"I can't believe this guy didn't understand the expectations" - Anchorage Police Chief

Last Wednesday's Anchorage Daily News had an article about a police officer who used the APD's computer system to look up information about people for non-work related reasons.

Reporter Casey Grove writes,

Police Chief Mark Mew said Tuesday that he had warned the recruits on the academy's first day about inappropriate behavior while on duty.
"I can't believe this guy didn't understand the expectations," Mew said.

I've seen Chief Mew in action over the years and I think he's grown a lot and is dedicated  to making Anchorage as safe a place as possible.

But as a teacher, I'd point out that people often don't hear what they are told, especially on the first day.  I know that my students, on the first day, basically wanted to know how much work they would have to do, how many papers, how much reading, so they could figure out if they could do ok in class.

Even if they did hear anything else, there was no guarantee that what they understood was what I had intended.  And if the class wasn't interactive, where the students were forced to think and respond, the odds of them getting other stuff, especially information that was not part of what they already knew, was low.  Even when I told students exactly what they needed to do to prepare for the next week's class, they didn't believe me.  Until they had a quiz the next week and they realized that if they had done what I said, they would have passed the quiz.

So warning recruits on the academy's first day about inappropriate behavior isn't going to impact performance unless they actually listen and understand the details. And while some may get it, the others won't unless they are engaged in the discussion and given opportunities to role play, respond to case studies,  or otherwise actively participate in ways that force them to put their understanding into action. Which allows the instructor and the student to see if the student understood.  Just because you say it, doesn't mean they learned it. 

I imagine though, that the recruits got the information more than that one time from the Chief on the first day.  But understanding how humans learn new ideas (not easily) and new behaviors (by practicing them rather than hearing about them)  will make changing recruits' understanding and behavior more likely.

And there are some whom the academy simply won't reach.  And the academy has to have ways to detect who those people are and help them find more appropriate employment.

AIFF2013: On The Air - Tuesday Dec. 3 10 am and Wednesday Dec 4 at 2pm

TUESDAY


Steve Heimel's Talk of Alaska show will host:

• Tony Shepard, founder, Anchorage International Film Festival
• Jim Parker, volunteer program organizer
• Callers Statewide

on KSKA 90.1 FM in Anchorage and APRN stations statewide on Wednesday, Dec. 3 at 10 am.    Here's how you can participate:

• Post your comment before, during or after the live broadcast (comments may be read on air).
• Send e-mail to talk [at] alaskapublic [dot] org (comments may be read on air)
• Call 550-8422 in Anchorage or 1-800-478-8255 if you’re outside Anchorage during the live broadcast

For interested film makers who aren't in Alaska (yet) you can listen online. Just go to  Alaska Public Radio and click the red 'radio stream' on the left. 

Click image to get to Alaska Public Media, then hit the Radio Stream button

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 4 at 2pm. 

Kathleen McCoy, on Hometown Alaska, will discuss both the Anchorage International Film Festival and the Indigenous World Film Festival that will have its 10th Anniversary in Anchorage January 17-18. 

Kathleen's guests will be: 

• Jim Parker, Director of Film Programming, Anchorage International Film Festival
• Steven Alvarez, program director, Indigenous World Film Festival

Kathleen asked if she could add me to part of the program, so I'm scheduled to be on the Wednesday broadcast too.

Participate:

• Call 550-8433 (Anchorage) or 1-888-353-5752  (statewide) during the live broadcast (2:00 – 3:00pm Wednesday Alaska time)
• Send e-mail to hometown@alaskapublic.org before, during or after the live broadcast (e-mails may be read on air)

I would also note that you can buy all film passes ($100) for the Anchorage International Film Festival online or at the Bear Tooth (the website says starting Thursday at Bear Tooth, but we got one Monday night already.)   Regular tickets are $8 a film, the opening night includes a party afterward and costs $30 ($15 if you have an all films pass.)  So, if you go to the opening night and see ten more films/programs/workshops, the pass is a good deal.

And tomorrow you can start buying tickets for the Friday opening night showing of Icebound, a film about the serum run to Nome that is memorialized each year in the Iditarod.  I suspect this one will sell out, so getting tickets early is a good idea.  The word premiere shows up, but it's not clear if it's an Alaska premiere or what.  It appears to have been shown on BBC4 in October.

