Proud Parents Push Daughter's Book

As I was perusing books at Powell's bookstore in Portland Sunday, a couple asked me if I had read Landfall by Ellen Urbani.  No, I hadn't.  It's very good I recall them saying.  Then they revealed it had been written by their daughter.  I asked if they were in it.  No, but they were in a previous one.  And this one is dedicated to them.  So I asked them if I could take a picture of them holding the book.  Here it is.

But, in answer to my question, they showed me the dedication:

"Along with virtually every other good thing in my life, this book is a gift from and for my mother, whom I adore.

And with her, my father, who each day gives everything he has for his family."

And clearly, Mom adores Ellen back.

The book takes place post Katrina.  As I looked for info about the book I found several sites saying it comes out August 29 this year, but it was already at Powell's - maybe because Portland is her home town.  Her first book, it turns out, was about her experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala 1991-1992,  I didn't mention to her parents that I was in Portland for my Peace Corps group's reunion.

 Other Books

Powell's is an enormous bookstore with room after room of books.  Here are a few books I looked at near the entrance.   The first three reflect my always burning curiosity about what makes people tick.

The Man In The Monster is a book about a journalist who befriends a serial killer on death row as she seeks to understand the man and his actions.  This gets directly to the basic theme of this blog - how do you know what you know?  Why is a man's life summed up by something he spent, perhaps three or four weeks on in total, rather than everything else he did?  Is it accurate to forever label him a murderer when, as the parts of this I scanned suggest, it was hard for the author to imagine the man she grew to know as the man who had killed?

Mark Ruthman, Chicago in a First Read review of the book writes:

"This is a very well-written and soul-searching peek at an unexpected relationship that develops between a brutal killer and a pacifist journalist. While this seems wildly improbable, the journalist has an amazing sense of compassion and the killer is well-educated and legitimately or convincingly remorseful and highly functioning and medicated by the time she meets him, so that she only catches glimpses of the "monster" that on a handful of occasions took control of him and caused him to stalk and sometimes rape and kill women and girls. As time develops and she sticks with him through his retrials and appeals and sentencing, all the while fervently trying to keep him from being executed, her compassion wins out and she has to be reminded by him of his horrific actions. She pieces together the story of his childhood and early relationships where parents, family, and others skewed his notions of how to treat other people in relationships and general. His family history suggests both nature and nurture went awry and contributed to his desires to commit horrible crimes. .  ."

There are a number of reviews of the book at the link.

Another book that tries to bridge communication among people by getting them to share their stories with each other.  This was particularly poignant on a weekend when we were meeting up with friends we'd share Peace Corps training and teaching in Thailand with and learned more of each others' stories since the last time we'd seen each other - in some cases 45 years ago. 






What's Your Story? was put together by Brandon Domon who sat in a public space and gave people a blank page to write their stories.  The rules are spelled out in the book, which, like the stories in it, is all handwritten.

Click to enlarge

 Straight To Hell is a disturbing book, by a young banker who describes his high flying days and ways.  If you don't already question the enormous salaries in banking, then this book should at least raise a few.  Like whether the market is the best way to determine salaries. The chapters I looked at were about his life in Hong Kong.

Again, a sharp contrast to the life I led for a year in Hong Kong teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

This book reminds me of pale version of John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman.   But it seems to focus more on the sensational than the structural forces that allow this to happen.  But both are exposés of corporate greed behind the facade of respectability. 







And finally, this last one combines two stories by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.

I was hoping you could read the staff recommendation at the bottom, but it's too small.  It basically says these two first books of Murakami have long been out of print in English, but now they are back, that they are coming of age stories for the characters, but also for Murakami.

I found this note on his beautiful website:

In 1978 Murakami was in the bleachers of Jingu Stadium watching a baseball game between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp when Dave Hilton, an American, came to bat. According to an oft-repeated story, in the instant that he hit a double, Murakami suddenly realized that he could write a novel. He went home and began writing that night.

A bookstore is a little like an airport - each gate offering you a different destination.  Except a bookstore offers an overwhelming number of options.  I bought two books.  Americanah,  a novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian-American.  The other is The Larouse Book of Bread, by Éric Kayser.  It's time to take my bread making to another level.  Can I bake 50 different kinds of bread in the next year?  That would be nearly one a week.  Maybe I should aim for 25.  After all, I may want to repeat some of the best ones. 

