Lewis Cowan Killed Fred French

It's a long drive from Yosemite to Los Angeles, so when we got to Fresno, I was ready for a break and the car was ready for some gas.  I figure that smaller towns are easier to navigate - to get on and off the highway, find gas, stop and walk around a bit - so we skipped Fresno and decided on Kingsburg.  We had stopped in a town called Kingston over night on the way to Yosemite, so this seemed like good symmetry. 

I don't want to keep you waiting for Lew Cowan too long, so here's his wanted poster.  Click it to enlarge and focus.  The details of the crime are below.









We found the poster in the Kingsburg historic jail.  Which we found strolling a downtown street. As you can see from the horse in the picture below, there's a Swedish flavor to this town as well.












We followed the sign  (above the horse's head) down a cute little passageway to the jail where we found this yellow poster about the dastardly deed.  You can click on the image to see it better, or you can just read the transcript next to it.

"On the night of November 2, 1916, Fred French, while performing his duties of deputy night watchman for the community of Kingsburg, encountered Lew Cowan behaving in a drunken and disorderly manner in the pool hall. Cowan and French engaged in a wrestling match, and bystanders pulled them apart, whereupon Cowan ran away. French then called Constable George Boyle who along with U.S. Marshall S.J. Shannon, found and arrested Cowan. Cowan also caused a disturbance at that time and managed to land a punch to the face of Boyle. They took Cowan to jail, but by that time he had become calm and pleaded that he was sorry and would go home and sleep it off if they would just release him. Constable Boyle then took him home.
Cowan's mother received him at home, but could not stop him from collecting a shotgun and shells and leaving the house. He met a fellow named, "Larson," who had been with him in the initial altercation in the pool hall. Allegedly he threatened Larson and force him to accompany him. The two men walked to the railroad depot, where they spotted French leaning against a fence. Cowan raised the gun and fired both barrels, hitting French in the head and killing him instantly.
Cowan sent Larson home and absconded. Ensuing searches failed to find Cowan.
In her book, "Bit of Sweden in the Desert," Pauline Peterson Mathes, gave this account: "Thirteen years after her father's murder and the day after her mother's funeral Alice (Fred French's daughter) was sweeping the sidewalk in front of their home when and old looking, bearded man came along, tapping a cane as he walked. He asked if that was Fred French's house. She told him her father had been dead for 13 years, having been murdered in 1916. The old man then looked at her with tears streaming down his face, and said, 'Oh, I'm really sorry to hear that.' He went on in the general direction of the old Cowan place. Was that old man Lew Cowan? We'll never know.'"

Drunks with guns isn't a new problem.  This happened 101 years ago last week.

Here's the actual jail.

 And out back, there's a person escapiing.  The muralist makes it look pretty real.

We were there about three weeks ago, but I did want to share our short diversion from the drive.  Kingsburg is on Highway 99, a road my dad and I rode summers for our vacations together in when I was kid.  It was a two lane highway most of the way and went right through the center of town.  Now it's four to eight lanes most of the way and full of big trucks.  Very unpleasant driving.  But reasonably fast.

The Kingsburg Historic Park website has more pictures of the inside - much better than the ones I took - so you can see more there.  There's lots to see in this world, if you just take the time to let it find you.

From Flavor and Soul to Muslim Cool On UAA's New Book Shelf

I thought this was going to be a quick post.  Just some pictures of books I saw at the library.  A reminder to me and others of how much we don't know and all the wondrous books out there that will fill in some of the gaps.  This has taken much longer than I expected as I got engrossed in finding out more about these books.

These books were in the new book section of the library.  But then I realized some of these were hardly 'new' books.  So I went back to find the publication dates of all of them.  I have question for the acquisition office of the library about how some of these were chosen.  I know when I've asked that question in the past, there were some that were gifts which might explain a few.




Nahid Aslanbeigui and GuyArthur Oakes,  Cecil Pigou (2015)

"The British economist Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877-59) reconceptualized economics as a theory of economic welfare and a logic of policy analysis. Misconceptions of his work abound. This book, an essay in demystification and the first reading of the entire Pigouvian oeuvre, stresses his pragmatic and historicist premises." From Palsgrave (the publisher.)

Karen Tei Yamashita, Brazil-Maru (2010)

"A range of characters, male and female, tell about a particular group of Japanese who emigrated to Brazil in the first decades of this century. Christian, well-educated, and reasonably affluent, they sought to establish communities where Christian and Japanese values could flourish. The group prospered, though not without cost, and it is this cost that's a major theme here. A secondary theme, suggested by the quotes from the philosopher Rousseau that precede each section, is the nature of education in a new world where emigrants' children often have only 'natural and purely physical knowledge.''' From Kirkus Reviews.

'New' at the UAA library means new to the library.  The review quoted above was published in 2010.