AIFF2013: Animated Films In Competition

These are the animated films chosen by the screening committee to be in competition for festival awards.  They are mostly pretty short and they all play in one program (Animation) twice during the festival.   So, it's best to just go see them and be surprised without too much hype beforehand.  This is just a peek to whet your appetite with no spoilers.  I haven't seen any of them yet - just a few trailers.

Films in the whole program (all 18 short animations, not just the ones in competition) are overwhelmingly from the US, but there are also films from Australia, Canada, Luxembourg/France, and Switzerland.  The films range from 2 minutes to one outlier at 23 minutes.  (And if you want to see all the animated films, there are at least three more animated films that aren't in the animated program:

• The Narrative of Victor Karloch in the Horror Program with another short films (not animated.  There was another that seems to have disappeared.)
• Enraizado and La Noria in the Mexican short film program at Sunday Dec. 8 at 7:45pm.)

 
ANIMATION PROGRAM  - Two Chances To See Them

Saturday, Dec. 7 at 12 noon at the Alaska Exp large theater

Friday, Dec. 13 at 7:30 pm at the Anchorage Community Works* 

*349 E Ship Creek Ave., Anchorage, AK 99501


So, either on Pearl Harbor Day or Friday the 13th.


Here's a preview of the animated films in competition:

*****************************************************


Blue                    
Katelyn Bianchini 
Canada
8m
✓

Blue was Katelyn's senior thesis at Chapman University according to her website.

*****************************************************


Icarus Falls
Jesse O’Brien
USA
3m
✓

Below is  2-D Animitic done in preparation of the eventual 3-D film that, I'm assuming, we'll see at the festival.  I don't see this as a spoiler, but a way to get a sense of how much work goes into one of these very short films and to help understand the process. Jesse's blog, where I got this, shows other steps in developing the visual characters.




*****************************************************


Mister Super Juice
Mike Wellins    
USA

Mr. Juice Swimming - Image from Mike Wellins

5m
✓    

 "Mr. Super Juice is an important infomercial with Mr. Super Juice, himself, extolling the virtues of juicing and juicing machines. Mr. Super Juice speaks the truth when it comes to real juicing and delivers a dire warning for those who still aren't ready to worship at the altar of juice."

From a website Mike shares with his brother Dean, a Disney animation guy:

Mike Wellins has been an artist and filmmaker since age 8. Mike Graduated Merced Highschool and attended California State University, Chico, where he studied Art, English, Computer Animation and film and video production.

*****************************************************


Mr. Hublot
Laurent Witz
Luxembourg/France

Image from Zeilt Productions
(Real image is significantly more impressive}

11m
✓
This one has already won at least ten 'best' awards.  It's visually lush if this still is any indication.

I haven't been able to get very much on these films, but of what I have seen, this looks and sounds fantastic.  Check the Mr. Hublot website for very short trailers too.  




******************************************************



The Innovator
Sean McCarthy
USA
2m
✓

Image from Dances With Films

Metro Active has a long story on Sean if you want to know who made this film.  It begins:

"He flash-mobbed the Oakridge Macy's with a cinematographer in a wheelchair and a crew of 15. He was cuffed and booked for the crime of guerrilla filmmaking. San Jose's Sean McCarthy spreads out from student pranks to the film-festival circuit."

I only got a slight sense of the films in competition.  It's clear that Mr. Hublot should be in this group.  I'm waiting to see the others.  I would note that Richard Cunningham's  "A Clean Break" is in the group, but not in competition.   Cunningham's 'Year Zero' was my favorite animated film in the 2011 festival - with a very original look. And apparently it's being made (finished?) into a feature.   I'm looking forward to seeing his new film.  He's a highly talented film maker with his own unique style and I'll be looking critically at the animated films to see why "A Clean Break" isn't in competition.  I'd also note that last time he didn't win any awards here either.  The films that did were very good, but for me Year Zero was a truly special film which broke new animation film ground. 

Why I Live Here: Cold Beauty

It's good that people Outside (Alaska) believe it's cold and dark here most of the year.  It keeps them from moving up here.  But I'm constantly awed and delighted by the magnificence of Nature and the show it puts on in Alaska is never ending.  Even after 36 years here, I'm awed daily.  Fortunately, most Outsiders think such talk is just Alaskans rationalizing why they live in the cold and dark.   That's right.  Seattle's a nice place if you have to move north.  And there's Calgary and Edmonton if Seattle's too far south.   All much nicer than Anchorage.  Really.

