Anchorage Gets 5pm Jolt (4.2)

A very short but sharp earthquake jolted me a few minutes ago while I was on the phone with my mom.  This was not one of those quakes where you say, "Was that an earthquake?"  But I don't think I felt it for more than a couple of seconds.

The Alaska Earthquake Information Center (AEIC) doesn't have the magnitude yet but it was 2 miles from Eagle River.  Here's from their site:

[UPDATE 5:18:  Earthquake Track is calling it a 4.2.  Not that big as earthquakes go, but as I said, it was a sharp jolt.]

Preferred Hypocentral Solution:

Local Date:	Tuesday September 10th, 2013
Local Time:	05:02 PM AKDT
Universal Time:	09/11/2013 01:02:58.648 UTC
Magnitude:	Unknown
Latitude:	61.3217
Longitude:	-149.5222
Depth:	17 miles (28 km)
Author:	oa_opDbg

This earthquake was:

2 miles (2 km) E of Eagle River

5 miles (8 km) SSW of Chugiak

7 miles (12 km) NE of Fort Richardson

10 miles (16 km) ENE of Elmendorf AFB

15 miles (23 km) ENE of Anchorage

18 miles (29 km) S of Wasilla

23 miles (37 km) SW of Palmer

28 miles (45 km) N of Hope

29 miles (47 km) NNW of Girdwood

32 miles (51 km) SSW of Hatcher Pass

34 miles (54 km) SSE of Willow

34 miles (54 km) SW of Sutton

48 miles (76 km) NW of Whittier

57 miles (91 km) ENE of Tyonek

58 miles (93 km) N of Moose Pass

59 miles (94 km) N of Cooper Landing

69 miles (110 km) NE of Sterling

70 miles (112 km) SE of Skwentna

72 miles (115 km) SSE of Talkeetna

74 miles (118 km) NE of Nikiski

78 miles (125 km) NE of Soldotna

79 miles (127 km) NE of Kenai

85 miles (136 km) N of Seward

91 miles (145 km) NE of Kasilof

91 miles (146 km) E of Mt. Spurr

99 miles (159 km) NE of Clam Gulch

99 miles (159 km) E of Hayes Volcano

101 miles (161 km) NNW of Chenega Bay

101 miles (162 km) WNW of Tatitlek

107 miles (172 km) W of Valdez

115 miles (183 km) NE of Ninilchik

123 miles (197 km) ENE of Redoubt Volcano

251 miles (401 km) SSW of Fairbanks

566 miles (906 km) WNW of Juneau

Cal Worthington -" a cross between Dale Carnegie and Slim Pickens" -Joins His Dog Spot

I just got an email with a link to the Cal Worthington Wikipedia page:

Image from LA Times

Calvin Coolidge "Cal" Worthington (November 27, 1920 - September 8, 2013) was an American car dealer well known throughout the West Coast of the United States, and to a more limited extent elsewhere due to minor appearances and parodies in a number of movies. He was best known for his unique radio and television advertisements for the Worthington Dealership Group. In these advertisements, he was usually joined by "his dog Spot," except that "Spot" was never a dog. Often, Spot was either a tiger, a seal, an elephant, a chimpanzee, or a bear. In one ad, "Spot" was a hippopotamus, which Worthington rode in the commercial. On some occasions, "Spot" was a vehicle, such as an airplane that Worthington would be seen standing atop the wings of while airborne. "Spot" was officially retired in the mid-1980s; however he was mentioned occasionally in his later commercials.
According to a profile published in the Sacramento Bee in 1990, Worthington grossed $316.8 million in 1988, making him at the time the largest single owner of a car dealership chain. His advertising agency, named Spot Advertising, had Worthington as its only client and spent $15 million on commercials, the most of any auto dealer at the time. He sold automobiles from 1945 until his death and owned a 24,000-acre (9,700 ha; 37 sq mi) ranch located in Orland, California, north of Sacramento.

Cal Worthington was a fixture on Southern California TV when we left for Anchorage in 1977.  What an unpleasant shock to find out his tacky ads were on TV in Anchorage as well.  'Spot' was a bizarre menagerie of animals he posed with in his ads.  But he was a very smooth talker. 

