Help Set The Future of 36th and New Seward Tonight

There's an open house on Monday, June 16, 2014, 4:30 – 7:30 PM with a presentation at 5:30 PM. Click here for more details!

I tried to get info on Friday at the DOT office near my house, but the project engineer there, Chong Kim, didn't know the details of the 36th/Seward project.  He did tell me about the vandalism on the bike trail under Seward Highway.

The maps are clear enough for me to figure out completely.   For instance, can westbound cars on 36th turn north in these plans?

There down to three options.  The links take you to bigger pdf maps.

 The one above is called the Half SPUI - Single Point Urban Interchange.  It looks like something happens sound of 36, but the north half, not so much.  Can you turn north from 36th?  You have to be able to, but how?  Not clear on these maps.

 This is the hybrid single point urban interchange.  (These are their terms, not mine.)This one has off-ramps in the middle, rather than the sides.  That will be pretty confusing for drivers at first.  I think this is their preferred model.

 And this is the Loop Ramp.  When I first saw this I thought it wiped out the BP Energy Center, which would never happen.  But looking more carefully, it doesn't, but the move the parking lot - taking out, it would seem,  some of the birch forest that makes this building so amazing.  And this looks a lot more expensive.  I don't think it's going to happen.

We just arrived at my mom's place in LA, so we'll miss this meeting.  So others have to go and report on this.  How will bikes and pedestrians fare in each option?  Is there a chance of leaving it as is?  I don't like the current intersection, but I want to be sure these are better before picking one. 

Some Not So Random Shots At Pride Fest

We didn't get there until after 3pm.  It was a gray day with some light drizzle, but that had ended by the time we got there.




We found ourselves standing next to the No on Prop 1 booth which was right next to the BP Booth.  That got me thinking about who else had booths.  Here are a few.







The Yes on 1 folks had a booth too, but by the time I got around to getting their picture it was almost 5pm and a lot of booths were already being dismantled.






US House candidate Forrest Dunbar was talking with the operations manager for the Alaska Workers Association, Barbara Sarantitis at the AWA booth.

AWA works with low-paid workers and their newsletter says

"AWA members cooperate year-round in organizing a self-help free-of charge Benefit Program that includes emergency food, cloting, preventive medical care, legal advice, non-emergency dental care . . ."

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America was there letting people know that LGBT folks were welcome at their church.  I didn't see Jim Minnery and his Love Your Gay Neighbor campaign.

Darrel Hess was staffing the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission and Ombudsman table.

The Anchorage International Film Festival had a booth to promoting the GayLa part of the festival.  Three AIFF heavy weights were at the booth when I got there:  Laura Moscatello, the general manager,  and board members Rich Curtner, and Dean Franklin,  who is also their web manager. 

The National Park Service was there as well. 

Bike Trail Slasher

Just last fall I wrote about the opening of the Campbell Creek bike trail under the Seward Highway.

Today, when I went to see Chong Kim, the Department of Transportation Project Engineer who was in charge of that project so I could ask questions about the three final options for 36th and Seward Highway, he was very upset because someone, over the winter, slashed the screens that are used to protect bikers and pedestrians from debris falling off the highway.  Other places these are also to keep snow plowed on the road above from hitting people on the trail.  Here, along Campbell Creek, they aren't allowed to plow snow into the creek, but I'm sure it happens once in a while.  Chong had worked hard to get screens that were both functional and decorative.   He's clearly upset about this.





Here are some pictures of what's happened.

It was a little hard taking pictures because the screens are see-through to a certain extent.  But on the near left side you can see a big rectangle cut out. 

This project goes under four different roads - two frontage roads and then the north and south parts of the highway.  So there are a bunch of screens and parts of most of them have been damaged.

Here's Chong Kim, the project manager on video.  I've talked to him about a number of projects over the last few years and he's always been very candid and passionate about the projects.  The kind of public administrator who gives this member of the public confidence.

These aren't cheap screens.  He said the fabric for all these screens cost $10,000.  The material, with the images of a skier, runner, and biker were specially ordered.

Chong was truly upset and trying to figure out how to fix these in a way that will still be attractive, but harder to destroy.

Another.



















Here they just slashed it.

And here they made a long narrow peek hole.

