"Ex-mayor sues San Diego over wife’s implant rupture"

Now that's a headline you don't see everyday.  The LA Time's lead sentence is:

 "Former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock and his wife are suing the city over a 2015 fall she took on a damaged sidewalk that allegedly ruptured her silicone breast implants and eventually required replacement surgery."

I never heard of Hedgecock until I read this article.  There's a lot here, just in this one sentence, to allow people to make all sorts of conclusions.

1.  He's a former San Diego mayor suing the city he headed

2.  Damaged sidewalks can be a serious issue.  My wife painfully broke her wrist a couple of years ago because of just such a sidewalk in Santa Monica (we didn't sue Santa Monica)

3.  She had breast implants

As I say, there are lots of ways to react to this story.  Here are three that jump out to me immediately.

A.   When is it reasonable to sue the city over bad sidewalks and when should the pedestrian just be careful?

B.   Why would the former mayor sue his own city?

C.   Do we really need to know about her implants and what difference might it make?

A.   When is it reasonable to sue the city over bad sidewalks and when should the pedestrian just be careful?

My mom lived on a street with Italian Stone Pine trees that caused 6 inch upthrusts of the sidewalk and the roots rumpled the streets so bad that city had to put up white and orange striped saw-horses to warn the cars.  There was frustration among the neighbors that the city didn't fix things (they eventually did after about five years), but people knew to walk carefully.  LA is so big that if everyone who got injured tripping over a sidewalk sued, it would bust the budget.  So it seems to me there are a several (not mutually exclusive)  reasons why someone might sue:

1.  to get the city to take fixing the sidewalk seriously

2.  because one couldn't afford health insurance and needed to pay the doctor bills

3.  because a lawyer said you could make a lot of money

For me, the first two are legitimate - especially if you donate most or all of what you win for #1.  

B.   Why would the former mayor sue his own city?

Checking out Mayor Hedgecock on Wikipedia, this seems fairly easy to figure out.  He was elected in 1983.  

In 1985, Hedgecock was charged with several felonies related to receiving over $350,000 in illegal campaign funds and was forced from office because of the scandal.[5] All the key players, including Hedgecock's associates and the financier himself,[6] admitted in sworn statements that they knowingly and willingly broke the law when they conspired to funnel the money from a wealthy financier into Hedgecock's 1983 mayoral campaign.[7] Though Hedgecock claimed none of it was true, he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and was found guilty of twelve counts of perjury, related to the alleged failure to report all campaign contributions. Since California, like most other states, does not allow convicted felons to hold elected office, Hedgecock was forced to resign on December 5. His first trial ended in a mistrial by to a hung jury after the jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of conviction. However, two of the 12 jurors in the first trial submitted sworn statements that the jury bailiff, Al Burroughs, provided them alcohol and tried to pressure them into finding Hedgecock guilty. State prosecutors then conducted an investigation into the possibility of criminal jury tampering. As part of the investigation, Burroughs admitted trying to influence the verdict. Under California Superior Court rules, any attempt on a bailiff's part to influence a verdict is "serious misconduct" that can be grounds for reversal. However, prosecutors refused to release the transcripts of their investigation interviews to Hedgecock's attorneys.[8]
An appellate court in San Diego ruled in 1988 that the judge presiding over the second trial "who had announced from the bench that he believed Hedgecock was guilty -- was wrong to block release of" the transcripts to the defendant. Hedgecock was still denied access to those documents for two more years until he appealed to the California Supreme Court, which ordered the transcripts released. In that appeal, the Supreme Court threw out the 12 perjury convictions and set aside the remaining conspiracy charge pending a hearing on Hedgecock's motion for a jury trial on grounds of jury tampering.[8]
The defense finally obtained the transcripts in October 1990. The next month, Hedgecock reached a deal with prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy in return for no jail time or retrial. As part of the deal, a judge reduced the felony to a misdemeanor and dismissed the case on December 31.[8]

I can understand there was no love lost to San Diego from  Hedgecock.  But it does sound like he was guilty and eventually got off most of the counts because of attempts to sway jurors, which is indefensible, but is not necessarily related to whether he was guilty or not.  

