Why I Live Here - Anchorage Folk Festival And The California Honeydrops

It's a five minute walk to the Wendy Williamson Auditorium.  The folk festival had concerts there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  And I'm guessing it's one of the last of the free concerts of this calibre in the US.  And the auditorium was completely full.

High Lonesome Sound

We saw several fine acts - Shirley Mae Springer-Staten's group made amazing sounds.  High Lonesome Sound also got the crowd riled up.


I was among those who came into the concerts with no awareness of who the California Honeydrops were.

California Honeydrops

But it took less than a minute to realize how good they were and what a fine voice the lead singer had and how much he was in control of it.  The MC told us that the Honeydrops don't do concerts, they do dance events (I can't remember the exact word he used) and right from the start there were people up and dancing.  It was an exhilarating concert.  I'm always hesitant to put up videos of music from my little camera because the sound is only an echo thrice removed of the original.  But it will give you a sense of the rocking scene Sunday night.   I guess it blended blues and jazz, but you can judge for yourself.  You can hear some of their music with much better audio at their website.







The festival continues through next weekend.  Check out the schedule here.

Saudis Condemn Charlie Hebdo Killings While They Flog Blogger Raif Badawi

The world is complex and we face plenty of challenges.  Unless we're willing to stop accepting simplistic (and often nationalistic) explanations of what's happening, things won't get better.  This post reflects a bit of that complexity by following a few threads from the coverage of the Paris killings at Charlie Hebdo.

From the Guardian:

Arab governments and Muslim leaders and organisations across the world have condemned the deadly attack in Paris, but it was praised by jihadi sympathisers who hailed it as “revenge” against those who had “insulted” the prophet Muhammad.
Saudi Arabia called it a “cowardly terrorist attack that was rejected by the true Islamic religion”. The Arab League and Egypt’s al-Azhar university – the leading theological institution in the Sunni Muslim world – also denounced the incident in which masked gunmen shouted “Allahu Akbar” – “god is great ” in Arabic.

Screenshot from Australian News  with text added

Meanwhile, a Saudi blogger is being flogged as part of his sentence.  His crime?  News.com.au reports (part of Murdoch's News Corp):

His brutal punishment follows his arrest in 2012 after he created an online forum that his wife insists was meant to encourage discussion about faith. Following his arrest, his wife and children Najwa, Tirad and Myriyam left the kingdom for Canada.
Last year, Badawi was initially sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes in relation to the charges. But after an appeal, the judge stiffened the punishment.
The charges related to articles he wrote criticising religious authorities in Saudi Arabia, as well as pieces written by others that were published on his website.
According to Amnesty International, the prosecution had called for him to be tried for ‘apostasy’ (when a person abandons their religion), which carries the death sentence. As well as the weekly flogging, the 31-year-old’s sentence also includes a 10-year travel ban, and a ban on appearing on media outlets.

Here's a video that purports to be of the first public flogging of Badawi.  It's apparently done with a cellphone and I would imagine that the person who filmed it took considerable risk.




It's not easy to see what is happening.  At the end, it appeared to me that the strokes were more symbolic than serious.  But I don't have any personal experience with flogging.  I do know that sometimes what appears to be a slight impact can do serious damage.  But I looked up about how much damage flogging can cause.

 From a 2007 ABC News report:

". . . Floggings in Saudi Arabia typically take place Thursday nights outside of prisons or marketplaces. The accused is shackled and sometimes permitted to wear a single layer of clothing, like the popular Saudi tunic or dishdash.

This flogging clearly didn't take place at night, nor on Thursday.

Screenshots from YouTube video

A police officer administers the lashes with a bamboo whip about 7 feet long. Under his arm, the officer will typically hold a copy of the Koran in order to regulate the power with which he can whip the accused.

It's hard to know whether this is bamboo or something else.  It's clearly not 7 feet long and it appears the flogger does not have a Quran under his arm.  Here are some screenshots from the video.  I tried to get shots that would show the Koran if he had one.  The bottom picture shows his arm out from his body so that a book would have dropped.  I did talk to an official for an Islamic country who has spent time in Saudi Arabia and he said he'd never heard of the Quran being used this way.

