the plane, so that was good.  But if it had been a full flight?)  At the new seat, the tv monitor didn't seem to work.  No loss for me, but it's an indicator of tolerance of less than perfect.  

So, why should you give up miles on Alaska Airlines to fly Virgin or Jet Blue?  Because coming back I talked to a guy at the ticket counter.  We told him we were taking our rolling suitcases as carry on.  He said, "Let me check how full it is."  It wasn't full at all.

If we want Jet Blue and Virgin to keep coming back - and forcing Alaska to lower their prices - they need to fill up those airplanes.  And Alaska needs to know that we are willing to take the other carriers if they keep their prices so high.  Just check the prices in the fall when the competition drops these routes. 

So, if you are flying out between now and the end of the summer, check out Jetblue and Virgin flights.  Show them that we appreciate their giving Alaska some competition on Alaska's home turf.  (OK, I know that Alaska's headquartered in Seattle, but their named after our state and they are the major carrier up here.)  When they have competition, they lower their fares, when they don't they have some pretty high fares. 

What Countries Border Syria?

Syria's been in the headlines about two years now, but where is it?  How many of you have pulled out a map and studied this country so that when they say Allepo, you know where it is?  If you've already done this, then hit next blog.  If not, I'm here to remedy that deficit, to help you do what you know you should have done already.

----------------- ----------------- ----------------- ----------------- -----------------

cut here

Cyprus	B
Turkey
Israel
Lebanon
Egypt
Jordan
Iraq
Syria
Saudi Arabia

----------------- ----------------- ----------------- ----------------- -----------------

cut here

You know if I just gave you a map with the country names, you wouldn't look at it.  But if you take a screen shot from the first cut here line to the next, print it out, and then fill out the table, you'll get this forever.  Below is another map with the names.

From Blog28

And so you can follow the news about what's happening inside Syria, here's a political map with the names of main cities.

This political map comes from a site called World Shia Forum, which has an array of maps showing religious, ethnic, linguistic, population and other characteristics.  The writer of this post proposes dividing up the country on ethnic lines. 


 -

If Biogenesis Had a Contract With NSA - Headlines Would Be About Stolen Data, Not Baseball Players' Drug Use - Obama Responds

The information which led to the suspension of a dozen major league baseball players this week, was stolen from the company.  A disgruntled client/employee/investor took boxes of data and released the information to the press.

From the Anchorage Daily News:

"Porter Fischer, a former employee of the now-infamous Biogenesis clinic in Miami, told ESPN's "Outside the Lines" that there are at least a dozen more athletes across numerous professional sports leagues that have yet to be exposed.
Fischer turned the Biogenesis clinic investigation into a national scandal when he turned boxes of documents over to the Miami New Times last year."

But the reaction of the nation led by the media is in stark contrast to the reaction to the whistle blowers who released information to the world, at great personal risk, because they thought the public needed to be aware of what was being done by the government.  I'm not necessarily endorsing the actions of the whistle-blowers, but I'm sympathetic to their motivation.

Propublica has a timeline of people prosecuted under the Espionage Act.   Here are the key people on it:

• 1971: Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo indicted
• 1985: Samuel Morison convicted
• January 2006: Lawrence Franklin convicted
• May 2010: Shamai Leibowitz convicted
• August 2010: Stephen Kim indicted
• December 2010: Jeffrey Sterling indicted
• Jun. 2011: Case against Thomas Drake dropped
• October 2012: John Kiriakou convicted
• June 14, 2013: Edward Snowden Charged  
• July 30, 2013: Bradley Manning Convicted 

John Kiriakou, one of the men on the list, recently wrote:

"President Obama has been unprecedented in his use of the Espionage Act to prosecute those whose whistleblowing he wants to curtail. The purpose of an Espionage Act prosecution, however, is not to punish a person for spying for the enemy, selling secrets for personal gain, or trying to undermine our way of life. It is to ruin the whistleblower personally, professionally and financially. It is meant to send a message to anybody else considering speaking truth to power: challenge us and we will destroy you.

Only ten people in American history have been charged with espionage for leaking classified information, seven of them under Barack Obama."

 
The leaks of classified documents by people working for government raises many questions, about the leakers and about the government and its reaction to the leakers. However, there is a great difference between whistle blowers and spies.

