We're getting rid of our popcorn ceiling upstairs and since we have to clear out the upstairs pretty much, we're getting the upstairs painted too. We just went through all this at my mom's house in LA, but it really needs it.
So I'm trying to get rid of things along the way instead of just moving everything as is. And working an hour or so a day in the yard as the snow is mostly gone now. And tomorrow and Saturday I go to the Alaska Press Club conference.
So while I have a backlog of posts I'm working on, they just aren't ready yet. I didn't get to my bike ride today until 9pm. Fortunately, our summer light is here already. The picture below was at 9:30 pm as I was almost home. Maybe "clouds at sunset" would be more appropriate since there is more sky than mountains.
From the Alaska State Senate Democratic Press Office:
JUNEAU - Today, the Alaska State Senate passed SB 134 by Senate Democratic Leader Berta Gardner (D-Anchorage). The legislation clarifies that a parent who chooses to keep a child conceived through rape can sever ties with their rapist, if approved by the court and in the best interest of the child.
In 1987, the Legislature passed a law allowing a mother to terminate a rapist father's parental rights. This law was inserted in AS 25.23, which focuses on adoption. The current termination statute has confused advocates and attorneys. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, has erroneously interpreted Alaska's statute as pertaining only to adoption cases. Family law lawyers within the state of Alaska have claimed they were not aware of the applicability of existing statutes.
"This does not affect a lot of people in this state but is a huge issue for those impacted people. It is important for a woman who becomes pregnant through rape to be able to be aware of her options," said Sen. Gardner. "Without a clear legal protection, a woman could be forced and locked into a long-term relationship with her abuser."
There are currently 45 states with statutes that allow for the parental rights of rapists to be reduced or terminated.
The legislation passed unanimously in the Senate and moves to the Alaska House of Representatives for further consideration. Members of the press with questions may contact Alaska Senate Democratic Press Secretary, Noah Hanson at 465-5319.
Initially, one might think this should have happened 60 years ago - when Alaska became a state. And there was legislation, but apparently it wasn't all that well known by attorneys and there was some confusion whether it only related to adoption cases. (One judge, according to the testimony, interpreted that way.)
And not everything is cut and dried. One case was discussed in the hearings at Health and Human Services Committee* in which a 13 year old was in a relationship with a young man 'over majority' who was convicted of statutory rape and served prison time. But the baby was raised, in part, by the paternal grandparents and was attached to them.
Miles Curtis testified on this in support of the bill. The child was in the maternal grandparents care until he was eight and only recently into the custody of the paternal parents. The child didn't want to be with the family, hard on the child, hard on the mother, hard on us financially. The current law was used against the mother. Problem wasn't with the abuser, but with the state of Alaska who have taken over the role of the parent. We would like it so that rapists are never in the best interest of the child. It won't help our case, but for others in the future it will help.
*Testimony on this bill begins at about 1:36 pm on the video.
I'd note that perhaps one reason it took so long for this bill to be heard (first hearing seems to be April 6, 2018)** is that it was sponsored by two Democratic Senators - Berta Gardner and Tom Begich - in the Republican controlled Senate.
**The video says this hearing was April 6, 2018, though the legislative record says April 9.
The bill now goes to the Democratic controlled House where one would expect it to pass fairly easily.
I'd note that I haven't done a lot of coverage of the state legislature since I spent a session in Juneau in 2010. Getting around on the state's BASIS website seems a lot easier than it was - particularly getting the video and audio of hearings.
From Having Our Say by Sarah L. Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany, with Amy Hill Hearth:
"This is what were told by our Mama: A fellow named John Logan, who was white, was an army officer called away to fight during the War of 1812. While he was gone, his wife took up with a Negro slave on their plantation. She was already the mother of seven daughters by her husband, and her romance with the slave produced two more daughters. When the husband returned, he forgave his wife - forgave her! - and adopted the two mulatto girls as his own They even took his last name, Logan. No one remembers what happened to the slave, except he must've left town in a big hurry. This slave and his white woman were our great-great-grandparents." (pp. 33-34)
There are lots of spots along Turnagain Arm to stop and explore. On the east side (away from the water) they tend to go up pretty steeply and that's less and less appealing as we get older. On the west side are favorite spot is a small parking spot near Indian where the bike trail starts. But where you can get over a small chainlink fence and then over the railroad tracks down to a rocky beach.