"In the sentence a judge will specify three things: One, the amount of lashes; two, whether the flogging will be held in the prison or publicly; and third, what portions are to be administered at one time," Wilcke said. "No more than 60 to 70 lashes are administered at any one time with usually one to two weeks between floggings. Women will get 10 to 30 lashings a week; a man might get 50 to 60 per week."
If a complete sentence was administered at once, the accused could potentially die. Doctors in Saudi Arabia examine prisoners before each flogging to determine if they are healthy enough to withstand the lashes."

It's not at all clear that the person who wrote this description of the rules was accurate or that if he is, where the rules apply, or who enforces them.  I include them and this caveat to remind people that things are more complicated than we assume at first blush, and that we can't rely on the information.

I would note that I began this post yesterday (Thursday) and today it is reported that the sentence  has been referred to the Saudi Supreme Court and this week's flogging was postponed for medical reasons.

The Bigger Context

This situation raises all sorts of ethical conflicts.  We understand that the Saudis are fighting ISIS so their condemnation of the shootings makes sense on that level.  This punishment falls short of a death penalty (though his wife fears the cumulative floggings could kill him).

Meanwhile the US has condemned Badawi's sentencing and punishment  but shortly after that the State Department, according to Amnesty International's Steve Hawkins,  was praising Secretary of State Kerry's relationship with King Abdullah (about 1:30 into audio.)


Our media has framed the Paris attacks as extremist terrorists attacking freedom of speech.  But others see it in a much larger context.  People like Chris Hedges speak bluntly about this:

We have engineered the rage of the dispossessed. The evil of predatory global capitalism and empire has spawned the evil of terrorism. And rather than understand the roots of that rage and attempt to ameliorate it, we have built sophisticated mechanisms of security and surveillance, passed laws that permit the targeted assassinations and torture of the weak, and amassed modern armies and the machines of industrial warfare to dominate the world by force. This is not about justice. It is not about the war on terror. It is not about liberty or democracy. It is not about the freedom of expression. It is about the mad scramble by the privileged to survive at the expense of the poor. And the poor know it.

These are fighting words to the 1% and those who swallow their propaganda.  Notice he didn't say 'capitalism' but rather 'predatory capitalism.'  If the media pays any attention at all to Hedges it mostly will be to label him (not what he says)  disloyal, communistic, anti-American, or traitorous.  If we start to seriously discuss Hedges' arguments (and Hedges is a former Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times  reporter who has spent years reporting from the Middle East, Central America, and the Balkans), lots of corporate friendly versions of the how the world works will start to unravel.

So, it's easy to criticize the Saudi royals, but as I recall, Saudi royals have a special relationship with the Bush family. They were the only people allowed to fly in the US immediately after the World Trade Center attacks.  Which links fairly smoothly to asking what exactly is the Saudi role in the plummeting price of oil?  Merco Press, with a general link to oilprice.com, speculates that the US and the Saudis are in this together to put pressure on Iran, Syria, and Russia.  Arthur Berman, in an interview at oilprce.com doesn't dismiss the political factors, but claims income is the basic Saudi driver.

I don't claim any inside information, except I do know that the world is more complicated than our media present it.  And that Americans (and probably many others) are content with simplistic explanations - so long as they imply, "So go on and don't change anything."  And coverage and reactions are selective.  Why so much more reaction to Charlie Hebdo where 12 were killed, while hundreds, perhaps thousands, are being killed by Boko Haram in Nigeria?   But with climate change and with growing economic inequality both inside the US and globally, those answers won't work for too long.

Do Rich People Deserve To Be Rich?

There are people who see the world as it is presented to us. And there are people who see past the
facade to what's really happening.

 Chris Hedges is one of those folks.  Another is Russell Brand.

Here he interviews George Monbiot about the facade - he calls it myth - that people get rich by working hard and poor by being lazy.

