"...when burdens like poll taxes and literacy tests were imposed on citizens and registering often required a trip to the local courthouse, voter turnout was far higher than it is now."

Here's the quote from the New York Times article:

"Mr. Gardner said he did not necessarily favor imposing new qualifications for registering and voting, but he added that when burdens like poll taxes and literacy tests were imposed on citizens and registering often required a trip to the local courthouse, voter turnout was far higher than it is now."

So who, you are asking, is Mr. Gardner?

He's the Democratic Secretary of State from New Hampshire (who is in charge of voting there) and he's on Trump's commission to investigate voter fraud.

There's lots more to this article, but lets just address this idea first.

When states had poll taxes and literacy tests (which the US Supreme Court at first ignored by ruling these issues  fell under states' rights, but eventually ruled unconstitutional), a relatively few people were actually allowed to vote.

So, yes, if you count 'turnout' as the percentage of people registered to vote who actually voted, turnout was probably pretty high.  But if you count the voting age population, most of whom were blocked from voting because of poll taxes and literacy tests, then actually, the turnout was dismally low.

Carol Anderson wrote in White Rage:

"1898 Williams v. Mississippi 
"the justices approve the use of the poll tax, which requires citizens to pay a fee - under a set of very arcane, complicated rules - to vote.  Although the discriminatory intent of the requirement was well known prior to the justices' ruling, the highest court in the land sanctioned this formidable barrier to the ballot box.  In fact, Justice Joseph McKenna quoted extensively from the Mississippi Supreme Court's candid admission that the state convention, 'restrained by the federal Constitution from discriminating against the negor race,' opted instead to find a method that 'discriminates against its [African Americans'] characteristics' - namely poverty, illiteracy, and more poverty." (p. 36)
 Anderson notes the impact of this decision.
"As late as 1942, for instance, only 3 percent of the voting-age population cast a ballot in seven poll tax states." (p. 36)" [emphasis added]

Given that Mr. Gardner is a Democrat, my question is whether he made this statement sarcastically or  whether he was seriously thinking about one of the stated goals of the commission:  to find out why voting turnout is so low.

The article states that the entire New Hampshire Congressional delegation asked Mr. Gardner to resign from the commission, but he refused, asking

"whether any of the legislators had ever quit a congressional committee because they disagreed with the views of another member."

I'm not sure that's a fair analogy because Congress members have an obligation to their constituents and sitting on committees is just one of their responsibilities.  On the other hand,  Gardner was appointed to this commission which is seen by many as a way to push the conservative goal of reconstructing obstacles to voting by black and other people of color who are likely to vote for Democrats.  The leader of the committee is the Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach who has made voter suppression a career goal.  

The New Hampshire congressional delegation's request that Mr. Gardner to resign, according to the article,  came about because:

"the commission’s de facto leader has warmed up for the session by suggesting that the election in November of Senator Maggie Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat, was rigged. . .

His accusation was based on data from Mr. Gardner’s office showing that 6,540 people in New Hampshire registered to vote on Election Day using out-of-state driver’s licenses to verify their identities, but only 1,014 of the registrants later obtained a New Hampshire license.
Mr. Kobach said that was evidence that the remaining 5,313 registrants were illegal voters from other states — enough voters, he noted, to supply the narrow margins of victory for both Ms. Hassen and Mrs. Clinton."

The article goes on to explain that New Hampshire law allows college students, whose homes may be out of state, to vote in New Hampshire.  They can have out-of-state drivers' licenses as proof of identity.  And most of the incidents where out-of-state licenses were used, were in college towns.


I'm tempted to write, "In this age of fake news . . ." but really, fake news has been part of US history from the beginning.  The difference today is

• there are more 'publishers' thanks to the internet making everyone a potential publisher, who can spread fake news far and wide
• there are more 'publishers' and so there are now actually challenges to fake news and people are aware of this phenomenon, whereas in the past, if the three main network television stations or the key newspapers said something, most people didn't have access to the underlying facts that would challenge the 'news'

It's always good to go through these exercises of hearing statements and then getting to see the rest of the context of the story.  It reminds us to always be asking, questioning, and then finding out the whole story.  