Though we discovered yesterday that the rocky part is much more limited than it used to be It's mostly mudflats now.
Yesterday there was only a thin area that was rocky, right along the where you climb down the boulders from the railroad tracks. Then it turned quickly to mudflats.
Here's a picture from September 2012 at this same beach. While it's not the same exact spot, you can see the same mountains in the background. You can't even see the rocky slope on the left where the railroad tracks are. The area between the railroad tracks and the mudflats was much greater.
But let's enjoy the amazing textures of the mudflats.
This one is from the road. I can't remember such a low tide where I couldn't see any water except for in the deeper channels.
As we got over the railroad tracks we found a couple and their dog enjoying a picnic overlooking Turnagain Arm. It was warmish (high 50s F) and no wind at all.)
And here we are on the railroad tracks (looking south) as we head back.
Trump's past has been glossed over for many, but it seems to be bubbling up in the Justice Department. If you want to understand how Trump got where he is and why that is soon to undo him, you need to dig deeper than social media and mainstream media.
I'd recommend a few sources of information to get you up to speed if you aren't already there.
This New Yorker article by Adam Davidson steps back then steps forward to explain why even Trump supporters will start having doubts when all the facts about his business dealings come out. He talks about how, as a reporter in Iraq, he saw the inevitable, but it took the American public much longer to realize we weren't winning there. Then he talks about studying the Collateralized Debt Obligations and realizing that the banking world was going to come crashing down. Again before the public did.
"I thought of those earlier experiences this week as I began to feel a familiar clarity about what will unfold next in the Trump Presidency. There are lots of details and surprises to come, but the endgame of this Presidency seems as clear now as those of Iraq and the financial crisis did months before they unfolded. Last week, federal investigators raided the offices of Michael Cohen, the man who has been closer than anybody to Trump’s most problematic business and personal relationships. This week, we learned that Cohen has been under criminal investigation for months—his e-mails have been read, presumably his phones have been tapped, and his meetings have been monitored. Trump has long declared a red line: Robert Mueller must not investigate his businesses, and must only look at any possible collusion with Russia. That red line is now crossed and, for Trump, in the most troubling of ways. Even if he were to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and then had Mueller and his investigation put on ice, and even if—as is disturbingly possible—Congress did nothing, the Cohen prosecution would continue. Even if Trump pardons Cohen, the information the Feds have on him can become the basis for charges against others in the Trump Organization.
This is the week we know, with increasing certainty, that we are entering the last phase of the Trump Presidency. This doesn’t feel like a prophecy; it feels like a simple statement of the apparent truth."
Essentially, when the remaining Trump faithful see behind the curtain, they too will realize they've been swindled. Eventually it happens to all frauds. Watch as Toto pulls down the wizard's curtain.
Next, for those of you who have Netflix, the documentary series Dirty Money ends with an episode on Donald Trump. For those who have been paying attention there isn't that much new, but as names like Michael Cohen start getting more airtime, this gives some background on them and their relationship with Trump . Just search for Dirty Money on Netflix, then go to the last episode of that series. [I don't think I can link you straight to the movie within Netflix since you have to put in your passwords, so the link just goes to Netflix and you have to find Dirty Money episode six yourself.]
If you have more time, Netflix also has a four episode series called Trump: The American Dream. This one gets much deeper into the Trump story. (The use of superlatives to describe everything he does goes back a long time.)
Watching these videos will be like reading the program at the opera. Soon the names and stories of Trump's henchmen and cronies will flash by in the news. If you read the program now you'll know the backstories of these folks.