Spies sell information to foreign governments for profit, because they are being blackmailed, because of ideology, or a combination of more than one of these.  A report on the motivation of spies on this US Department of Agriculture site by By Dr. Mike Gelles Naval Criminal Investigative Service says that most spies have personal issues that the organization should be looking for.  But this report is about spies, not about whistle blowers. 

True whistle blowers believe that the government is doing something that is in serious violation of the law and poses a danger to the public if the information is not released.  They can be right or wrong about this.  And its possible that the information they release causes some danger as well as needed information.  This has some similarity to when a dangerous prisoner is released because the technical rules of justice were violated.  We balance two different important values.

Reporters prosecuted for espionage raise even greater issues.  John Kiriakou writes:

Two of my espionage charges were the result of a conversation I had with a New York Times reporter about torture. I gave him no classified information – only the business card of a former CIA colleague who had never been undercover. The other espionage charge was for giving the same unclassified business card to a reporter for ABC News. All three espionage charges were eventually dropped.

People in power have always tried to keep information from the public.  Some of it is legitimately withheld - the Freedom of Information Act outlines the kinds of information that is exempted from release.  But often, information that the people should know is hidden by those exemptions.

The film  Dirty Wars  which we saw Monday night is one more account of the serious abuse of secrecy in the federal government.  The film raises many questions, I don't have time to pursue now.

Knowledge of what our government is doing is critical to citizens of a democracy making good choices when they vote.   One can't help wonder how much the government is hiding simply because it is embarrassing.  The Municipality of Anchorage, for example, when it settles with someone who has sued the Municipality, includes language which requires the person to not disclose the details of the settlement.  When asked by the media (if they are paying attention at all) about the settlement, the Muni officials say the conditions of the settlement prevent them from saying anything.  Even though this is a condition they insist on and require.  Basically, this is to keep the public from knowing what the Muni did wrong and how much they paid to make it go away.

And yesterday I read that the encrypted email service David Snowden used has shut down:

"The statement posted online by Lavabit owner Ladar Levison hinted that the Dallas-based company had been forbidden from revealing what was going on."

The release of millions of classified documents by Bradley Manning and David Snowden raises huge questions about [the culpability of the government's handling of this sort of data such as:]

• how these folks had access to all this information
• how they  could download and store this information without detection, without the computer programs alerting officials to what was happening
• why private contractors are doing this work 
• how contracting out this work sets up an interest group with motivation to lobby Congress to increase the amount of secrecy and spying

[The government has pushed the danger of terrorism, it seems, in part to keep the focus off questions on their lax security procedures.]

The amount of media attention on these issues has been tiny.

Yet, when Porter Fisher walks off with Biogenesis files and makes them public, the attention is on the drug use of the subjects of the files, not on the breach of the confidentiality of their medical records or on the theft of the files.

How we handle whistleblowers, whether government employees, private contractors, or the journalists who publish the information the leak, is a problem which may be evolving into the biggest danger to democracy in the US today as the NSA, FBI, CIA, the White House and their many corporate contractors, ruthlessly work to silence anyone who dares to reveal their actions.  


Obama came on the radio as I'm finishing this, responding to some of these issues.  Does that means he's monitoring my computer and reading my posts before I even publish them?  I'm sure they don't even know this blog exists.  Here are the four points Obama made:

1. Reforms to Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act
2. Oversight  over the FISA Court - they only hear one side of the issue, they can have adversarial procedures with civil liberty groups expressing their concerns act  in the courts
3. We can be more transparent - instructed inteeligence agency to be as transparent as possible and a website of intelligency agencies to be more transparent and explain what it's doing
4. High level group of outside experts to review and recommend - interim report in 60 days and final report by the end of the year

Now he's answering questions.  You can listen live here.

Richard Nixon Resigned 39 Years Ago Today "I have never been a quitter."

Richard Nixon was a man who demonstrated how very positive and negative qualities can coexist in one person.  His name is still strongly linked to the Watergate burglary and being the first president to resign from office.  But he also opened up China to Americans and set up the Environmental Protection Agency. 