C.   Do we really need to know about her implants and what assumptions do people make about them?

I really can't think of any reason we needed to know about the implants.  I don't see how it matters what injury she got, except, perhaps if there was a statute of limitations issues and it took a long time to understand the injury had happened.  

It seems to me there are a number of basic reasons to get a great implant

1.  to attract attention by getting really big breasts

2.  to build self esteem because one has almost no breasts at all (#1 probably fits here as well)

3.  to help in transitioning from male to female

4.  as part of recovery from breast cancer or other damage to one's breasts

According to UPI, Hedgecock met his wife in 1970 and they were married in 1975.  So he isn't married to some much younger woman with humongous breasts.  I'm guessing this was related to breast cancer.  And it's really no one's business.  

Which leads to another question:  Should the media even mention this?  

There's a dilemma here.  If they don't mention it, people will want to know what medical problem arose.  The public will speculate all sorts of possible damage.  And one could argue that if they really wanted to keep it private, they didn't need to sue the city.  But that means that people with legitimate complaints, but who must reveal private conditions to complain, are less likely to seek justice.  

It certainly didn't need to be in the headline - except to get readers to read the story.  (I was going to use a different verb there, but it seemed in bad taste.)

Looking through more of Hedgecock's biography, he seems like an interesting guy.  He was (is?) a surfer, which is pretty much part of growing up in Southern California.  But his father was ill and he had to work.  He had severe enough acne that it got him out of the draft during the Vietnam War, according to Revolvy.   He attended UC Santa Barbara and Hastings Law School and worked as an environmental lawyer.  He was involved in rock music as a promoter and musician.  Wikipedia reports:

"In the months before the infamous Altamont Free Concert, security was provided by the local Hells' Angels motorcycle club to whom Hedgecock paid a signing bonus of a case of Jack Daniel's.[16]
In 1986 he formed a band with well-known San Diego journalist Thomas K. Arnold called The Arnold-Hedgecock Experience. Arnold was a writer for the Reader, San Diego Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and numerous other publications; in the early 1980s he also engineered 1960s pop star Gary Puckett's comeback. They recorded a cover of "Louie, Louie" and donated proceeds to St. Vincent de Paul, a local charity; they played several concerts around town, including opening for The Kingsmen in Oceanside in front of 10,000 people.[17]"

More recently he's been a conservative talk show host who caused a stir by inviting a White Nationalist onto his program and five years late got national attention again when

"he claimed on his radio program that public schools in the United States teach “hatred of white people” and “hatred of white privilege” and that public schools are 'as anti-American, anti-West and anti-white as you could imagine.'[14]"

In times past, people were known in their communities and people knew how to judge what they said based on past experience.  Our world got much more anonymous as transportation improved and people could move around and recreate themselves.  But with social media today, anonymity can quickly be countered.  But if people don't do a little homework when they read about some event, they can jump to conclusions that aren't warranted.  Or they can give someone the benefit of the doubt they don't deserve.  Most importantly this goes for politicians running for office.  A recent ADN story gave several reasons why people didn't vote in the recent municipal election including lack of time and lack of interest.   And I understand, but really, it's not all that hard to do the work of living in a democracy.  So in this post I wanted to know a little more about this story, and it didn't take too long to find out.  Though it did take a lot longer to write it up.  

Dandelions And Chickweed Aren't Weeds

This blog is about how you know what you know.  When you look out at your garden and see lots of little yellow flowers what do you see?
1.  sunshiny color brightening your yard
2.  weeds
3.  nutritional food
4.  medicinal herbs

It all depends on who was able to shape your brain.  The chemical companies that need you to think they are weeds so they will buy their poisons?  A Korean friend who eats dandelion leaves regularly? An herbalist who taught you about natural cures?  Or your brain may have competing models in your head about dandelions.

When I first learned that dandelions and chickweed are edible, after a few summers fighting 'weeds' in my garden in Alaska, I toyed with a book that I would call "50 recipes of dandelions and chickweed."  But I had lots of other things to do and never wrote it.

