Stopover In Talkeetna

It was sunny and warm, though windy when we left Anchorage.  The workers already had plastic on the floor, a couple of daffodils were close to opening,  buds on the birch trees were greening.  After reading about yesterday's "heavy snow" in Denali, along with the road being open only to mile 3, and temperatures dipping to the low 20s, I booked a room in Talkeetna for the night.








We got here and napped - catching up on some sleep we needed - then walked on the back streets which got us this view of a creek that I'm assuming empties into the Susitna nearby.

There's still a lot more winter here than in Anchorage.







We wandered back and took the trail through the woods into town.

Our first glimpse of downtown:

There's one main street, several blocks long.  Talkeetna's about 110 miles north of Anchorage.  Denali National Park is about 235 miles north so this seemed a good stop and we haven't really been here for quite a while.  It's about ten miles off the main road, so we tend to pass it by.  It's the jumping off point for Denali climbers.  In summer climbers from around the world are here (well they're here already) to fly to a Denali base camp in hopes of getting to the peak.  We were told that people had been stuck on the mountain due to the recent storms and a plane was able to get folks back yesterday.

We stayed a night in the Fairview Inn one winter many, many years ago.  It was a long noisy night as the bar is downstairs and they have frequent concerts.

The Fairview Inn was built in 1923 and soon after President Harding, on a long visit to Alaska, was there for lunch.  He died shortly after, though I don't think there's a cause and effect relationship.  It's registered as an historical monument.

If you're paying attention, you'll see it has a for sale sign.  An ADN article from 2014 said that attorney Phillip Wiedener had it up for sale at that time for $1.8 million.  I checked today and the price is only $1.2 million.   For people seeing prices like that for little homes in California, it might seem a steal.





We passed the cannabis shop, but it wasn't open.









And then on down to the Susitna River.

Further north, the Nenena Ice Classic ended yesterday when the tripod on the ice moved the required distance down the river giving someone a $225,000 jackpot for being the closest to the exact time the tripod was tripped.   And some ice passed by while I was watching.



Looking up the river, we could see the Alaska range, at least the foothills below Denali which would have been off the picture to the right if the clouds were gone.

We had pizza for dinner at the Wildflower Cafe,which was surprisingly good and not very expensive.  But the highlight was the amazingly illustrated bathroom.  (A bit distorted as I tried to photoshop two pictures together)


Denali's supposed to have a high of 37˚ F tomorrow, with a partly cloudy forecast for the morning and early afternoon, and then the days get warmer through the weekend (into the 40˚s) with some chance of rain and snow each day.   But the park is a large area and the entrance is fairly low elevation, so I think we'll take our chances.  Being outside walking around today was great, and we've been in the campgrounds with snow before.  Though the Park's website has conflicting info - the Alert says the road is open to mile 3 but the map (now) shows it open to mile 30.

Here's a webcam of the Alaska RR depot in the Park.  There's plenty of snow.  And this one from Mt. Healy suggests the Alert is more accurate than the map.  I guess we'll explore near the park entrance.  Or we'll cuddle up in the van and read a lot.

Getting Little Things Done As We Prep For Denali

The big things happening in our lives today were getting the upstairs ready for the workers to fix our ceiling and then to paint.  And so we are also getting ready to drive to Denali National Park while they do the first part of that chore.

So here's how I kept busy to those ends, but also smaller tasks.  I started by going to the repair shop for them to install my new battery for the camping part of the VW van.  Then to Best Buy to get a new CD player that we can plug into the tape deck in the van.  (It's a '97 van, so it has a tape deck.)  Then to the battery store to drop off the old battery.

When I got home I called my insurance to ask if they got my forms for my hears.  They haven't, even though when I talked to them before I sent the forms 17 days ago, they said I'd get my check in about ten days.  So I had to redo the forms.  Fortunately, we had copies of the forms.  But then we've been having a recurring problem with our printer.  It prints fine.  But when I try to make a copy it complains that the wrong sized paper (envelope size) is in the tray.  It's not, but it says that and won't copy.  I've pushed all the buttons in the little window.  I've changed the paper to envelope size and back, but nothing worked.  But when we moved everything downstairs I found the paper where I wrote down the number of the Costco concierge (a little pretentious title, don't you think?).  After trying this and that, she had me check my computer setting.  It was set right, for letter sized paper.  She had me change it to envelope size and try to print.  It didn't.  She had me reset it back to letter sized.  It didn't print.  But there was a new option that showed up in the little window on the printer - change paper size.  So I did, and then it printed.  Grrrrrr, it shouldn't be this hard (this has been a recurring problem - enough so I've ended up taking pictures of documents then printing the pictures.)  But then no one used to have printer, copier, fax machines in their homes that worked via wifi.  So I'm only complaining a little bit.

