Sunshine In The Rain

I went out onto the deck to enjoy how green and wet it is here in Anchorage.  The dahlia was providing it's own sun power in the rain. 














We left a hot and muggy LA last night and followed the northern glow all the way home dropping into the clouds and rain for what seemed a long time before landing.  My guess was that we had maybe 30 seconds from when I could see the ground until the wheels touched down on the runway. 





This picture on the right was looking out the window at the horizontal rain lit up by the plane's lights.  The camera's take on this is different from my eyes' take. 

The airport was jammed at midnight when we arrived.  It was hard to get through the crowd to the steps down to baggage and all three lanes were full of cars picking people up outside of the baggage claim.  I do have to say that Alaska Airline's 20 minute baggage guarantee is great.  We were outside getting into the car less than 20 minutes after we got off the plane.  And that's been true in Anchorage and LA. 

It's nice to be back in some semblance of order - at least where I know where things go and I can find them easily.  As messy as our house is, compared to what we left in LA, it could be in a magazine article on orderly.  It helps having a house sitter you have to clean things up for. 

And the sweet peas I planted by seed in May, and were budding when we left for LA, are starting to bloom.  Nice to be home in the cool, low 60's, so nice after LA's unusually mugginess. 

Traces Of A Life

People's lives tend to be put in brackets of birth date to death date.  Inside those brackets we list basic facts like parents, spouses, kids, employment, and other key achievements or events.  But a life is made up of much more than that and I've been going through the traces of those other things in my mom's life.

There's so much I could write about but there are things my mom wouldn't want on the blog, so I'll just do a couple of examples.

The deer and the squirrel sat on my mom's night stand when I was a little kid and probably longer.  I don't know when they got put away.  I'd forgotten all about them until I found them wrapped up in the back of a drawer.  They're small.  The squirrel could sit on a quarter.  But they were part of our life together, a connection we had over these little animals. 

Another little piece is this temporary pass that was in my step-father's belongings.  He was a good friend of both my parents (and my father continued to have good relations with my mom and step-father after they divorced).  I'm not sure what meaning this particular pass had.  But it's interesting as a connection to the man and to a bit of documentation of history. 

Below is the back of the pass.

Here's part of Thailand Peace Corps Group 19's picture when we got to Thailand and just before we headed off to our assignments in 1967.  My mom wasn't particularly excited to see me off to Asia then, but she never let on until we talked about it much later. 

This is a shot from near the water at Venice beach the other evening.  We finally were able to get some time together, just sitting on the beach enjoying the surf.  There were more dolphins out there.  My mom and I also had a beach bond much of which developed at Venice beach.  She was still using her boogie board in her 70s.  And there are a couple still in the garage. 

And here's a picture she had in her room of my brother Glen, who died in a work accident at age 23.  That had a huge impact on my mom, but she kept working and helping others. but went to the cemetery every week to give him new flowers.  It's actually a picture I took and developed, including burning in the picture of him surfing in the background.  That was before photoshop when you could doctor pictures in the darkroom. 

There's also wedding pictures of my mom an dad, her wedding ring, and thousands of other little things. 

We Need An Emergency Attorney Number Like 911

Given the Sandra Blank incident I mentioned yesterday, it seems like it would be useful to have emergency attorneys available for people being pulled over by police.  We've all heard the adage "A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client."  But that's exactly what happens when a cop pulls you over.  For most of us, it's much easier to advocate for others than for ourselves.  We tend to be more emotional than an independent advocate.  And we don't know the law as well.

So, I propose an emergency number, like 911, that people could call when a cop pulls them over and they think it might go badly. 

Let me also say that there are cops and there are cops.  Many become police officers because they sincerely want to protect the public.  Even some of this group, unfortunately, have an image of the bad guy they are protecting the public from, that arises from the prejudicial stereotypes Americans have been saturated with by every part of our culture (media, schools, family, churches, courts).  Another group of cops became cops because they needed a uniform and a gun to make them feel important.  It's way past time for good cops to call out the bad ones, and also to expose the structural barriers to doing that.  Things like the police code of silence.

Meanwhile, here's something on your rights when stopped by the police. 

And an old post on  Our Rights To Film Cops In Public

By the way, California recently passed a SB411 specifically making it legal to photograph or record police in public if someone is where they are legally allowed to be.  From what I can tell, it's waiting for the governor's signature. 