1965-1975

Portland had me back in 1966 through about 1970 as we reminisced about Peace Corps training and our time in Thailand together, plus what we've all been doing since.

So, it's appropriate, as we get back to Anchorage, I go back, tonight, to 1965-19 75 in Anchorage at Cyrano's for "From earthquake devastation to Boom Town in a madcap ten years!"  The email I got implies Steve Heimel and Johanna Eurich are involved in this week's production.

I bet it doesn't include my first visit to Anchorage in August 1967 as our Peace Corps group's last American stop was in Anchorage.  A bunch of us had found out that if you had a ticket from Chicago to Bangkok, you could stop on the West Coast free and we didn't plan to spend our last three days in DeKalb, Illinois (nothing against DeKalb, but we seen enough corn growing during our training and those on the West Coast wanted a stop home.)

Photo from Alaska Airlines

I don't remember the flight between LA and Seattle, but the Alaska Airlines plane I boarded in Seattle was all decked out as a Gay '90s saloon - flocked red wall paper, stewardesses (they were all women back then) in floor length red velvet skirts, and there was a piano on board with live music.  [Warning:  this weekend comparing memories reminded me that mine is selective, but this picture from a story about the promotion does give some validation to my brain cells.)

I got to Anchorage at 6 am and was picked up by Bob D., a high school friend, who was stationed at Elmendorf.   He dropped me back at the airport to catch the Northwest flight to Tokyo where we overnighted and bought cameras.  There was another stop in Hong Kong - just the airport this time - and then to Bangkok.  And yesterday I posted the group picture of us just after we arrived.

I remember how totally green Anchorage was and the beautiful mountains, and I recall being told "Here's the university" and seeing nothing but trees.  So when there was an opening at UAA when I was finishing my degree, I was delighted to get the offer and we drove up in 1977 - just outside tonight's decade.


So, 7pm at Cyrano's.  Tonight is the last night of this decade.

More information on all this is here.

Fiinding Flowers In Paper Napkins

A man with scraps of white paper and flower sculptures was sitting at the table J picked for our breakfast at Powell's bookstore.  We made eye contact and he slipped off his ear buds as I asked about the paper.  Napkins. His name is Arnold Drake World.  It's been twelve years figuring this all out.   It's all math now, Fibonacci sequences.



Here's Arnold Drake World's website.   He also seems to have gotten pretty good press coverage here in Portland.  For example this video at the Oregonian.

Aside from the cheerful twinkle in his eye, I was caught up by his seeing in paper napkins a world of sculpted flowers.  What latent worlds all around us are just waiting to be discovered and brought to life?

Peace Corps Reunion Portland

This is just a quick filler post.  My Peace Corps group is together for the second time since our official tour of duty ended in 1969 (though some of us stayed a third year and others lingered in the Peace Corps or in Thailand other capacities).  I did manage a break yesterday morning - the hotel has bikes for guests to use - and road along the river and some old routes from when we lived here in Portland in 2003. 


It took me a bit to figure out what Greenland was, but I stopped to snap a picture of Alaska's future.  I think Oregon's ahead on this because they've had more organized medical marijuana sales.

I really haven't had my camera out that much.  I've been enjoying reuniting with old friends, some whom I haven't seen in close to 50 years as well as meeting their equally interesting partners. 


And we're living out the reality of how unreliable memory is.  Some of us remember things that no one else does.  Others remember some parts of our training and others don't recall them at all. 






We talked in the bar, at breakfast, on the shuttle, at the Japanese garden.







Here's a sloppy group picture from our dinner Saturday night.  Some folks are totally recognizable after all these years and others not at all. 

There's a few more than half of the original group who went to Thailand to teach English together in 1967. 

And this morning a bike event is happening outside our hotel window.  I haven't had time to process all this.  Maybe there will be more later. 

Beatrice Does Leather - Your Imagination Is The Limit

As we pushed the stroller to the park yesterday we passed lots of little shops, but one particularly caught my eye.  It had stunning purses on beautiful stands.  Not many.  But exquisite.  I thought, "How much must each one cost to have a store here in San Francisco with just a small selection?"  So I went in to check.

A woman came out from the back, and I noticed there were people back there working.  They actually made the items (there was more than purses) right here.  We started talking about the shop and the process of making these purses.  (The description below is from both our talk and her brochure.)


Beatrice (or Bea) Amblard is from Paris.  She got an apprenticeship at Hermes after finishing a course at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Paris.  Hermes sent her to their new San Francisco boutique in 1987.  After 14 years at Hermes, she went on her own and started April In Paris.