We got home from LA just in time for the temperature to plunge to about -5˚F (-20˚C).  But I shoveled the driveway in the cold sunshine yesterday.  Today when I got back in from finishing the job (well there's a bit more I could do tomorrow) the outside thermometer said +9˚F (-12˚C) and tomorrow it's predicted to be in the 20s.

As I shoveled I kept looking up at these birch trees, dressed in hoarfrost, and I thought about how the new camera can take much better pictures of this than the little one.

"1 dead, four people shot at Ramkhamhaeng University after clashes"

 The headline comes from a Thai Visa post.


I've been vaguely paying attention to the latest round of demonstrations in Thailand, but the headline above caught my attention.  In 2006 I taught a class for a month at Ramkhamhaeng University.  It's an open University with lots of students who wouldn't have a chance getting into more elite universities.

The image is from a Youtube videos that begins on the street in front of the University.  There's a by-pass road above and lots of shops on one side of the street and the University on the other.

It's hard keeping things in Thailand straight these days as you can see if you go to these links New Mandala and Bangkok Pundit that I've had up on the blog several years now. It's not even clear that the man killed was at the University from what I'm reading. 

This is also a reminder of where things can end up when people split on ideological lines and see only their differences and not what they have in common. 

[Feedburner note:  Basically it's been working, but 11 hours after this one was posted, it's still not showing up on blogrolls.  When it didn't go up right away, I pinged it, but that didn't help.]]

From Rainy LA To Sunny Anchorage

Somewhere in Alaska air space, I noticed another plane outside the window.  Actually this photo is blown up a bit so you can see that it's another Alaska Airlines plane below us and to the west.

The pilot had banked to the left, then to the right, and back to the left and then I noticed the plane.  I saw the contrails first, and then the plane.

This is more what it looked like out the window.  It stayed with us a minute or so.  Then we banked again and then the other plane seemed to fall back.













You can see the contrail above our engine and the plane itself is almost in the middle.  Click the picture to see it much clearer. 

Waiting to take off in rainy LA

After a week of sunny warm days in LA, it was raining Friday when we left.  But they need whatever water they can get down there.  Seems we left when it started raining in October too.










Shortly after we had flown alongside the other jet, the clouds started to break up and we had some spectacular sunset views.






Clouds hanging over the water as we're getting near Prince William Sound.  










The setting sun makes big and stark shadows in the water. 

Shooting out of airliner windows offers challenges, like all the spots in the lower left not to mention the smudges that refract the light.  But have to just make do since the picture below is so spectacular.  I've done no photoshop clean up or enhancement  on any of these

Soon we were flying up Cook Inlet.  Here the ice picks up a golden glow from the sun.

We're getting close to the airport.  This is ice on Cook Inlet.

The nicks and scratches and water on the window are much less visible when the sun's not shining directly at you.  More ice patches just before we land.



I stuck this one in to contrast with the view of the airport in LA with the rain drops on the window.  It was 3:20 pm.

People in LA were asking if it's dark all the time now, so I thought it would be good to show that it isn't.  In LA now, the sun was setting around 4:30pm.  I do have to say that it gets light in LA around 6:30am.  In Anchorage on November 29  sunrise was 9:42 am for a total of 6 hours and 12 minutes from sunrise to sunset.  Officially, the sunset was 3:54 pm according to Time and Date. 

And the twilights are much longer this far north.  In LA the sun seemed to drop into the ocean pretty fast and we knew we didn't have much time to bike home before it was dark.  But here, the glow lasts. 

And on a sunny day like Friday, even after the sun is gone in town, it's still up there in the mountains as you can see in this ride home from the airport.  The camera says this was taken at 3:48 pm.


I keep thinking these flight pictures are going to get boring, but each trip the light is different and the views are different.  Saturday is the last LA-Anchorage non-stop flight of the year.  I'm not sure when they start again in 2014.  It sure makes the trip a lot faster.  Today it was 5 hours and 15 minutes.  

Oh, yeah, it's just below 0˚F (-18˚C) here. 