The two assert that it's this myth that helps keep the poor poor and the rich rich.  The start out with Self Attribution Theory (we attribute our good to our own efforts) and go on to look at examples of the wealthy perpetuating the myth, though they themselves were born to wealth.  Monbiot cites a study that says many corporate leaders score high on tests for psychopathy.  He goes on to say,

"If you're born poor and have psychopathic tendencies, you're quite likely to end up in prison.  If you're born rich you go to business school."  [I think he said 'business school' at the end.]

Brand does this with charm and wit and mockery of how most news hosts dress and act.


  

Did anyone watching this, even unconsciously, dismiss Brand because of how he is dressed and how he sits? I'm sure that he is intentionally making the point through his dress and posture that we have been conditioned to give more credence to men in suits who sit or stand up straight.  Even when they say totally stupid things, even outright lies.

[UPDATE 11:30am:  I've added a little to this post.  Nothing to change the meaning, just to supplement what I'd written about the video.]

323 798 8370 - Another Scam Phone Call

I don't know what this guy's angle is, but I've been getting this phone call several times a day for the last three days - including at 2 am this morning.  Fortunately, I was fast asleep.  I recall a dream where the phone was ringing vaguely, but I didn't wake up.



I did call the Anchorage Better Business Bureau and they knew about the Jamaican Lottery scam and one ring scam where people call back to see who called and get changed $19.95 for international call.

I'm checking the FCC website to see how to report this.  But I've got an appointment soon, so I'm just putting this up as a warning.



[Once again, feed burner failed to pick up this post and share it on blogrolls, so I'm reposting it and taking down the original. Sorry for those loyal readers who have already seen the original and thanks for your patience.][That didn't work. Experimenting by shortening the title.] [For those who care about such things, the feed burner worked when I shortened the title.  Was that why it worked?  Don't know.]

You Have A Great Idea That Will Save Many Lives - But No One Listens

This blog, deep down, is about how we know what we know.  And how people know things that are simply wrong and believe their wrongs deeply.  WHY?

NPR this morning had the story of Ignaz Semmelweis,  a Hungarian doctor in Vienna in 1846  who wondered why five times more women in one clinic got a fever and died after childbirth than in another clinic.

 In the deadlier clinic, the birthing mothers were treated by all male doctors and med students.  In the other clinic they were treated by female midwives.

The story emphasizes that doctors were just beginning to have science education and Semmelweis started gathering data.  He began with the death statistics that showed the big difference between the two clinics.  Why the difference?  What caused it? 

Hypothesis 1:
In the women run clinic, women birthed on their sides, not on their backs as they did in the male run clinic.  When they changed that in the doctors' clinic, it didn't have any effect. 

Hypothesis 2:
The priest who walked through the doctors' ward ringing a bell, terrified the women and caused them to get the fever.  But they still got fever when they changed the priests route and got rid of the bell.

Semmelweiss took a break.  When he came back a doctor had died after he did an autopsy.  From the NPR piece: 

"This often happened to the pathologists," Duffin says. "There was nothing new about the way he died. He pricked his finger while doing an autopsy on someone who had died from childbed fever." And then he got very sick himself and died."

Before this, they thought the fever was restricted to birthing women, but Semmelweiss realized the doctor died of the same things the women were dying.  A big revelation.

Semmelweiss then realized another difference between the two clinics:  the doctors were all doing autopsies, but the midwives weren't.  Was it something about the autopsies?

Hypothesis 3:

"So Semmelweis hypothesized that there were cadaverous particles, little pieces of corpse, that students were getting on their hands from the cadavers they dissected. And when they delivered the babies, these particles would get inside the women who would develop the disease and die.  If Semmelweis' hypothesis was correct, getting rid of those cadaverous particles should cut down on the death rate from childbed fever."

Semmelweis got the doctors to wash their hands and instruments with chlorine water and the deaths dropped dramatically.

Victory!?  Unfortunately, not.  As the piece continues:

"You'd think everyone would be thrilled. Semmelweis had solved the problem! But they weren't thrilled. For one thing, doctors were upset because Semmelweis' hypothesis made it look like they were the ones giving childbed fever to the women. And Semmelweis was not very tactful. He publicly berated people who disagreed with him and made some influential enemies. Eventually the doctors gave up the chlorine hand-washing, and Semmelweis — he lost his job."