James Hinton, The Mass Observers (2013)

Even after reading the book cover flap, I still wasn't sure what 'mass observers' meant.  I guess in UK people know what this is.  From Google Books:

"This is the first full-scale history of Mass-Observation, the independent social research organisation which, between 1937 and 1949, set out to document the attitudes, opinions, and every-day lives of the British people. Through a combination of anthropological fieldwork, opinion surveys, and written testimony solicited from hundreds of volunteers, Mass-Observation created a huge archive of popular life during a tumultuous decade which remains central to British national identity. The social history of these years has been immeasurably enriched by the archive, and extracts from the writings of M-O's volunteers have won a wide and admiring audience. Now James Hinton, whose acclaimed Nine Wartime Lives demonstrated how the intensely personal writing of some of M-O's volunteers could be used to shed light on broader historical issues, has written a wonderfully vivid and evocative account which does justice not only to the two founders whose tempestuous relationship dominated the early years of Mass-Observation, but also to the dozens of creative and imaginative, and until now largely unknown, young enthusiasts whose work helped to keep the show on the road. The history of the organisation itself - the staff, the research methods, the struggle for funding, M-O's characteristic 'voice', and its role in the cultural and political life of the period - are themselves as interesting as any of the themes that the founders set out to document. This long-awaited and deeply researched history corrects and revises much of our existing knowledge of Mass-Observation, opens up new and important perspectives on the organisation, and will be seen as the authoritative account for years to come."



Anthea Taylor  Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster (2016)

"In the first book-length study of celebrity feminism, Anthea Taylor convincingly argues that the most visible feminists in the mediasphere have been authors of bestselling works of non-fiction: feminist ‘blockbusters’. Celebrity and The Feminist Blockbuster explores how the authors of these popular feminist books have shaped the public identity of modern feminism, in some cases over many decades. Maintaining a distinction between women who are famous because of their feminism and those who later add feminism to their ‘brand’, Taylor contends that Western celebrity feminism, as a political mode of public subjectivity, cannot in any simple way be seen as homologous with other forms of stardom. " Again, from Palgrave







W. G. Sebald  Die Ringe des Saturn (1995 German, 1998 English according to Wikipedia)

This is one of those cases where the similarities between English and German are so close that I don't have to translate the title.

It's not science fiction, or even science from what I could tell.   It's a travel book of Seabed's walking trip through the  rural Suffolk heath and coast where he finds traces of past glories and scandals.

Since people who can't read German won't read this book, I'll post a German description:

"Einer geht zu Fuß. Er wandert durch die Grafschaft Suffolk, eine spärlich besiedelte Gegend an der englischen Ostküste, und dort findet er, in den Heidelandschaften und abgelegenen Küstenorten, die ganze Welt wieder. Überall stößt er auf die Spuren vergangener Herrlichkeit und vergangener Schande."








John Gennari  Flavor and Soul (2017)

Another interesting looking book - this one looks at the overlap of American Italian and Black cultures.  See more at the University of Chicago Press.














Joel C. Rosenberg Inside the Revolution

This is listed as a non-fiction book and Rosenberg's cached website says it's based on hundreds of interviews including former CIA chief Porter Goss, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, and "more than 150 Christian pastors and ministry leaders operating deep inside the Islamic world."  The website also has a link to books on biblical prophecy.  I can't tell if that's part of this book or not.

Elliot's Blog ("Generally Christian Book Reviews") tells us more about the book:

"Inside the Revolution takes the reader on a journey through the histories and present-day mindsets of three distinct religious groups in the Middle East: the radical, fundamentalist Muslims; the peace-loving, open-minded mainstream Muslims; and the Christ-following Christian converts (former-Muslims and non-). What drove Osama Bin Laden to become the man he was and relish the things he did? What do the Muslims in your town really think of Al Qaeda and jihad? How many Christians are worshiping in Iran, and how does the government treat them? The answers to all these questions (and so many more ) are developed throughout this book, a well-researched and beautifully arranged masterpiece on the roots of what has recently brought our world into its nervous instability."

   From Wikipedia:

"Rosenberg was born in 1967 near Rochester, New York. He has stated that his father is of Jewish descent and his mother was born into a Methodist family of English descent.  His parents were agnostic and became born-again Christians when he was a child in 1973. At the age of 17, he became a born-again Christian and now identifies as a Jewish believer in Jesus. He graduated in 1988 from Syracuse University, after which he worked for Rush Limbaugh as a research assistant. Later, he worked for U.S. Presidential candidate Steve Forbes as a campaign advisor. Rosenberg opened a political consultancy business which he ran until 2000, and claims to have consulted for former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where he says that he garnered much of his information on the Middle East that he uses in his books."

Rafe Blaufarb The Great Demarcation (2016)

"The French Revolution remade the system of property-holding that had existed in France before 1789. This book engages with this historical process not from an economic or social perspective, but from the perspective of the laws and institutions of property. The revolutionary changes aimed at two fundamental goals: the removal of formal public power from the sphere of property and the excision of property from the realm of sovereignty. The revolutionaries accomplished these two aims by abolishing privately owned forms of power, such as feudalism, seigneurialism, and venal public office, and by dismantling the Crown domain, thus making the state purely sovereign. This brought about a Great Demarcation: a radical distinction between property and power from which flowed the critical distinctions between the political and the social, state and society, sovereignty and ownership, the public and private. This destroyed the conceptual basis of the Old Regime, laid the foundation of France’s new constitutional order, and crystallized modern ways of thinking about polities and societies. . . "  From Oxford Scholarship.