The contractor came by to see how our moving things was doing.  We'll be ok.  Then I still needed to fill out one more (four were done via the copies) form.  By then the mail had already been picked up, but I bike ride to the post office would get me some exercise time.  There wasn't even a line and I sent it registered so I could track it this time.  On the way home I stopped at the family medical practice to get my knees Xrayed.  When I saw the doctor last week, we agreed I should get a baseline image.  I notice them mostly when I go down stairs.  They don't hurt, but they are no longer unnoticed either.

Then I got home in time to get into Google Hangout, which is not Meet or something like that, to chat with my San Francisco grandkids.  And while we were chatting I suddenly realized my left hear wasn't behind my ear.  I looked downstairs in the garage where I'd taken off my bike helmet, but it wasn't on the floor.  And where I took off my hat and sunglasses, but it wasn't there either.  You do get one lost hear free, but it's a little early for that.

J got home and talked to the grandkids, then she went looking for the missing hear.  She brought it up.  It was caught in the strap of my bike helmet.  That was lucky.  I'm going to have to be much more careful with them.  I really forget they're on (or not on.)  Until someone talks too softly for me to hear.  Maybe I can find a way to tape my phone number on them.  Another good reason mohave the bigger ones.

So I still have to get camping stuff into the car and get all the little loose stuff cleared out.  The workers will move the bigger stuff into the kitchen.  We'll sleep downstairs when we get back until the painting is done.  Then I hope we will get rid of a lot of stuff rather than bring it back upstairs. But the printer works well downstairs, it may stay there.

And we've been watching the Denali road opening and weather for the last week.  The park busses start May 20.  But until that day you can drive as far as the road is cleared up to Teklanika Campground - 30 miles from the entrance.  It's a wonderful time to be there.  But until just last week the road was only open to mile 12.5.  And then it went back to mile 3.  12.5 again, and then mile 30.  The weather's been chilly - high's in the 30s(F) and lows down to 20˚F.  Here's what it says for right now:

"Heavy Snow Freezing Fog
31°F
-1°C
Humidity 85%
Wind Speed Calm
Barometer 29.73 in
Dewpoint 27°F (-3°C)
Visibility 0.25 mi
Last update 1 May 5:56 pm AKDT"

But we learned a long time ago, that if you let weather get in your way in Alaska, you'll never do anything.  Looking at current road conditions right now:

"Denali Park Road closed at Headquarters
The Denali Park Road is closed to vehicle traffic at Mile 3. Pedestrian traffic (via ski, snowshoe, etc) is permitted, but stay back from any road plowing equipment you see. The Murie Center (our visitor center) is open daily, 9 am - 4:30 pm, at Mile 1.5."
 

Maybe I should take cross country skis.  In 2016 we were there in late April and it was beautiful.


Meanwhile it's sunny and 49˚F here and I can see green on the birch buds in the front yard.

"Nextdoor: An alternative reality where black Audis terrorize and everyone is a meth-addled menace"

Someone convinced me I should join Nextdoor - an online community where you can get to know people in your neighborhood and keep up with very local news - and it sounded like a good idea, so I did.  That was about a year ago.

More recently I've been noticing that a lot of people are posting about crime and suspicious people and situations.  I was beginning to think that there were a lot of fearful people on Nextdoor.  Sure, if someone breaks into you car or house, it's reasonable to be upset.  But if most of the posts on something like Nextdoor are about crime, it also magnifies people's perception of the dangers of their neighborhood.  (The same can be said for newspapers and tv news.)

Here are some recent posts from the Nextdoor pages from my neighborhood in Anchorage:

• Unsupervised Kids in Subsidized Housing Neighborhood [she's seen them carry hatchets and guns and take drugs]
• 2003 Black Tahoe stolen in midtown 1/30
• Car rifled. Stolen change, coffee cards, glasses and keys. They keys are for out o state property so not usable for them but a pain for us
• Abandoned Vehicle
• Mail thieves

These were interspersed with lost (and found) cats and dogs, items for sale, but I'd say at least 50% were crime or safety related.    