Here's the beginning of the LA Times Obituary:

Cal Worthington, the Oklahoma native whose old-time carnival flair built one of the most successful car dealerships west of the Mississippi, has died. He was 92.
Worthington died Sunday while watching football at his home on the Big W Ranch near Orland, Calif., said Brady McLeod of the Miles Law Firm in Sacramento, which represented Worthington.
Described as a cross between Dale Carnegie and Slim Pickens, Worthington was best known for his wacky television pitches that had him wrestling with a tiger, flying upside down on an airplane wing or riding a killer whale. His sales antics with his “Dog Spot” drove a career that took him from a three-car lot on a patch of Texas dirt to a multi-make dealership empire that grossed billions of dollars and stretched from Southern California to Alaska.

'You cycled up from Argentina then?' 'Yep' 'Why you wanna do that?'

We met Steve Fabes because he was having dinner with a friend at the Thai Kitchen Saturday night.  Nothing too remarkable about him until I asked him what brought him to Anchorage.

Cyclist Stephen Fabes in Anchorage after 33,000 miles

His bike.  He started out in England, rode south to Cape Town, took a three month break, then flew to Argentina and rode his way up to Alaska.  He's been on the road three years.  He's in Anchorage AFTER riding the Haul Road to Deadhorse.  He's taking a month in Anchorage - which includes a local presentation at the World Affairs Council tentatively scheduled for September 20, 2013.  Then he'll fly to Australia to continue his bike journey of across  six continents. 


He's a medical doctor back home in England and he's made stops at medical clinics along the way.  But biking 54,339 km (33,000 miles) thus far isn't too lucrative, so he has a crowd-funding campaign planned for this month to help  cover the rest of the way.  I don't imagine his expenses are high.  As I understand it, he's got housing in Anchorage through someone who contacted him through his website.

One could argue that there are more compelling causes than paying for a relatively well off guy's five year bike trip around the world, but you could also argue that it's no different from putting down money for a  movie or book or any other sort of entertainment.  His blog offers a great adventure most will only dream of, allowing us to ride along and see the world from the seat of his bike.  And after spending some time talking to him, I have no doubt that he will eventually give back far to the world far more than people contribute.

As you'll see from the excerpts below, he's a damn good writer with a serious vocabulary. 

These excerpts from his blog "Cycling The 6" are from the loooong Yukon/Alaska post which is full of great description and photos:

Day three on the Haul Road began with the sound of rain drilling onto my tent and the words of Paul and Duncan echoing through my mind. 'It's not so bad' they told me 'unless it rains'. The unpaved parts of the road are coated with calcium carbonate for the benefit of the truckers but the bane of cyclists. When it rains the surface transforms into a brown goo, the consistency of toothpaste, which sticks to everything. That day was a mud bath as the road continued to get churned up by the downpour. I camped by a river and lugged my bike down to the bank, submerged it and scrubbed her clean, the next day was dry and I grew optimistic that the worst was over, the worst of course, was still to come. .  .


I arrived finally to the Arctic Circle to get my obligatory shot by the signpost. The Arctic Circle is the southernmost latitude in the Northern Hemisphere at which the sun can remain continuously above or below the horizon for 24 hours. A tribe of tourists shambled past me with a tour guide who was pointing out notable arctic vegetation whilst giving a nature documentary-like narration, but the camera lenses of the crowd became focused on me instead of the flora. I half expected the tour guide to continue...

'And here we have a cycle tourist. It's a solitary male, you can tell from the brown crust of peanut butter in the facial hair. They migrate to Alaska in the summer and are scavengers by nature and will eat vast quantities of anything available, often picking up morcels from the ground, sniffing them, shrugging and devouring the find. This one's been on the road a while, notice the veneer of filth, the wild stare and the pungent odor. We like to keep the cycle tourers wild, so try not to feed them. Look, there, he's scratching his arse, we believe that's a courtship ritual.'  . . .

As I cycled over the north slope which was a vast, even expanse of tussocks and pools, up sprang my old compadre - the Shadow Cyclist. 21 months ago in the southern Argentinean city of Ushuaia I watched the same shadow cyclist, sinewy and sinister, stretched out to my right into the wind-blasted Patagonian scrub. As I rode north through the Americas the setting sun to my left would bring to life the Shadow Cyclist and he traveled with me. As my shadow glided over the tundra my mind was a whirlpool of memories, full of the weird places I'd been and the people that coloured them. In the distance the dark blots of roaming muskox could be seen on the plains, and up above snow geese honked as they flew in their malformed Vs and Ws, heading to warmer climes, as I continued to the top of the continent.