So when I saw this book - The Boreal Herbal:  Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North, by Beverly Gray - in the book section of Costco, I started turning pages.

There are pages and pages of plants you'll see if you hike anywhere in Alaska.  (Beverly Gray, appears to live in the Yukon.)  Besides the obvious dandelions and chickweed, it includes uses for all sorts of common plants including spruce tips and devil's club.






Here's part of the section on dandelions:

click to enlarge and focus

And here's a little bit from the chickweed section.

There was a big stack of them at Costco on Debar last week.  This is a great field guide (though it's kind of big to carry around) as well as a guide to food and medicinal uses.

I mentioned the book to someone Saturday.  As I described it, she asked, "The one written by Beverly Gray?"  "That's the one."  She'd taken a workshop with Gray and couldn't say enough about it.

I think about the story of the Japanese visitors who were visiting an Alaskan cannery and were appalled to see all the fish roe being tossed.  That encounter resulted in a significant new export product for Alaskan fishers.

We have an abundance of nutritious plants in Alaska.  Judicious harvesting could lead to another market.  Our forests are a rich source of healthy foods.

We Like Majority Rule, Except When We're Not In The Majority - HB 175

HB 175 is currently in the House Judiciary Committee.   Here's the whole bill.

A BILL
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED
"An Act ratifying an interstate compact to elect the President and Vice-President of the United States by national popular vote; and making related changes to statutes applicable to the selection by voters of electors for candidates for President and Vice-
President of the United States and to the duties of those electors." [emphasis added]

HOUSE JUDICIARY 

GRUENBERG 120   1:00 PM   M W F 

Standing Committee

	CHAIR:	Representative Claman*
	VICE-CHAIR:	Representative Fansler*
		MEMBER:	Representative Kreiss-Tomkins*
		MEMBER:	Representative LeDoux*
		MEMBER:	Representative Eastman
		MEMBER:	Representative Kopp
		MEMBER:	Representative Reinbold
		ALTERNATE:	Representative Millett
		ALTERNATE:	Representative Stutes *

 *indicates members of the House majority.  So this should get out of the committee and could pass in  the House.  Senate fate is probably not too good.  Republicans love the electoral college and come up with all sorts of arguments to keep it.

Here's a letter in the Alaska Dispatch News today that proves my point - you don't like 'majority rule' if you're in the majority and you like it when you're in the majority.

"Without Electoral College …
The benefit of the Electoral College can be seen by subtracting the state of California from the equation. Without California, Trump won by 2 million popular votes and well over a hundred electoral votes. Subtract New York as well and he won by 3 1/2 million popular votes and two to one in the Electoral College. Do we really want one or both of those states dictating policy to the whole rest of the country? As it is, just those two guaranteed blue states mean Democrats can count on almost a third of the electoral votes needed to win the presidency before the election even starts.
— Bill Tolbert
King Salmon"

So, majority rule is bad if Trump loses (popular vote) and good if he wins (electoral college.)  But what is this nonsense about "without California" and "without New York"?

California, with 37 million people is  about 12% of the US.  New York, with a population of over 19 million, makes up about 7% of the US population.  So Bill Tolbert has no issue with deducting nearly one-fifth of the US population to get his numbers.

He also neglected to take out the second most populous state - Texas - with 25 million people, or about 8% of the US population.  I can't imagine why he would have skipped Texas. (I*)

Tolbert's argument is like saying, if it weren't for the heart attack, he would have lived to 80.  And if it don't count his cancer either, he could have lived to 90.  Creating alternative worlds through mathematical fiction.

Time For Everyone To Voluntarily Leave United Airlines

I watched the video of the man being dragged off the plane.  WHATTTTTT????????????  FOR REAL???

OK, Alaska Airlines once removed a passenger for insulting a female crew member.  And more recently they had a woman leave the plane for being disruptive and insulting to the man sitting next to her because he'd supported Trump.  But neither was physically dragged off.  Watch how politely the flight attendant spoke to the unhinged woman passenger.  And in both cases, the passengers were at fault.