One Story of Irma Refugees: Friend And Her Family Flee Sarasota

I just talked to my friend Lynne.  She moved to Sarasota to be with her then 90 year old dad last year. Lynne has been my guide into the world of blindness and it was with mixed feelings that she decided to leave Alaska.

Sarasota is on the west coast of Florida.  It's low lying, near the water.  And in the path of Irma.  She told me they were looking to get to higher ground - probably a nearby hotel. [UPDATED:  They were in a mandatory evacuation area and had been told to get out.]   But her son called from Seattle and told her to get out of Florida.  She has a cousin in Tennessee.  Her dad, who's pushing 92 now and her older brother weren't sure about the 760 mile drive to Tennessee, but finally agreed.

The three of them, plus Lynne's guide dog, got in the car at 7:30 pm Friday night and drove 20 hours to Franklin, Tennessee.  Dad drove.  Oh year.  The cousins are there.  There on vacation in Hawaii, but they told them they could stay in the house.  They arrived yesterday (Saturday) afternoon about 2:30 Central time.  So now they are adjusting to the new situation.  For a blind person, that's a lot more difficult than for sighted people.  She has to figure out the paths she can take around the house without bumping into things.  And she can't just look into cabinets and closets, she has to feel for things.  And cans of food don't usually have Braille labels.  There are apparently lots of stairs which are harder on her dad than on her.  She just needs to know where they are.  He can see them, but has trouble getting up and down them.  She's still trying to figure out how to connect to the wifi.

But they're out of the storm (for now anyway).  They don't know how long they'll be there or how it will work out when the family gets back.  Their condo is on the ground floor and they're worried about what will be ok when it's over and they get back.

But for now they are safe and adjusting.

[UPDATE Monday Sept 11:  Lynne got word that there's no flooding but the evacuation is still in place and roads are impassable - lots of trees down and still falling.  They're also waiting for the electricity to go back on.  Maybe they'll spend the night somewhere on the road so they don't have such a long drive.]

The Basic Plan To Save The Planet As We Know It

Here's a pretty much random quote.  I just opened the book and started reading and found this interesting, but I'm sure I could do that with almost any page in this book.

"Most landfill content is organic matter:  food scraps, yard trimmings, junk wood, wastepaper.  At first, aerobic bacteria decompose these materials, but as layers of garbage get compacted and covered - and ultimately sealed beneath a landfill cap - oxygen is depleted.  In its absence, anaerobic bacteria take over, and decomposition produces biogas, a roughly equal blend of carbon dioxide and methane accompanied by a smattering of other gases.  Carbon dioxide would be part of nature's cycles, but the methane is anthropogenic, created because we dump organic waste into sanitary landfills.  Ideally, we'd do it differently.  Paper would be diverted for recycling and food scraps sent to composting or run through methane digesters.  When they are not entombed, these wastes can create real value.  But as long as landfills are piling up, we must manage the methane coming out of them.  Even if we stopped landfilling immediately, existing sites would continue polluting for decades to come."

Landfill Methane is #58 in Paul Hawken's (editor) Drawdown:  The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed To Reverse Global Warming.   

The book's premise is that we have to cut back - drawdown - on carbon emissions.  And not only is this possible, but it's a great opportunity to rethink how we do everything which will lead to a better life for all.

He breaks down that overwhelming goal into more manageable tasks.  If you wanted to climb the highest peak in North America - Denali - you'd also have to break that overwhelming goal into smaller doable tasks.

After almost six years of monthly Citizen Climate Lobby (CCL) meetings, I understand that the biggest obstacle to cutting back on carbon emissions is people's belief that it can't be done, or that it can't be done without ruining our economy and way of life.  I understand that both of those beliefs are wrong. Many, many people are working on ways to change how humans get and use energy.  Reversing our carbon use is very doable and it will make life better and create lots of jobs.  BUT it will force change on many people as some kinds of work disappears and new kinds arrive.

But as our current national attack by hurricanes shows us, the rules of climate are changing.  100 year, 500 year, 1000 year floods are happening with a frequency that shows the old equations are no longer valid.  Global warming is changing the conditions of earth,  giving us more frequent and more powerful storms.