Jan Brandt  Against the World (2011 German, 2016 English)

When I opened the book, I was surprised that someone had already made notes in the first few pages.  Then I realized these notes were part of the book.  The dust jacket reviews were sensational, something like these from the German publisher Dumont:

“Jan Brandt’s outstanding debut novel. (…) Brandt changes perspectives and times with the utmost of ease, and his novel is consequently a grandiose 360 degree view of a small world where more of the larger world outside is reflected than its inhabitants themselves can recognise at times.”
SPIEGEL online
“A stunning, wonderfully presumptuous book, triumphant in its obsession for details and lexical richness, that is aimed a world of hindrance and oppression. (…) The result is an expansive mediation on friendship, the power of music, love and other cruelties. (…) It is splendid how the 37-year old is capable of driving on his complex and multifaceted story about a handful of characters over hundreds of pages with-out ever boring the reader – and it leads one to hope for more from the pen of this manic realist.”
Rolling Stone

A still admiring, but also critical review, that would have Brandt taking advice from Robert Frost to keep it concise comes from Dialog International:

". . . What's frustrating is that Gegen die Welt contains several excellent sections and strands that could be crafted into terrific novellas or novels.  I especially liked the character Bernhard "Hard" Kupers, Daniel's father, a funny and energetic small businessman who does whatever it takes - including arson - keep his drug store afloat, even as he indulges in gambling and adulterous affairs. The dialogue between Hard and his wife "Biggi" is pure comedy.  The strongest piece of writing is the story of the locomotive driver who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome after two young people throw themselves in front of his train.  His story goes on for over 150 pages - the bottom half the page, while the top half continues the saga of Daniel Kupers.
Jan Brandt has many such "techniques" for tormenting his readers, and I confess I put the book down for weeks at a time. But, to the author's credit, I did decide to finish Gegen die Welt, and, reading the last third of the novel, I realized Brandt's true achievement.  Gegen die Welt was published in 2011, three years before Pegida  or AfD (Alternative for Germany), yet Brandt predicted the wave of right-wing populism that today is washing over the provinces.  The citizens of Jericho are no different from those in Sachsen or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. They see their world threatened by globalization, big box stores, automation, immigration - and are attracted to any rhetoric that promises to 'make Germany great again. . .'"  

Joseph René Bellot, Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph René Bellot : with his Journal of a voyage in the polar seas, in search of Sir John Franklin (1855 originally, not sure of this edition)


Here's a look at a great engraving in the original.

Patrick Jory Thailand's Theory of Monarchy (2017)

"Since the 2006 coup d’état, Thailand has been riven by two opposing political visions: one which aspires to a modern democracy and the rule of law, and another which holds to the traditional conception of a kingdom ruled by an exemplary Buddhist monarch. Thailand has one of the world’s largest populations of observant Buddhists and one of its last politically active monarchies. This book examines the Theravada Buddhist foundations of Thailand’s longstanding institution of monarchy. Patrick Jory states that the storehouse of monarchical ideology is to be found in the popular literary genre known as the Jātakas, tales of the Buddha’s past lives. The best-known of these, the Vessantara Jātaka, disseminated an ideal of an infinitely generous prince as a bodhisatta or future Buddha—an ideal which remains influential in Thailand today. Using primary and secondary source materials largely unknown in Western scholarship, Jory traces the history of the Vessantara Jātaka and its political-cultural importance from the ancient to the modern period. Although pressures from European colonial powers and Buddhist reformers led eventually to a revised political conception of the monarchy, the older Buddhist ideal of kingship has yet endured."  From SUNY Press

Su'ad Abdul Khabeer  Muslim Cool (2016)

"Muslim Cool is a way of being an American Muslim—displayed in ideas, dress, social activism in the ’hood, and in complex relationships to state power. Constructed through hip hop and the performance of Blackness, Muslim Cool is a way of engaging with the Black American experience by both Black and non-Black young Muslims that challenges racist norms in the U.S. as well as dominant ethnic and religious structures within American Muslim communities.  
Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, Su'ad Abdul Khabeer illuminates the ways in which young and multiethnic U.S. Muslims draw on Blackness to construct their identities as Muslims. This is a form of critical Muslim self-making that builds on interconnections and intersections, rather than divisions between 'Black' and 'Muslim.'”  . . . From NYU Press

#metoo and #ihave - Redefining The Rules Of Sex And Power

There are the written rules - what people are supposed to do and not do - and there are the rules a scientist might write up after observing what really happens.  The first set is prescriptive and the second set is descriptive.  Humans strive to find ways to make the world work the way we think it should.  

I'm trying to find some way to make sense of what the sudden attention to sexual misconduct by powerful males means and how things might look in five years.  Will the power balance be radically different?  Or will all this just fade away and powerful people will continue to do what they want?

The media have been full of women's (and some men's) accounts of being abused by men in power.  #metoo has been well covered.  So when I heard about the hashtag #ihave - where men were supposedly confessing to their own abuse of power, I looked to see what was there.

Disappointing.  You can look yourself.  Maybe there are some serious confessions in there, but it's loaded with unrelated stuff, plus confessions of trivial stuff, plus mock confessions.  It did get me to Steve Locke's "I have led women on, I've cheated"  and "Benjamin Law: Five Things I Admit #IHave Done."  One could say, these are a good start toward self-awareness.

Let's see, here's Locke's list:

1. "I have led women on,"  
2. "I've cheated, and 
3. acted in ways that reflected a sense of entitlement towards the exploitation of women's bodies and behaviours. 
4. I've acted in ways that could be described as 'creepy,' both sober and under the influence. 
5. I've absolutely been overly defensive when called out for my actions, and 
6. have attacked things that certain women loved most about themselves because I felt intimidated by them. The list could go on." 

He also talks about punching a wall and feeling powerful when it frightened the woman he was with.