AIFF 2013: This Year's Logo Way Too Busy

 

I like the curve of the red line that lists the venues.  In fact I like individual parts.  I like the snowflake incorporated in the film reel.  I like the colors. I like the pieces of the snowflake in the bittersweet shimmer bar on the right. (I couldn't think of a name for the color so I looked it up.) But as a whole, this logo is way too busy for me. It's like three different logos squeezed into one. My eye is scattered into all different directions.  Lettering is horizontal, vertical, and curved.  And that photo is jarring; it doesn't fit in with the rest.  Why is the curve on the left cut off?  Why does it say Freeze Frame? It's the top phrase in the largest font. Yes, I know it's a film term, but what exactly does it mean here?   It already has the word 'freezing' in it. I'm sorry, this is my least favorite of all the festival logos.  

Tell me I'm wrong and I'm missing something here.

I originally had thought that maybe this was the logo for this year because it was on the AIFF website first:

 

But it's just the poster for the Family Fun Films.  This one is kind of cute and whimsical.  

I also see that Lion Ark is listed for the Family Fun Films.  I saw it LA, and I think it's a fine film, but there's some pretty graphic violence against animals shown.  That PG-13 rating has a reason.  

It does appear that Lion Ark shows after the Family Fun part of the Festival. Don't bring the younger kids to this one.  There's a lot all the kids would like about this, but parts that would be disturbing to the younger ones.  At least I hope that the kids aren't so used to violence that they wouldn't be disturbed. 

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks the logo is cumbersome.  

I found this edited version on the website of one of the films in competition.  They actually had to change the lettering (the actual logo has the date where it says Anchorage International Film Festival.) And they removed the reddish venue list that looped around on the black.

As I said, there are several logos in this logo and this one works for me - just needs a year and dates and it would be fine. 

And even Festival Genius used this portion of the logo for one of the films in the AIFF.



If different people independently find they have to edit the logo to fit, there's something wrong.  I hope the logo approvers take note for when they pick next year's logo. 

Tomás' Video

My friend Tomás, is a very talented cartoonist who lives in Spain.  When he sent me a link earlier this year to a music video he'd done the visual for, I was impressed.  Very original and imaginative.  I told him to submit it to the Anchorage International Film Festival.  He did.  But it didn't get accepted.  Perhaps they don't like music videos, but I don't think their rules say that.  I still think it's very original, well drawn, and very evocative.  (Whatever that means.)  You can see a snippet of it yourself.   And, of course, I'm looking forward to see all the animation at the festival that is better than this. 





Note: I'm not complaining that it didn't get in. Just stating facts. Each person has his own aesthetic preferences and the people who decided on the animated films made choices that were right for them. And I haven't yet seen the others. Tomás wrote recently that the trailer can now be posted. 

Thanksgiving - Conflicted Thoughts On A Conflicted Holiday

[Every post is a draft, but this one feels more drafty than others.  Go back to cooking.]


It's hard to fault the idea of a day for giving thanks.

But the quaint story about Pilgrims feasting and thanking the local indigenous people who saved them that first winter in Plymouth has been exposed for some time now.  The left out parts have been added:  the four hundred years of European immigrants' genocide of Native Americans through war, through appropriation of their land, and death marches to distant reservations, assimilation,  and destruction of their cultures and their resources,  leave a bitter taste with the Thanksgiving turkey.

The cultural movement that exposed the hypocrisy of our Thanksgiving holiday has also exposed other hypocrisies.  The people who benefited from and still cling to the cleansed view of history are finding little cover as the lies and distortions of how they benefited from the appropriation of the land and labor from those deemed as 'the other' are dissolving.  (My use of 'they' is questionable too.  My parents arrived on these shores in the 1930s, with very little.  But at the very least, their whiteness did give them privileges that people of other skin tones didn't get.  And I still get them. But I'm not clinging to the myths.)

I think today's sharp political, economic, and world view divide among Americans, is in part due to the emergence of these new political truths, which, themselves will be modified as time passes.  And I think fundamental differences in how we see the world have always existed, but those who were, in the past, able to keep their world view as the ruling view, are seeing that power slip away.  And they aren't taking it well.


The Constitution (the most basic contract that all Americans implicitly agree on) guarantees us the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  These seem to be the basic values and all the other guarantees are the means to these ends.

But those world views, biased by our different economic and political situations, interpret 'liberty' and 'pursuit of happiness' differently.  And we don't even agree on what life means, when it begins, and when it's morally ok to end it.  

Pursuit of Happiness

'Pursuit of happiness' does NOT mean, to many with wealth (from enough not to worry to so much it's disgusting), the right of others to tax their 'hard earned' money to help others to pursue happiness.  Even many of those whose 'hard earned' money was inherited believe this.  They seem to believe Dad worked hard, so I deserve it.  And Dad believes that he earned it with no help from anyone else.  It was self-made. 