I guess it came to a head for me when someone posted a warning  earlier this month to be careful during the political seasons for misleading posts:

"Be aware of political actors for 2018, even now
Hey all, you may or may not have seen my activity in a thread regarding the mail voting situation. Just know, the Koch brothers have spent a TON of money in this area(I'm not joking or exaggerating), especially regarding unions, and don't take every resident at their word, because they may not be residents. You can talk to me in person, I'm not a member of anyone except my dance group."

That led M to write:

This is not a political site please do not post political posts .

Followed with:

Thank you M.  I'm thinking of quitting this site as I don't appreciate the nasty attitudes of some of these people.  When I signed up for this site I thought it was for neighbors to let neighbors know about thefts, car break-ins, etc., not an agenda to spout your political views no matter which side.  Surely there are other sites where you can go to vent.

Did that "Be aware of political actors" post sound nasty to you?  I guess "nasty attitudes" means things I disagree with because "Thank you M" was the nastiest attitude I saw.  Then others pointed out the guidelines allow for civil discussions of political issues that impact the local area.  But it appears that some people think this is just for reporting crimes and it seems there are people who see nothing but suspicious people and vehicles.

I'm not sure if people who aren't members can go to the link, but here are the guidelines for Don't Use Nextdoor as a Soapbox.


And so yesterday, when I saw this LA Times opinion piece, I felt a kindred spirit had written it.

Nextdoor: An alternative reality where black Audis terrorize and everyone is a meth-addled menace

He says all I've said, but he's much funnier.  Here's a brief sample:

"In the alternative reality that is Nextdoor, people are committing crimes I’ve never even thought of: casing, lurking, knocking on doors at 11:45 p.m., coating mailbox flaps with glue, “asking people for jumper cables but not actually having a car,” light bulb stealing, taking photos of homes, being an “unstable female” and “stashing a car in my private garage.”
From the very first time I logged on, my mission was clear: Do not let my lovely wife Cassandra find out about Nextdoor. Not because I didn’t want to worry her pretty little head, but because I didn’t want her bothering my pretty little head in panic about every black Audi driving down our block."

Theorizing The Web Conference: You Can See Most (All?) Of The Panels Here

My immediate conception of "theorizing the web" was:  people talking about what the meaning and consequences of what's happening online.  Here's their description:

"Theorizing the Web is an inter- and non-disciplinary annual conference that brings together scholars, journalists, artists, activists, and technology practitioners to think conceptually and critically about the interrelationships between the Web and society. We deeply value public engagement, and consider insights from academics, non-academics, and non-“tech theorists” alike to be equally valuable."

Pretty much what I was thinking, but more specific.

So I found out about this from a @nathanjurgenson Tweet which offered a link to the online proceedings.  Here are a few of the panels and panelists.  There's video here  of each these panels and a bunch more (maybe all).

#A4 POLITICS OF PORTRAITS
.Moderator
Millie Christie-Dervaux   -  How we capture bodies in art and visual communication media sheds light on how bodies are imbued with identity.
Ayşenur Benevento  -  Capturing Their Aspirations: Examining Parents’ Photographs of Their Children on Social Media
Emily Stainkamp  -Looking back at the selfie: A survey of Western self-portraiture from antiquity to Selfish
Rachel Coldicutt    -   The Woman’s Gaze and The Robots’ Gaze
Anja Dinhopl  -  The Looking Glass Self(ie)

#A3 QUEER RELATIONSHIPS
.Moderator:   Jessie Sage   -  Our expectations of romantic relationships are deeply heteronormative. The experiences and transgressive actions of queer people stand to change that for everyone.
Tommy Ting  -  Cruising Heterotopia: Queer Play in Video Game Space
Lindsay Ferris  -  I’m queer – don’t fuck with me if you’re not: Exploring queer women’s use of Tinder
mattie brice  -  Catfishing in 3 Acts: Investigating Emotional Labor Networks Supporting Progressive Masculinity
Aaron Su  -  Recuperating the Cybernetic Libido

#K1 THE NEXT GENERATION
[AUDIO ISSUES EARLY, WILL BE FIXED & RESTREAMED LATER!]
.Moderator  -  Molly Knefel
.Participants  -  Malcolm Harris, Osita Nwanevu, Crystal Abidin
While it’s often claimed that young people’s social reality is dictated by phones and social media, the actual forces at play have deeper historical roots. Like everyone else, everyone born within 20 years of the new millennium are affected by surveillance, unemployment, and self-determination, but they are uniquely situated within social antagonisms they have inherited. 

