Note To Carly Fiorina: Solving Nation's Problems Harder Than Rocket Science

From Friday's news:

"For GOP presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina, solving the nation’s biggest challenges is pretty simple — “it’s not rocket science,” as she likes to say."

I watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon in an elementary school classroom in Thailand.  It's one of the moments that moved me to the field of public administration.  I thought to myself, having lived in Thailand for two years by then and with the Vietnam war close enough that I could get the Armed Forces Network out of Saigon on my radio at night, "If humans can land on the moon, why can't we find ways to feed, house, and school  all the people in the world, and provide them basic health care?" 

As I pondered what I would do after Peace Corps, I came across public administration.  It seemed to be a field of study that might address that question - it was a generalist field that borrowed knowledge from other disciplines and applied that knowledge to real human situations.

Public administration seemed broad enough to let me pursue answers to other questions that Thailand raised. Things like: is there a way to combine the best  of the communal aspects of Thai society with the best of the individualistic parts of the US society?

And I was also curious about why the US free press that I grew up believing in was NOT reporting about the US planes that were flying over my house on their way to bomb Laos and North Vietnam.  If I knew it was happening, then the many journalists in Thailand and Vietnam surely knew.  The Laotians knew, the North Vietnamese knew, and no doubt the Chinese and Russians knew.  But officially it wasn't happening and the American public was not reading about the bombing in their newspapers or seeing it on the nightly news.   Why not?

I began to realize that getting people to the moon was relatively easy.  The rocket science part - doing the calculations and building the machines - was basically modeling and crunching numbers.  The hard part was getting people to do things, getting Congress to agree on funding and then coordinating folks scattered across the nation. 

Getting people to agree on systems that equitably distribute resources among the peoples of the world is far more difficult.  The political, social, economic, and cultural webs of humans are hard to weave but easy to rip apart. 

So, from my perspective, if Fiorina thinks handling government problems isn't rocket science, she's right.  But if she thinks, as this quote suggests, that it is easier than rocket science, she's dead wrong.  It's way harder.

In physics, the laws of nature  are stable.  What happened ten years ago will happen again tomorrow.  You can calculate the speed and direction of a rocket and of the moon so that you can land the one on the other.

In the social sciences, there are some observable principles, but the people we study in social science don't obey those laws as scrupulously as the moon obeys Newton's laws. 


It's often difficult to test theories because you can't find two comparable cities (or states or nations)  to use in experiments.  But if we could, another problem arises.  People are sentient and willful.  When they know what scientists think they will do, they can change their behavior - for their own good, like cutting down smoking, or to prove their independence, like not cutting down smoking.  

If government were as easy as Fiorina seems to think, millions of people wouldn't be in prison, wouldn't be homeless, wouldn't be addicted to drugs and alcohol, wouldn't be killing each other in our cities and in war zones.  We would have adjusted our carbon use years ago and avoided the impacts of climate change we are experiencing already.  Members of Congress (and leaders in other nations) would be heroes because they would have supported projects that resulted in prosperity, equity, and the successful pursuit of happiness for all people.


Note:  I'd like to say I went into public administration because getting to the moon was the easy task and because figuring out how to get human beings to collectively solve collective problems was the much harder challenge.  While that is partially true, it's also true that I don't really have much of an aptitude for physics (though both my kids have physics degrees) and I have much more of an aptitude for public administration. 

Chuitna River DNR Hearing - Two Different World Views Colliding

There's no wifi in the room so I'm doing this quick during a lunch break (early because they'd allocated more time than people used) but I have to get back from the Federal Building cafeteria where they do have wifi.

I've got lots to sort through.  Lots of learning as I listen to testimony that seems to be coming from inhabitants of totally different planets.  Their views on this are based on completely different world views and assumptions.  More later.  I'll get pics up for now.  Above you can see the DNR table that's listening and asking questions.

Across from them is the spot for people giving testimony.  This is Valerie Brown from Trustees for Alaska at the podium.

During a break - Dave Schade on the right standing up.

This is the Pac Rim attorney - Eric [Fjelstad].  I didn't catch his last name clear enough to try to write it here.

Gotta get back to the room.  There's a tunnel under the street so you don't have to go through security again.  More later. 

Dave Schade And The Decision Over Coal, Salmon, and the Middle Fork Tributary To The Chuinta River

Organizing a post is often a problem.   For example, I went to a reception at UAA for grad students in the College of Business and Public Policy (CBPP) yesterday and now I'm asking myself:

1.   Should this be one post (about the UAA reception)?
2.   Or several posts about the different aspects I found interesting?