From what I can tell (given the sketchy info available so far), United decided to bump four passengers so that four United crew could get to work, presumably, at the destination, Louisville.  In my experience passengers don't generally board until the bumping is taken care of.   In this case the passengers were already on board.

The airline says they offered $400 then $800 vouchers to people who would voluntarily get off.   No one volunteered.  Then, they say, they picked four people randomly.  Presumably they would all get the $800  that was offered to people who voluntarily left the plane, but I don't know that for sure.

Three passengers got off 'without incident.'  The fourth said he was a doctor who had patients to see the next morning.  He also was of Asian descent.

The passenger did nothing wrong except insist that his valid ticket for that flight be honored.  The airline screwed up by overbooking the flight and boarding the passengers first and then insisting that four get off.  They should have thought about their crew members before filling the plane.  Once it was filled, there was no reason why their crew should have precedence over paying passengers. Even before the passengers boarded the plane, there's no reason crew should have precedence.  How did they pick him?  Was he flying on frequent flyer miles? Was it because he was Asian?

If they needed to board sky marshals, I might give them a little more leeway.  But the passenger said he had to get to work the next morning which was no different from the United crew having to get to work.  And crew members are much more interchangeable than a doctor seeing his patients.

I applaud the man for not backing down.  The airline employee used terrible judgment when he forcibly dragged the passenger off the plane.

I can't believe that there wasn't a single person on the plane who couldn't have been persuaded to take the $800 voucher (or move if necessary) to free up one more seat.  They could have even offered to let them wait between flights in the United board room.  There were lots of other options.  They could have even found another crew member to substitute in Louisville.  Surely they do that all the time when crew call in sick.

I understand that an unruly passenger might need, on occasion, to be forcibly removed from a plane.  One who might be endangering other passengers.  I don't know how often passengers are dragged off like this man was.  Here's a story about an abusive United passenger causing a Sydney - San Francisco flight to divert to Auckland, but the video shows him walking off on his own power.  And the passenger was the problem.

But this man was only standing up (or in this case sitting down) for his rights.  The airline overplayed its authority to make these decisions, which they have for airline safety requirements.  Not to fly they screw up and need to fly their own crew around.

I'm guessing the pressure to fly on-time played some role in this.  There was also some machismo in the security guy having his authority challenged.

I have to give a big cheer for cell phone videos that document what happens.  Of course they can be edited to distort what happened, but it seems that most of these get up pretty quickly and are from ordinary folks who aren't editing before they post.

I don't normally write about something like this where all the facts are not clear yet.  Perhaps it's because family matters have made me a frequent flyer over the last several years, but this one hits home.  And I'm ready to eat crow if it turns out the passenger wasn't a doctor and did something, besides refuse to give up his rightful seat, that legitimately provoked his removal.  But it will be hard to justify dragging him out.  But I'm ready to say I was wrong if time proves I jumped the gun.  And my wife and I volunteered, when getting our boarding pass, to bump and when they offered us $400 each on flight that was leaving right away (though with stops on the way), we said ok.  Before we got on the plane.

The United CEO's non-apology letter doesn't help. In fact it suggests that the problem starts at the top of the company.  I agree you should support your employees when they take the difficult, but right, action. I cheered on Alaska for backing up their crewe when they booted the man who demeaned the female crew member.   But not when it's the airlines fault.

I hope lots of regular United passengers start checking out other airlines.  Given the leggings incident a couple of weeks ago, and this saga (video below), I'd say that United has a serious problem.

My Tire Got Screwed

It was pretty easy to see why I had a flat tire.  Fortunately, the car was in front of the house and I have a great neighbor who loves working on cars.

First he unscrewed it.  You can see the grayish mark of the head of the screw and the hole in the middle.  He had a tool to go in the hole and clean it out.

Then he pulls out this sticky rubbery strip - looked like sticky licorice - and threaded it into another tool and applied the glue.