Paul Hawken seen from Anchorage CCL meeting Aug 2017

So last month, Paul Hawkens was the speaker at the monthly CCL speaker.  Local chapters around the world connect by video conference.

 I took notes and was duly impressed, but never managed to post about it.  (You can see the video of the meeting here - the Paul Hawken intro comes at 2 minutes in and he begins a little after 3 minutes.)

The book has 80 ranked 'solutions divided into seven 'sectors.'

Sectors

1.  Buildings and Cities 2.  Energy 3.  Food 4.  Land Use 5.  Materials 6.  Transport 7.  Women and Girls

The quote at the top about Landfill Methane came from the section on Buildings and Cities.  Landfill Methane is ranked as solution number 58.

The top ten solutions are listed below

Top Ten Solutions

1.  Refrigerant Management 2.  Wind Turbines (Onshore) 3.  Reduced Food Waste 4.  Plant Rich Diet 5.  Tropical Forests 6.  Educating Girls 7.  Family Planning 8.  Solar Farms 9.  Silvopasture 10. Rooftop Solar

Each solution has calculations on "Total Atmospheric CO2-EQ Reduction" and Net Cost (US$ billions) and Lifetime Savings.

This is an amazing book.  It's visually beautiful and it essentially has the basic plans for saving the planet as we know it.  That's all.

So, why am I posting this a month after the meeting instead of posting about today's meeting?  Well, George Donart, the dynamo leading our Anchorage chapter, took orders for books at the last meeting and he brought them in for us at this meeting.  So I'm newly recharged by the book.

This book would make a great gift for anyone about ten or above.  I'm thinking graduation gifts, gifts for college students, for people you know who don't have climate change on their agenda of important issues.  For people who are concerned about climate change but think there's nothing we can do about it.  For teachers.  For people who are worried about climate change don't know what to do about it.  For yourself.

It's almost like a coffee table book.  You can pick it up and read about one or two solutions.  Then pick it up later and look at the rankings.  Another time read the introduction.

And the CCL website gives you lots more information and you can find the local chapter nearest to you. at this link.

Is my title an exaggeration?  I don't think so.  Climate change related events - and that includes things like the war in Syria - has disrupted the lives of more people, I would venture, than any other single cause in recent years.  If we don't reduce our carbon emissions things will only get worse.  The money we will spend on rebuilding Houston and (as I write this Irma's eye is about to hit Florida.

Screen Shot Google Crisis Map 12:41am Alaska Daylight Time

I personally don't think there is a more significant issue facing humankind.  And as the sectors in Hawken's book show, the solutions cover all aspects of how we live.

Aurora Notify Twitter Feed Lit Up Yesterday - But We Had Clouds - More Aurora For Tonight

When there's a significant event on the sun likely to cause northern lights, my Aurora Notify feed tells of the approaching light show.  First there are pictures from northern Europe - maybe Scandinavia, Scotland, Ireland.  Then perhaps someone in Iceland posts a picture and then we started getting the Canadian reports.  So Alaskans have plenty of time to prepare.

So the notices Wednesday and Thursday were pretty enthusiastic.  From the National Geographic:

"According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center, the sun began unleashing its fury on Wednesday at 5:10 a.m. ET, with an X2.2 flare. Just three hours later, the sun produced a second flare measuring a whopping X9.3—the most powerful on record since 2006.
The strongest solar flare measured in modern times happened in 2003, when scientists recorded a blast so powerful that it was off the charts at X28."

Except it was cloudy yesterday in Anchorage.  I went out several times to check.  I even found a USAIRnet site that has maps of current cloud cover.  Last night it showed Anchorage cloudy to Wasilla, but Palmer was showing clear.  Did I want to drive 45 miles for the chance of seeing the aurora?  If I didn't live in Alaska, probably I would have.  Today we had sun and clear skies.  Normally I'm content with clouds and rain at night and sun in the day.  But would the clear skies hold out to tonight?  It's 3:30pm now and the clouds are back.  But the cloud cover map from 2:53 shows us clear still.