This is a pretty good list.  But I suspect that many women would also confess to these kinds of behaviors, at least 1, 2, 5, and 6.  Part of this is about growing up, learning how to negotiate the adult world, dealing with one's insecurities.

Locke says he went to therapy (and still goes) to understand and change his unhealthy relationships with women.  

Benjamin Law's list is softer. 

1. Told female friends, "Yeah I'm mates with him, but wouldn't be if I was a woman" – because I knew of his weird and predatory behaviour around women.  [I guess he's saying he shouldn't be mates with the guy.]
2. Laughed awkwardly at sexist remarks in professional situations, instead of pulling men up.
3. Almost gone on TV to discuss a book written by a famous Australian musician who has been violent against women I know.
4. Declined disclosing my wage to a female colleague who suspected she was being paid less than me (she was) for fear of reprisal from our male boss who'd told me to keep it quiet.
5. Suggested things were far worse in the past.

I'm not saying that this list doesn't help people become aware of little ways people can passively support systems of abuse.  But what women are #metoo-ing is far more egregious than what I'm seeing on #ihave.  (I checked to see if I should capitalize #IHave, but it got be back to #ihave.)

I even saw a tweet that compared #metoo and #ihave to the public denouncements and confessions of the Cultural Revolution in China.  I understand why someone might see a connection, but the differences are far more significant, starting with the fact that the Cultural Revolution denouncements were instigated by Mao.  Not by the people who were wronged.  

And while I recognize that men's careers might be ruined by false accusations, far, far more women's careers and lives have been ruined by actual sexual harassment and assault.  When the number of men's ruined careers starts approaching 25% of the number of women's ruined lives, then we can start worrying more about false accusation.  Not that we shouldn't call them out.  But it's no reason to dismiss such accusations altogether.

The ideal would be equal power between two people so that anything that might be construed as sexual is consensual.  Here's what it seems like we have to overcome:

Taking advantage of an unequal power relationship.    (I recognize that some might argue that our society, with an assist from nature,  gives extra power to men so this is always the case.  But ask any man who's been turned down for a date, if there are many individual women who have more more power than many individual men.)  Some of the key sources of power:

• Physical Strength - men are often stronger and larger than women and can force themselves on women
• Authority - laws or customs give someone the right to wield power over another - a teacher, a boss, a pastor, a parent, a police officer, a building permit official
• Social Power - society awards greater credibility for all sorts of reasons - persuasiveness, physical attractiveness, occupation, connections, charisma 
• Economic Power - those with money have power over those without

For each of these sources of power, except physical strength, there is an implied transaction.  One person trades sexual favors - from touching to intercourse - for something the other person has the power to give or take away - a grade, a job, a dinner, a passport, a better life, etc.  For men, physical strength can be the clincher if the other forms, in the end, don't get them what they want.  

Are all these equal? Or are some worse than others?  Here's my proposed hierarchy, recognizing that these actions often combine more than one aspect.

• Forcible rape - where there is not even a modicum of consent is the worst.  
• The threat to take away a woman's  job or to otherwise make her life more difficult if she doesn't consent to his overtures.   
• The offer of something she needs or wants in exchange for sex.  

The idea here of consent is conceptual.  Technically, if someone were forced to judge, there could be different levels of consent depending on how necessary or discretionary the given or taken 'item' is.  I think readers can imagine a continuum of scenarios from essentially forced to essentially consensual.  

Sex or Power?   Some argue that all rape is about power, not sex.  As a former young man, I can't help but be skeptical.  Sometimes a cigar is a cigar.  The alcohol, music, and body contact at a bar or party can easily lead a young man to take advantage of a woman, not to exert power, but to have sexual release. But, of course, much of Weinstein's inappropriate touching was a way of showing the world his power as a relatively unattractive man to have beautiful women around him who  allowed him to touch them inappropriately.  And for some (many?) men, power is an aphrodisiac, in which case the power and the sex are combined.  

But one doesn't have to be a powerful mogul to combine sex and power.  All the men for whom sex is the game of pursuing the prey until she submits and who then lose interest after the 'conquest' exhibit some variation of this combined sexual desire and power.  

If there is no other position of power involved, if the sex is not in exchange for something else, things get murkier.  How does one determine consent?  When I was coming of age, girls were supposed to save sex until marriage.  Consent was not socially acceptable.  They were supposed to say no and the boy was supposed to somehow know the difference between a real no and a face saving no that meant, keep going.  Hollywood still gives us countless role models that sex is a hunt - think, for example, of Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother.  Just go through this list of Barney quotes and think about how Marshall, Ted, Robin, and Lily love him despite his predatory behavior.

Is There Ever Equality?  Suppose we have two college students who meet and find each other attractive enough to go out on a date.  Neither has an official position of power over the other.  Yet one might be older, or more attractive, or richer, or more talented, or more socially inept, or more sexually experienced than the other.  They may each have qualities that makes one superior in some ways and inferior in other ways.  One may be more attracted to the other, than the other way around.  Each of these conditions gives a modicum of power to one or the other, though it may change from moment to moment, or month to month.   

It's in this situation that I think we have to give people more space to make mistakes, to experiment, to grow up without serious reprisals.  I'm not talking about men who lie and cheat to get sex.  But I am talking about people who don't yet know who they are or what they want;  who aren't that comfortable with themselves or with others.  I'm talking about people who have difficulty reading non-verbal cues from others.  These people are going to make sexual mistakes.  They need some room to learn how to be in a relationship.  But they also need to recognize that another person is involved and be respectful. [Hmmm, this sounds like an ad for sex education in schools.]  If they get into powerful positions, this pass no longer applies.  Besides, they ought to have enough money to get professional help.