#B1 TECH SUPPORT
.Moderator
Michael Connor  -  To sustain protest we must also turn to one another for support. Can digital media serve as a means for this without undermining it?
Kristen Barta  -  Reclaiming visibility after sexual assault: Lessons from sexual assault survivors’ use of social media for designing digital supportive spaces
Olga Boichak  -  Mediatizing War: digital media and the battlefronts
Ada Cable  -  Perverse affordances: The victims of
Sara Lillo  -  Declarations and Diagnostics: Mental Health Tweets and Our Perceptions of Twitter

#B3 BOT PHENOMENOLOGY
Moderator  -    Damien Williams  What it means to exist with technology, and what it means to exist as technology
Emma Stamm
Robin Zebrowski
Johnathan Flowers 

#C1 MAP QUEST
.Moderator
Jeremy Antley - Digitality hasn’t obviated geography as was anticipated; it has made geopolitical boundaries simultaneously more visible and more intensely monitored. Sometimes technology even makes visible border practices that states intend to be invisible.
Anne Jonas - Embedding Inequality: The Implications of Regional Blocking in Web Services
Matthew Sekellick - Hot Hot Heats: Strava’s Global Heatmap and (the Aesthetics of) the Corporate Subject
Jan Rydzak - Disconnected: A Human Rights-Based Approach to Network Disruptions
Jasmine Vallve - Cross-Border Solidarities of Racialized Violence and Surveillance 

#C2 POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP
.Moderator
Tanya Lokot - Digital media has taken on a structuring role in more and more of our lives, including participation in civic life. The role of citizen is now deeply entwined with digital platforms’ interests and affordances.
Amrita Sengupta - Collective Identity in Digital Spheres: Feminist movements and struggles for public spaces
Anastasis Germanidis - Sybil Society
Colin Kielty - Analog Analogies to Digital Citizenship: “Nodality” Online and Off
Kaveh Azarhoosh - Uberization of jobs and decline of deliberative democracies in Western European Democracies

#C5 NETWORK AFFECTS
.Moderator -Joelle Woodson.  Moderator -  Britney Gil
No tech platform can solve how communication and emotions are fraught with contradiction and confusion. As machines start to speak the language of affect, these contradictions may only intensify.
Jacqueline Feldman - AI and Affective Labor: an inquiry into how easily bots can fake it
Erin Gordon - Do You Want to Quit? Intimacy, Site, Self
Amber Westerholm-Smyth - Consumers of our own grief? Exploring the commoditisation of grief following terrorist attacks on social media platforms.
Tim Cowlishaw - A Digital Dérive: Situationist strategies for reclaiming digital public space. 

No, I haven't looked at all of the videos.  Hardly any so far.  They seem to all be an hour or more.  But here's a chance to sit in on New York based conference on a really important topic, without spending all the time it takes to get to New York.  But you also don't get to ask questions during the sessions and mingle with the crowd between sessions.  But I'm sure if you really have a burning question or comment, you can find the presenters' email addresses and contact them.  

“Padre, you just got to stay out of politics,” he recalled the speaker saying.

As I'm sure you all know, Paul Ryan fired the House's chaplain - a Roman Catholic priest, Father Conroy.

The title quote and quotes below come from a New York Times article that points to the prayer that is said to have caused Ryan's remark (in this post's title.)  Apparently he was miffed by this comment about the Republican tax plan that Ryan helped pushed through:

 “May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”

This focuses on a key difference between the Catholic interpretations of the bible and many Protestant interpretations which talk about work as being a divine calling and the importance of self reliance.

But as I read the quote, I couldn't help but think about what Ryan probably really meant by the word 'politics.'  I think he meant don't take positions that challenge my positions.  Surely, if the Father had spoken about saving fetuses from abortion (as political a topic as you could want, and one consistent with the Catholic church's beliefs) Ryan wouldn't have been upset at all.

 Merriam Webster's online dictionary's first definition of political is:

"of or relating to government, a government, or the conduct of government" 

How could a Congressional chaplain say anything of relevance that would not be political?  Even if the chaplain's job is purely ceremonial, there's no way a chaplain can say anything without it being interpreted as political by someone.

The article goes on to discuss simmering tension between Catholics and Evangelical Christians in the House.