The problems are exacerbated by how long it takes to upload to Youtube (a movie over a minute or two takes a while on my slow upload connection.)  This is all a preface to what's below. [As I'm about to post this, several hours after I began it, I realize this will only focus on one of the people I met yesterday and the hearing he will conduct tomorrow over conflicting mining and salmon claims in the Middle Fork tributary of the Chuitna River.]

The College of Business and Public Policy has a several masters degrees - public administration (MPA), business administration (MBA), and one in global supply chain management (MS) - and the reception was for new students to be able to meet other students, alumni, faculty, and staff.  I was invited as a faculty emeritus and now sometimes adjunct faculty member.  Lots of things caught my eye and ear, but one in particular, is very timely, so let me start [and finish] with that. 

Alaska Public Radio had a piece on the Chuitna dispute between salmon and coal back in June.  Basically, as I understand this, it's about whether Pacific Rim Coal's mine in the area will negatively impact the fish in the river and if so, whose legal claim to the water and resources is stronger.  Read the article linked above to see about the conflict between traditional and reserved water rights.  There are also a few comments by Dave Schade (pronounced Shady), Chief of Water Resources for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).  I only found that piece while writing this post.  But I did read Schade's name in the August 7, 2015 ADN article.

Dave's name jumped out at me because he was one of my students in the MPA program back in the early 1990s.  I hadn't seen him since then.  And it didn't occur to me that he'd be attending the grad student reception.  He was there at the invitation of his niece Kaitlin who is a student in the MPA program now.

I remember Dave as a strong and independent student.  By independent I mean he wasn't wedded to any particular ideology.  He was born and raised in Alaska and has a firm sense of himself.  As a student I recall he listened and read and thought and came to his own conclusion.  All he would say to folks last night about Friday's public hearing at the Federal Building Annex was that he's got criteria spelled out in the law and it's his job to try to match the facts to the criteria (see bottom of the post) and then make a decision, by the court mandated deadline of October 6.   Pretty much the kind of thing taught in the MPA program - that such decisions have to be based on the 'rule of law' -  meaning that decisions are based on the appropriate law, regulation, or professional standards that most closely govern the situation.  Not by personal preference or arbitrary whim.   I haven't followed the Chuitna River issue in detail, but there does seem to be a bit of room for interpretation, and even there Schade will, I'm sure, explain why he leans one way rather than another.

OK, as I'm writing this, it's clear that there's enough here to make this a post all by itself.  I've got the agenda for tomorrow's (Friday August 21, 2015) meeting from Alaska Business Monthly.

The current hearing agenda is as follows:
8:45 a.m. – 8:50 a.m.             Introduction of Hearing Officer and Panel
                                               Instructions regarding hearing process
8:55 a.m. – 10:25 a.m.            Chuitna Citizens Coalition Inc.
                                                Trustees for Alaska
10:35 a.m. – 11:35 a.m.          Pac Rim Coal LLP
12:25 p.m. – 12:55 p.m.         Cook Inlet Keeper
1:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.             Alaska Center for the Environment
1:35 p.m. – 2:05 p.m.             Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority
2:10 p.m. – 2:25 p.m.             Alaska Conservation Trust
2:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.             Alaska Miners Association
2:50 p.m. – 3:05 p.m.             Alaska Oil and Gas Association
3:10 p.m. – 3:25 p.m.             Council of Alaska Producers
3:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.             Howard Grey
3:50 p.m. – 4:05 p.m.              Resource Development Council
4:10 p.m. – 4:25 p.m.             Chuitna Citizen’s Coalition Inc. – Applicant’s final comments
4:25 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.             Hearing Officer’s Closing Comments

It will be held in the Anchorage Federal Building Annex (222 W. 8th) conference room.  

I tried to find the agenda on the Department of Natural Resources website to be sure it was accurate, but couldn't, so I called their information office, and they couldn't find it and asked if I wanted to talk to Dave Schade.  I smiled to myself and said, 'Sure."  Dave said the agenda was sent out to all the parties involved but not posted online.

Schade:  I'm hoping that we'll get some new information from the testimony.
Steve:  Are there any information holes you're specifically hoping to fill?
Schade:  Now you're asking for specific comments.
Steve:  No, not asking what the holes are, but just if there are any.  

So he offered to send me a copy of the letters he sent out to the parties.

First is the most recent letter which has the agenda (with breaks included) and goes down into administrative details about equipment presenters might need. 