There's more, but I figure that's enough to get the idea across.




Of course, I wish I could talk with the person(s) who did this.  What was he thinking?  (Research seems to indicate it's almost always a male.)  I looked for interviews with vandals on google, but that got me to a talk with a rock group. 

A brief google search for research sort of confirmed this, but the research was old. It suggested that the need for

• love and security
• new experiences
• praise and recognition
• responsibility

were the basic causes for vandalism and violence.  From The Roots Of Vandalism and Violence:

Anger, hate and lack of concern for others are common reactions to being unloved and rejected.  Vandalism and violence are an expression of these feelings. 

I tend to believe this is the case, but while it said the findings were based on research, it didn't show the sources.

It's not a simple problem.  It's about getting parents training on how to raise their kids.  It's about schools making sure all kids' strengths can find expression and be rewarded.  It's about funding good pre-school programs and good day care.

It's about governments that put money into the education of young kids.  Our current legislature isn't going to decrease vandalism.  

Shredding Alaska Archives

There's something wrong about a company that shreds documents being called "Alaska Archives."

And since we only just learned recently that the Federal Archives' Alaska holding will be shipped from Alaska to Seattle,  it was particularly startling to see this truck next to me at a stop light.  I took a very fast picture before the light changed. 

[UPDATE June 16, 2014:  Pico Alaska links to a 49 Writers story on the impact of the archives moving to Seattle.

In fact, 49 Writers has a whole series on the Archives and how to use them.  I guess now it will start with a ticket to Seattle.]

China White Paper Changes Rules Of Hong Kong Basic Law

Police crackdowns on protesters make good television.  And even without video or photographs, the stories have concrete images that readers and listeners can quickly comprehend.

But technical wording changes in long 'white papers' are much harder for the news media to present.  Especially when the history behind the documents is unknown.

China has recently made  significant changes in the rules that govern Hong Kong - The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR.)  Rules that foreshadow crackdowns on the freedoms that Hong Kong residents enjoy that aren't shared in the rest of China.

In this post I'm going to

• give a very brief history of the Basic Law and the context of Hong Kong at the time based on my experiences living in Hong Kong when it was promulgated.
• offer an excerpt from the new white paper that gives a sense of the kind of language that is making the people of Hong Kong fearful.

Hong Kong 1989/90

On April 4, 1990, toward the end of our Fulbright year at the Chinese University of Hong Kong,  the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) was passed by the Third Session of the Seventh National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing.

There were still seven years to go before the UK would hand over Hong Kong to the Chinese.  It was less than year since Tiananmen and people in Hong Kong were worried that all the freedoms they had under the British would be swept away. (I'd note that compared to the US, their freedoms were modest already.)  People were seeking escape routes in case things got bad.  News stands were full of new magazines that highlighted countries where Hong Kong residents could apply for citizenship.  I remember big ads in the newspaper for citizenship in Botswana for people who could invest, if I recall right, US$250,000.  Vancouver was becoming known as Hongcouver because so many people were buying property and establishing residency there.

Although Hong Kong was a British colony and people had British passports, people had discovered that when they renewed their passports, the words 'right to abode' were no longer in them.  Britain was not prepared to have 5 million Hong Kong residents move to London.

The Basic Law offered Hong Kong special rights and freedoms that were not available to mainland Chinese.  At the time, Hong Kong was a wide open capitalist* city full of consumer goods and high rise buildings - all the glitter and free trade of the west.  In mainland China things were still grey from people's clothes to the most rudimentary shops with few goods for sale.  You'd tell the clerk what you wanted.  She'd write out a receipt which you took to the cashier.  When you paid, you were given a receipt to take back to the clerk who would give you your item.  Every hotel floor - and even the 'foreign expert housing' I stayed in on campus in when visiting Beijing - had young giggling girls who monitored guests as they came and went from their rooms.

China had to make some guarantees to the British that Hong Kong wasnt going to revert to the severe Mainland communist control and that the people of Hong Kong weren't going to lose all the freedom they had.  And Beijing, it seemed, didn't want to kill the golden goose that was bringing in so much foreign currency, much of it sending Chinese products to the rest of the world.   This was before Deng Xiaoping made his southern tour and declared there was a place for capitalism within China.  It was before Shanghai's transformation.