"The controversy was heightened when Representative Mark Walker, Republican of North Carolina and a Baptist minister, said Thursday in an interview with The Hill newspaper that he hoped the next chaplain of the House might come from a nondenominational church tradition who could relate to members with wives and children.
Catholic Democrats quickly called his remarks anti-Catholic, as Catholic priests are celibate . . ."

The Times article also offers another explanation for the firing - that the Chaplain wasn't carrying out his pastoral duties satisfactorily.  It also suggests this was one more Republican 'unforced error' that would help Democrats in the November election.  I don't know about that.  There are so many things that will influence whether and how voters vote.  Add this to the list.

A Serious Life And The Two Horses Of Genghis Kahn

I met Michael Sidney Welch a number of years ago when I taught a class at Olé on blogging.  I insisted that we have it in a computer lab and that everyone would get their own blog in the several weeks we met.  My expertise was just my own blogging experience, but I knew if I just talked and they didn't try it out themselves, it would be really boring.

Just about everyone - I think there were about 20 folks - got a blog up and several have kept those blogs going or got new ones up after that.

Michael is a philosopher.  I see him around town, usually he's with his wife, particularly at the Anchorage International Film Festival.  Recently his wife invited us to a group I can best describe as a movie club.  I mean that in the sense of a book club that watches movies rather than reads books.

This week we met to see "The Two Horses of Genghis Kahn" - a really beautiful Mongolian movie about a woman who travels around Inner and Outer Mongolia in search of the lost lyrics of a song her grandmother taught her.  She knows some of them, but there were more inscribed in a horse head violin that was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.  She still had the broken off horse head and sought someone to make a new violin for it while she went searching elders for the missing words.

The broad landscapes and the search for lost culture are familiar to Alaskans and it provoked a lot of discussion about cultural change, both natural and. . .   I'm sitting here thinking about the right word and I'm not succeeding - unnatural isn't right.  Forced comes to mind - as when one culture tries to wipeout another culture by banning the language and music and other ways the culture is transmitted from generation to generation.  And we could talk a long time by what 'natural' cultural change entails.  We talked about how younger generations live in different worlds than their parents' generation.  But is this really natural?  Or is it a product of the industrial revolution that fosters so much rapid change in the last few centuries?

I haven't found any serious reviews, but this one gives an introduction to the film and the director.
Anchorage's Loussac Library has a copy. Youtube has a tease that looks like the whole copy from Netflix, but it doesn't seem to be so.  It apparently has been on Netflix (couldn't find it today) and may be on Prime.   It has a much slower pace than US viewers are used to.  Here's a preview, though we watched it in the original (which I assume was Mongolian, but may have been a dialect) with English subtitles.



As we were leaving Michael told me he has his newish blog - A Serious Life - up now.  When I say he's a philosopher, I'm not joking.  This is not for the Tweet at Heart.  I'll also link it in the right column, since some of the bloggers I've had there have been, shall we say, preoccupied with other things than their blogs.

For those who make it this far, the title of the movie is also the title of the song Uma is seeking.

Zainol

Regular visitors to the blog already know Zainol's work.  Actually, anyone who's been here has seen his work.

Zainol is a Malaysian artist.  I bought three small paintings from him back in 2005 I think when I went to a conference in Malaysia.  I immediately fell in love with the pictures, but as a very light packer, didn't even consider buying them.  But the artist - it was an outdoor art fair in Kuala Lumpur - convinced me they were light and would survive the trip and they made it back to Anchorage.

When I began this blog in 2006, I figured out quickly that I wanted the pictures, somehow, into the banner on top.  It fit the idea of What Do I Know?   I finally got a picture I wanted and figured out how to add some writing.  But I couldn't figure out how to get it the right size to fit in the banner.  That didn't happen until May 2007 when I put up a brief post about the blog's new look.

I wanted to let Zainol know that I'd used the picture for my blog, but I couldn't contact him.  I couldn't find him on google.

Yesterday, as part of moving the upstairs downstairs as we get ready for painting, I took the three pictures off the wall.

[I had to put them back up so I could take the picture and I didn't check the alignment carefully.  I put them up with I on the left and III on the right.  They hung straighter before so I think I had them in a different order.]

So when I took them down, on the back was the name of the painting and the artist.  It was easy to google and I got Zainol Ariffin Mustafa Alfandi's Facebook page right away.  

Then I tried to find where I wrote about the picture I used for the blog header.  It wasn't in my personal information or on the right column.  I searched the blog for Zainol but Blogger hasn't been good about finding words in the older posts.  So I added something on the right sidebar near the top.  