Just like with Nixon, there was a majority of Americans who stood by the President, simply because he was the President. But slowly the circle around him got smaller and smaller as people in his administration were indicted.
At that time the Vietnam War also had the country polarized and those who held onto their belief in the President's innocence the longest were those who didn't want to believe these things about the president who was waging the war they so strongly believed in.
The details will be different this time round, but I suspect the end will be similar. Nixon was much more traditional, much better informed about how Washington worked (he'd been a member of Congress and Eisenhower's vice president for eight years.) Trump, I guess, believed that saying "if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere." He's in way over his head. And he has no self-control. So his decline will probably much more volatile.
And here are some posts I did to understand who Trump was back in 2016 that give background into his father and his mentor:
November 6, 2016: What A Trump Presidency Would Look Like - If you do your homework, some predictions aren't that hard. I suspect many of you would have made similar predictions. I'm comfortable pointing out what I said before we knew who won the election.
The last two posts (#1) and (#2) weren't really meant to tease you, but to overcome your natural tendency to actually stop, get a piece of paper and pen, and draw something. You're surfing the net and your fingers are only supposed to be tapping the keys. So I wanted to get at least a few of you to break that pattern and draw a peanut.
You can still do that. I'll leave some space and if you don't scroll down you won't see the peanuts.
I'll put my peanut drawing up again, so you don't see what's below until you've drawn your own peanut. We can wait while you do that.
Don't scroll down until you've drawn your own peanut. (Of course, I have no power to stop you from scrolling down, but I think this will mean more if you draw first.)
OK. Now let's look at some peanuts closely. Let's start with the ends, because they're different.
One end - the top in the picture above - has a little hook, a parrot beak.
The other end - on top in this second picture - has what I'm calling a navel, a little dimple. The two ends of the peanuts are connected by ribs that go from the navel to the hook. I counted ribs on about five peanuts and there seemed to be nine or ten. They're not exactly straight. You can see them best on the upper photo.
And between the ribs are little weblike patterns, which I assume help make the peanuts harder to crush. You can see them better in the next picture where I've taken the same peanut and put it through a few different Photoshop filters so that different ridges and edges would be emphasized.
So now my drawing of a peanut looks pretty simplified. As I wrote in the previous peanut posts - that this isn't really about peanuts, it's about knowing things and about being observant. But as I was typing this post I was thinking it had much more application than just that.
We have the notion I mentioned that when we can label something, we stopping 'seeing' it. The first time you get a peanut (or meet someone) you check it out to figure out what it is and how to recognize it next time you see it. But once that's done, we tend not to look too closely.
This holds true for all the things we've named (or labeled). As soon as we recognize it's a peanut we're satisfied. We don't necessarily go beyond that simple first drawing of a peanut. Instead they all look the same. (Remember, in the picture immediately above, they are all the same peanut.)
But really the idea of a peanut is much more complicated - the two different kinds of ends where the ribs all meet. The weblike designs between ribs. If we look closely we can see that each peanut is unique, though we may have to look pretty closely to see the differences.
And I suspect that our ideas about health, ethics, nature, politics, and everything else are also prematurely identified and labeled and then not really examined too carefully after that.
And you thought this was just going to be about peanuts. Well, so did I. But that also helps make my point about looking at things closely opens up new possibilities in areas we thought we knew. Like when Alaska gained a huge Japanese market for fish roe after a Japanese visitor watched how the salmon were being cut open and the roe was thrown away. He asked why and Alaska fishers discovered that they were throwing not just roe away, but lots of money, because there was a demand for roe in Japan.
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When I tried to find out more about the structure of peanut shells, I wasn't too successful. Most of what I found was about the molecular structure, not the actual peanut shells themselves. But there are lots of uses. In India - peanut ash is used in producing concrete. And ground peanut shells can also be used to absorb dye from liquids. And Google has a patent to use ground peanut shells for insulation.