And then he shoved it into the whole.  The two ends go up as he pushes down.  Then he pulls out the tool and there's just a bit of the two ends sticking out when he's done.  He fills the tire and we're back in business.

Good neighbors make life so much better.  Thanks Roy.

What Does "Pay Their Fair Share" Mean?

Alaska's budget is about $4 billion short.  The legislature is battling to balance the budget.

Republicans, pretty much, want to do it by cutting the budget.
Democrats say it's been cut to the bone over the last couple of years and that revenue needs to be raised.

In a recent blog post I quoted a letter to the editor which called on teachers to take a pay cut to preserve their colleagues' jobs.   I pointed out that it seemed unfair for only teachers to take a pay cut.  Everyone benefits from kids getting a good education.  Everyone should take a pay cut.  And that there was a way already set to do this, and it was done in most other states.  It's called an income tax.

I, of course, knew that this term is like blasphemy to conservatives, particularly to wealthy ones.

Oliver, who comments here once in a while, suggested, in a comment to that post, that we have a sales tax instead.  After a discussion about all the people who would not pay an income tax, including those who make less than $14,000, Oliver concluded that:

"Not what I would call fair or everyone paying their fair share."

I took some time to think about and respond to his comment.  When I tried to post my comment, there was a problem and it wouldn't post there.  I had thought about making it all a new post, but figured the discussion should stay with the original post and comment.  Then I tried again and it said my comment was too many words.  So I'm making this a new post.  You can see the old one and Oliver's comment in full here.

My response:

1.  For the sake of this discussion, I'll just accept the numbers that Oliver offered.  I agree in general principle that as many people should pay the tax as possible.  I would point out that as of 2016, there were 198,617 residents 18 or under, many of whom would live in families that paid an income tax.

2.  It's long been understood that a sales tax is a regressive tax, meaning the poor pay a larger percent of their income in sales tax, and that it 'hurts' them far more than it 'hurts' wealthier people.  Even if wealthier people pay more in sales taxes.  I won't go through that argument here.  That link also discusses the reasons for a progressive tax, like most income taxes, in which higher income people pay a higher percentage of their income. (Assuming there aren't enough loopholes to make the higher rates moot.)

So I would just like to focus here on the idea of "everyone paying their fair share."  More particularly, on the underlying assumption of that.



The Problem Of The Work Ethic In The 21st Century World

The work ethics that most Americans can quote goes something like this:  hard work and diligence are morally good.  There are some corollary assumptions:

• that if you work hard, you will do well
• wealth is the result of hard work
• poverty is the result of laziness

  reminds us that work wasn't always seen as having intrinsic value, particularly manual labor.  The Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans saw work as something to escape, to have slaves do.   It wasn't until the Reformation that work became holy.  Luther equated one's vocation with one's calling from God.  But, with Calvin, according to History of Work Ethic, work didn't make you good, it was a sign that you were predestined to be good.  

"Central to Calvinist belief was the Elect, those persons chosen by God to inherit eternal life. All other people were damned and nothing could change that since God was unchanging. While it was impossible to know for certain whether a person was one of the Elect, one could have a sense of it based on his own personal encounters with God. Outwardly the only evidence was in the person’s daily life and deeds, and success in one’s worldly endeavors was a sign of possible inclusion as one of the Elect. A person who was indifferent and displayed idleness was most certainly one of the damned, but a person who was active, austere, and hard-working gave evidence to himself and to others that he was one of God’s chosen ones (Tilgher, 1930, p. 53-61).
Calvin taught that all men must work, even the rich, because to work was the wil of God."

In any case, today, most of us, at least subconsciously if not explicitly, tend to look down on the poor and give respect to the wealthy.  But despite this general rule, there have always been exceptions:

1. Those who inherit wealth only work if they want to or their families require them to. If they do work it’s often in jobs provided through family connections
2. Slaves worked, but didn’t get paid for their work - their masters took the benefit, and those lost wages are still reflected in our society’s wealth inequality.
3. Women didn’t work outside the house unless economics forced them to.  Married women whose  husbands had enough income to support the family worked at home.  Depending on how much the husband earned, the woman might work hard in the house or might have help to do most of the work.
4. People who were physically or mentally ill or disabled may or may not have worked depending if they could find something that matched their abilities  
5.  Children may or may not have worked - it depended on the family income and where they lived.  Farm kids often worked from a young age.  Child labor outside the house/farm expanded greatly in the industrial age for poor families.  And conditions were often horrendous.