At the site, the page is interactive and you can put the pointer on any of the circles and get more information.  Maybe these are just local thin clouds and a little further north it will be clear this evening.  These is supposed to be a pretty big solar storm.  (Is there any relationship between solar storms and hurricane intensity?*)


Today, as it gets dark in Europe, the Aurora Notify tweets are starting again.  Here's one from today:

Europe's turn for #aurora. Amazing show in Sweeden, Finland, Denmark, Scotland, Ireland, Iceland as the sun sets. Please let everyone know! pic.twitter.com/1rD6t7Q9k3

— Northern Lights Now (@NorthLightAlert) September 8, 2017

I'll check the skies tonight and this map and the reports as the roll in and decide if I'm going for a ride to the north.

*I couldn't just leave that question hanging.  With google, no one has an excuse not to find out the facts.  NASA has a great page on solar storms FAQs.  [Really, I need to be more careful.  It's got a page full of information, but I don't know enough to evaluate how good it is. It looks good to this solar novice.]

Question 14 is:

"What are some real-world examples of space weather impacts?"

It talks about power outages, satellite communication problems, and impacts on radio waves, but not on earth weather per se.  But if the satellites went down, tracking the hurricane would probably be more difficult.

Nature has a 2008 report of a study that suggests there is a connection, but not what I expected.  They tracked hurricane activity and solar activity and found with high solar intensity, weaker hurricanes.  But there seems to be a lop of skepticism about the link.

Manhattan Short - Anchorage October 2 (And Atypical on Netflix)

Monday, October 2, 2017 at the Bear Tooth in Anchorage.


The Final 10 are:
Do No Harm (New Zealand), Behind (Spain), Fickle Bickle (USA), Hope Dies Last (United Kingdom) The Perfect Day (Spain), Just Go! (Latvia), Mare Nostrum (Syria), Viola, Franca (Italy), In a Nutshell(Switzerland) 8 Minutes (Georgia). Click Here to read interviews with the Final 10 Directors

Taku Lake, Campbell Airstrip Foxholes, Shaggy Mane,

A couple of shots from the last several days as I wander the bike trails trying to keep my blood flowing.

This was Taku Lake a couple of evenings ago as I tried to slip in a bike ride while it wasn't raining.


Going up the new bike trail again on Campbell Airstrip Road - there's good new bike trail for about .7 miles which connects to the old bike trail that ends at the Campbell Airstrip trailhead - I ran across this new sign on local foxholes.

click on image to enlarge and foc

I was thinking as I stopped to take a picture of the sign, that I should get it while it's new (it wasn't there last week) before the spray painters arrive.  It added a dimension to this part of town I'd never thought about.  I saved it as a fairly large file so you an click on it to enlarge and focus better.

Here are the foxhole pictures enlarged:

I've seen foxes in the Anchorage bowl, so I'm sure there are some in the woods around here, but for today, this is a different kind of fox hole.


Finally, I saw my first shaggy mane mushroom today.  It's a little early.  This is one of my favorite mushrooms.  They are delicious to eat and easy to identify.  I haven't seen any other mushrooms that look even remotely like these.  They do turn inky black after a while and then they're inedible.  I've written more on them with a picture of one going black here.

So while we did our weekly video conference with our grandson (and his little sister who is beginning to pay attention to us on the screen briefly) I showed him the mushroom, cut it up, got some garlic, onion, and tomato.  Cooked them up in some olive oil and then added a little white wine.  Mmmmmmmmmmmm.  

Would The US Be Different If Women, Or People of Color, Or Blind People Had The Power Of White Males In Our Society

I've often spoken to my friend L about what it means to be blind.  The human-created world is designed by sighted people.  What would be different, I asked L, if blind people had designed things?  She was uncharacteristically silent.  She'd never asked herself that question despite being a blind activist.

And I think we should start thinking about how the world would be different if women had the power of men.  Or African-Americans had the power of whites.  Or a coalition of people of color.  Or atheists.  How would things be different?   A thought experiment if you will.

