Sunday, January 04, 2015

Jonathan's Lemon Tree

We drove out to San Bernadino the other day to visit former Alaskans Jonathan and Mary Anderson.  Jonathan's now chair of the public administration department at Cal State San Bernadino.

Here's Jonathan picking us some lemons from his very loaded lemon tree.  Their house is on land that long ago was a lemon grove and the neighborhood has lots of citrus trees.






This is their orange tree.  And no, that isn't snow.  It's white rocks.  But they had had a freeze the night before, and Jonathan thought we needed to go for a drive up to the mountains - a quick half hour up to about 4500 feet above sea level.



















Southern California isn't always clear.  Sometimes it's just moisture from the ocean and other times it's smog.  It seemed to be a combination of both.











He found us some snow.














There wasn't much to see in the arboretum at this time.












Headed back home.

Saturday, January 03, 2015

Something To Chew On While Squeezed Into Coach When It's A Toasty 0˚ Out

A few things I ran into or got sent my way lately that are worth thinking about.


1. Why Airlines Want to Make You Suffer  BY 

"JetBlue distinguished itself by providing decent, fee-free service for everyone, an approach that seemed to be working: passengers like the airline,  and it made a  consistent profit. Wall Street analysts, however, accused JetBlue of being “overly brand-conscious and customer-focussed.” In November, the airline, under new management, announced that it would follow United, Delta, and the other major carriers by cramming more seats into economy, shrinking leg room, and charging a range of new fees for things like bags and WiFi."

Wu argues that it pays airlines to make you suffer so passengers have to pay to suffer less - buy food, buy an aisle seat, buy a digiplayer, etc.  With all the flying we've been doing to visit my mom, we've enjoyed the benefits of 'elite status' on Alaska Airlines.  But that will end eventually and we'll become cattle again.  And Alaskans don't really have the options like driving,  or taking  buses or trains.  A key point in the article is the lack of competition.  Probably the most evil aspect of all the airline charges for me is the change fee.  It's totally gouging the flier.  If you change online, it costs the airline nothing (or practically nothing.)  And since most flights are full anyway nowadays, changes won't cost them seats, especially if they graduate the fee from nothing to something the week before the flight.  And the anguish they cause people who want to change, but would take a big financial hit if they did, is real.  It's one of those "just because we can" fees.


2. S sent me this long Outdoors article on how fake meat is going to revolutionize eating, save energy, and reduce global warming.
"I dumped meat a few weeks ago, and it was not an easy breakup. Some of my most treasured moments have involved a deck, a beer, and a cheeseburger. But the more I learned, the more I understood that the relationship wasn’t good for either of us. A few things you should never do if you want to eat factory meat in unconflicted bliss: write a story on water scarcity in the American Southwest;  How much shit is in my hamburger?'; watch undercover video of a slaughterhouse in action; and read the 2009 Worldwatch Institute report 'Livestock and Climate Change." [UPDATED Jan 23, 2020:  Thanks to reader Lisa for alerting me that this link was no longer working and supplying another place to find the report.  Link fixed for now.]


It has cameo parts by Bill Gates and NY Times food writer, Mark Bittman.  It focuses on Beyond Meat where they are rethinking how to get the taste and texture of meat from plants.  As a mostly vegetarian who believes the meat industry is bad for animals and bad for the environment and for consumers' health, this all sounds like good news.  But there's still a part of me that knows that every solution has its own new problems. 



3.  Another unfortunate layout design in Alaska Dispatch News this week.   Do I even need to explain why I think this photo should not be next to this headline and story?  As a blogger I understand how easy it is to miss this sort of thing.  This is just friendly teasing.  But it's two like this in two months.  
*The screenshot is from the online version of the paper edition that you need a subscription.





4.  And the Los Angeles Times had a front page article on Anchorage's first year with no temperatures below zero degrees.  The title, "Temperatures in 2014 were too toasty for Alaska,"  reflects Outsiders' wit when it comes to Alaska.    Never mind that no one in Anchorage thinks of 0˚F as toasty, except maybe after two weeks of  -20˚, which hasn't happened in many, many years.  The point isn't that it's toasty, but that the warming temperatures, which anyone who's lived in Alaska for 20 years or more can attest to, is changing everything from when we plant in the spring, to the amount of ice we have to deal with on sidewalks and streets, and the wildlife we see, and the disappearing acts of nearby glaciers..  Throughout the state, it's melting permafrost, which, besides affecting roads and structures built on permafrost, also is beginning to release methane.On the positive side, that stereotypical impression keeps people from moving to Alaska.
It's also interesting that while the Alaska weather, cutesy headline and all, was on the front page, a more prosaically titled article, "California was Warmest in 2014" showed up on page 3 of the California section of the paper.  (Actually, the online version I linked to shows that the Times does like the word "Toasty" when talking about weather.)