Arriving in Deadhorse:  

There were no dancing girls to welcome me in and put a wreath around my neck, instead an oil worker came over to me -
'You cycled up from Argentina then?'
'Yep'
'Why you wanna do that?'

You can read the whole post here - and see posts from across Europe, Africa, and up through South America.  

Trying Out My New Head

I asked J to get me my other head this morning.  I did a lot of research online before picking it.  It has the bayonet attachment, rather than the screw on. With the screw on heads some folks said if you don't start it right you could be facing backward when it's screwed in all the way.  There's another kind with a zipper but it didn't get good reviews.  It can get floppy. 

I was ready to get up but my eyes really didn't want to open fully and so the other head seemed a good option.  It's been resting a few days and should be wide awake and fresh and ready for anything.   The manual, which is built in, says I can set it for cheerful and optimistic and erase all the nagging chores I need to do and block out all news of current events. It will give me a totally fresh outlook - maybe it will even be sunny out when I'm wearing that head.  I got the tech app for it too, so I should be able to figure out my phone, my camera, and all the programs on my computer. 

This post is unrelated to the fact that I'm reading Oliver Sacks' Hallucinations.  So far I've only read about Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS) which only affects blind people.  Though it may have been influenced by Anonymous' comment on the last post about hoping to have some reflection time over the weekend.

The Role of Climate Change In The Syrian Revolution

[The Syria connection is toward the end.  But I urge you to read my synopsis of the talk because Paul Beckwith really helped me better understand  the dynamics of how the warming works and how it causes massive flooding in some places and droughts in other places. And that background helps add credibility to his comments on Syria]

At today's Citizens Climate Lobby meeting, the national speaker we heard via phone, was University of Ottawa climatologist Paul Beckwith who spoke about how the melting in the Arctic affects the rest of the planet.  [You can hear the whole talk here - it begins a few minutes into the meeting.]   The gist was:

The temperature difference between the poles and the equator results in global wind patterns that greatly affect weather. 

Hot air rises, creating a low pressure area.   The temperature difference creates a pressure difference between the poles and the equator and that pressure difference causes air to move from high pressure areas to low pressure areas near the surface of the earth. 

Because the earth is rotating, the air doesn't move in a straight line. Curves to the right in the northern hemisphere and the opposite in the southern hemisphere.  This curvature to the right generates the jet streams, which are high altitude winds which circle the earth - sort of a boundary between the upper and lower atmospheres - so these winds typically move from west to east and there will be some waviness, but what is happening now. 

Warming Faster at the Poles Lowering Temperature Differences World Wide
With the elevated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere there is more absorption of the heat that is leaving the earth so it's trapping that heat and causing an overall warming.  In the Arctic the white of the sea ice and snow on land reflect the heat.  But as the ice and snow melt, the poles absorbs more heat causing the Arctic to warm.  North of 66˚ the rate of warming is 2-3X the rest of the planet.  As you move north, the increase is magnified more - 4, 5, even 6 times.

Because the Arctic system is warming faster than the rest of the planet, it's lowering that temperature difference.  So there is less of a pressure difference and less need for the air to move northward.  This slows down the jet streams. 

As they slow down the land ocean temperature difference increases and the jet streams get much wavier as they slow down and they tend to get locked into position relative to where the oceans and continents are.

Important because jet streams guide weather and storms.  And because overall temperatures are warmer, there's more evaporation from the oceans and more water vapor in the atmosphere. 

More Moisture and More Energy and Slower Air Movement = Bigger Storms Here and Drought There
For every degree Celsius increase in temperature there's 7% more water in the atmosphere.  It rises, cools, condenses, and forms clouds.  When it forms clouds, it releases energy.  So more water vapor and more energy in the atmosphere means more intense storms.  And the storms are moving slower, so if you have a massive storm system carrying  huge amounts of water, it's not moving as quickly as it used to move.  That's why certain areas get massive torrential downpours.  In Canada this summer this led to flooding in Banff and Calgary - a $3 billion event -  and a month later the same thing happened in Toronto.   They had 3 inches in an hour, 5 inches in an evening.  Those cities don't have infrastructure that can handle that.  Manila recently had 2 feet in a day or two.  While they are used to monsoons, normally it would be 1 foot in a week or two.