The land taken from Native Americans was their due.  As was the labor taken from slaves.  These are the most stark examples, but there are countless ways that people have been able to get laws passed that benefited them over others - gave their industry reduced taxes or increased subsidies.  Privileged their children from better schools to how the law treated them.  The list goes on and on.  If the 'self-made men' don't acknowledge these benefits, who would expect them to acknowledge the benefits we all get?

Even those who got their money from using their brain to develop an idea and to turn it into a product or service and found a way to get it to market and to earn a good profit, still didn't do it alone, as Obama so infamously said.   They had the backing of a government whose criminal and justice systems kept others from stealing their ideas and profits.  Whose banking systems allowed them to raise, safely store, and exchange funds without the value of those funds fluctuating wildly.  They were able to hire employees who had a public education that enabled them to do the work needed.  Their country's economy was strong enough that people had enough money to buy their products and services.  Their raw materials got to their factories on publicly subsidized roads and railroads and their finished products got to consumers the same way.

Yes, there were often frustrating government regulations  - but at least they were written down and passed by an elected legislature and could be challenged in court.  They weren't arbitrary decisions made on the spot by corrupt officials leaving the entrepreneur to pay a bribe or get turned down, or worse.  That happens in many countries.  And part of the reason our laws are so complicated is that their entrepreneurial colleagues, rather than accept the spirit of the law, hire lawyers to find loopholes in the letter of the law.  This forces the legislature to write more and more laws in a never ending cycle to close loopholes and expand the volume of regulations. 

Anyone whose business was set to open in Damascus two years ago, or in Juarez, or in Madrid or Athens would appreciate the importance of all the amenities that a stable, reasonably honest government provides: the infrastructures that enable people to start a business and succeed.

And, of course, there is luck.  Being at the right place at the right time.  Other would-be entrepreneurs, just as smart, with equally good ideas and talent, don't succeed because they open their business just as the economy tanks or a tornado hits, a new health report scares customers from their product, or a competitor shows up at the same time with a slightly better product or a heftier marketing budget.  

But 'self-made' men (Ayn Rand's mythical heroes) don't see any of these factors that supported their success.   Nor do they see how the system is stacked against others.

Self-made men see those who are not 'successful' as lazy and unworthy.  "If I did it, anyone can."  They don't see their luck in having innate talents that were valued in their cultural setting and useful in their business, that family networks opened the right doors at the right time, that a teacher or friend gave them an important boost when they needed it.  They don't think how the risky actions they survived (a red light run, an insult made, a lawyer trusted) could have just as easily derailed their success.

On the other hand, there are those among the poor, who blame the rich for their situations and avoid the hard work of learning skills at school, of getting and keeping a job, of planning for the future.  They see the world as so stacked against them that that they don't even try.  Just like the wealthy who disdain them, they are at the mercy of genetic inheritance and environmental breaks.  And certainly their bad breaks diminish the odds of their succeeding compared to the folks who despise them as lazy and unmotivated.  And when they stand up and protest their miserable conditions, they are condemned as unpatriotic rioters. 


Happiness

And if we disagree on the 'pursuit' part, we also disagree on what the 'happiness' part means.  For some it is tied completely to monetary wealth - whether they have it or not.  For others, wealth is about relationships - family who stand by you, friends who celebrate your victories and console your losses with you.  With social wealth, there will almost always be enough to eat and pay the rent, however modest the food and shelter may be.

For me, economic wealth, without social wealth, is empty.  It's the lack of such social security that, I think, causes the 'self-made' heroes to blame poverty on the poor.  In the absence of social wealth, their economic wealth represents their success.  And social wealth is hard to achieve if one's network can't provide enough economic wealth to maintain a basic level of food and shelter and safety. 

The belief in the necessity of competition because we live in a zero-sum world, goes hand-in-hand with the self-made myth. "It's everyone for himself"  justifies the callousness to the plight of others.  But always fighting has to be tiring.  If Tony Soprano is at all realistic, it doesn't lead to happiness, only the trappings of success.

At the bottom of the economy, we find those among the hard core poor also living in a world of competition, of every-man-for-himself.   They'd understand the business leaders who are constantly raiding competitors and destroying other businesses.