Today, we still have this moral value attached to wealth and working.  Not working, or at least being poor, is seen in the US as a moral failing.  We may provide services for the homeless, but we tend to blame their homelessness on lack of a work ethic.

A Change In the Nature Of Work

The myth is that the work ethic was useful once in a time when everyone had to work for the family and the society to survive.  That may have been true of families, but most societies in history had workers and those who lived off the work of the rest.
The work ethic was probably a convenient tool when human economies became industrialized and workers were needed in the factories.   But our economy has changed.

Trump has blamed immigrants for taking away American jobs though we know for the most part immigrants take jobs that Americans either don’t want to do, or skilled positions for which employers can’t find enough qualified Americans.

The Real Job Thief Has Been Automation.  

From the time that science was applied to management in the US (around the early 1900s) workers were seen as a problem. Early Management Science tried to make factories more efficient by making people more machine like.  People no longer created a whole product from the beginning to the end.

Instead the process was broken down in to separate pieces, and factory workers did the same 10 - 90 second action over and over again all day.  The joy of work, of having a craft and doing it well, was replaced by tedious, boring work.  First this was with factory work, but then it spread into other fields.  Some of the last fields are education and medicine.  The technology of distance education, for example, reduces teaching into components.  Teachers prepare, with the help of teaching technicians, videos, reading assignments, etc. before the class begins.  Everything is put on line and the teacher may have no role except to comment in discussion groups. And a new teacher could step in and appropriate the work of the teacher who designed the class.   Doctors are no longer working in private practice.  They are now mostly employees of hospitals.

What Will We Do With Our Leisure?

This change was already anticipated in the 1950s and 1960’s when weekly magazines had cover stories with titles like “Automation:  What will people do with all their leisure time?”  They were predicting 30 hour work weeks.

What they forgot was that we have a capitalistic society where profits go to the owners of the companies.  So, as work got automated, some employees did get more leisure - they lost their jobs.  The remaining employees often ended up working more than far more than 40 hours a week.

Companies then used automation to out-source a lot of the remaining work to customers - think about self-service gas and grocery checkout, ATM machines,  skipping travel agents and booking your own tickets on line.  Now we even have to check ourselves in and get our own baggage claims.

Instead of 30 hour work weeks, we have far more unemployed, and a much greater income gap between the heads of corporations and their employees.

Are You Ever Going To Wrap This Up, Steve?

The point of this long explanation is that people are unemployed because our society doesn't need everyone to work to produce the goods and services that we want.  In fact, we do it more efficiently with more machines and fewer workers.

But our value system is still based on a society that needed every able bodied person to work.  I’m guessing that you, like most people, are still thinking in terms of those old values.  But owners of companies have an incentive to automate and get rid of jobs - it’s cheaper and machines don’t have personal lives that interfere with their work.

So that’s why I’m not persuaded by your argument that with an income tax, some people don’t contribute their fair share.  That language implies a moral shortcoming on the part of those who will get something for nothing that echoes the Protestant work ethic.

Most, if not all of those people who don’t earn enough to pay an income tax, also didn’t get a fair share when it came to things like good parents, skills that are rewarded in our school system and job market, good mental and physical health, and other factors that impact who will succeed and who won’t in our society.  Brawn which was marketable in the past, is much less in demand.