This doesn't dissect the resistance too deeply, but gives us two factors:

1. ego - the doctors didn't like being seen as the cause of the problem
2. public relations - (and this one is also ego related)  Semmelweis didn't do a good job of marketing his finding

In fact, things didn't go well for Semmelweis after this.

Stories like this tend to make readers smug.  Oh this is terrible!  How could those doctors be so stupid and selfish?  

It makes listeners/readers feel so superior.  But my interest is in the truths all of us listening to this story are rejecting just as the doctors rejected the truth facing them.  Without introspection about what I should reevaluate in my own life, this story has no value.  In fact it could cause harm by making me think I'm superior to those doctors.  I'm not.  We're not.  We all reject inconvenient truths.  Some rejections are trivial.  Some mainly hurt ourselves.  Other rejected truths cause other people serious harm, even death.  

"BP president disputes governor's claims on oil tax"

That was yesterday's (Saturday) headline in the Alaska Dispatch.

I want to note it here, because under Sean Parnell, the oil companies never had to dispute anything with the governor.

I don't know yet that it means anything substantive, but it's refreshing.

There's been a lot of talk about Public Private Partnerships.  So much so that some people just say P3.

Governments have always bought goods and services from private companies.  Partnerships tend to go further and tend to mix governmental and private sector roles.  Theoretically, this can work out well.  Often though, this can be a ploy for the private sector to acquire government assets at low prices, chanting the mantra of the private sector being more efficient than the public sector, and then raising prices and profiteering from the arrangement.  The privatization of parking meters in Chicago seems to be a good example.

Government has a role to perform those functions that the private sector can't or won't perform.

When two people, two businesses, or a government and a business, decide to go into partnership, both sides need to vigorously guard their interests.  The term 'trust, but verify' has been used in diplomacy a lot lately, but it's also a good term for business relationships.

Unfortunately, corporations have a record of gaining leverage in their government partnerships through their support of candidates in elections.  Throughout the world, including the US, large corporations buy key decision makers who then give away government assets and interests.  I have no doubt that banker Frank Murkowski, as governor, was a willing partner with the oil companies and not a strong, cautious, demanding partner.  For whatever reasons, Sarah Palin was much more adversarial with the oil companies.  But her running mate Pat Parnell had been a Conoco -Philips attorney.  Instead of bargaining for the best deal for the state and people of Alaska, Parnell gave the oil companies what they wanted.  Whether he knew he was doing this or whether he has lived in the oil world so long he believed the narrative, I don't know.

But I do know that when businesses work with each other, it's like playing poker.  Each side wants to get the best deal it can from the other.  There's bluffing, there's careful calculation, there's distraction, and eventually there's an agreement, or not.  The positive spin of the word partnership may be the ideal, but competent government representatives know that the other side is out to get the best deal and if they can do it at the expense of the government they will.  Often, government partnerships happen when the private sector companies aren't willing to take the risk themselves and want the government to cover their losses.  The State of Alaska has a history of funding such risky operations - from dairy deals to barley to fish processing, just to name a few.  It was hard for legislators to say no when money was flooding into Juneau.

So this headline brings a little hope that our new governor is willing to stand up to the private sector.  It's only an early sign.  We have to see what the follow up is.  There will be a lot of pressure by the private sector to play the anti-government card.

The Dangerous Machine And Other Distractions

I'm trying to be faithful to my blog, and I have a list of unfinished posts, but I also have other distractions in my life.  As we left Seattle I stopped to empty my pockets right before going through security next to the "Dangerous Machine" credited to Cappy Thompson, Dick Weiss, and James Lobb of Pottery Northwest.

Dangerous Machine - Cappy Thompson, Dick Weiss, James Lobb 

Cappy Thompson created the stained glass window at the south end of Seatac and Dick Weiss has a big one at the north end.