The answer was the document known as the Basic Law.   A key phrase in the Basic Law was "One country, two systems."  As Hong Kong reverted back to China after its 99 year lease to Great Britain, it would be allowed to maintain its own system.  The border from Mainland China into Hong Kong was heavily controlled.  That was the deal.  This last week, following the tens of thousands in Hong Kong who publicly commemorated Tiananmen's 25th anniversary, China released a white paper that appears to change the rules originally set out in the Basic Law.

One part of the Basic Law says that eventually the people of Hong Kong should be able to vote for the chief executive.  In 2007 the date for such elections was set as 2017.  It appears that many people in Hong Kong believe if such an election does take place, Beijing will limit candidates those who 'love China."

I haven't had a chance to read it all carefully.  But here's an excerpt that I found that seems to highlight the kinds of changes that are causing severe heartburn for people in Hong Kong right now.

"One country, two systems" is a holistic concept. The "one country" means that within the PRC, HKSAR is an inseparable part and a local administrative region directly under China's Central People's Government. As a unitary state, China's central government has comprehensive jurisdiction over all local administrative regions, including the HKSAR. The high degree of autonomy of HKSAR is not an inherent power, but one that comes solely from the authorization by the central leadership. The high degree of autonomy of the HKSAR is not full autonomy, nor a decentralized power. It is the power to run local affairs as authorized by the central leadership. The high degree of autonomy of HKSAR is subject to the level of the central leadership's authorization. There is no such thing called "residual power." With China's Constitution stipulating in clear-cut terms that the country follows a fundamental system of socialism, the basic system, core leadership and guiding thought of the "one country" have been explicitly provided for. The most important thing to do in upholding the "one country" principle is to maintain China's sovereignty, security and development interests, and respect the country's fundamental system and other systems and principles.

The whole text can be read at the South China Morning Post here.


Given that Hong Kong was a British colony, one might expect Great Britain to be concerned about changes in the agreement they signed when they handed over Hong Kong to China.  But I can't find any official reaction out of London.  That may not happen as China's premiere Li Keqiang is headed to London for significant trade talks next week.

Should anyone be surprised about this?  I think not.  I would guess that the Basic Law gave the British a way to say, as they left, that we've made sure you'll be ok, though they had nothing to do with writing it.  It was the Joint Declaration that they worked out with China as conditions for the handover.   The Basic Law always had enough ambiguity   that China would be able to have as much control as they needed.  I think while people knew this, they still held out hope that they'd keep their freedoms.


*The capitalist label is a little misleading.  Most Hong Kong workers lived in low rent government housing blocks and different business sectors had guaranteed seats in the Hong Kong government.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/11/world/asia/hong-kong-beijing-two-systems-paper/index.html 

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/729661-china-releases-white-paper-strengthening-authority-over-hong-kong/

 http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/protests-in-hk-after/1145922.htmlhttp://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/protests-in-hk-after/1145922.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/hongkong/10889465/Hong-Kong-must-accept-Beijings-control-Chinas-Communist-Party-warns.html

[I've tried reposting this because Feedburner is having trouble updating links on blogrolls.  There was a lot of extra coding in the HTML that apparently came in with the quotation.  I've eliminated it, but hope I didn't cut out any of the post at the same time. And I'm not sure this will fix the pinging problem. But I posted the bear warning and it had no problem. That's why I think it's something in the coding of this post. ]  [It worked.] 

Why l Live Here - Bears On Campus

I got this email that was sent out to the University of Alaska Anchorage community today.

Dear Anchorage Campus Community:

Yesterday afternoon we reported the presence of a black bear with two cubs near the Integrated Science Building. Today, June 12, the bear and her cubs are still on and around the UAA campus. Just a short time ago, they were spotted on the trail that runs beside Mosquito Lake between UAA and APU. Please continue to be aware of your surroundings as you walk around campus. If you see the bear and/or her cubs, please do not approach them.

UAA is opening and operating a normal schedule today, June 12.

Thank you.

  My wife was out for her walk and often walks where the bears were spotted in yesterday's email.  I called her and she had just walked the trail but saw no bears.  She decided to take a different route home.