OK, that's a first draft for ways to think about this.

And as I was writing this - I let it sit overnight and then made more changes - I came up with another interesting project:  Make a list of Weinstein brothers films, watch them, and rate them on how women are treated by the men.  (Actually, that's a good thing to do with all movies.  My daughter first suggested that to me long ago.)  To what extent do we as movie goers accept abusive treatment of women in films and thus encourage men to model that behavior?

[UPDATE January 27, 2018:  My daughter also brought the Bechdel test to my attention.  To pass this test a movie must have:
(1)  at least two women in it, who
(2) who talk to each other, about
(3) something besides a man.
Something to pay attention to when you watch movies.]

[We started watching How I Met Your Mother on Netflix.  I wanted to see why it was so popular.  It's well written, fast paced, funny, and the episodes are short.  It was a good way to take the edge off after heavy shows, like Vietnam.  But really, Barney's behavior toward women is manipulative, devious, and everything that is wrong with perpetual one night stands based on the idea of the hunt.  The show does give glimpses of his inherent loneliness and fear of commitment,  but it glorifies his relentless pursuit of the one night stand, through deceit and with absolutely no regard for the women he pursues.]

It Snowed Overnight

What snow we'd had was pretty much gone.  All that I saw left were shady spots along Campbell Creek.  But it's a bright new world today.  I say that because having snow on the ground makes everything brighter including night.

Finding stats on first snows, and more importantly first lasting snows, isn't as easy as I expected.  I did find one site with charts of average first snow for around the country.  Here's the West table down to Anchorage.

	Avg 1st Snow	Earliest Snow	Avg Annual Snow
Fairbanks	Sep. 27	Aug. 29, 1922	64.2 inches
Great Falls	Oct. 2	Aug. 22, 1992	61.6 inches
Cheyenne	Oct. 2	Sep. 8, 1929	60 inches
Crested Butte	Oct. 5	Sep. 3, 1961	206.7 inches
Billings	Oct. 12	Sep. 7, 1962	55.6 inches
Anchorage	Oct. 15	Sep. 20, 1947	74.6 inches

Our first snow this year was October 21.  Not too late.  But there's another statistic that I'm looking for:  first sticking snow.  By that I mean, snow that doesn't disappear in a couple of days, but sticks around all winter.  Our first snow this year was followed by wind and high 40s temperatures.  

November 5 seems to be late for sticking, or permanent snow.  It has been cooler this last week, so maybe this will stick.  Our backyard thermometer says 33˚F, just above freezing.  

Surrogate Gramping

I got to play grandpa today with an 17 month old today.  Her mom had a conference and her dad works on call.  So, essentially the guys got to hang out with the youngster, who after an initial shyness, loosened up and was no trouble at all.  We had about an hour or so alone while dad went in to do some prep stuff.

It's still warm for November, but fog has been playing hide and seek in Anchorage for the past week.
Leaving morning (and afternoon) frost on everything.

We read books, took things out and put things back.  That's a major activity for that age.  We cut the old raspberry canes and went to the playground.  Even frost swing seats.













We walked on wooden edges, read more books, juggled a bit, ate snacks, ate lunch.  The walk had its desired effect and D had a good long nap.

Then out for another walk, this time with the stroller.  That's when we saw the geese flying.  They too have been procrastinating starting south, but the chill now is probably going to get them going.

As I drove home, I could see the fog gathered to the east up against the mountains.  I'm guessing it will flow back into town during the night.  I had to wait till I was stopped at a light, and then the traffic lights hid the mountains above the fog.

Johnson Tire Closure - Some Background

The ADN has had articles Thursday and today  on the closure of Johnson Tire.  This is a particularly critical time as people are changing their tires from summer to winter tires.  According to the article, people had left their snow tires at Johnson Tire and now they can't get access to them.

Kelly Gaede 2010 Leg Hearing

I  posted on Kelly Gaede back in 2010 when I was blogging the legislature.  He had proposed a mandatory winter tire bill which Rep. Harris had introduced.  At the hearing it was clear that this was a bill that would give Gaede and his company Johnson Tire a lot more business.  Rep. Tammy Wilson aggressively questioned the bill and how it would impact her constituents.


The state now lists inactive business licenses for Johnson's Tire Service - one for Dennis Gaede in Fairbanks and Kelly P. Gaede in Anchorage.

Here's a link to that old post:  Mandatory Winter Tire Bill.  One of the commenters - Anonymous July 7, 2010 - seemed to have more detailed personal information about the history of Johnson Tires and Gaede.  I can't vouch for the accuracy of the comment, but it seems like it's worth checking out.

Up Against The Wall

Regular readers will recall, I wrote about El Capitan.  That led me to check the Anchorage rock climbing gym.  And last night I went with a friend for the intro class.

The intro class meets 7pm - 9pm M,W, and F. For $20 you get a lesson and equipment.  And as I mentioned last time they suggested bringing a buddy.  Though that didn't really turn out to be necessary, there were people who needed partners in the group of folks.

There's a long iPad form to fill out and initial waiving all sorts of things, mostly about if you get hurt.  And climbing shoes, despite looking really comfortable, aren't.  I started with a size 8.  Way too tight.  A size 9.  Still too tight.  When I got the size 10 I realized others weren't wearing socks.  But even without the socks it squeezed my toes.