She's also added a school to pass on the centuries old traditions of leather work that she has learned. I understood that she has students who have some difficulties (such as dyslexia) in regular school.  That makes perfect sense to me, because I believe we force everyone into an academic track even though some, perhaps many, would be much better off in some other track, where they use other than academic skills.

Each work is unique.  She said she interviews customers to find out about their lifestyle and how they would use the item that will be made.  Each item should fit perfectly into the customers' lives.  Bea was passionate about her art and what she does.




This doesn't come cheap, of course.  There are lots of hours put into each item.  And she uses only the best materials.  The red alligator purse I pointed to (in the photo above) was the most expensive (of course that was the one I picked) at $15,000.  A bit out of my range.  But San Francisco has lots of people with plenty of discretionary income.  (And lots with none as well.)  And there are customers coming from the April In Paris website as well:  And she sees these as pieces of art, not disposable consumer items.

Her trademark is a play on her name Bea.  And it's on all the pieces. 


I enjoyed talking to her and I only thought to pull out the video late in the process and the rest of my party had gone off to the park so I felt I needed to go.  But here's the short video I made.  While I'm a little amused by most of the cutesy, high end coffee shops and other pretension stores, I felt that this was the real thing.  This was someone maintaining an old craft, maintaining it at the level of an art form and was able to make a living doing it.


Do go visit the website.  There are lots of examples of the work.

And also visit the website for the school.  When she talked about passing on what she has learned to the next generation and preserving the art form that has survived centuries, I thought about the school in the temple in Luang Prabang where monks were taught the skills  [bottom of the post] that would allow them to maintain the art in the many temples in that ancient Lao capital.




'Your imagination is the limit . .'

So is your pocket book, which for most of us won't be made by Bea and her team. But it's ok.  People who buy these things are preserving an old art form. 

San Francisco Shots

There are lots of flowers and greens growing surrounded by cement.  Childhood memories always bring a smile when I see a blooming agapanthus.













This building commands attention.  It's an auto repair shop today.  Fortunately the address is prominent and I was able to find out more about this building.

From part of the description of this building at 3536 Sacramento in The Early Public Garages in San Francisco : 1906 - 1929 - An Architectural and Cultural History by Mark D. Kessler:

"As at Pine Street, all of the implied displacements - both vertical and horizontal - serve to highlight the most vacuous but important part of the facade  - the entrance.  Other facades of brick box garages celebrate entrance through the use of a singular, summary gesture - an arched portal beneath a gabled parapet.  By contrast, the designer of this facade pursues a fine-grained regulation of proportion, composition and motif in order to achieve this end.  This facade is remarkable for the aggregation of small-scale brick details into a unified composition that represents a simple cross-section.  The brick detailing is charming and varied, dense and delicate.  Small-paned windows, gauged brick lintels, corralled verticals, and basket-weave infill impart to this facade a surprisingly convincing residential character.  Located on a shopping street in a residential neighborhood, this building is contextual and striking."

And according to Yelp,  Leonard at Botta's auto shop's service is a good as the architecture.  This review reflects the positive experiences noted in all the other comments, though this one's prose is a little more creative:

"Got my bumper fixed here after a neighbor disregarded my car's personal space. Communication, scheduling, and drop off/pick up was easy and efficient. They communicated with my insurance (USAA) and the rental car place (Enterprise) and I didn't have to worry about a thing.

Picked it up and had a  beautiful fresh bumper (and a clean car- which was an awesome surprise). Unfortunately, another neighbor (I'm assuming it wasn't the same neighbor - that'd be really bad car-ma) must have gotten jealous, because the next morning, there were more scratches :( Ugh, my car is looking forward to moving out of the city.

Anyway, I let Leonard know and since he had leftover paint from my car that was still useable, he had me come by and he touched it up for free, which I REALLY appreciated. Would definitely recommend taking your car here. Great customer service."

The Civic Center BART station.

Jane cafe and bakery.

This was at a driveway at a fitness center.

The doors at the Central Seventh Day Adventist.

I'll do another post on April in Paris where I took this picture.  This is a preview.  Do you see the bee?

Oil Addiction Prevents Alaskan Politicians From Making Good Decisions

Image Screenshot from Video In 2010 Post

Most people don't change their habits unless they have to.