At the same time, these storm systems depositing large amounts of water on specific regions means that water is not traveling to other regions where it used to go.  They are getting less than normal rainfall because storms are sticking and not traveling as far and as fast.

The Syria Connection

Then he added the kicker.   In answering a question about how to respond to those who claim climate change is natural, he talked about how the strange weather patterns today are far more frequent and intense than in the past. 

He was talking about how these climate changes are causing social disruptions.  And he used Syria as an example.  What hasn't been mentioned much is that Syria's been having a five year drought that has devastated farming.  He said that of 8 million farmers, 3 million fell into poverty.  A large number of these farmers moved to the cities and were unemployed.  While he didn't claim this was the cause of Syrians joining the Arab spring, it certainly may well have been the tipping point. 

Since I had missed this point about Syria, I looked it up.  Here are things others are saying about this.  I've just taken a bit.  You can see much more at each link.



 From The Bulletin (Aug 2012):

"Among the many historical, political, and economic factors contributing to the Syrian uprising, one has been devastating to Syria, yet remains largely unnoticed by the outside world. That factor is the complex and subtle, yet powerful role that climate change has played in affecting the stability and longevity of the state.  .   .

From 1900 until 2005, there were six droughts of significance in Syria; the average monthly level of winter precipitation during these dry periods was approximately one-third of normal. All but one of these droughts lasted only one season; the exception lasted two. Farming communities were thus able to withstand dry periods by falling back on government subsidies and secondary water resources. This most recent, the seventh drought, however, lasted from 2006 to 2010, an astounding four seasons -- a true anomaly in the past century. Furthermore, the average level of precipitation in these four years was the lowest of any drought-ridden period in the last century. .  .

It is estimated that the Syrian drought has displaced more than 1.5 million people; entire families of agricultural workers and small-scale farmers moved from the country's breadbasket region in the northeast to urban peripheries of the south. The drought tipped the scale of an unbalanced agricultural system that was already feeling the weight of policy mismanagement and unsustainable environmental practices. Further, lack of contingency planning contributed to the inability of the system to cope with the aftermath of the drought. Decades of poorly planned agricultural policies now haunt Syria's al-Assad regime."

From The Climate Desk  (March 2013):

"In Syria, prior to the unrest that eventually exploded into revolution and armed conflict, Syria had experienced an unprecedented drought, lasting about five years. In 2011, NOAA produced a report showing that the Mediterranean littoral and the Middle East had significant drought conditions that were directly related to climate change. And then we found some reporting that had been done over the course of the drought which were showing that in Syria the drought, connected with natural resource mismanagement by the Assad regime, had led to a mass exodus, rural-to-urban migration, as farmers lost their livelihood. The UN estimated that about 800,000 people in Syria during the course of the drought had their livelihoods entirely destroyed. In the run-up to the unrest in Syria, a lot of international security analysts, even on the eve of the exploding unrest, had determined that Syria was generally a stable country, and that it was immune to social unrest and immune to the Arab Spring. It was clear that there were some stresses underneath the surface, and those migrations that we’re talking about, internal migrations, also put pressure on urban areas that were already economically stressed, and that was added on top of refugees that had been coming in from Iraq since the US invasion.

The Atlantic (Sept. 2013):

 Syria has been convulsed by civil war since climate change came to Syria with a vengeance. Drought devastated the country from 2006 to 2011.  Rainfall in most of the country fell below eight inches (20 cm) a year, the absolute minimum needed to sustain un-irrigated farming. Desperate for water, farmers began to tap aquifers with tens of thousands of new well.  But, as they did, the water table quickly dropped to a level below which their pumps could lift it.

Syria has been convulsed by civil war since climate change came to Syria with a vengeance. Drought devastated the country from 2006 to 2011.  Rainfall in most of the country fell below eight inches (20 cm) a year, the absolute minimum needed to sustain un-irrigated farming. Desperate for water, farmers began to tap aquifers with tens of thousands of new well.  But, as they did, the water table quickly dropped to a level below which their pumps could lift it.