Let's be clear.  Despite the fears of evangelical Christians that they are being discriminated against and despite the fears of white middle class workers that their cultural identity is disappearing, white males, are still firmly in power.

Let's just look at some numbers.  (Except for presidents - one Catholic and the rest Protestants - I couldn't easily tease out the religion information.  It won't be as stark as the president numbers, but I'm sure the vast majority of the people in these top positions are Christians.)

	White	Other	Male	Female
US Presidents	98%	2%	100%	0%
US House	79%	21%	81%	19%
US Senate	90%	10%	79%	21%
Fortune 500 CEOs	96%	4%	94%	6%
US Population	77%	23%	49%	51%

Sources:  House and Senate, Fortune 500 gender, Fortune 500 race, US Population

The numbers come from different years, but they give us a stark example of how white males overwhelmingly hold the top positions of power in the US government and in the largest corporations.  Only the US House of Representatives is close to matching the population race statistics, and even there it's a four to one advantage for whites. (I'd guess that gerrymandering people of color into packed districts plays a part here.  Black Reps often get 60-90% majorities when they are all packed into a few districts, thus wasting votes for Democrats that could have made other districts more competitive.) It's also four to one for males even though females make up slightly more than half the population.

I understand that most white males probably don't feel that powerful.  And they aren't.  They can't find a job, and if they have one it doesn't pay as much as it should.  They're kids don't listen to them.  Even Trump must be complaining about his lack of power to do things.  Individually most Americans don't feel too powerful.  But look at those numbers!   The people in power in this country have been white males since the beginning, and the rules have been made by people who see the world from a white male perspective.  If the average white male doesn't feel powerful, just think how the average female and the average person of color, or the average non-Christian must feel.

Would women earn as much as men if the top positions gave them the high level power men have  now?   Would birth control costs not be covered in many health insurance policies while viagra is?  Would there be universal child-care?  Or would men stay home and take care of the kids?

Would prisons be populated disproportionately by people of color if they sat in these top positions of power?  Would black wealth be equal to white wealth?

People these days don't have much alone-without-a-screen thinking time.  But I'm going to challenge you to imagine how the world if different groups of people had controlled the top positions of government and business the way white males have.  What laws would be different?  How would our lives be different?

Perhaps we all feel so powerless because the gap isn't so much about gender or race as it is about class.  For a while we had a viable middle class and the gap between the salaries of those at the top of the organization weren't nearly as extreme as they are today.  And with that money, the wealthy can use sophisticated advertising techniques to convince white males it's about race and gender, not about class.

Perhaps the biggest fear of white males as they feel power slipping away (though the numbers show that their perceptions are quite different from the facts) is that people of color and women will treat white males the way white males have treated people of color and women.  That is a scary thought isn't it?

Should Anchorage People Move To Avoid N. Korean Atomic Bomb?

It's hard for most people to imagine how close Anchorage is to Korea.  When Korean Air flew non-stop, we could get to Seoul in about seven hours.   Flying over the pole works.  We got to Paris last summer in about ten hours (not counting the time on the ground in Iceland).  That's about how long it would take to fly to New York if there were non-stop flights.

It helps to see these distances on a polar map.  Don't mind my messy lines.

Original Polar Map from Winwaed blog

Pyongyang to Anchorage = 3564 air miles
Pyongyang to Honolulu = 4597 air miles
Pyongyang to San Francisco - 5597 miles


Does my title question strike you as alarmist?  I'm sure that a lot of people in Houston are asking themselves if they should have heeded warnings, warnings that said climate change was making more forceful storms and that Houston's development in open areas needed to drain water in a flood plain would result in disastrous floods.

With the news this weekend of a much larger nuclear weapon than previously tested in North Korea, I think it's reasonable to ask this question about staying or moving.  So let's look at the key questions:

1.  Can and will North Korea build a bomb and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching Anchorage in the next year or two?  It's looking increasingly possible.