OK, this is getting grim for Thanksgiving.  And straying from the Thanksgiving theme.  But I'm looking for why so many people see problems more than they see benefits.   As more of a thinker than a feeler, I believe that understanding reveals the possible paths to change.  I think that people who act more on emotion can change too, without consciously understanding why.  I think to the extent that they feel more love and more accepted and supported, they can let down their guard a bit.  And ultimately, I think 'thinkers' are ruled more by emotion than by rationality as well.

Remember, I started out saying these were more notes than a coherent post.

I like the idea of a day for giving thanks.  I seem to be able to uncouple Thanksgiving Day from the story of the Pilgrims and just make it a day of humility and appreciation for the things I have.  And I have a lot to be thankful for. 

So I'll stop here and give thanks for the time I get to spend with my mom now, time that seems to give us both some comfort.  I give thanks for my children's ability to negotiate the world's changing economic, social, and technological environments with reasonable success and with care for others who are not so successful at it.  I give thanks for being able to participate in the beginnings of my grand daughter's journey through life.  I give thanks for a wife who puts up with all I put her through.  And I give thanks that I live where I have the freedom to write what I think. 

I hope that everyone reading this far is able to find much to be thankful for too. 

An Egyptian Adventure at Venice Beach

Riding on the bus from LAX to my mom's, we meet a man who'd just opened a new shop on the Venice Beach boardwalk.  An Egyptian shop.  His name is Peter and he invites to come see the shop and have a cup of Egyptian tea. 

It was in the brick courtyard on the boardwalk that used to be Charlie Chaplin's house where he invited his friends to stay, he told us.  Hmmm, I know where the Frank Gehry house is, why have I never heard of the Charlie Chaplin house?  Since this is on my bike to the beach route, I said I'd try to come by.

So Monday morning, after riding down to the Venice pier on a great day for a bike ride, I stopped at the brick courtyard on the way home.

Here's what it looks like from the bike trail.  517 Ocean Front Walk.














And as you go into the courtyard, it looks like this.  It's cute and quaint, but apparently it was never Charlie Chaplin's.


I had looked it up and found a site called Westland that had a post titled:   Debunking Venice's Historic Myths.  

The writer says that he's:

 "operated a Venice history display and postcard stand along Venice's Ocean Front Walk since 1979."

He talks about the many stories about Venice Beach and then goes through many of them and tells us whether they are true or not.  In one section, he talks about whether celebrities really once lived somewhere.

"517 Ocean Front Walk - Charlie Chaplin - NO

The current owner named the commercial courtyard the Charlie Chaplin Courtyard under the mistaken belief that it was built by the silent movie star. The Sea Spray Apartments were built in 1922 as exclusive apartments."

No matter.  I find Peter and get introduced to his Egyptian partner Saber.  They met in Egypt.  And, I forgot to mention, when Peter got off the bus, he then got his bike off the rack, and rode home.  Maybe after setting up this shop he can't afford a car, but I'd like to think his use of public transportation and a bike is his environmental consciousness. 

Saber and Peter at their Egyptian Shop

I'm invited in and shown around.  Since I forgot my little pocket camera in Seattle, I've taken along my big new camera.  I tell them I'm a blogger and take pictures.

I'm a little disappointed with these pictures.  I think there is so much detail in each item that it all gets lost in a picture that tries to get too much.

There's lots and lots of items for sale.  I've never been to Egypt, but I'm guessing this looks a lot like the tourist shops around the big attractions in Egypt.  All the kinds of images of Egyptian art we know from museums, television shows, and books on ancient Egypt.

Peter gets me some tea. (I took some photoshop liberties with the background.)  I know in India that shop keepers often bring tea out for their customers.  And I think it's pretty common in the Middle East.  It's the first hook the salesman puts into his customer.  I should have had my first warnings.

Then Saber starts talking to me about my family.  He pulls out a scroll and says, "This is a family tree."  It's a painting of, apparently, a family.  He asks my name and gives me a chart of the Latin alphabet with their hieroglyphic equivalents.  S.  He points to the hieroglyphic on the chart and then writes it in marker on the scroll he's holding.

Uh oh.  Now what?  I think I'm caught on his line.  Soon he's written my family members' names all over the top and bottom borders.  I've lost round one, now it's just a question of how much I'm willing to pay for this.