Moose?  Yes, they're pretty common on campus.  Bears?  That's much rarer.  

Twofer: Racist Rant and Consequences of Leaving Kid Alone In Car

Two posts I saw the other day are still stuck in my head.  They also help illuminate the Bergdahl Rohrschach post I did the other day that suggested that many news events are like Rohrschach tests:  what people see in the event - particularly when details are scarce - reflects more about the commenter than about the event.

Here are two more events.

1.    From Salon.

 The day I left my son in the car

I made a split-second decision to run into the store. I had no idea it would consume the next years of my life

Author Kim Brooks recounts in great detail how a series of events  resulted in her running into the store to get one item while her four year old son waited in the car with an iPad.  She cracked the windows, it was 50˚F (10˚C) outside, and she put on the car alarm.  Unbeknownst (that is a strange word, isn't it?) to her, a stranger videotaped her and the kid and her return and called the police to report her.  Kim left before the cops arrived and flew home to another city, but when her husband picked her up at the airport he told her to call her mom, whom she'd been visiting and whose car she was in.

It's a long, long, long piece, but pretty gripping.  It raised a lot of issues, but to me (my Rohrschach) it was about common sense, child danger and independence, and about people judging others.  What I really wanted to know about and what wasn't covered, was the person who reported her.  What was that person's back story?  What caused that person to do what she did?  As one of the commenters at Salon wrote - a true good Samaritan would have stayed by the car and made sure the kid was ok.  Is this a person who is fixated on rules to the extent that she can't discriminate between child neglect and a quick and reasonable dash into the store?  Does she have her own tales of childhood neglect and abuse that justify this in her mind?  We only hear what happened from the view of the writer.  Perhaps there was more incriminating behavior she left out.  The whole Salon piece is here.

A gripping read for anyone, particularly a parent in today's overprotected world. (I write that as someone who walked about a mile to school alone starting in first grade.)  This also reminds me of a story of a close friend who was charged with shoplifting at Whole Foods and spent a year and a big chunk of money to get it dismissed.  This should have never happened; there were some cross-cultural miscues, but common sense did not prevail until the judge finally tossed it.  That's a story I haven't written about here.  Maybe one day I will.  It seems security guards at Whole Foods have done this more than once, for example here, 


2.  Black guy video tapes racist rant from his car.

I don't even feel like putting up the video, but here's the link.  It already has 9 million hits and 35,000 comments.  I bet someone could do a doctoral thesis just on the comments.  Two people see each other out of context of their whole lives.  I'm more interested in what was going on in her head. 

In a follow up on USA Today, she says she's working with her doctor and was changing medications and she apologized, though it seemed more something she was doing as therapy or on advice of an attorney than from her heart.  The guy who posted the video wrote:

"This happened to me last Friday May 30th 2014.  I'm more upset that it was done in front of her children.  They will have hate and have no idea where it came from."

I think the number of hits and comments speaks to how unusual it is to actually capture something like this on camera.   I think the man handled things pretty calmly, all things considered.  The woman was way out of normal range of behavior and I'd be inclined, at this point, to accept her explanation that she was off her meds.  Is this more about racism or more about mental health?  When someone is in her condition and really out of control, I suspect they use whatever they think will push the other person's buttons.  But I'd like to think that even if my brain's normal constraints stopped working, I wouldn't throw 'nigger' at anyone.  But those of us who are products of US culture have that word stashed away in our brains.  Who's to say it wouldn't slip out of any of our lips in a time of stress and mental unbalance?  We only know when we're tested.

Only the people who know her well know whether this was exceptional behavior. 

Lots to think about. 

Brat Wins In Virginia With 8% of Registered Voters. Will Cantor Pull A Murkowski?

[Nov. 7, 2014 - results of the general election here.]

By now, anyone reading this, unless they're in South Africa, knows that Republican House majority leader Eric Cantor lost his primary election Tuesday June 10 to David Brat. 

I'm writing this from Alaska and I don't know much about Cantor's district.  I did drive once from DC to Richmond which would have had me driving through a good part of the population center.  But I'm just gathering internet available data as I try to figure out what happened and what it might mean for his district in November and what it might mean here in Alaska. 