Middle Creek Hearing Letter And Agenda - August 21, 2015

The June 23, 2015 letter narrows the scope of the testimony to objections that have already been made to
1.  to some part of the DNR analyses, and
2.  to granting the reservations

It also addresses the issue I raised above - about information holes DNR might want to fill.  Specifically it identifies questions DNR might ask:

• how particular objections relate specifically to each application under consideration
• what back up information supports particular objections
• what is the basis for any legal or constitutional argument being made
• what timelines or processes an objector might suggest as an alternative to a timeline or process objected to
• how DNR should consider particular objections in relation to the criteria set out in AS 46.15.080 (see bottom of the post)

Alaska Middle Creek Reservation of Water Objection Hearing Notice by Steve

I have to say that from what I can see in these letters, that Schade has spelled out the process in detail for participants and given a sense of the kind of questions they might be expected to respond to. 

They've had this information since June, giving them sufficient time to prepare.  And the things he's asking are what any MPA student is taught to ask for - supporting information for claims, alternatives to things they object to, and the legal basis for their claims.  I remember a student once in class, after I'd asked a question, got an answer, then followed the answer up with "Why?", saying, "I knew you were going to ask that." That 'why?' should be automatic to people doing this kind of work.   Dave needs all the supporting information he can get to be able to make his decision on this.

Since he mentions the specific criteria he's requred to use, I thought I should look them up and post them here. 

AS 46.15.080. Criteria For Issuance of Permit.

(a) The commissioner shall issue a permit if the commissioner finds that

(1) rights of a prior appropriator will not be unduly affected;

(2) the proposed means of diversion or construction are adequate;

(3) the proposed use of water is beneficial; and

(4) the proposed appropriation is in the public interest.

(b) In determining the public interest, the commissioner shall consider

(1) the benefit to the applicant resulting from the proposed appropriation;

(2) the effect of the economic activity resulting from the proposed appropriation;

(3) the effect on fish and game resources and on public recreational opportunities;

(4) the effect on public health;

(5) the effect of loss of alternate uses of water that might be made within a reasonable time if not precluded or hindered by the proposed appropriation;

(6) harm to other persons resulting from the proposed appropriation;

(7) the intent and ability of the applicant to complete the appropriation; and

(8) the effect upon access to navigable or public water.

 You can see there's a bit of room for interpretation - words like 'adequate' and 'beneficial.' 'Public interest' at least is spelled out.  A good public administrator will wrestle hard with the law and the facts trying to come up with the most defensible decision possible.  There are some close calls where both sides have strong claims and where two different hearing officers could come up with different, but justified, conclusions.  And then there are decisions where the answer if fairly clear cut. 

You can get more background information from Pacific Rim Coal , the coal mine developers, and from Inlet Keepers, a keep opponent of the mine.

You can also go to the hearing tomorrow.  Testimony is limited to those parties who have already been involved, but the public may attend and listen.

And one final comment.  The  Water Resource Section of the Division of Mining, Land & Water, of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, is just one of the government agencies that have some sort of jurisdiction over this project. 

State Legislature Sues Governor Over Medicaid Expansion

The ADN has the story.  Basically 

"a Republican-controlled House-Senate committee voted 10-1 to authorize spending up to $450,000 to hire a pair of law firms to work on a suit against the governor."

WHO VOTED HOW?

Voting in favor of hiring the two law firms were Republican Reps. 

Mike Chenault of Nikiski, 
Steve Thompson of Fairbanks, 
Craig Johnson and Charisse Millett of Anchorage and 
Mark Neuman of Big Lake, 

Democratic Rep. Bob Herron of Bethel  (member of the House Republican Majority)

Republican Sens. 
Anna MacKinnon of Eagle River, 
John Coghill of North Pole, 
Charlie Huggins of Wasilla and 
Kevin Meyer of Anchorage.


Voting against:

Democratic minority member, Juneau Rep. Sam Kito.

Absent: 

"Two Republican senators from coastal areas typically viewed as more moderate, Gary Stevens of Kodiak and Peter Micciche of Soldotna, were absent, as was Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, who belongs to the Senate’s Republican majority.

Rep. Mike Hawker, R-Anchorage, also missed the meeting. He was in Minnesota undergoing medical treatment but said by email he would have voted against hiring the law firms."

 THE LAW FIRMS TO BE HIRED

The DC Firm:  Bancroft PLLC   - This boutique DC firm, that epitomizes the DC revolving door.  From their own website:

"Bancroft PLLC was founded by former Assistant Attorney General Viet D. Dinh and now includes former Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, former Associate White House Counsel H. Christopher Bartolomucci, and other accomplished professionals focused on our clients’ most difficult and complex legal issues. Among our 12 lawyers are 6 U.S. Supreme Court clerkships, 12 U.S. Court of Appeals clerkships, and 5 Presidential appointments."