Alaska politicians (and the people who elect them) have been addicted to easy oil money for the past forty years.  The cozy relationship between some of our politicians (i.e.  ex-governor Parnell was a Conoco-Phillips lobbyist (literally, not just figuratively) and two sitting senators are also oil company employees and others get lots of support and advice from the industry) doesn't hurt either.

So our Republican dominated state government (for the last ten years or so) has spent that money like giddy lottery winners.  They didn't listen to warnings of eventual declines in oil revenues from ISER over the years.  It's true, though, that new technologies allowed for oil extraction longer than originally expected and increasing oil prices kept the revenues up even when production started dipping, letting politicians ignore the economists' warnings.

But the politicians in power positions made no serious plans to find alternative revenues or cut spending.  And because oil so dominated the economy, other traditional sources such as timber or tourism would never come close to what oil has brought in.  And as Republicans, they kept new taxes off the table.  And since none of them have the vision,  the guts, or the charisma to inspire the public to new thinking,  they've avoided the idea of tapping the Alaska Permanent Fund for what it was originally intended to do:  supplement the budget when the oil money runs out.  Nor have they been willing to broach reestablishing a state income tax.

And now the oil is hitting the fan.  The oil price decline plus Republican led tax giveaways to the oil companies have put our state budget into crisis.  Instead of planning for the day when oil revenues would no longer pay all the bills like rational, intelligent people do, they've continued to spend until their fingers come up empty when they stick their hands into the state coffers, at least the ones that don't have special locks on them like the Permanent Fund and budget reserve funds. 

OK, some will complain I'm being partisan here picking on Republicans and letting Democrats off the hook.  Democrats certainly have challenged the big tax breaks the Republican majority gave oil companies, but after redistricting, they no longer had the votes to block them.  And even the public was there, losing a ballot initiative to restore the tax by only 4% despite huge oil company spending on the election. And the Democrats have challenged big capital projects like the Susitna Dam and the Knik Arm bridge.  I don't know that Democrats have been particularly better about leading the way to use the Permanent Fund as a trust fund to help support our budget.

But the fact is that Republicans have been in power - both in the legislature and the governorship - and thus we got to our current dilemma on their watch.  So naming Republicans isn't partisanship, it's factual.

All these thoughts came pouring out of my head after reading an AP piece on the impacts of the low cost of energy  in today's ADN.  Oil and coal and natural gas company stock is down, down, down.  And Alaskan's have known for the last year or so that our stock is way down too.  But it didn't have to be if we had looked beyond the short term and prepared.  But we were drunk on oil money and we weren't forced to.


And just the other day we learned that Sen. Murkowski worked to get Alaska exempted from new EPA rules on energy companies that would require them to lower their carbon emissions. 

I get the short term impacts this will have on rural Alaska.  But the actions they would be forced to take would help wean them off the expensive fuels they've continually been using.  And there are Alaskan locations - like Kodiak and villages around the state - who are already breaking their addiction and finding alternative energy sources. Instead, most places, especially in the Capitol building in Juneau, have continued feeding their and our addiction. 

Some addicts just spiral down into self destruction.  Others break from their destructive ways and learn new, healthier habits.  It's what Alaskans need to do.  And we need politicians who have vision and can inspire Alaskans to break from the unsustainable easy way, to the harder but ultimately necessary path.

We are a state of welfare recipients, getting our state budget funded by oil taxes and the federal government, not to mention the actual individual cash Permanent Fund dividend payouts.  We need to think like the wealthy people we still are -  our Permanent Fund has $52 billion and the constitutional budget reserves has another $10 billion - and use the income of our wealth in a responsible way as others have proposed.  We need to supplement that with some sort of taxes - yes, pay our own way, not rely on others to subsidize our schools, state parks, roads, police, health care.  Let's start being healthy, responsible adults. 

How Can People Pay For A Digiplayer When This Show Is Free Out The Window?

Early morning water colors.

Just across the arm to the mudflats of Matsu.  A little after 6 am.

Knik Arm.  We took off about 6:05am, this was maybe ten minutes later.  The official sunrise in Anchorage for today was 5:40am, but with the mountains blocking the sun, it takes a little longer in the valleys.

It was a little misty over the mountains as we flew over.

And then there were clearer areas like over this glacier.

There was thick cloud cover over Prince William Sound.  It was so tight and so low, it almost looked like carpet.  I wondered whether there was any space between the cloud bottoms and the land.