But it bothered me and so yesterday I looked through the posts for 2006 and then 2007 until I found it in May 2007.  I didn't include a picture.  I guess I figured the banner was good enough.  

But now I can include Zainol's full name and his FB link in case anyone is interested in his art.  Thanks, Zainol.  The paintings are still fresh, beautiful, and thought provoking.  

So, people who visit here often have seen part of one of Zainol's painting often.  Now you can go to his FB page and learn a bit more about him.  And I can fully recognize him here.  

What Does It Mean To Live To 117?

The Anchorage Daily News had the following short piece in its collection of short stories on Monday:

"THE WORLD'S OLDEST PERSON DIES AT 117

At 117, Nabi Tajima was older than modern-day Australia, and everyone else known to live on the planet. 

Tajima, born Aug. 4, 1900, in Araki, Japan, and recognized as the world's oldest person, has passed on that mantle. She died Saturday, having been hospitalized since January, the Associated Press reported, and was the last known person born in the 19th century. 

She was living in the town of Kikai on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands, the AP reported. 

The title of 'world's oldest living person' is a remarkable, if not fleeting, one. Tajima claimed the distinction in September, when fellow 117-year-old Violet Brown died in Jamaica. Brown was the oldest person in the world for about five months. 

Tajima straddled the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries and is one of the few people who could recall a time before World War I.  Two days after her 45th birthday, the United States dropped the first of two atomic bombs northeast of her home island.
Tajima's secret to longevity was “eating delicious things and sleeping well,” the group said. She danced with her hands at the sound of a samisen, a traditional three-string instrument."

This is the kind of story the paper clips from elsewhere and so when I looked for it online, I found it in the Washington Post, with a few more paragraphs and some pictures.

My thoughts when I read this were about what was not in this piece.  What was her physical and mental condition when she died?  How long was she able to converse and recognize the people around her.  Did she still do the things she liked to do?  What did she eat and did she enjoy the food?  And how long has it been since she did those things?  What parts of her body were still functioning?   

I think about my own mom's two and a half year decline from going out, walking on her own, mental alertness.  The physical mobility went first.  She had some ailments which didn't bother her when she was in bed, so she started spending more time in bed.  That led to loss of her muscle strength and ability to walk.  For the last year or so getting into the car was a problem.  Eventually eating got difficult - things got caught in her throat and she'd start coughing.  Her mobility was via a wheel chair and someone to move it.  She sat out in the sun daily, reading, and I would walk her up the street and back.  Sometimes around the block, but the next street over was very steep and had terrible sidewalk breaks.  

While she had moments of confusion - particularly when she woke up in the morning and transitioned from her dreams to being awake - for the most part she was lucid and understood what people were saying and responded pretty normally.  She could answer our questions about the past as we found things in the garage whose history we didn't know.  My mom passed away at 93 after a vigorous life, which included working at a job she loved until she was 85.  

My father had a distant cousin who lived to 102.  The last time we saw him he was 101 I think and we picked him up at the assisted living home where he lived.  He was dressed in a suit - how he dressed himself every day - and we drove to a nearby Thai restaurant where we talked and he ate with relish.  I dropped him and J off and then parked the car.  But he walked, without a cane, the quarter mile or so back to the car.  At that point, I'd say he was in great condition and he helped fill me in on a lot of family history I hadn't known.  So living that long isn't necessarily a painful thing, though i don't know how the last year or so went.  

After watching my mom's decline, I read these stories about 'the oldest person on earth' with some skepticism.  I guess it's a remarkable thing to live that long, but is it something anyone would want to do?  The article says, 

Tajima claimed the distinction [of being the oldest in the world]  in September, when fellow 117-year-old Violet Brown died in Jamaica

I suspect people claimed it for her and I wonder what she thought about that title.  Our Guinness Book of Records Syndrome makes us note these oddities, and I realize that for medical researchers there is significance.  And if the title brought Tajima any joy, that's a good thing.

The Washington Post has a few more paragraphs the ADN left out as well as some pictures.