Abuse Of Power Dream and Reality

I was standing next to a three foot glass cube in a museum when a man ordered me to do or not do something.  I looked at him and made some small protest comment.  Immediately, he said something like, "OK, you're out of here" and started to escort me to the exit.

That's when I woke up.  Upset.  WTF?  I wasn't doing anything and this jerk guard totally abused his power.   I tried to go back to sleep but I was agitated.

This time the guard grabbed my arm to escort me out.  I looked around to see if anyone was getting this on their phone. 

I'm on the edge of sleep and waking.  This time I demand his identification.  Who are you?  He refused to share his identification.  He wasn't wearing a badge or even a guard uniform.  He grabbed my arm.  I sat on the floor. 

The next time after I demanded his id and he refused - I said loudly to other people in the room, "Make a video."  I said I didn't have to listen to him because I didn't know who he was and he looked just like any museum visitor. 

I bobbed up above the dream surface, got some air, then slid back down under. 

This time I said forcefully, "I'm a museum investigator asked to find the guy who's been harassing museum guests."

This time I surfaced above the dream and stayed awake.  I described the dream to my wife.  Then I hit the snooze button, hoping Morning Edition would put me back to sleep.  But soon we were hearing my dream as a real-life nightmare.  It was bits and pieces of the tape of the Texas police officer harassing a black woman he'd pulled over for not signaling a lane change.  I have to say, as we've been driving around LA, that there are a lot of people who don't seem to know they have a turn signal.  These folks should be pulled over and shown the indicator and told to use it.  It should go on their record, so if they are seen without signaling again, they wouldn't get off so easily. 

But the cop in the tape is way over the line.  And then he tells the lady who is sitting in her car still, to put out the cigarette!  Even if I thought he might have been concerned about her health, I'd say he was way out of line.  That it sounded more like he just got off on his uniform and the ability to order people around. 

I was pissed when I woke up from my dream.  My pseudo guard was way out of line and had no business ordering me around.  But this cop was even worse.  I can imagine the woman, Sandra Bland, was thinking about the days not so long ago that blacks had to take crap from whites in the south and just bite their tongues. 

This Texas cop seems to be keeping the old days alive.  Oh, yeah, as most of you probably already know, the next day Sandra Bland was found dead in a jail cell she never should have been in.  Trying to keep one's cool when one is being humiliated for no reason is not easy.  And how long has this been going on - out of sight of most people - before anyone began taking the victims seriously.  Only the advent of people's video cameras and a platform to play them has caused enough people to seriously protest. 

Theodore Bikel Is Gone

When I got to Germany in 1964 for a year at the University of Göttingen, I had a number of record albums, including one with Guela Gill and Theodore Bikel.  During that year I became good friends with a married doctoral student and his wife who lived in the student housing I was assigned to.  When Jurgen heard the Bikel album he went crazy.  He loved it and we played it over and over again.  And, of course, I left the album with them when i went back home.

Years later when we visited Jurgen and Inge, Jurgen had gotten every album Bikel had ever put out and could sing all the songs - particularly those in Yiddish.

So, it is with a heavy heart that I learn about Bikel's death today.  But like my mom, he was in his 90s and has had a good life. 

Here's the only Youtube I could find of a song from my old album.  It's been forever since I heard this.  It's in Spanish, not Yiddish.



[sorry, this is another reposting because Feedburner didn't pick the original up]

LA In Disguise

LA is pretending to be a tropical city.  Grey cloud cover and humidity that's making the 76˚F feel like 90˚.  We got as much as we could out for garbage day, borrowing space in the neighbors' cans where we could.  But we haven't made a dent. 

But I needed to clear my head a bit so rode down to the beach before it either started raining again or got too hot. 

At my turn around point, I noticed black figures in the surf.  Just as I realized they were dolphins, not surfers, another guy stopped and speculated they might be orcas.  But if there were that many orcas (at least twenty scattered around) I think it would have been a much bigger deal.  And when he suggested the water was warmer than usual, I pointed out they like the waters of Alaska.  So, I'm saying dolphins, and this picture of Monterrey Bay dolphins supports my conclusion.

I was just going out for the exercise, so I had my pocket camera with me, not the good one that would have made those black dots individually distinguishable.  Clicking on the picture will help a bit.  You can see how grey a day it is. 




And there was also some excitement on Rose as a film crew was somehow doing its thing without really blocking traffic too much.  I promised myself I could remember the name I saw on some of the vehicles, but all I can remember is Down Under, which was the mnemonic that was going to help me remember.  It's two words, one of which is either Down or Under.  I'm guessing it was something with Under. 