Here are the official election results from the Virginia State Government page:

As you can see, there were 65,008 votes cast.  (I don't know about absentee, but this is 100% of the votes cast Tuesday, apparently.)

So, what percent of registered voters in this district is that? 

From Virginia State Board of Elections website has a February 1, 2014 report on the number of registered voters in District 7.

Virginia District 7	2/1/2014
#of Precincts in District	234
# of Active Voters:	473,032
# of Inactive Voters	31,863
# of Total Voters	504,895

I'm sure that somewhere they have this information broken down by party, but I didn't find it and it's not important enough to spend too much time on.  And it was an open primary without much happening in the other races.   I'm just trying to get some ballpark idea of what happened.

If we take the active voters (473,032) in the district, then about  14% of the registered voters in the district participated.  And about 8% of the district's registered voters, voted for David Brat. 

For Cantor, the obvious deficiency was not getting his voters out.  Given the tone of the coverage of this race - "In an enormous political upset . . " for example - Cantor's supporters figured they didn't have to go to the polls.


Nathaniel Downes at Addicting Information attributes the loss to gerrymandering:

"The cause for this major upset boils down to the GOP’s overuse of gerrymandering. By carving out safe districts for their candidates in the general elections, the Republicans engineered a situation whereby fringe candidates within their own party now can cause primary challenges which can not only force out incumbents, it can enable for candidates who would do damage to the nation through their anti-government rhetoric to win seats in government."

The district did change in 2013 - since Cantor's last race - and it seems to have acquired a leg, so to speak, but probably overlaps the old district quite a bit.  But Downes' point is that it's more Republican than it was, not that there are different constituents.  Here are what I found as the old and new district borders:

District 7 Before 2013 Redistricting

Virginia District 7 after 2013

 

What about the Democrat?   They really weren't expecting to be players in November it seems.   The Downes (the guy at Addicting Info) writes:

"The original Democratic candidate for the district, Mike Dickenson failed to file the paperwork necessary to be on the ballot, although there has been some push for a write-in campaign. So, it looks like the field for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District is going to be dominated by the Tea Party and Libertarian candidates this year.
*UPDATE* It turns out that the Democratic Party of Virginia has pushed forward a candidate late yesterday, Jack Trammell. Like Dave Brat, he is a professor at Randolph-Macon College, and has not yet even gotten his campaign website up and running yet. For now it redirects to ActBlue, the Democratic PAC focused on internet fundraising."

Well, there's more than Democrats. Ballotopedia says:

"Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, will face Democrat Jack Trammell, who is also a Randolph-Macon professor, Libertarian James Carr and write-in candidate Mike Dickinson, who failed to earn the Democratic endorsement."

So, if all that is correct,

• the Republicans have a Tea-Party candidate, David Brat, who upset the House Republican Majority leader, Cantor 
• there's a Libertarian candidate, James Carr, who presumably would eat into Brat's votes
• a last minute Democrat, Jack Trammel, a fellow faculty member at Randolph-Macon College with David Brat which gives new meaning to "campus politics'
• a write-in candidate who failed to file as a Democrat, Mike Dickenson

Will Cantor Pull a Murkowski?

In Alaska, when Sen. Lisa Murkowski lost the primary in 2010 to Joe Miller, there was a little known Democrat on the ballot to oppose Miller.  Murkowski was able to rally the economic resources of the Alaska Native corporations, and sufficient Democrats voted for her on the grounds that Scott McAdams, the Democrat, couldn't win, and Murkowski was far better than Miller.  She also got lots of Republican votes though official national Republican money stuck with the primary winner.

I don't know enough about Virginia's district 7 to be able to have a clue what might happen if Cantor decided to fight for his seat back.  Given that Brat won with only 8% of the registered voters, and given the Murkowski precedent, I'm sure it will be tempting.


What Does This Mean For Alaska?

My guess is that Joe Miller is a happy man tonight and that his Tea Party supporters will be energized.  The thought that Brat was outspent by Cantor almost  50 - 1, will motivate supporters of a lot of financially marginal candidates.