The domestic Syrian refugees immediately found that they had to compete not only with one another for scarce food, water and jobs, but also with the already existing foreign refugee population.  Syria already was a refuge for quarter of a million Palestinians and about a hundred thousand people who had fled the war and occupation of Iraq.  Formerly prosperous farmers were lucky to get jobs as hawkers or street sweepers.  And in the desperation of the times, hostilities erupted among groups that were competing just to survive.   .    .

Campbell Creek Bike Trail Under Seward Highway Almost Ready

The target date for completing the bike trail under the Seward Highway is Fall 2013.  The trail is there, but the path hasn't been paved nor has the path otherwise been finished off.  But they have completely new bridges in and we walked by there the other evening.
[UPDATE October 19, 2013 - It semi-officially opened today and is open for riding.]

From the west side you can walk the trail, under the highway bridge.

Here's what this looked like in 2007.]

 

When the State does a project, they tend to obliterate the landscape and then build it back up from scratch.  I'm sure they have good reasons for it.  In this case the bridge has been expanded greatly.  Before there was just a little edge along the path under a bridge you had to duck to get under in spots.  Now the space next to the creek is bigger, it seems, than the creek.  

Here's what this spot looked like in May 2012:

 

And here's going under the bridge the other day:

And near the same spot in 2008.  This was the whole trail then right against the water.  And when the creek was really high, the whole trail was gone.  The heavy equipment is between me and the water above - also the orange fencing is along the water.  And the bridges were shorter and lower.

There are four bridges - (from the east) first the frontage road, then the northbound highway, southbound highway, and the western frontage road.  Here's a little past the first bridge (maybe even the second one.)

And here's what that used to look like:

 

Once you get out from under the highway, instead of the one-bike winding path through the fireweed, there's more bike superhighway up to this bridge which is blocked for now.   At the right times, you can watch the spawning salmon from this bridge.  We're very close to The Wild Berry tourist trap at this point, just west of the Seward Highway (see map below). 

Getting to this bridge used to look like this:

Turning around at this point, it now looks like this:

One more picture of the bridges - now looking east from the west side. 

And here's a map for the area.  I started on the east and went to the west, then turned around and went back where the wooden bridge was blocked off.

When this is done, you'll be able to ride from downtown out to Westchester Lagoon up the Chester Creek trail to Goose Lake and the the University crossing either over or under all streets via tunnels and bridges.  At the university you have to cross a parking lot and a few streets to get to the bridge at Tudor and Bragaw (now Elmore), and then on the Campbell Creek bike trail.  There's a bit of a break in the trail at Lake Otis, but then you get back on a wooded trail that will go under the Seward Highway and then on to just past Victor near Dimond coming out at Dimond High School.  Then there zigging and zagging through neighborhoods to connect to the trail in Kincaid park, and from there you can get back downtown.

The Trails of Anchorage site  says it's 13 miles from Kincaid Chalet to Goose Lake, and I'm guessing it's not much less for the rest of the loop I described.

Here's a link to the Arctic Bicycle Club.

Degrading Goose Lake Skyline

If you think skylines should be buildings and other man made structures rather than mountains, then you'll be pleased with the evolving Goose Lake skyline.  There was a time when a bit of the University of Alaska Anchorage was just barely visible over the treetops.  Then the library addition went in with it's green phallic symbol on top exposed for all to see.  The science building and then the parking garage soon peeked over the treetops.  And this evening as we walked around the lake there was what looked like a factory with smokestacks rising above the trees. [Turns out it is the Science Building, not the sports center.]   The new sports center that required the flattening of acres and acres of forest and now juts up above Providence Drive to block the mountains is the only thing I could imagine the new 'factory' to be. 

Looking west from the bike trail, one could still imagine being out in the wilderness in the middle of town.  I just stood there taking pictures as the duck came closer and closer.

It's early September and one has to think about darkness again. It's a whole new feel being in the woods at twilight. 

Earlier on the walk we came across this huge chunk of soil that had been ripped off the ground felling two trees over a foot in diameter plus a dozen smaller ones.  This could be left over from last fall's ferocious winds that toppled so many trees.

I really do have much more to post, but family matters have been consuming a lot of time.  I have a number of unfinished posts that just need more time to ripen enough to post. 

Sugar Shack Fans, Can You Wait Until Monday?