2.  If they can, would they use them to target the US?  Americans have a highly distorted view of the world.  In our minds, its ok to have troops and ships and planes stationed all over the world, yet we got crazy when the Russians tried to put missiles into Cuba in 1962.  Other countries also don't like 'enemy' troops so close by.  We've had troops in South Korea since we fought North Korea in the 1950s.  Of course the North feels threatened.  We like to joke about how crazy the North Korean leadership is (and it's certainly unique in the world today), but according to a Heritage  Index of 2017 US Military Strength the US has

"some 54,000 military personnel Department of Defense civilian employees in Japan" and  "maintains some 28,500 troops in Korea." 

Yet any attack on the US by North Korea, let alone a nuclear attack, would be suicide.  But if they thought we were attacking them, I don't doubt that they would attack us - if they could - as well as the much more populated nearby South Korean target.  That 'mutual assured destruction' was supposed to be the deterrent during the Cold War.

3.  If they could and they would, would Anchorage be the target?  Hawaii probably has much more appeal.  There are more people in Honolulu and a large US military presence.  When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the US military presence in Alaska was tiny in comparison.  Seattle and San Francisco and Los Angeles are much better targets.  But Anchorage is closer.
Today Anchorage has a joint army/air force military base with a combined population of about 11,600.   The US tests anti-ballistic missiles from Kodiak, Alaska against potential attacks from North Korea which would make a tempting target as well.
The most compelling reason, in my mind, to attack Anchorage is that it is the closest US target, meaning the US defenses would have less time to respond.

4.  What could stop them?

• Chinese and Russian influence on North Korea
• Economic sanctions - these could make it impossible to complete their weapons, or it could just make them more desperate.
• Conducting ourselves less threateningly - if Pyongyang thinks a US attack is imminent, if we could find a way to convince the that's not the case, it might work.  But if preparing for a US attack is simply a way to keep the North Korean population afraid of war and supportive of the government, it won't.  
• Anti-ballistic missiles maybe.  They seem to have a spotty record with targets they knew were coming.  

So, is it time to look at real estate outside of Anchorage?  I'm sure few Alaskans are going to move at this point because of North Korea.  While Alaska did have a monster earthquake in 1964, relatively few people died and most people here now, weren't here then.  We feel safe.    Just as the people of Houston did a few months ago. Moving means disrupting our lives. But if the odds of an attack seem low, the odds of surviving a successful attack would be nil.  Only a tiny fraction of the people in Houston died.  That wouldn't be the case here.  

Stretching Credulity - Anchorage Police Need 40 Hours To Provide Data To Reporter

Here's the tweet from an Anchorage reporter:

My FOIA request to APD was answered. It's only going to cost $1,600 to learn how much SWAT overtime has cost the city in 2017. What a deal! pic.twitter.com/oCkFS02Uiw — Travis Khachatoorian (@ReporterTravisK) August 31, 2017

APD = Anchorage Police Dept     MOA= Municipality of Anchorage

A Related Story

Back in 1982 or 3 when I was working in the Human Resources department of the Municipality, a request came in from the League of Women Voters.  They wanted to see how much women and men got paid for the same work.  They asked if they could have it in two weeks.  The person who handled that had it done in an hour or two.  Then she held on to it for a week.  I asked why.  If they know I can get this information this fast, they'll be flooding me with requests.

I understood the logic, though I wasn't completely comfortable with it.  But they had started with a two week request so it seemed ethically ok.

Jumping ahead 35 years to the present - A Few Thoughts

1.  MOA should be tracking overtime routinely.  The Municipality should be on top of overtime for all the departments, just as a matter of keeping spending down.  When you get enough overtime in a department, it's time to start weighing whether it wouldn't be cheaper to hire new employees.  Every 40 hours (or so depending on the department) of overtime would pay for a new employee working regular time.  Departments with hundreds of hours of overtime  are paying time and a half when they could be hiring new employees to work at the normal pay scale.  This article about overtime at the Fire Department would suggest the MOA is keeping track of their overtime at the Fire Department.  APD has similar issues, so it would make sense they were tracking that too.

2.  Modern computers make tracking this sort of information almost instantaneous.  If the MOA was able to get the information in the League of Women Voters story above in two hours or less in 1984, then there is no reason that the information that Travis Khachatoorian  requested can't be found in an hour or less 35 years later.  If they can't do that, they need to hire some competent computer programmers in Finance.