One of their top attorneys, Paul Clement, recently had his going hourly rate of $1,100 cut to $300:

"— Judge Mae D’Agostino of the Northern District of New York, giving the reasons for slashing Paul Clement’s customary $1,100 hourly rate to $300 per hour when awarding attorneys’ fees in Osterweil v. Bartlett, a Second Amendment case.

(For what it’s worth, $1,100 was Clement’s hourly rate in 2011, when he was began representing Osterweil. Clement’s current hourly rate is $1,350. Osterweil would’ve been getting a deal!)"

  

Another Bancroft attorney was denied his claim that he worked while driving to the office.

Obamacare is not a new topic for this company.  They represented the 26 states that went to the Supreme Court over  Obamacare in 2012.

Anchorage based firm:  Holmes, Weddle, and Barcott.



Who's Calling The Shots Here?

Not clear.  We know that the Koch supported Americans For Prosperity has been strongly opposed to Obamacare.  Presumably they are working with key members of the House and Senate Majorities on this.  But we shouldn't leap to conclusions.  Maybe others are involved too.   It would be interesting to learn who Meyers, Chenault, and the others talk to behind closed doors and what they talk about.

The members of the Majority seem to believe that they are immune to electoral removal.  Redistricting has given many of them comfortable seats.  But I don't suspect they realize how many people are affected by this who may well be motivated to vote in 2016.

Not only are they still dragging their feet on expanding Medicaid, but they've allocated up to $450,000 on this for their attorneys.  And the governor's office will probably have to spend just as much to defend his decision.  Sure is easy to spend other people's money, it seems.  The Republicans also spent millions of dollars over the years in unsuccessful lobbying efforts to open up ANWR.

Julian Bond In Anchorage

When I heard the news about the death of Julian Bond who'd started the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and been a Georgia state representative among many other things, I thought about the time I got to talk to him when he was here at the University of Alaska Anchorage.  I don't even remember what we chatted about, but it was an honor to have the chance to just be with him.  But then, given my recent experience at my Peace Corps reunion, I began to question my memory - did this really happen? 

Boxes

So I went on line to look up "Julian Bond at UAA."  And there it was - in the UAA Archives.  So I biked over to UAA to see what they actually had.  The first box had a stock pr photo that Bond must have sent in advance.  The second box had negatives of the event in one folder, and negatives with a proof sheet in the second folder. 

So here are some pictures from when he was here.  You can read the mainline obituaries and notices elsewhere - as in this New York Times article.  

   

 

click to enlarge and focus

 For this one I used Photoshop's inverse (under image) function to change it from negative to positive.

All these images are from:

UAA University Relations photographs, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage

There was no more information than than the date 1984 and Julian Bond written on the negative sleeve. 

There were lots and lots of other old photos in the same folders.  You can wander through the collection electronically at http://consortiumlibrary.org/archives/Collections.html

I was experimenting a bit trying to get decent images from the proofs.  I vaguely remembered there was a way to change pictures from negatives to positives in Photoshop and it was pretty easy.  As I mentioned above - just go to Images, then to Inverse. 

 

Clouds And Shadows And A Glory

One would think that pictures from the plane in an out of Anchorage would get old.   But even though I've lived here for almost 40 years now and I'm still amazed by how the mountain views change as the light and shadows change.  So I shouldn't be surprised by a seeing Cook Inlet differently as we flew into Anchorage Monday.

The battery on the bigger camera died as we got over Turnagain Arm, so these are from my little Powershot.    Below is the road into Girdwood and the mudflats.

As we flew in and out of the clouds, our shadow came and went, sometimes circled by a rainbow.  This actually has a name - a glory. - ( I needed to check on it before posting.)  According to Wikipedia:

"A glory is an optical phenomenon that resembles an iconic saint's halo about the shadow of the observer's head, caused by light of the Sun or (more rarely) the Moon interacting with the tiny water droplets that make up mist or clouds. The glory consists of one or more concentric, successively dimmer rings, each of which is red on the outside and bluish towards the centre. The effect is believed to happen due to classical wave tunneling, when light nearby a droplet tunnels through air inside the droplet and, in the case of a glory, is emitted backwards due to resonance effects.^[1]"

"The scientific explanation is still the subject of debates and research. In 1947, the Dutch astronomer Hendrik van de Hulst suggested that surface waves are involved. He speculated that the colored rings of the glory are caused by two-ray interference between "short" and "long" path surface waves—which are generated by light rays entering the droplets at diametrically opposite points (both rays suffer one internal reflection).^[3] A new theory by Brazilian physicist Herch Moysés Nussenzveig, however, suggests that the light energy beamed back by a glory originates mostly from classical wave tunneling, which is when light rays that missed a droplet can still transfer energy into it.^[1]"

After flying over south Anchorage, we veered west for a slow loop back to the runway.  Lots of cloud shadows on the water.