Which leads to another project - organizing my photos so I can find old ones, because somewhere I have a picture of the north stained glass window.  Can you tell I liked the dangerous machine?  It enlarges a little bit if you click on it.  And I still have to learn photoshop's tricks for getting rid of the reflected lights.  The tips I've read are fairly tedious and time consuming.  The best one is use a polarized filter when you take the picture - but that's not an option (to my knowledge) with my Powershot.  I did play a little with the background.

Other Distractions

I'm preparing to teach the capstone class for the public administration MPA this spring.  It's the class where the students find organizations in the community who could use them on some sort of organizational/management analysis project that will allow them to apply the things they've learned in all their other classes.

I'm going through last year's blog posts to see if there is anything good enough to submit to the Alaska Press Club's contest.  Last year's submissions got lost and they sent me my application fee back.  I had good stuff in 2013 - I was still finishing up the redistricting board and I'd covered the Kulluk press conferences.  2014 doesn't have anything quite that substantial.

from the book

And I'm working on a book for my granddaughter's 2nd birthday.  That still has a ways to go and the birthday is coming up soon.


Today I was at the Citizens Climate Lobby meeting and we heard from Shell Oil's climate change advisor, David Hone, who called in from London. (Here's a link to his blog.)  He basically said that Shell knows that climate change is an issue facing earth and is already factoring in a carbon fee into their financial planning.  He said they know there will be action to limit carbon and they prefer a straightforward fee or a cap and trade (their preference) approach to regulation.  These approaches, he claimed, would be equitable for all carbon producers.  (I'm still thinking about that, since one of the maxims I've picked up in my life is that every change has winners and losers.  Is his claim limited enough so that 'carbon producers' would be the 'losers' and the winners would be in other sectors?  Still thinking that through.)  I felt good because the momentum for a carbon fee has grown hugely since I joined CCL a few years ago and CCL has been a key player in changing the political climate for a carbon fee.  One of the stats that I heard that struck me was that CCL local chapters now cover - and I can't find the exact number in my notes - 80 or 90 percent of congressional districts.  That's a key number because the whole strategy of CCL is to have members of congress lobbied by their own constituents.

There had been some protests, we were told on the conference call, to having the Shell guy there.  But the response was that we have to be willing to talk to everyone as human to human if we're going to get things done.  He's message, to a degree, overlaps ours.  But I also blogged the Kulluk fiasco last year and I know that the Shell spokespersons told us as little as they thought they could get away with and in some cases outright lied - such as whether they left Dutch Harbor when they did to avoid paying a tax.

Then I caught a ride over to the library to pick up a book I had on hold (No Land's Man by Aasif Mandvi).  Anchorage legislators were holding a community meeting in the Assembly chambers so I stuck my head in and listened to a teacher talk about the new teacher evaluation system ASD is using after opting out of No Child Left Behind.  She was an award winning teacher who got very emotional as she explained that the new system made it impossible for a teacher to be rated highly.  But she didn't go into enough detail for me, so I followed her out and asked her for more detail.  I've got that on video and so that makes one more post in my line up of unfinished posts.

And then I enjoyed the warm (for Anchorage) 38˚F (according to a bank message board) sunny weather as I walked home.

"Two things I’d never written: a love story and a science play. So I wrote THE ICE-BREAKER."

So writes playwright David Rambo on his website.  Two things I've blogged about are plays and climate change, but I've never written about them in the same post.  Rambo's notes go on:

"Following the success of Randall Arney’s production of GOD’S MAN IN TEXAS at the Geffen Playhouse, I was offered a commission from the Geffen and A.S.K. Theatre Projects. We kicked some ideas around, but nothing stuck – until I read a New Yorker article by the marvelous writer Elizabeth Kolbert about discovering the history of climate over millennia through drilling into the Greenland ice cap. I gave Randall the article with a note, “I think there’s a metaphor here I can’t resist.”
Thus began a year of research about climate science. I sought out geologists and climate specialists, read everything I could find on the Arctic and the logistics of ice core drilling. My initial sense was that the play should be intimate, about people more than science.
To let all the research settle in my mind, I gave myself a retreat: a drive through the southwest in the summer. My route was chased by wildfires, the desert sky turned purple and threatening with hailstorms, I went for days without having to speak to another human – it was an extraordinary couple of weeks.
The play took shape. I loved it, but the Geffen didn’t. Happily, The Magic Theatre in San Francisco did. Director Art Manke introduced it to them and we got a Sloan Foundation grant to help mount a premiere, along with the National New Plays Network. Art later staged it at The Laguna Playhouse, which was about as perfect a realization of the play as I could have hoped for.
THE ICE-BREAKER isn’t produced as much as it should be; maybe some theatres feel climate science is too controversial. That’s a shame; it’s a lovely, heartbreaking, thought-provoking visit with to people as strong and as vulnerable as the planet."