His record also helps us understand how far to the right our country has shifted in the last 40 years.  And how the concern for secrecy and the attempts to stop leaks can obsess a president as it seems to obsess Obama.  And what can go wrong if that obsession is not counterbalanced with respect for the rights of United States citizens.

Some events from Nixon's record as president:

Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and got the Clean Air Act passed.

But he vetoed the Clean Water Act, however he was overridden by Congress.

He set up taping systems in the Old Executive Office Building, the White House, and at Camp David to secretly tape all his conversations for history.

Nixon signed an Emergency Employment Act in 1971. earmarking $2.25 billion for the creation of public service jobs at state and local levels.

He surprised the world by going to China and establishing relations with the country we'd refused to acknowledge since it went Communist.

He also was the first US president to visit the Soviet Union.

He was mired in Watergate and late one night walked out to the Lincoln Memorial and talked to very surprised students there. 

He enacted legislation devaluing the dollar in 1972


He froze all prices for sixty days except raw agricultural products and rents in 1973.

His vice president Spiro Agnew resigned and pled 'no contest' to a kickback scheme while Governor of Maryland in 1973.

He increased Social Security benefits in 1973 and increased the minimum wage to $2 with the likelihood of future increases and broader coverage in 1974.

As a result of an IRS investigation into Nixon's finances, the President was forced to pay $432,787 in back taxes and $33,000 interest in 1974. 

And here's a juicy tidbit from  Wikipedia:

December 31, 1974: As a result of Nixon administration abuses of privacy, Privacy Act of 1974 passes into law. Ford is persuaded to veto the bill by Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld; Congress overrides Ford's veto. (Note that the newly-elected Congress had not taken office yet, this Congress was still the 93rd Congress.)

Sources of information and for more details:
The Miller Center
On The Issues
Wikipedia

The Alaska Parkinson's Rag - Gets National Accolades

Peter Dunlap-Shohl is a pretty remarkable guy.  He's got a wicked sense of humor and very little observable ego.  He also has Parkinson's Disease.  It's not the disease that makes him remarkable, it's how he's dealing with the disease - with the humor and low ego.  The most visible manifestation is his blog - which takes his cartoonist skills and makes the disease accessible for non-PD people.  He also, I'm sure, makes it a little easier to bear for those who do.

Here's what Healthline* - the website that put The Alaska Parkinson's Rag on its list of 15 best Parkinson's Disease (PD) blogs  - says about Peter's blog:
(*Note:  I can't get this to open right when I use Firefox on my Mac, but it works for me on Safari.)

Off & On: The Alaska Parkinson’s Rag

Off & On: The Alaska Parkinson's Rag offers a high-energy, artistic look at life with Parkinson’s disease. Peter Dunlap-Shohl, a quirky and creative cartoonist, this site [sic] combines the latest information on PD with comics, commentary, and poignant personal accounts.

If you’re seeking a soulful, upbeat journey of disease and discovery, look no further: Dunlap-Shohl delivers. You’ll find in this blogger the positive partner you need, whether you’re in Alaska or somewhere much, much warmer.

(I don't think the writer read my recent post that showed it was 9˚F warmer in Anchorage than San Francisco.)

I think blogs like these should get attention so that people who have or know people with PD can learn more about the disease and the people with it.  But I'm generally suspicious of "The Best 15 XXXX" lists.  The site says  "Winners selected by Tracy Rosecrans | Medically Reviewed on July 25, 2013 by George Krucik, MD, MBA"  Linked In says Tracy Rosecrans is the Director of Marketing at Healthline Networks, Inc. in the SF Bay area.  She's also done web consulting.

I give them credit for saying who did the list and that they were checked by a doctor.  Maybe she has some special expertise on what it's like to have PD.  Or maybe not, but she thought this would be a good gimmick for the Healthline blog.  Were there any criteria for choosing blogs? (I'm guessing diversity of approaches.)  Did she consult anyone with PD?  I have to mention these things so that people don't get too worked up about the awards. Especially PD bloggers who didn't get mentioned.   It sounds like one person checked the internet and thought this was a good variety of PD blogs.  I do that sometimes, but I don't make up awards to go with it.  At the very least, it's probably not a bad thing to highlight some PD blogs. 

For the record, I know Peter and have had links to his blogs for a number of years now, and I know that Peter and his blog are special.  His PD cartoons are incredible.  They give me a sense of what he's going through.  And he would deny everything I'm writing about him.