Friday, January 02, 2015

Parking Ticket Follow Up

I wrote about a parking ticket I got Monday night.  I felt I had done what was reasonable to figure out the parking restrictions on this block with six parking places - all identical curb marking and parking meters- except it turned out the last two were passenger loading only.


We happened to be on that street tonight (Friday) coming home and I thought, let's see if people are parked there tonight.

Well, it's Friday night, and this is what it looked like:



The two parking places that are passenger loading, were clearly marked off with the valet parking sign at the point where the 5th parking space on the block begins.  I've circled the parking meters in yellow.  There's no way anyone would miss this.

Looking back from the parking meter where we parked (circled in yellow again), there's the umbrella and valet parking set up.


OK, with this extra signage, it's clear not to park there.  There were no signs on Monday.  A car was parked in the fifth space and we parked in the sixth space - the two metered spots starting where the valet parking sign is in the street to the umbrella and attendant stand.

So, from the restaurant's point of view - they only intended this for the weekends.  Yet the parking enforcement is ticketing people on other days of the week.  We were there Monday.  There was no valet parking then and no reason for people to avoid those parking spots.  Or any reasonable way to figure it out unless you were OCD or had been burned by the LA Parking Authority before.

OK, before someone writes to explain OCD and why I'm wrong, I'm using hyperbole.  OCD is usually for behaviors like washing hands, locking doors, turning off the stove, etc.  But if someone lived in LA and had to find a new parking place everyday, they too might keep checking to make sure there wasn't some sign on the block that had a special application to the space they were in, even though the signs they did check said it was ok to park.

[UPDATE Jan 28:  The resolution at  this post]

Thursday, January 01, 2015

Famous People Born 1915: It Was A Very Good Year 2

I'm going to send you to the original post here  that has video and pictures and a list of 37 folks who were born in 1915 and made names for themselves. I'm afraid the coding for the table was too big for Feedburner to send it to other blogrolls. I tried to make it simpler but after redoing the chart, I did something that screwed up all the formatting.


Image from here.



 This post gives me a chance to add a few pictures and a video that weren't in the original as a teaser.

This quote from Alan Watts (born Jan 6, 1915) seems an appropriate one for a post like this.












Image from Wouk website




And novelist Herman Wouk, born May 27, 1915 and one of three on the list who are still alive.














Or this short video of Anthony Quinn (born April 21, 1915) as Zorba.















Famous People Born In 1915 - It Was A Very Good Year

[1916 list is now up]

Billie Holiday was born 8 months before Frank Sinatra who was born a week before Edith Piaf.



It's always interesting to consider at all the folks who were born in the same year.  We don't normally think about famous people in terms of their birth year cohorts.    As kids, had they been in the same school, the months they were born in would have mattered quite a bit.  And it would be interesting to know which ones would have been friends.   How many actually got to meet each other?  How many were good friends?



Three of these folks born 100 years ago in 2015 appear to still be alive - Herman Wouk the novelist who wrote the WW II novel The Caine Mutiny, Nobel Prize winning Physicist Charles Townes who was part of the team that created laser beams, and banker David Rockefeller and could have their 100th birthdays in 2015.

[UPDATE Jan. 30, 2015:  Charles Townes died January 27, 2015]



Some of the best known are singers Frank Sinatra, Edith Piaf, and Billy Holiday.  Also best known are actors Orson Welles, Ingrid Bergman, and Anthony Quinn.  There's Moshe Dayan and guitarist Les Paul.





Sargent Shriver, as the first director of the Peace Corps, has special meaning for me.  And I actually got to meet Nobel Prize winning playwright Arthur Miller in the Anchorage museum when we were both waiting for our wives.  [UPDATE See Oct 17, 2015 post, Miller's 100th Birthday, with Alaska connections in Death of a Salesman.]

We've got some heavy thinkers like philosophers Roland Barthes and Thomas Merton.