The systems we have for allocating pay are also very skewed.   How hard you work is not necessarily related to how well you do or whether what you do makes society better or worse.   Should the people who get rich selling alcohol have some extra responsibility for the people who die at the hands of an alcoholic?   Should a teacher get tax credits for inspiring a student to succeed despite a difficult upbringing? [UPDATE a little later:  When I wrote this, I didn't know that a bill has been introduced in California to exempt teachers from state income tax.0

An important measure of human beings for me is how they play the hand they were dealt at birth.  Those who are given a lot, owe a lot more than those who were dealt a lousy hand.  In my ideal world, people's moral worth would be measured by the ratio between the benefits one receives and what one gives to society.  Ideally, everyone would be at least 1:1.

The people who camp in the woods along the bike trails would mostly like a decent home and income and only camp in the woods when they chose to.  But their skills and life experiences have gotten them to a point where they really can’t get out of their ruts without some serious interventions.  Our health care non-system caused many people to self-medicate, with alcohol being the legal drug, but lots of illegal drugs have also been available.   American individualism still attributes poverty to the laziness of the individual.  Other countries recognize that the social, political, economic systems play a big role in who succeeds, financially, in life and who doesn't.

I  don’t have a problem paying higher taxes to offset what they can’t pay.  I wouldn’t want to trade places with them.  And I also know that as the percentage of poor gets bigger, the more brutal society gets, even for the wealthy.

I would love a society where people are nurtured as kids and helped to discover and develop their skills and talents so we have far fewer people who can’t make it on their own.  But we also have to figure out how to distribute wealth when there just aren’t real jobs for a large segment of society.

And so "paying their fair share" doesn't mean that everyone pays in money.  Lots of people are paying with abusive parents,  with learning disabilities that weren't overcome because their school saw them as problems kids not teachable kids, with skills that are no longer valued, with trauma from war or crime, and in many other ways.

This Debate Isn't New

And I'd note, these conflicting  ways of looking at the world aren't new.  Hilary Mantel, in Bring Up The Bodies, describes how Henry VIII's chief minister,  Thomas Cromwell's attempt to hire the poor to build much needed infrastructure was treated by Parliament:

"In March, Parliament knocks back his new poor law.  It was too much for the Commons to digest, that rich men might have some duty to the poor;  that if you get fat, as gentlemen of England do, on the wool trade, you have some responsibility to the men turned off the land, the labourers without labour, the sowers without a field.  England needs roads, forts, harbours, bridges.  Men need work.  It's a shame to see them begging their bread, when honest labour could keep the realm secure.  Can we not put them together, the hands and the task?
But Parliament cannot seee how it is the state's job to create work.  Are not these matters in god's hands, and is not poverty and dereliction part of his eternal order?  To everything there is a season:  a time to starve and a time to thieve.  If rain falls for six months solid and rots the grain in the fields, there must be providence in it;  for God knows his trade.  It is an outrage to the rich and enterprising, to suggest that they should pay an income tax, only to put bread in the mouths of the workshy.  And if Secretary Cromwell argues that famine provokes criminality;  well, are there not hangmen enough?" (emphasis mine.)

I'd note that Thomas Cromwell lived from 1485 - 1540 and Martin Luther lived from 1483 -1546.
John Calvin lived from 1509 - 1584.

Another Reason Not To Have Your Bills Paid By Direct Deposit

From the BBC:

"When the police knocked the door down they found a mountain of mail in the hall and Henry Summers was inside, dead. He had been dead for three years, undiscovered, because all of his bills were paid by direct debit."

The journalist goes on to tell the story of who this man had been.  

Picasso at the Lapin Agile - Einstein Too

I'm sticking this in quickly because this show plays again tonight and tomorrow and I enjoyed it
greatly and want people to know about it before it ends Sunday.

It takes place in 1904 - or as, I think, Einstein pointed out in the play, in the first decade of the 20th Century - in a Paris bar.  It's a night when both Einstein and Picasso show up and talk about how each will change the world.  For having two such illustrious figures, the play is pretty lightweight.  But this Steve Martin authored play was fun, sexy, and a little thought-provoking.

And, it was very well done.  From the stage design to the costumes to the acting, it was a delight and I recommend it to anyone who at least knows who Picasso, Einstein, and Matisse are.  The actors were terrific - and the young Einstein and young Picasso - don't look anything like they do on the cover of the program.  Though casting for the young Einstein was genius.  You know who he is immediately.