The burnt shell of the old Sugar Shack coffee stand has been sitting at the corner of Lake Otis and 37th since the vandal caused fire this past May.  

Recently it disappeared and was replaced by a new stand.

Then the signs showed up.

I asked someone working on it today when he thought it would open again.  He said they were aiming for Monday. 

Here's what it looked like in May after the fire. 

"A REAL Job is a Job You Hate" - Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson's 1990 Graduation Speech Lives On In Cartoonist Tribute

Cartoonist Gavin Aung Than has taken part of a graduation speech by Calvin and Hobbes' creator Bill Watterson and turned it into a cartoon story on the pressures our society exerts for people to succeed in a very narrowly defined path.  Go check it out here.

I've excerpted a couple sections to tempt you to read the whole thing.

Staying at home and taking care of the kids (for a man) is not part of the American way, but it can be worth it to find your own path. (A new study says that when wives earn more than their husbands, the men's self-esteem goes down.  This goes back to society's expectations making it hard for a man to stay home.)

Aung Than's post also tells the story of Watterson's life. 


Of course, I needed to find Watterson's speech online to make sure this was all true.  It was at Kenyon College, May 20, 1990 - ten years after Watterson had graduated from Kenyon.  You can see the whole speech here.  It's a very Calvin and Hobbes kind of speech. 

His basic theme is that people should try to find a way to live their lives that's consistent with their values and their driving interests.  Teaching grad students a subject I felt passionate about gave me lots of space to pursue my natural interests within a traditional work setting.  Because I was doing things that interested me and challenged me, I worked much harder than any boss could have gotten me to work, which is consistent with what Watterson said in 1990. 

It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I've learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it's how important playing is to creativity and happiness. My job is essentially to come up with 365 ideas a year.

And what made my job constantly interesting (and writing this blog fun rather than work) was having the space to explore and experiment, and, in Watterson's words, to play.

"If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I've found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I've had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.

By Watterson's definition I didn't have a real job.  

A REAL job is a job you hate. I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the 4-1/2 million minutes I worked there. My fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without doing any work for it.

Finding an organization that allows you that freedom is getting tougher and tougher these days.  Applying the business model to teaching and research is all wrong.  The market demands for productivity and - in the university setting - "treating students like customers" is making Universities into heartless corporate entities, that are focused on quantifiable output measures which tend not to include humanity, decency, kindness, joy, personal growth, or discovery.   Students should be treated with respect, but the teacher/student relationship is not the same as the corporate/customer relationship.  

Some hi-tech firms understand that the innovation they need can't be mandated.  It has to be nurtured.  Employees have to be allowed to pursue their passion. And they work best when their passions and their jobs overlap significantly. But even in great situations there are always supervisors who confuse their legitimate authority with the illegitimate power to work out their personal issues on their employees.  I don't think the perfect job lasts too long.  Things and people change. 

The factors needed for play -Creativity and constantly looking at the world from different perspectives - is subversive to many. 

We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.

Watterson didn't sugar coat his message to the Class of 1990.

You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of "just getting by" absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. [sic] You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people's expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.

 Again:  the full graduate speech is here.  (I think I'm linking to the real speech, but always be skeptical.)
The cartoon tribute by Aung Than is here.


[Writing titles for these posts can be tricky.  I want them accurate and I recognize that catchy titles get more readers.  I work hard to make sure my title is consistent with what's in the post.  In this case one could argue it's a little misleading.  The phrase "A REAL job is a job you hate" comes from Watterson's graduation speech and wasn't in the tribute.  It's probably not a big deal, but I wanted to acknowledge it for those who might have been bothered by it.  Sorry.  (After I wrote this I changed the title.  It was "A REAL job is a job you hate - Tribute to Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson.  It's still not perfect and I'll leave this note for those who care about this stuff.]

70 Years Ago, Jehovah's Witness Case Set Precedent To Overturn Prop 8

In 1935 Billy Gobitis and his sister, both Jehovah's Witnesses, refused to pledge allegiance to the flag in school because to do so would violate the second commandment forbidding idol worship.  Despite explaining the reason for his refusal in writing, the school board stood its ground.

"The Gobitis family was physically attacked and their family grocery store was boycotted. This caused great financial strain as the family faced the cost of sending the two children to private school. Their father sued on behalf of the children, saying the district’s policy violated his children’s religious freedom." [from The Bill of Rights Institute]

By 1940 the school pledge was before the Supreme Court which ruled in Minersville School District v. Gobitis   8-1 in favor of the school district.   