Then we checked out the boulder room upstairs.  And then we went back down to the big climbing walls.   There are different climbing routes up the wall, each with its own color, a sign that designates its level of difficulty, and which rope (hanging down from near the ceiling) goes with that route.

We had been given harnesses which we had on like shorts made of straps.  Since I didn't take pictures I'm linking to an REI page on how to pick a harness.  Then we got shown how to tie the double eight knot for the climber and how to attach the carabiner and the belaying device.  I should have taken pictures, but I was caught up in the class.  The links will fill you in.  I'd note the way we learned to make the double eight knot was different.

Then we watched the instructors climb - actually the attention was on the belaying, not on the climber - and then it was our turns.

It wasn't really hard.  The belaying device holds the climbers even when they are hanging free and you can let them down slowly or more quickly.  So after the class was over and we got our belayer certificates, we went back and tried some more difficult routes.  Not too much more difficult.


Finally, I remembered to take some pictures.  Here's my partner up on the wall part way.


He looks so much more agile than I do in the picture he took of me.  But, then, something I only thought of afterward, was that his name is Cliff, so he should be more at home on the wall.  And he's climbed before.









We were going up a green route.

It was fun and after being in Yosemite and learning a bit about climbers, I just really wanted to learn about how the ropes and belaying works.  Climbing up was not too difficult on the easy paths, though you have to work harder on the more difficult ones.  Letting go of the wall and holding on to the rope and letting your partner belay you down was probably the coolest part.  It takes some faith to just let go.

Will I go back?  Probably not.  I got what I wanted.  And it's kind of like swimming indoors.  I so much prefer the ocean.  This is much easier than climbing outside - everything is there and ready for you to just climb.

What I got was the most basic experience in climbing and a better appreciation for the safety measures climbers take and the feel of being way up on the wall.   If I were forty of fifty years younger, I might have decided to try some real climbing.  But I am thinking about next time my granddaughter visits Anchorage.  There were kids climbing the boulders.

[UPDATED Nov. 2, 2017 4:30pm  - When people worry about the danger of mountain climbing, I'd note that mountain climber Fred Beckey died the other day at age 94.  Here's the start of an LA Times obituary:

"Legendary mountain climber Fred Beckey, who wrote dozens of books and is credited with notching more first ascents than any other American mountaineer, has died. He was 94.
Beckey died of natural causes in Seattle, said Megan Bond, a close friend who managed his affairs.
“He was an extraordinary mountaineer. He also had a personality and humor that almost dwarfed the mountains around him,” Bond said. “He was a brilliant writer. He was a scholar. He lived based on what was important to him, and he was not going to sell out.”
Beckey was known as much for his eccentric personality as for his singular obsession with climbing."]

Bergdahl - Justice Or Scapegoating?

I understand that Bergdahl's walking off from his post in Afghanistan, getting taken by the Taliban and imprisoned and tortured for five years, led to others risking their lives to find him.  It appears that no deaths can be attributed to searching for Bergdahl,  but least one solder, Mark Allen, suffered grievous harm.  A further issue, that was totally out of Bergdahl's control, was the debate about whether five Taliban should be released in exchange for Bergdahl.  There are legitimate questions about the impact of releasing the Taliban prisoners, but, for example, Israelis release far more Palestinian prisoners in exchange for just one Israeli soldier, even for the remains of Israeli soldiers. 

Bergdahl was a troubled man.  He'd been washed out of Coast Guard bootcamp.  When he applied to the army, they overlooked that problem and accepted him anyway.  And later, he was diagnosed.

"In July 2015, an Army forensic psychiatrist issued a report diagnosing Bergdahl with schizotypal personality disorder, a condition marked by distorted perceptions, eccentric behavior and “magical” thinking, at the time of his alleged misconduct."

From Stars and Stripes:

“I expect Fidell [Bergdahl's lead attorney] will argue that the Army shares some blame here,” [Eric Carpenter, an assistant law professor at Florida International University and a former Army defense attorney and prosecutor] said. “They brought in somebody that should never have been in the Army in the first place – someone already with mental health problems, and then they put him in the most stressful place that exists – a small [outpost] in the middle of the most hostile part of Afghanistan, and then gee, surprise, surprise, he had a breakdown.”

I understand that when people are harmed - like the people who tried to find Bergdahl - that there is a strong need to find justice.  This need regularly cause the convictions of the wrong people. Eyewitnesses too often swear that the wrong person committed the crime.  Is convicting Bergdahl going to bring justice?  He's already been imprisoned for five years and tortured by the Taliban.

This case is different.  Bergdahl acknowledges he deserted.  There is Bergdahl's decision to walk away from his unit to consider.  But a larger moral issue here is why was he put into this position in the first place when they knew he was not mentally stable?  If people feel that someone has to be punished for the harm to those seeking to find him, is Bergdahl the right person to target?

Focusing on Bergdahl takes the heat of the army officials who set up the waiver system when they were having trouble getting recruits, a program that resulted in Bergdahl being accepted into the army.  Or the specific official(s) who gave him a waiver.

Or people like George Bush whose actions led to the death of thousands of American troops, and hundreds of thousands of civilians throughout the region of the war.