3.  The first five hours request processing time should be free.  OK, I'm using 2011 information here, but John McKay's Open Government Guide says the first five hours should be free. See page 9.  Also go to page 37 to begin the section on electronic records.  I'm not sure if the laws have changed or not, but electronic records capability are much faster now.  There are also provisions that allow for waiving fees in the public interest.

My Conclusions

There are several possible (not mutually exclusive) conclusions:

1.  The MOA is using archaic software that makes it hard for them to get this information quickly.  The scandal over the SAP computer project lends some credibility to this conclusion.

2.  The MOA can get the information much more quickly than they say, but doesn't really want the information out and is hoping the reporter will find another story to pursue.

3.  The MOA finance department is not the right department to ask for this sort of information.  Possibly payroll could do this more quickly.  But Travis says he asked the APD for the information, so they should have sent it to the right department.

4. This should be a very easy thing to find out on the computer.  If it isn't  the computer expertise at the MOA is much worse than the SAP problems suggest.

My gut says the problem is with number 2, but I'd need to get more data to be certain.

It's So Much Easier To Destroy Than To Build

This is so obvious.  Something we all know.  Yet we need to be reminded regularly.

I was reminded this morning as I took apart the jigsaw puzzle we'd worked on intermittently since June and only finished this week.  Here's what the finished puzzle looked like after two months of 'construction':

And here's what it looks like now - after about a minute of work:

We drop a porcelain bowl that shatters in seconds.

We see this when a wrecking ball or a fire takes down a building.  All the time to acquire the money and materials and designs.  All the time to gather the people who put those materials into place and then maintain them.  The time to gather the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the photographs, the shared events, and other memories of a place.  Years of work and play can become rubble in minutes.

We see this in a violent death.  Years of becoming a human being - the learning, developing, building relationships destroyed in an instant.

And, less obviously, Trump has been trying to dismantle the government.  Pulling out of the Paris Agreement.  Banning transgender folks from the military.  Cracking down on immigrants and threatening to end DACA.

And Trump's also finding out how difficult it is to create things - like a healthcare program where “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

We've been watching the speed of destruction in Houston this week.

Yet, destroying individual items, buildings, people is much easier and faster than destroying larger systems - a city like Houston, the US government,  the ecosystem of the earth.  With slow-building disasters, you have time to avert them.  But the gradual nature also lulls people into not seeing what is happening and where it leads.

I worked for NOAA during the year that Reagan was elected and came into office vowing to cut back on government.  I'd been there long enough to see that the agencies were made up of people with years of experience all over the country.  They understood weather, oceanography, atmosphere, marine mammals.  They also understood the vast network of people who monitored these things to make weather forecasts, to map the coastlines, to protect seals and whales.

As Reagan planned (unsuccessfully) to dismantle agencies like NOAA, I saw not just interchangeable parts that could be easily rebuilt by ordering so many meteorologists and atmospheric scientists off the shelf.  Rather I saw complex networks of human beings that over the years, working together on various projects in different locations, had built an understanding of how to make the organization work and had built an understanding of who to call on for this expertise and that.  They'd built, through years of interaction, a trust amongst each other.  Something that takes a long time to build.  A commodity we aren't seeing among the people Trump has gathered to help him in the White House.

So, the thought that some NOAA agencies might be axed, was horrifying.  So much that had been built up over so long would be lost and could not be replaced except over another very long period.

I think about this as I hear that Trump wants to cut the State Department by a third.  Wants to get rid of the special envoys for the Arctic and for Climate Change.

Fortunately, human systems, human communities are not as vulnerable to instant destruction (unless all the humans are destroyed).  In fact, bureaucracies are designed to resist quick, impetuous changes.  But that doesn't mean a lot of damage can't be done.

One last thought:  how do we come to understand why some people either don't see or don't care about such destruction of things and people?  Don't understand or don't care about what will be lost?  What can we do, as a society, in the way parents rear their kids and schools educate them, and societal structures encourage or discourage them, that minimizes the number of folks vulnerable to such destructive impulses?