*Picture sources at bottom of post


The women, not many, are all entertainers.

I cherry picked the names from NNDB which has a much longer list.  And most of the links go to NNDB.  I've sorted this table by the age they lived to.  It's always interesting (and a little creepy) to think about why some people live short lives and others long ones.  I know Thomas Merton was electrocuted in a hotel shower in Bangkok in 1968.  I was in Thailand at that time too, but didn't know anything about him then.




And there are some who are there simply because they were big names and their roles have had some influence on American culture like Barbara Billingsley -  June Cleaver, the mother on Leave It To Beaver - and Lorne Greene, the patriarch of Bonanza.

There are several Nobel Prize winners, no US presidents (but a Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart),  and at least one villain - Augusto Pinochet.


Edith Piaf

Dec 19 1915

Oct 11 1963

38
Fantastic French Singer
Thomas Merton Jan 31 1915 Dec 10 1968
43
Catholic Thinker
Billie Holiday Apr 7 1915 Jul 17 1959
44
Jazz Singer 
Philip L. Graham Jul 30 1915

Aug 3 1963

48
Washington Post publisher, 1947 - - 63
Billy Strayhorn Nov 29 1915

May 31 1967

51
Composer 
Take The A Train
Alan Watts Jan 6 1915

Nov 16 1973

58
Philosopher Zen
Bobby Hackett Jan 30 1915 Jun 7 1976
61
Jazz Musician
Zero Mostel Feb 28 1915 Sep 8 1977
62
Actor -
Fiddler on the Roof
Roland Barthes Nov 12, 1915 Mar 23  1980
64
Philosopher
Moshe Dayan

May 20 1915 Oct 16 1981
66
Israeli military leader, politician
Muddy Waters Apr 4 1915

Apr 30 1983

68
Amazing Blues Musician
Ingrid Bergman Aug 29 1915 Aug 29 1982
68
Actor
Potter Stewart Jan 23 1915 Dec 7 1985
70
US Supreme Court
Orson Welles May 6 1915

Oct 10 1985
70
Actor
Citizen Kane
Theodore H. White May 6 1915

May 15 1986
71
Historian
Robert Hofstadter Feb 5 1915 Nov 17 1990
75
Nobel Prize Physics
Robert Motherwell

Jan 24 1915 Jul 16 1991
76
Abstract Expressionist Painter
Lorne Greene Feb 12 1915

Sep 11 1987
77
Ben Cartwright on Bonanza
Fred Friendly Oct 30 1915 Mar 3 1998
82
President of CBS News, Journalist
Frank Sinatra Dec 12 1915 May 14 1998
82
The Boss
Ring Lardner, Jr. Aug 19 1915 Oct 31 2000
85
Playwright
Anthony Quinn Apr 21 1915

Jun 3 2001

86
Actor Zorba the Greek

John C. Lilly Jan 6 1915 Sep 30 2001

86
Human/dolphin communication
Abba Eban Feb 2 1915 Nov 17 2002
87
Foreign Minister of Israel
Alan Lomax Jan 30 1915 Jul 19 2002
87
Musicologist - Saved folksongs
Saul Bellow Jun 10 1915 Apr 5 2005
89
Nobel Prize Literature
Arthur Miller Oct 17 1915 Feb 2005
89
Playwright - Death of a Salesman
William Proxmire

Nov 11 1915

Dec 15 2005

90
US Senator Wisconsin
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf Sep 1915 Aug 2006
90
Opera Soprano
Augusto Pinochet

Nov 25 1915

Dec 2006
91
Chilean Dictator
Barbara Billingsley Dec 22 1915 Oct 16 2010
94
Leave It To Beaver’s Mother
Les Paul Jun 9 1915

Aug 13 2009

94
Electric guitar/multitrack recording pioneer
Paul Samuelson May 15 1915 Dec 13 2009
94
Nobel Prize Economics
Sargent Shriver Nov 9 1915

Jan 18 2011
95
1st Peace Corps Director
Charles H. Townes Jul 28 1915


99
Nobel Prize Phyics
Laser
David Rockefeller Jun 15 1915

99
Trilateral Commission Founder
Herman Wouk May 27 1915


99
Novelist
The Caine Mutiny



*Sources for photos in the image
Charles Townsend  (with James Gordon) http://aip.org/history/exhibits/laser/sections/themaser.html  (image enhanced)