A funny, affectionate look at these two characters.  Truly enjoyable theater.

I took this before the performance began.  As you can see it's very intimate.  We got there just before 8 and there weren't two seats available together.  I sat close enough to the stage that sometimes I felt part of the play.  No more than a couple of feet from the actors if they were at the bar.

I'd suggest going online at getting your tickets in advance.  And getting there by 7:30 tonight, if you can go.  Tomorrow it starts at 5, so give yourself time to get a seat.

It's in the UAA Art and Theater building - in the Harper Studio, not the main stage.  It's all well marked in the building.

I Keep Forgetting, There's No Saturday Newspaper Anymore

I went out to get the newspaper this morning.  I looked around, but it wasn't there.  Then I remembered.  There is no longer a Saturday edition of the Alaska Dispatch News.

Probably, lots of people reading this blog gave up paper editions long ago.  While other people, judging by letters to the editor, are miffed that they are paying for a subscription that now skips  Saturday.

Every print newpaper is struggling to find a way to make itself profitable.  The ADN has the best short term model - it's owned by a billionaire.  But that's not a sustainable model, and the readers are at the mercy of the owner's political and social tastes.

As a local blogger for the last ten years, I've seen the improvements in the ADN.  When I covered the legislature in 2010, the ADN rotated reporters to Juneau every three weeks or so and my coverage of the legislature really had no competition in Anchorage.  When I covered the Alaska Redistricting Board, 95% of the time, I was the only media there.  When I called the ADN editor and asked why they weren't covering the redistricting board, he said, "Because Seth is in Juneau." Seth was their one reporter for state news.

Fortunately, the ADN now has a lot more reporters covering state and local affairs.  And they've recently added a weekly Arctic section.  We're lucky to have all that extra content, even it is now squeezed into six days instead of seven.

If only Facebook and Twitter each shut down one day a week.  I suspect everyone's lives would greatly improve.

Warmer Weather and Lots of Snow Brings Breakup to Anchorage

Breakup in Anchorage is when the temperatures start getting into the 40s or more and the snow and ice that are left thaw into puddles and small lakes.  Breakups in recent years have tended to mild and quick, unlike 20 years ago and more when there were deep puddles everywhere.

This year we had a cold, sunny March with lots of snow sublimating.  Then a foot of snow at the end of March.  Now it's hitting high 40˚s F during the day and all that snow means lots of homeless water.


This isn't too big a puddle, but the picture shows the snow that's left still.

Here's the driveway of a church parking lot.  We had to walk in the street to get around this puddle.  We used to wear 'breakup boots' this time of year, but we've had such mild breakups that I didn't even think about it when we went for this walk a couple evenings ago.

Here's a driveway that hasn't completely thawed yet.

 And here's a stretch of sidewalk/biketrail that's on the south side of the street, so it doesn't get much sun and it's still partly frozen.







I finally decided I could wait to get my bike out no longer, even if I did get wet.

Here's a parking lot lake.  (The car was out of the deepest part by the time I got the camera out.)

I went through the Helen Louise McDowell Sanctuary where breakup is still in the future, though the snow was soft and deep.  If you got off the narrow padded down snow in the middle of the path, your foot would sink a foot.  I walked the bike.
















Here's the hidden sanctuary still looking very winter.

As I look at this picture I'm realizing that this is the part that has a boardwalk.  There was no sign of boardwalk.

Here's a bit of bike trail that was deep enough to make us detour the other evening.  But on bike it was fine, I have a back fender, but I still went through it slowly.  I also pulled out  The Cloudspotter's Guide to check on those cloud above the trees.

"Of all the common clouds, Cirrus must be the most beautiful.  Their name comes from the Latin for a lock of hair, for they are the delicate white wisps of ice that appear high in the heavens. . .
Cirrus are the highest of the common clouds and are composed entirely of ice crystals, typically forming above 24,000ft in temperate regions of the world."

Since Anchorage is not in a temperate region [yet], I don't know how high these might be.