Or the apparent disorganization of the people running Bergdahl's unit, which is raised in the case of Mark Allen, 

“'Whereabouts of the DUSTWUN' means Bergdahl. The second day of the patrol, they came under attack. Allen was shot in the head. One man was hit in the hand by an RPG; another was wounded by shrapnel.
This report includes an extensive discussion about what went wrong on this mission. It says the patrol was horribly planned and badly executed in every possible way. Which is in line with what some soldiers and commanders told us in interviews: that in the days and weeks right after Bergdahl left his outpost, there was such a scramble to find him that soldiers were sometimes left under-equipped and vulnerable. But whether any deaths can be attributed to the search for Bergdahl, according to the Army, the answer seems to be no."

Should Bergdahl be blamed for the poor organization and planning of his unit's missions?  That was precisely what Bergdahl says his desertion was aimed at - bringing attention to how badly his unit was organized.

Emotion usually clouds our decisions and messes with our moral consistency.  We need a scapegoat for things that have gone wrong.  A mentally ill recruit is easier to identify than the folks who let him into the army despite his mental health problems.

Our sense of culpability varies depending on the symbolic meaning of the persons in questions.  We, at least superficially revere vets, yet disabled vets don't radiate the image of strength and power that we want to see in our military.  Their mental problems resulting from war were often dismissed, even punished,  by the military.  Disabled vets confuse our symbolic reactions.  On the one hand our impulse is to honor vets who fought for their country.  On the other hand, disabled people are seen as less than everyone else, though we're overcoming that bias, at least when it comes to vets. Vets who desert are traitors.  But what if they are mentally unhealthy?

My sense is that there is a lot of blame to go around here and piling it all onto Bergdahl, who has already suffered as a Taliban prisoner for five years, won't serve any good.  Bergdahl is not a danger to society. Ending this situation by imprisoning him, means the larger organizational issues that led to his desertion won't be addressed.

Protestantism Began 500 Years Ago Today (Tuesday)

I don't have much to say - meaning, I guess, I have way too much to say - so I'll just mark this event with a few quotes.  First  from Christianity Today:

"Sometime during October 31, 1517, the day before the Feast of All Saints, the 33-year-old Martin Luther posted theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. The door functioned as a bulletin board for various announcements related to academic and church affairs. The theses were written in Latin and printed on a folio sheet by the printer John Gruenenberg, one of the many entrepreneurs in the new print medium first used in Germany about 1450. Luther was calling for a "disputation on the power and efficacy of indulgences out of love and zeal for truth and the desire to bring it to light." He did so as a faithful monk and priest who had been appointed professor of biblical theology at the University of Wittenberg, a small, virtually unknown institution in a small town."

If the word indulgences didn't pop out at you in that paragraph, let's try again.  From Crosswalk:

"Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses were particularly focused on the practice (and corruption) associated with indulgences. Specifically, indulgences were being sold for financial gain, as well as giving people a false assurance of salvation. It is not surprising that Luther posted his theses on October 31st, the eve of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day, a time which emphasized the distinction between the souls of “saints” and the souls of everyone else, as well as revealed widespread misunderstanding about the power of indulgences (and the afterlife in general).

About a year after the wall came down in Berlin and between East and West Germany, I had an opportunity to visit Wittenberg and the famous church.  I wanted to put up my own picture of the church door in Wittenberg, but I haven't found it.

But this is a good time to ponder what actions stick and what actions disappear into nothingness.  Many were upset with the corruption of the Catholic bureaucracy in those days.  Why did Luther's actions make such a big difference?  I'm not going to answer that question because this isn't something I know all that much about.  But I'm sure he was helped by things that had happened before him.  I'm sure his own personality and skills played a role.  And I'm sure timing was a large part of this.

And we can ponder too, whether his 'solution' has made the world a better or worse place overall.  I don't know the answer to that, but the most interesting take that I've read on the impact of Protestantism was Max Weber's The Protestantism Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

You can read the whole book at this link.  Here's a bit from the 1976 introduction by Anthony Giddens.  It's hard boiling a complex work into a short summery, so consider this only a few notes of of a symphony.  I'll warn you that academic German writing can be hard and the translations are often even harder.  But the content is worth the effor

"What explains this historically peculiar circumstance of a drive to the accumulation of wealth conjoined to an absence of interest in the worldly pleasures which it can purchase? It would certainly be mistaken, Weber argues, to suppose that it derives from the relaxation of traditional moralities: this novel outlook is a distinctively moral one, demanding in fact unusual self- discipline. The entrepreneurs associated with the development of rational capitalism combine the impulse to accumulation with a positively frugal life-style. Weber finds the answer in the ‘this-worldly asceticism’ of Puritanism, as focused through the concept of the ‘calling’. The notion of the calling, according to Weber, did not exist either in Antiquity or in Catholic theology; it was introduced by the Reformation. It refers basically to the idea that the highest form of moral obligation of the individual is to fulfil his duty in worldly affairs. This projects religious behaviour into the day-to-day world, and stands in contrast to the Catholic ideal of the monastic life, whose object is to tran- scend the demands of mundane existence. Moreover, the moral responsibility of the Protestant is cumulative: the cycle of sin, repentance and forgiveness, renewed throughout the life of the Catholic, is absent in Protestantism. 