And then as we closed in on the runway, the light changed again. 

". . . editing the film to fit the story line." Or Why We're Seeing So Many Stories About White Cops Killing Black Men Now

Edward Jay Epstein's News From Nowhere was published in 1973.  In it he outlined how news at television networks got made.  It's a great book that looks at the structure of the networks and how that structure and the technical requirements at the time shaped what people saw each night as "the
news."

Despite its age and the many changes in video and in media delivery systems, it's still worth reading because of the organized insight he offers about news production (in the most literal sense.)

And this year, as stories about white police officers shooting unarmed black men started showing up almost weekly, I thought back to this book and how it explained that 'the news' is based on a pre-determined storyline.  Clearly, police harassment of African-Americans has been taking place for a long, long time.  The Phrase Finder traces the official media debut of the term "Driving While Black" to 1990.

"The term came to public view in the 1990s, although the reports of the police tactic date from long before that. In May 1990 The New York Times included a piece with this line:

'We get arrested for D.W.B... You know, driving while black.' "

I remember being at a conference in Florida back in the 1990's and asking a black professor who had been a classmate at USC about why he was dressed in a suit and tie when most of us were less formal.  He replied that his clothing was an attempt to mitigate problems when he was stopped by the police - particularly when in the South.  Wearing a suit and tie might increase the odds that the police would let him go without anything serious happening. 

Epstein has a section called "The Story Line" in Chapter 5:  The Resurrection of Reality.

"More than fifty years ago Walter Lippmann suggested that newspaper reporting was in large part a process of filling out an established 'repertory of stereotypes' with current news.  In a similar way, network news is involved with illustrating a limited repertory of story lines with appropriate pictures.  One NBC commentator, Sander Vanocur, observed that 'network news is a continuous loop:  there are only a limited number of plots - 'Black versus White,'  'War is Hell,' 'America is falling apart,' 'Man against the elements,' 'The Generation Gap,' etc. - which we seem to be constantly redoing with different casts of characters."  Many of the correspondents interviewed complained about the need to fit news developments into developed molds or formulas, and to order stories along predetermined lines;  at the same time, most accepted it as a practical necessity." [emphasis added.]

He  explains that, in part, this is due to having to coordinate so many different people - reporters, cameramen, sound men, writers, etc.  There needs to be some common idea of what the story will be.  It's necessary

"that there be a stable set of expectations of what constitutes a proper story.  Moreover, producers generally assume that a given audience will have certain preferences in terms of both the form and the content of news stories.  "Every program has certain requirements and guidelines for its filmed reports," an ABC executive explained.  "Eventually these might harden into formulas and clichéd plots, but when they fail to hold the audiences' attention, the producer or the program is usually changed."

So, I'm guessing that until now, the 'white cop kills unarmed black man' story line was in competition with the 'cops are good, cops are honest and trustworthy' story line.  But with cameras on phones and with anyone being able to post on YouTube, there was finally footage available with the new story line that got a big audience that the mainstream news media (no longer just the networks) couldn't ignore.  And the media then caught up.

But some things seem not to have changed that much.  Epstein writes that most pieces are 'sound' pieces such as speeches, testimony, press conferences.  However,

"there is also a category of stories mainly concerned with visual action, such as riots, demonstrations and disasters, in which the pictures need not be synchronized with words spoken at the time.  In the case of these action stories, the establishing footage becomes the story itself, with the simple addition of a voice-over narration.  In these stories, cameramen are usually given free rein and are expected to seek out the most violent or exciting moments of the event.  One NBC cameraman explained, "What the producers want on the film is as much blood and violence as we can find.  That's the name of the game, and every cameraman knows it."  Robert MacNeil claimed in his book that cameramen in Vietnam at the height of the war were ordered by the networks to "shoot bloody" - and this produced a strong focus on military action at the expense of the less visible political considerations."

There's a lot more in News From Nowhere that explains how the structure of the news industry shapes the stories that the networks aired.   We all know, vaguely, that the news is managed, but this book spells out quite clearly how it was done, at least 1970s style. 

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?