LA Rain

We woke up this morning to the rumbling of thunder and the sound of rain.  Not measurable rain, but in this land of brown lawns, any rain is a big deal. 

Thunder is rumbling again now near 3pm and this time there was, and still is, real rain. 

Earlier I sat outside eating breakfast, watching the scattered raindrops darken the driveway, the dry in seconds.  Now they're sticking.  And the warm humidity of this morning has given way to a comfortable coolth. 


How serious is this drought?  From the July 15 California weekly drought update:

As a result of continuing drought conditions, emergency legislation was enacted in March 2015 that appropriated over $1 billion of additional funds for drought-related projects and activities.
The Administration’s May Revision proposal includes an additional $2.2 billion for programs that protect and expand local water supplies, improve water conservation, and provide immediate relief to impacted communities.

But before our Alaska majority legislators sigh in relief that they don't have this expenditure, they should think about what they're going to need to spend in climate change mitigation - from village relocation due to shore erosion to massive infrastructure reconstruction due to melting permafrost, just to name a couple of the more obvious effects.  This doesn't include the impact on fish and other species due to ocean acidification.  Oh, did I forget fighting forest fires?  The short term income we get from oil (well, now that the legislature has created massive tax credits, and the price of oil dropped, it isn't much) will be dwarfed by the costs of responding to the impacts of carbon caused climate change. 

Life After Death: Random LA Shots

My mom was 93 and we've been able to spend a lot of time with her over the last two years as she lost her mobility, but not her wit.  She never wanted to be 'kept alive' and she was able to stay in her home with the help of a full time caregiver and our monthly visits.  She flunked the hospice test twice - including last May.  But this time she qualified as her body was starting to shut down and she stopped eating and drinking.  And even though it's expected, and it's at the end of a long, interesting, and very productive life of service to others, it's still the final, irrevocable cutting of ties to the past.

So we're doing our best to enjoy the memories as we start cleaning up things she wouldn't let us throw away while she was alive.  I understand.  She knew where things were.  Really, she'd tell me exactly where to find things.  But there were also way too many old plastic containers, pens, old papers, dried pussy willows, and bars of soap.  And so now we're trying to take stock of what there is.  What needs to go, what's still good.  We're reading old letters and the deed to the house, finding little surprises everywhere.

The rest of this post is just some pictures I've taken as we run our errands around LA with a little bit of commentary.

I was coming back from a bike ride to the beach to clear my head.  I couldn't imagine how this car got squeezed between the wall and the light post.  Someone told me another car, removed already, had been speeding down Pacific.  I'm guessing it clipped the front of this one and pushed it into there.  It was only a little later that I realized that I'd been right there on my bike not more than 30 minutes before this happened on the way to the beach.  And people think riding in the street isn't safe.

This iris was blooming outside my mom's window the day she died.

I was so relieved to learn I could get gluten free vodka!

I remember being impressed with the irony of this sign when I was a young kid.  It's still up in the garage 50 some years later.

We had to go downtown to get death certificates.  It took less time to fill out the application, wait in the short line, and have them printed, than it did to listen to the whole taped message on the phone so I could talk to an actual person to see if they were ready to be picked up.  Phone service - moderate.  In person service - excellent.  LA County Health Department.

After passing a parking lot where you could park for $4 for the first ten minutes, finding a meter that cost only fifty cents per hour seemed like a deal.  Plus it was right next to Mexicali restaurant, a modest but delicious lunch spot.  Here's the array of salsas. 

Korea Times - click to read more clearly

Since things went so much faster than expected at the health department, we took a leisurely ride along Wilshire Blvd to the attorney's office.  We passed the old Ambassador Hotel where Robert Kennedy was shot.  It now has a Robert Kennedy park in front and what looked like a school where the hotel was.  Across the street was a sign for the old Brown Derby, but the derby shaped building was gone.  The magnificent art deco Bullocks Wilshire department store now houses Southewestern Law school.

Korea Town edges into Wilshire as well and this sign for the Korea Times seemed a good reminder of how cities evolve.  

Here's an unfinished metro station near the LA County Museum of Art, as the subway is finally reaching west after years of opposition from Beverly Hills folks who didn't want to give the riffraff an easy way to their neighborhoods. 