Sure, this is a risk he's taking as a salesman, but I'm also in awe of his salesmanship.  He's a pro.  I've met these guys before - in Greece, in Israel, and particularly in India.  But this guy is really good.  He's written my family all over this painting - I've got to buy it, right?  What's he going to do with it if I don't?  That's confidence.

So he tells me that because I'm going to write a story about the shop he will let me pay whatever I want.  But before I offer $10, he takes me to a small painting on the wall and asks me, "Which one is bigger?"  My (see, I've already accepted that I'm buying it) painting is about three times the size.  The painting on the wall is priced at what I thought was $22.  He corrected me.  It was actually $220.  Well that's absurd.  I'm out for a Monday morning bike ride and I'm being hit up for something I don't even want for $220.  I tell him I'll pay $30.  He tells me that the paintings are done by poor Egyptian students and it takes about three weeks to make one like mine.

"My" Scroll Before He Wrote On It

$30 is still way more than I need to spend on this.  But it's a new store, some of the money will somehow, I rationalize, go back to people in Egypt, though I have no idea whether his family is connected to the military dictatorship, the Muslim brotherhood, or any of the other factions and who will get the money.

I have no cash.  They credit card reader on Peter's iPhone isn't working right so I end up at an ATM at a shop nearby.  When I get back Saber tells me to write a good story about the shop.  Will he like this?  If he doesn't will he reclaim his papyrus?

As I ride home with my new scroll, I'm asking myself:  Is it a dry erase pen he could just clean off if I didn't buy it?  (It turns out to be permanent ink.)  Is it really painted or just a print that costs them a dollar or two each, so that marking up one is worth it if they sell two out of every ten they mark?

I don't know.  I don't really care.  I'm not easily separated from my money by salesmen like this, but he was really good.

I did go online today to see how much Egyptian papyrus paintings cost.  At Pyramid Imports you can get an 8"x12" painting for from $13 to $14 reduced to $5.99-%6.99.  This is about the size of the one they had marked as $220.
A 13x17" painting sells for $14.99 reduced to from $6.99 to $7.99.
A 13x33" painting sells for $24.99, no reductions.

And all these prices will add shipping but no tea and no banter.   And the online sales folk don't have to pay rent for a highly trafficked tourist spot. 

Mine is 17.5" high and I'm guessing at least 36" wide. (It's all rolled up and well wrapped and I don't want to open and have to rewrap it.)  So I probably paid a fair price for it.  If I wanted it.

I first encountered serious bargaining in Greece as a college student.  Storekeepers would tell you how much you were robbing them and they would fight tooth and nail over a price.  But if you met the shopkeeper socially, he would treat you with utmost generosity.  A little later I was in the flea market in Rome and wanted to buy a pot of geraniums for the American family I was staying with.  Since it was a gift, I erased the chalked price on the flower pot, as I gave it to the salesperson, who promptly wrote a lower price on the pot.

As a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, I got much more skilled at the fine art of bargaining, though the Thais are much less serious about this than the Greeks or Indians.  And, I'll add now, Egyptians.

Saber was a pro.  It was like watching anyone really skilled at what he did.  Say, like watching a magician make the money in my pocket mysteriously jump to his pocket.  I knew he was doing it, yet I couldn't stop him. 

As regular readers know, I'm trying to get rid of things not buy new ones.  But now I have an Egyptian family painting with all the names of my immediate family members written on the border in hieroglyphics in felt pen.

So, I do recommend you at least stop in this shop if you're on the Boardwalk.   The address is 517 Ocean Front Walk shop number 16 in the courtyard.  The buildings were NOT built or owned by Charlie Chaplin, but it's a good possibility that he walked by them at some point.  It's south of Rose about four or five blocks. 

After thinking things over, I know that I would be much more interested in modern Egyptian art and posters that reflect what's happening in Egypt today.  These copies of ancient art are nice, but I'd rather see and buy art that connects me with today's Egyptians and their struggle for democracy. 

I'm guessing this shop is as close as many people will get to stepping into a tourist shop in Cairo.  Just check out the prices of Egyptian stuff online and don't pay anything close to the prices marked on the goods in the store.  Remember, don't ever feel like you've been cheap.  If they sell it to you, they're making money.  If your price is too low, they'll say no.  And if you are too easy, it's no fun for them.  The prices marked on things are just the beginning points of an elaborate bargaining process.  Your best weapon is knowing what these things go for and checking online makes that pretty easy. 

And these are, I'm convinced, two decent men trying to pay their way in life and support their families with this store.