But Virginia's 7th Congressional district is only about 100 miles long and not nearly as wide.  You can drive to any house in the district in a day at most.  Campaigning in Alaska is much more expensive.  We have state house districts bigger than the whole state of Virginia.   And many villages aren't on the road system.  Hell, our state capital isn't on the road system (but you can get there by ferry.)  Unless you have a pilot's license or a friend who does, getting around the state is very expensive.  

I suspect that the coalition that elected Murkowski will reelect Begich in the end, especially if Miller is the Republican candidate again.  The big national conservative money is pushing relatively recent Alaska Dan Sullivan in the US Senate race, but Begich is a tenacious and savvy campaigner. 

Wielechowski/French Challenge Governor; Plastic Gyre and Kobuk at Museum - Preview Post

I rode through the light drizzle this morning to check on the press conference being held by Rep. Bill Wielechowski and Sen. Hollis French challenging the governor to stand by his claims.  It was scheduled at the Legislative Information Office which doesn't have any walls at the moment.  I thought that would make an interesting backdrop and I needed to get on my bike and get some exercise.

In this post I'll just give a preview of future posts.

Here are the two legislators at their red oil barrel.  Basically, they said the governor has been pushing SB 21 as legislation that would increase oil production and state revenues compared to the previous tax structure ACES.

Sen. French and Rep. Wielechowski showed in the charts the governor's own agencies' predictions that production and revenue will go down.

They challenged the governor to call a legislative session to pass legislation that says, "If by 2018, SB 21 does not increase oil production by 1 barrel or increase revenue by $1, then ACES would be applied to oil companies retroactively."

I'll put up more details and some video later.

Since the rain had gotten a little more serious by the time I got out of the meeting, I decided to stop at the museum and give it a chance to lighten up a bit.  I'd been wanting to see the GYRE exhibit - about the plastic continents floating in the Pacific - anyway.

WOW!  Everyone should go.  I'll put up more, but here's sneak peek.

 Scientific information of the GYRE is there, but the key is that artists have been invited to do pieces to help bring this issue home.


This "Present From The Pacific"is part of a much bigger piece by Steve McPherson.  I chose the lego pieces to highlight because it  should resonate with most people.  These are items found in the sea or washed up on beaches, packaged into gifts.



This exhibit will be here for the summer - then it travels the world.  We're the first city to see it.  Take the kids.  Don't put it off until September, you might want to go back.

And, of course, this does relate to the press conference I'd just been at, because . . .


. . .well of course, the vast majority of today's plastic comes from petroleum.

I'll have to go back and see if the museum made that connection.  I didn't see it there.

Another exhibit I almost missed because it's all by itself on the top floor is a series of photos of the Kobuk sand dunes and some explanation of how scientists today are studying the dunes to get clues about the sand dunes of Mars.

Kobuk Sand Dunes from photo at Anchorage Museum

And then I got back on my bike in something a little more than a drizzle and made my way to the bike trail which is so incredibly beautiful now, even in the rain.  Flowing down the green trail on my bike seems to cleanse me of the detritus of civilization (like the plastic gyre).

Cartoon Imitating Life

Well, that's what the best cartoons do - make us see ourselves.  But this one is pretty specific.  Last month I posted about a visit to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.  In the post I wrote: 

"[Our friends] wanted to see the Ansel Adams exhibit.  When I asked one of the guards about the photography policy, he said, no photography in the photography exhibitions."

So I was doubly amused when I saw today's BLISS cartoon in the Anchorage Daily News this morning.

I had plenty of head shots in my Getty post so I didn't post my photo of the top of the Ansel Adams poster outside the gallery.  But here it is now.

Did Bliss visit the Getty too?  Or another Ansel Adams exhibit?

The Bainbridge Island Museum  didn't object to my camera at their Ansel Adams exhibit of his photos of the Japanese internment camp at Manzanar.   I posted a few here.

I hope Harry Bliss doesn't mind his cartoon here.  It is my photo of my local newspaper and I left it a little out of focus.  And I've linked to Bliss' website.   And he was making fun of the museum not allowing photos. And I made his exact punchline on my blog a couple of weeks ago. [I'm writing all this because I am aware that a cartoon is the equivalent of a whole article or a whole book and I generally don't post other people's cartoons without their permission.  This is more than just a repost of his cartoon.]

Maybe the Getty can buy a copy and put it up in their Ansel Adams exhibit gallery.