Although the idea of the calling was already present in Luther’s doctrines, Weber argues, it became more rigorously developed in the various Puritan sects: Calvinism, Methodism, Pietism and Baptism. Much of Weber’s discussion is in fact concentrated upon the first of these, although he is interested not just in Calvin’s doctrines as such but in their later evolution within the Calvinist movement. Of the elements in Calvinism that Weber singles out for special attention, perhaps the most important, for his thesis, is the doctrine of predestination: that only some human beings are chosen to be saved from damnation, the choice being predetermined by God. Calvin himself may have been sure of his own salvation, as the instrument of Divine prophecy; but none of his followers could be. ‘In its extreme inhumanity’, Weber comments, ‘this doctrine must above all have had one consequence for the life of a generation which surrendered to its magnificent consistency . . . A feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness’ (p. 60). From this torment, Weber holds, the capitalist spirit was born. On the pastoral level, two developments occurred: it became obligatory to regard oneself as chosen, lack of certainty being indicative of insufficient faith; and the performance of ‘good works’ in worldly activity became accepted as the medium whereby such surety could be demonstrated. Hence success in a calling eventually came to be regarded as a ‘sign’ – never a means – of being one of the elect. The accumulation of wealth was morally sanctioned in so far as it was combined with a sober, industrious career; wealth was condemned only if employed to support a life of idle luxury or self-indulgence." (pp. xi-xiii) (emphasis added)

Lots to think about there.

Using Nixon To Put Trump's Denials Into Context - What Are They Really Thinking And Doing In The White House

To get some insight into the President's denials of wrong doings and attempts to redirect attention to Clinton emails, we can look at what President Nixon did when Watergate investigations were going on.  (The Dean investigation mentioned in the second half was an internal White House investigation that Nixon hoped could quash any further outside investigations.)

Here, from HistoryCommons:

August 29, 1972: Nixon Says Both Sides Breaking Campaign Finance Laws; Internal Investigations Have Found No Wrongdoing in White House

  

President Nixon responds to the report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) alleging possible illegal campaign finances in his re-election campaign (see August 22, 1972). Nixon tells reporters, “[W]e have a new law here in which technical violations have occurred and are occurring, apparently on both sides.” When asked what illegalities the Democrats have committed, Nixon says: “I think that will come out in the balance of this week. I will let the political people talk about, but I understand that there have been [violations] on both sides.” The financial director of his re-election campaign, Maurice Stans (see Before April 7, 1972), is an honest man, Nixon says, and is currently investigating the matter “very, very thoroughly, because he doesn’t want any evidence at all to be outstanding, indicating that we have not complied with the law.” Between the GAO’s and the FBI’s investigations, Stans’s own internal investigation, and an internal White House investigation by White House counsel John Dean, Nixon says there is no need for a special Watergate prosecutor, as some have requested. Of the Dean investigation: “I can say categorically that his investigation indicates that no one on the White House staff, no one in this administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident [the Watergate burglary—see 2:30 a.m.June 17, 1972]. What really hurts in matters of this sort is not the fact that they occur, because overzealous people in campaigns do things that are wrong. What really hurts is if you try to cover it up.” [BERNSTEIN AND WOODWARD, 1974, PP. 57; GERALD R. FORD LIBRARY AND MUSEUM, 7/3/2007] A Washington Post story on the press conference highlights Nixon’s use of the phrase “presently employed,” and notes that several people suspected of campaign wrongdoing—G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, Maurice Stans, Hugh Sloan, and John Mitchell—no longer work for the administration. [BERNSTEIN AND WOODWARD, 1974, PP. 57] An assistant attorney general is convinced that the Dean investigation is “a fraud, a pipeline to [White House aide H. R.] Haldeman.” [BERNSTEIN AND WOODWARD, 1974, PP. 206] In April 1973, an associate of Dean tells Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that there was never any such investigation, that Dean had not even discussed anything to do with Watergate as of August 29. “There never was a report,” the associate says. “Dean was asked to gather certain facts. The facts got twisted around to help some other people above him.” [BERNSTEIN AND WOODWARD, 1974, PP. 297-298] Dean later tells Watergate investigators that he never conducted any such internal White House investigation (see June 3, 1973). [WASHINGTON POST, 6/3/1973]

Entity Tags: John Dean, General Accounting Office, E. Howard Hunt, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hugh Sloan, Bob Woodward, G. Gordon Liddy, H.R. Haldeman, Maurice Stans, John Mitchell, Richard M. Nixon

Timeline Tags: Nixon and Watergate, Elections Before 2000

And if you want to know what Trump is thinking and doing, here's George V. Higgins' 1974 Atlantic Monthly account of what happened in the Nixon White House.  I'd note that all things considered, Nixon was a very capable president in many ways and a number of very important policy was made during his administration.  Here's a short excerpt:

"It is impossible, now, to ascertain with any assurance when it was that Richard Nixon first began to practice to deceive. But it is clear that over the years he perfected his art at least to the point of ‘trusting his monstrous craftsmanship completely, and believing it sufficient unto the most anxious of days. He became a virtuoso of deception, a wizard as a manipulator of reality and facts, and of the nation’s trust. Harry Houdini would have been hard pressed to imitate him with a set of handcuffs.
He guarded his ambition closely. A few intimates—Bob Haldeman, for example, who knew for more than two years what whoppers the President was piously reciting to the country on the subject of the cover-up—may have guessed at his prodigious skill in mendacity, but he was enough of an artist, with others, never to confide in them the truth about his fondness for lies, the final conceit of his mastery. It was that which led to Attorney General Richard Kleindienst’s disgrace, and to Attorney General Elliot Richardson’s stunned fury, and to the helpless rage and sorrow of James St."