And there were similar conditions in Washington state (this was approximately where the Olympic National Park might be) as we headed for the Portland airport.

Keep Moving

Fish was a big topic this week as we had house guests up here to do video of a Homer based village fish processing organization. 






Now we're back at the airport headed out for my son's birthday and then my Peace Corps group's reunion in Portland over the weekend.  I can't remember how long it's been since we got together last. 

The upside of 6am flights is seeing Anchorage early as it's getting light.  It almost seems like our house sitter belongs in the house and we are the house sitters when we're here.  But after the next few trips south to settle my mom's stuff, I think our hectic pace will slow down. 

"Fewer than 400 families are responsible for almost half the money raised in the 2016 presidential campaign, . .

. . . a concentration of political donors that is unprecedented in the modern era."


In case you missed that sentence in a New York Times article by Nicholas Confessore, Sarah Cohen, and Karen Yourish, which was republished in lots of other papers including yesterdays Alaska Dispatch, you should go back and read it and the article.

This money is going to be used for marketing research and advertising to try to convince enough voters to support specific candidates, mostly Republicans.  And advertising, done well, works.

If you don't believe it, consider these 36 companies that Business Insider reported spent a billion or more dollars in 2011 on advertising.  They believe that marketing works and the fact that you know their names and use their products proves it.  Before going down to the list,  make your own list of ten companies you think will be on that list.

Really.  Stop reading.  Get a pen and paper or a blank page on your computer and write ten company names that you think spent $1 billion or more on advertising in 2011.  The list is at the bottom of this post.  

Ok, now you can keep reading. 


I'm sure you know almost all their names.  There might be a few you don't because their advertising doesn't go for their corporate name, but for products produced by companies they own.  Like Geico or Colgate.

But it's not hopeless.  Awareness of where the money is coming from helps people understand the motivation behind the advertising.  And if 400 families can raise so much money, think what 50 million families can raise, even if their net worth is 1/1000 of the net worth of the 400.  And then there are the folks at Move To Amend, who are working on a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that made all this money channeling into elections possible.  They want

"to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights."

It's not hopeless.  The Jews escaped from the Pharaoh, the Soviet Union fell, colonial countries around the world gained their freedom.  In the US, our fight is relatively easy.  We have access to information, we aren't downtrodden the way other people are and have been, we generally don't get sent to prison for speaking out. 

We just have to stop being distracted by all the drivel this nearly $60 billion a year in advertising sends our way (the tv shows as well as the ads themselves), and pay more attention to what's really important:  family, friends, and keeping democracy from being dismantled.

Here's the list:
(And, also, is the list of about 65 people (mostly) who have donated $1 million or more to the 2016 campaign from the NY Times article.  Knowledge is power.) 

From Business Insider List of Companies that Spent $1 Billion or More in US on Advertising 2011
36. Apple	$1 billion
35, General Mills	$1.002 billion
34. Google	$1.005 billion
33. Microsoft Corp	$1.033 billion
32. Sony Corp	$1.041 billion
31. Capital One Financial Corp	$1.043 billion
30. Viacom	$1.06 billion
29. Kohl's Corp	$1.12 billion
28. Honda Motor Co	$1.14 billion
27. J.C. Penney	$1.16 billion
26. News Corp	$1.27 billion
25. Unilever	$1.3 billion
24. McDonald's Corp	$1.37 billion
23. Berkshire Hathaway	$1.39 billion
22. Sprint Nextel Corp	$1.4 billion
21. Anheuser-Busch InBev	$1.42 billion
20. Macy's	$1.51 billion
19. Target	$1.62 billion
18. Sears	$1.69 billion
17. Bank of America Corp	$1.7 billion
16. Toyota Motor Corp	$1.73 billion
15. Fiat (Chrysler Group)	$1.770.9 billion
14. Walmart Stores	$1.89 billion
13. Johnson & Johnson	$1.94 billion
12. Time Warner	$2.051 billion
11. Pfizer	$2.072 billion
10. Walt Disney Co	$2.112 billion
9. L'Oréal	$2.124 billion
8. American Express Co	$2.125 billion
7. Ford Motor Co	$2.14 billion
6. JPMorgan Chase & Co	$2.35 billion
5. AT&T	$2.36 billion
4. Comcast Corp	$2.47 billion
3. Verizon Communications	$2.52 billion
2. General Motors Co	$3.1 billion
1. Procter & Gamble Co	$4.9 billion