Here's a quick peanut drawing I made. It took less than 30 seconds to draw, color in, and photograph. So in my last post when I asked you to draw a peanut from memory, I wasn't asking you to spend a lot of time.
This post is for people who missed the last one. Go back and look at it. And for people who saw it but didn't make a drawing. It's just for you, no one else will see it. I'm trying to give folks a chance to think about what peanuts look like before I post the pictures of the peanuts I took yesterday.
So, here's my quick drawing:
What does yours look like? I'll either update this post with my peanut photos or put up a whole new post so you can draw without peaking. (I'm not even labeling this post art - I don't want anyone intimidated by that word. But it is about knowing.)
Now, draw a peanut (the outside of an intact peanut shell). Make it three or four times real size.
First draw the outline.
As you do this, draw the two ends.
Next draw the patterns that connect the two ends.
There are things we see everyday without really seeing them. When my granddaughter was here we looked at the peanut shells (she likes breaking the shells and eating the insides just as much as I do. But she takes off the skins first and I'm not so picky.)
Someone once said that once you 'know' what something is, you stop paying attention to it. But there is always more to see, feel, hear, smell. I once had a teacher who changed my life by saying "Intelligent people are never bored." I eventually came to understand that meant that there was always something to observe, to think about, to consider.
I've taken some pictures of peanuts. Tomorrow or the next day I'll put them up. But meanwhile, draw your own peanuts to see what you already know. Then go find some peanuts and then make new drawings.
Barbara, put your drawings up on your blog, ok. Your first 'blind' peanuts and then your observed peanuts. You draw so beautifully. (There are two artists named Barbara who drop by here now and then. One's in Canada. Maybe you can email me your pictures and I can add them. And anyone else is, of course, welcome to do the same.)
Often students would write their graduate papers using words they would never say, and which, quite often, they used incorrectly. When I'd ask, they'd tell me they found a word in the thesaurus, that this was grad school and they wanted to sound more academic. Did you look the word up? No, it was in the thesaurus so it was a synonym.
Well, usually synonyms have a related meaning, but they don't all mean exactly the same thing. So when I read this sentence in the paper this morning about the Alaska railroad, my antennae began to twitch.
"The stronger 2017 revenue figures were driven by continued growth in the railroad's passenger service — largely attributable to Alaska's burgeoning tourism industry." (emphasis added)
Burgeoning? Alaska's tourism industry is 'burgeoning'? It's been strong and growing since I moved here over 40 years ago. So, just to check whether my own internal dictionary is accurate, I looked up the word at dictionary.com:
"verb (used without object)
1. to grow or develop quickly; flourish:
The town burgeoned into a city. He burgeoned into a fine actor.
2. to begin to grow, as a bud; put forth buds, shoots, etc., as a plant (often followed by out, forth)."
It's the quickly part that rings false here. There's no real transition from one thing into another as in the first example. Here are the stats from a study I found at the Alaska Travel Industry Association website:
This long term slow growth isn't exactly the way I understand the word 'burgeoning.'
Take Home: If you use a thesaurus to find a different word to use, be sure to look it up in the dictionary before you actually use. Most synonyms are exact substitutes for each other.
It's been a while that I've been following Randy Bryce on Twitter. I think I saw a video of him talking about his campaign to unseat Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. If I weren't following him on Twitter I wouldn't be aware much of how hard he's been campaigning. I was beginning to think that it was possible for him to win. As he says in the video, who would have believed that a man working on a construction site a year ago could take on the Speaker of the House.
Well, it seems that Speaker Ryan thinks so too. Here's Bryce's tweet and video response to the announcement that Ryan will not run for reelection. I'm sure that the strength of Bryce's campaign had to play a role in that decision.
.@SpeakerRyan knew he couldn’t beat this campaign. Not in 2018. So he’s quitting now rather than losing in November.
Enjoy your “retirement,” Paul. I’ll be busy here in #WI01, fighting for all of the working people who don’t have the luxury to “retire” at the age of 48. pic.twitter.com/zUeB6u4DRc