 He ends with this note:

THE ICE-BREAKER isn’t produced as much as it should be; maybe some theatres feel climate science is too controversial. That’s a shame; it’s a lovely, heartbreaking, thought-provoking visit with to people as strong and as vulnerable as the planet.

Well, it's not too controversial for Cyrano's and opening night is tomorrow  Friday at 7pm.
And the opening night proceeds go to Citizens Climate Lobby Anchorage chapter which I've written about now and then.  CCL is the most efficient and organized and no-nonsense group I've ever seen close up.

They will have their international call in meeting Saturday morning after the play at 8:30am at UAA Rasmusson Hall 220.

Quick Seattle Stop

Got to spend a couple of hours with my little shark on the way home.  Including a quick look around at the aquarium.  The octopus was putting on quite a show, I was fighting low light and reflections on the glass.

We left early from LA and it was clear until just before Seattle.  We were in the cloud until a couple of seconds before landing.


Not sure what promotion this plane was about.

Fare enforcement checked tickets and he spent a long time talking to the lady in the center who had just barely gotten on with her stroller and baby.  I was thinking, she was happy when she made the train, but maybe not so much now.  But they seemed to settle whatever it was amicably.  She did have to show id.  

By 3pm the fog was gone, the sky was blue, and the air was clean and not really cold.

So I was busy today and only have a short time to post a little bit before boarding.  But I did see the front page of the ADN and hope to comment on the Pierre McHugh's new job as well as the governor's telling Gasline Commissioners not to sign the non disclosure agreement.   

Inside The Disney

Sunday we went to a concert at the Disney Concert Hall.  I've loved this Frank Gehry building from the first time I saw it, but we'd never been to a concert there.  Here's an earlier post with more pictures of the exterior.








A Sunday afternoon concert also gave us an opportunity to try the
Expo line from Culver City to downtown for the first time too.








We quickly rode along Exposition past USC and the Coliseum and various museums at Exposition Park and were in downtown in less than 30 minutes.  Here's the Pico stop at the Staples Center.  We got out at the 7th St. station and walked around downtown.















I just liked this address.  They're big.  And 8's are  good luck in Hong Kong.

We walked by the LA Police Department - the sign says

#BLMLA Demands:

1.  The immediate firing of the the officers who killed Ezell Ford
2.  The Immediate filing of murder charges by DA Jackie Lacy

The curb says “Trees Matter - this concrete is illegal - Let us grow."

Eventually we were inside the Disney.  I loved the hall and the acoustics were great.  I wasn't expecting too much from the concert - a New Year's Concert Salute To Vienna - which seems now to be a syndicated package of concert entertainment, piggy backing off the live concerts from Vienna.  The program lists groups of singers, dancers, and conductor going to various US cities.  One group to Philadelphia, New York, New Brunswick, Scranton, and DC.  Another to Coral Springs, West Palm Beach, and Miami.  Yet another to Florida - Clearwater, For Myers, and Sarasota.  One to San Diego and LA.  And one concert in Austin.  But the music in the hall sounded good and I was particularly taken by the voice of baritone Thomas Weinhappel.

Here's the orchestra warming up before the concert.

Then we left and took the train back to Culver City and drove home.


Can you tell I'm rushed?  I've got a bunch of posts and other tasks open but not finished.  The cold LA weather has changed to hot again.  And we're getting ready to head home.  Lots to do.