From the History Net:

The Court rejected the Witnesses' claim, holding that the secular interests of the school district in fostering patriotism were paramount. In the majority opinion, written during the same month that France fell to the Nazis, Felix Frankfurter wrote: "National unity is the basis of national security." The plaintiffs, said Frankfurter, were free to "fight out the wise use of legislative authority in the forum of public opinion and before legislative assemblies."

As the US was being drawn into World War II, refusing to pledge was seen by many as traitorous and individual Jehovah's witnesses were beaten and their houses of worship were attacked in various parts of the country.  The ACLU (which argued the next case before the Supreme Court) estimated that 1500 people were assaulted in 335 separate incidents. (Also from the History Net link.) Words like assault tend mask the fact that people's heads were smashed, blood spurted, and people were terrorized.  This happened in Kennebunk, Maine (the home of Tom's of Maine) as well as Baltimore and Illinois, among other places.

Ironically,  the History Net points out:

. . . in Nazi Germany, no group was too small to escape the eye of new chancellor Adolf Hitler, who banned the Witnesses after they refused to show their fealty to him with the mandatory "Heil Hitler" raised-arm salute. (Many Witnesses would later perish in his death camps. [emphasis added]

But a mere three years later - in 1943 - the Supreme Court, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, reversed itself on the same issue.  Jehovah's Witness school children again refused to pledge allegiance to the flag and sued when they were expelled.  From the ACLU website:

"The Board of Education on January 9, 1942, adopted a resolution... ordering that the salute to the flag become 'a regular part of the program of activities in the public schools,' that all teachers and pupils 'shall be required to participate in the salute honoring the Nation represented by the Flag...
Failure to conform is 'insubordination' dealt with by expulsion. Readmission is denied by statute until compliance. Meanwhile the expelled child is 'unlawfully absent' and may be proceeded against as a delinquent. His parents or guardians are liable to prosecution, and if convicted are subject to fine not exceeding $50 and jail term not exceeding thirty days.

Appellees... brought suit in the United States District Court for themselves and others similarly situated asking its injunction to restrain enforcement of these laws and regulations against Jehovah's Witnesses... The Board of Education moved to dismiss the complaint [which alleged] that the law and regulations are an unconstitutional denial of religious freedom, and of freedom of speech, and are invalid under the 'due process' and 'equal protection' clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. The cause was submitted on the pleadings to a District Court of three judges. It restrained enforcement as to the plaintiffs and those of that class." 

The Board of Education appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which affirmed the judgment of the District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.

This time round, the Court had the history of violent of attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses following the 1940 decision plus the US was now involved in World War II. 

The Court's decision this time was a complete reversal.  From Oyez:

In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court overruled its decision in Minersville School District v. Gobitis and held that compelling public schoolchildren to salute the flag was unconstitutional. The Court found that such a salute was a form of utterance and was a means of communicating ideas. "Compulsory unification of opinion," the Court held, was doomed to failure and was antithetical to First Amendment values. Writing for the majority, Justice Jackson argued that "[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

 And the relationship to Prop. 8?

A key argument for keeping Prop. 8 was that the majority of voters of California had cast ballots in favor of the banning gay marriage.  This was the will of the majority.

From Joel P. Engardio in USA Today:

When Justice [Robert] Jackson [in 1943] got the chance to reverse the 1940 ruling, he tackled the ballot box notion head-on. He wrote that the "very purpose" of the Bill of Rights was to protect some issues from the volatility of politics and "place them beyond the reach of majorities."

"One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly," Jackson said, "may not be submitted to vote." [emphasis added]

 Engardio goes on to show the link to Prop. 8.

"Fundamental rights," Jackson wrote in 1943 and Judge Walker quoted in 2010, "depend on the outcome of no elections."

Note:  While  reading for this I learned that President Eisenhower,  who signed the law adding 'under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, grew up in a Jehovah's Witness household, though he later became a Presbyterian.  Jehovah's Witnesses oppose war and their members do not participate in war.  Eisenhower not only joined the military, he became the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF),  until the end of the war in Europe in May1945. [Wikipedia]