Here is a list of the others with a brief excerpt from each.  These are not necessarily (or even likely) representative of what the bloggers do, just something I found in recent posts.  Like a lot of other posts, this sort of got out-of-hand.  Live with it. 

Walking My Path With Parkinson’s 

 "I'm feeling hopeful again. The physical therapy for my arm, neck and shoulders has been very helpful; in fact I "graduated" from PT this week.   Most helpful though, I think, has been Dr. Wasserstein's direction in taking medications.  He has me on a schedule, taking 3 Amantadine capsules a day, and now I feel great!

So here's that promised list of "Do's" and "Dont's" for communicating with doctors and their minions:"

Studio Foxhoven

Eating well - finally

"There wasn't much I could eat for dinner, so I had a spoonful of almond butter, a couple of carrots from our garden, half an avocado, and some salad without dressing. I glared at my family, graciously, as they ate their spaghetti, and lettuce dripping with raspberry vinaigrette.  I was coping quite well until my husband brought out the Moose Tracks ice cream.
It wasn't fair.
Three months ago I decided to watch my diet. What I saw was a lot of carbohydrates and sugary stuff. There was a decent amount of good food, too, but the carbs and sweets side of the scale was a wee bit out of balance.  And so was I.  I hadn't been feeling too good."

LIM Yoga Blog

On the benefits of hugging without PD folks taken into consideration:

"When someone raises both arms and leans toward me for an embrace, my state of being turns to fear. I’m not entirely steady (physically, that is) and the pressure of even a light touch can throw me off balance. If I’m already in the off-balance mode, the hug can turn to a tumble when it ends as my fellow hugger releases her arms, straightens and steps away. I need more time to regain an upright stance, so when she walks, I’m still in a forward lean."

Parkinson's Journey

 There's also much lighter fare than this one.

The United States Patent & Trademark Office filed the “Notice of Publication of Application” July 11, 2013 Titled: Blood-Brain-Barrier Permeable Peptide Compositions. This is a historic first, as the permeable peptide compositions are minimally or non-toxic and are, in mouse models, able to target and destroy proteins in the Central Nervous System that cause Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Contrary to what the general public may believe, most drugs do not reach the central nervous system (CNS) due to the presence of a physical barrier known as blood-brain barrier (BBB). Ninety eight percent (98%) of drugs never reach the brain and the ones that reach cannot slow down or halt Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease. Drugs such as Levodopa that do cross the BBB merely provide symptomatic relief and stop working after sometime.

FoxFeed Blog

This is the Michael J. Fox Foundation website and blog.

"Could that medication you're taking to lower your cholesterol also prevent Parkinson's disease (PD)?
Maybe, says a new population-based study from researchers at National Taiwan University in Taipei, which found that, in particular, individuals taking simvastatin (Zocor) and atorvastatin (Lipitor) had a lowered risk of developing PD. "
  

The Journey

"This has been a huge week medically for me. My neurologist appointment was on Monday. I had my stitches removed Tuesday morning (yesterday) and my new doctor's appointment was Tuesday afternoon. Today, I finally got to go back to the chiropractor. My back, neck, limbs, etc, etc.... were SO far out it was not even funny. I have been putting it off since hitting my head on May 24th, because I did not think it was worth it until now to have my back put in.  All of the vertigo issues and the thought of hitting my leg or otherwise hurting it seemed more important than my aching back. I remembered to take my DizzyFix to this appointment. He was really impressed with it and even asked me if we could do the maneuver with it, so he could see it in action. He already knows the Epley Maneuver, but did not know anything about the DizzyFix. He wants one for his office, now. :)  "

National Parkinson Foundation

"This month, the National Parkinson Foundation launched its second major smartphone app, Parkinson’s Central. In 2011, the NPF developed and released the first ever Parkinson’s app for docs, the Parkinson’s Toolkit. The instant success and popularity of these smartphone-based apps has proven that Parkinson’s disease has shifted into the technological generation, where patients and families expect information to be instantly available, literally in the palm of their hand. In this month’s What’s Hot column, I will discuss these two Parkinson’s disease apps, and also address the challenges of reaching everyone suffering from this disease, on a worldwide scale. "

Parkinson's Insights
 (Parkinson's Disease Foundation)

"1.  BigBrain is like the Google Earth of the brain, allowing researchers to not only see the big picture of brain anatomy but also allowing them to zoom in with incredible resolution to practically see individual cells.