And here's a lantana that I grew up with and is still blooming after so long.  But I didn't know that it was poisonous.  From the Illinois Veterinarian Medicine Library:

"Lantana (yellow sage) is a native of tropical Americas and West Africa. In the northern states including Illinois, it is grown as a garden annual reaching 12-18 inches tall . In the south, from Florida to California, it grows as a perennial shrub of 3-6 feet tall. In the tropics, it may grow even taller. Leaves are opposite, ovate, 1-5 inches long and 1-2 inches wide, with very small rounded teeth, somewhat rough and hairy. Leaves are aromatic when crushed. Flowers are borne in dense clusters 1-2 inches across on the axils near the top of the stem. Each flower is tubular with 4 lobes flaring to about 1/4 inch, initially yellow or pink gradually changing to orange and deep red. Often, the different colored flowers are present on the same cluster. Fruit is fleshy, greenish-blue to black, and berry-like with each containing one seed."

I didn't know it was poisonous:

"Animals in pastures with sufficient forage will often avoid Lantana, perhaps because of its pungent aroma and taste, but animals unfamiliar to the plant may ingest enough to affect them. Fifty to ninety percent of animals newly exposed may be affected. Foliage and ripe berries contain the toxic substances with the toxins being in higher concentrations in the green berries. Species affected include cattle, sheep, horses, dogs, guinea pigs, and rabbits (Ross, Ivan A. Medicial plants of the world. Totowa, N.J.: Humana. 1999. p. 187.)"

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Alaska is now the 30th state to accept Medicaid expansion

An email this afternoon from my Alaska State Rep, Andy Josephson says:

"Today, Alaska Governor Bill Walker announced plans to take advantage of federal funding to expand eligibility for Medicaid in Alaska. This action is supported by the Alaska Independent Democratic Coalition, which made Medicaid expansion a priority during the First Session of the 29th Alaska Legislature. Medicaid expansion comes with tremendous benefits including over a billion dollars in new federal revenue over the next six year, the creation of 4,000 jobs, and $1.2 billion in additional wages and salaries. Studies suggest Medicaid expansion would result in $2.49 billion in increased economic activity across Alaska.

There are multiple legal opinions showing that the Governor has the authority to expand Medicaid. Medicaid expansion is supported by the public and, I believe, a majority of lawmakers but that did not sway the Majority leadership, which refused to allow an up or down vote on the matter. I believe the Governor’s decision is justified based on the merits of the argument and the inaction of the Alaska Legislature. . . ."

The Republican leadership in the House and Senate in Juneau refused to pass this and fortunately Walker has found a way to do this administratively.  They have been and still are wrong on so many issues:  climate change, medicaid expansion, oil taxes, big construction projects, passing budgets that ignored warnings about declining oil revenues year after year, etc, etc. etc.  Influence from major donors/lobbyists (oil and construction particularly) or national far right wing pressure like the Koch's ALEC keep them from getting it right, from making decisions that benefit Alaska in the long term.   One can make micro-level arguments for many of the things they did or didn't do, but the long term evolution of things has proved their blindness to the larger issues.  

I make that fairly sweeping statement in light of this example of the Alaska Republicans who spearheaded the move for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman and who fought the addition of lgbt folks to Anchorage's anti-discrimination ordinance:

"On Thursday, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission unanimously ruled that sexual orientation discrimination is already illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner reports, the EEOC's groundbreaking decision effectively declares that employment discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers is unlawful in all 50 states."  [From Slate]

I guess the Anchorage ordinance has been effectively amended, at least in employment.  

And in light of Obama's visit to the Federal Correctional Institution El Reno near Oklahoma City to highlight the horrendous outcomes of the simplistic War on Drugs and Three Strikes You're Out programs which gave non-violent drug offenders long prison sentences.  This resulted in (Obama's stats) the US, with 5% of the world's population having 25% of the world's prisoners.  In ripping apart families, huge costs of prisons, and so many lives wasted behind bars.  And the Right's solution of privatizing governmental functions including prisons, meant there was now a new industry with a vested interest in expanding the prison population.  This is also in light of the legalization of marijuana in a number of states - both medical marijuana in many states and recreational marijuana in a few. 

El Chapo Prison Break Background

I ran across a documentary on the Mexican drug trade a while back that will give you some background on El Chapo, who broke out of prison the other day. 

Here's the post with the video "Narco Bling" (at the bottom).  Well worth a look. 

Will try to get back to regular blogging soon. 

 [Trying again to get Feedburner to work.]