2.  Although BigBrain is like Google Earth, it currently does not have any labels.  That is, if you do not already know what you are looking at, BigBrain will not be able to help you.  (Is that New York City or Jersey City that I see?) Not all scientists are experts in neuroanatomy and so not everyone looking at BigBrain can delineate every brain structure.  Besides, annotating BigBrain will only need to happen once.  As this is done over time, researchers of all stripes will be able to ask interesting questions."

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

"We felt the need to raise some awareness about this disease, not too many people under the age of 50 are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease we are the minority.
This is where the idea to hold a Motorcycle Rally began. Wanda was the drive, she needed something to focus on and get her mind off of their future.
So began the planning of the first annual “Shake Rattle & Roll Motorcycle Rally for Parkinson’s disease”.
A group of friends were invited to join in the planning of the rally and together we got the wheels turning."

Positively Parkinson's

 "The call display had my heart beating faster instantly.  The voice on the other end of the phone announced the beginning of an adventure the likes of which I had never known.  One could argue, and some did (and still do), that to accept the assignment was foolhardy.  Were there not enough challenges in my life; grappling with the degenerative effects of Parkinson’s disease, maintaining a thriving practice of law as part of a dynamic team of professionals, and contributing “spare time” to charitable causes (including serving as an ambassador for World Parkinson Congress 2013 in Montréal in October)?  Certainly, I had not been looking to take on any additional responsibilities.  In fact, the opposite might have been true.  But I knew this was a call I needed to answer."

On Being a Christian With Parkinson's Disease

 "Do you feel weak? Are you on your last leg of energy? Has hope dimmed and are you overwhelmed and weary of the battle against PD? Do you doubt your ability to get through another day​?

God says, “My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9-10"

Sitting Comfortably

"It just so happens that I have had one of these nasty little tests before, so I knew what was coming. I remember the jolts of electricity from electrodes placed on the skin going down my arm, causing individual muscles to fire and jumping about like a cat on a hot tin roof in response. Then the needles which were stuck into the muscles which are stimulated by movement of the arm or by wiggling the needle in its site and readings taken. Not necessarily painful, but extremely uncomfortable."

National Young Onset Center 

"I got a lot of response to one of my recent Tweets (@PDpsych) and wanted to blog a little followup:
The best way to drive away those you love is to project your anger w/PD on them. Helping you cope & taking the heat are not the same thing.
I was commenting on a phenomenon many PD partners are very familiar with and that I wanted to blog more about as a follow up. Parkinsons can produce a lot of anger. This anger will not be found on any of the list of “non-motor” symptoms because it is not a direct outgrowth of the neurological change. It is a reaction to having a difficult, chronic disease. Being a little angry about PD is a pretty understandable human response. Making someone you love the target for that anger is not.
Parkinson’s disease has no face. When a person become angry and frustrated because of its impact, there is no one upon whom one can truly direct these feelings. A person who is not careful may find these feelings discharging anyway. The target is often only a proxy for the PD, an unwitting victim."

About Parkinson's Disease

"Much of my work at Parkinsons Recovery over the past six years has been dedicated to identifying all sorts of options that are helping people reverse their symptoms. This has been important work and it seems I am the only researcher in the world doing this type of research. Everyone else is very focused on a narrow issue (as was I when employed as a professor). If you do not focus narrowly as a  professor, you do not get promoted or tenured. I succeed with the promotions and tenure but contributed little to the world in terms of insights and revelations.
What is my revelation this week?  I believe we do not need to struggle for the answer. The journey down the road to recovery need not be a war of us against a “disease.” I believe the answer comes quite naturally and effortlessly as long as we allow it to float in and “have its way.”
What do I mean here? If we are struggling to find a solution . . ."

Note:  For the most part, the links are to the blog, not to the specific post I excerpted.  I'm doing this August 6, 2013, so if you are looking for the specific post and it's six months or two years after this post, it will be one of the recent posts from August 6, 2013.