“She passed away as if falling asleep. As she had been a hard worker, I want to tell her 'rest well,'" said Tajima's 65-year-old grandson Hiroyuki, local media reported.Tajima was in the exclusive group of supercentenarians, people who have crossed the 110-year threshold. The U.S.-based Gerontology Research Group, which tracks certified people who become supercentenarians, reports 36 worldwide. All but one of them are women, and 18 of them are Japanese. Good diets and supportive family structure have been linked to Japan's world-leading life expectancy.
Her legacy is similarly expansive; she had nine children and 160 descendants, including great-great-great grandchildren, the Gerontology Research Group said.
Chiyo Miyako, also in Japan, has become the world's oldest person, according to the group. At 116 years and 355 days, she has about nine months to reach her countrywoman's mark of 117 years and 260 days.
Miyako would not have to travel far to visit her male compatriot. Japan's Masazo Nonaka, at 112 years and 271 days old, was confirmed to be the world's oldest man by Guinness World Records this month. The organization had been set to recognize Tajima before she died, the AP reported."

I'd add that as old as 117 might seem, the National Geographic notes:

 One study in the journal Aging Research Reviews notes a deep-sea sponge from the species Monorhaphis chuni lived to be 11,000 years old. 

"Ming, a quahog clam, died at the age of 507 when researchers tried to dredge the bivalve up from Icelandic waters."  

"As far as mammals go, bowhead whales seem to have the most candles on their cake—over 200. It makes sense, since the marine mammals live in chilly waters, says Don Moore, director of the Oregon Zoo in Portland. . . 

A cold environment causes a low body temperature, which in turn means slow metabolism—and thus less damage to tissues, Moore says.

I knew there was a good reason to move to Alaska.

"Currently the world's oldest known land animal is Jonathan, an 183-year-old Aldabra giant tortoise that lives on the grounds of the governor’s mansion in St. Helena, an island off West Africa." 

Here's a picture of the still living Jonathan taken in 1900 [!] that I found at a website called ODDEE.  (It also has picture of the oldest clam.)

 I'm afraid the title question was not answered in the passing note of Tajima's death.  The missing Washington Post does hint at the research interest in such people.  For the ADN,  it's just a newsy tidbit like the picture of Jonathan.

Alaskans Need To Prepare To Stop The Dunleavy For Governor Campaign

[What Do I Know?  tends to shy away from taking explicit partisan stances on political races, preferring to present facts and let the reader decide.  And technically, my objections to Sen. Dunleavy are not because of his party membership, but because of his individual actions.  The specific actions I saw that so disturbed me were in defiance of the vast majority of his party. This post is an early warning]


From a Walker/Mallot (for governor) campaign email:

"The Walker Mallott campaign released polling this morning that shows Governor Bill Walker and Lieutenant Governor Byron Mallott leading a two-way race against potential opponents Mike Dunleavy and Kevin Meyer by 36% to 33%."

From my perspective, this is truly scary.  I watched Dunleavy up close in May of 2015, when he chaired a committee responsible for passing Erin's Law (which had overwhelming bi-partisan support) during a summer special session.  Here's a quick summary of my  impressions a year later as in a post where I wondered whether Mat-su shouldn't be allowed to be annexed by Texas.

I wrote about Sen. Dunleavy last summer when he tried to gut the proposed Erin's Law by filling it with his far-right wing national parents' rights nonsense.   I say 'nonsense' because it's only about parents' rights in a very twisted way.  One whole section, for example, is really about crippling Planned Parenthood.  He had language then, and it's back now in SB 191, to ban school districts from contracting with any abortion provider or anyone who has any contract with an abortion provider.  I wrote about all of this in detail last summer. This was all understood to be aimed at Planned Parenthood.  

During that special session, I coined the term "to dunleavy" which summarized my impression of what Sen. Dunleavy was doing to Erin's Law during that session.  (The link explains the poster.)

Note:  This is a warning about Mike Dunleavy and not an endorsement of Walker/Mallot.  There are still possibilities of other candidates to challenge them both from the Left and Right.  And I would add that I think the Kevin Meyer is a much more decent person, but he suffers from the fact that his full-time employer is Conoco-Phillips.  While that, inexplicably, is not a conflict of interest in the Alaska legislature, it would be seen as much by most people who study governmental ethics.

My New Hears

Choose your own opening:

Opening 1
My wife was an audiologist part of her career.  Her stories were about how hard it was for people to adjust to hearing aids.  Problems with background noise and lots of other issues.  I learned that putting on hearing aids doesn't magically improve your hearing the way glasses immediately improve your seeing.

Opening 2
Glasses aren't called Seeing Aids, so why don't we have a word for hearing aids that isn't so clunky and off-putting?

Opening 3
As I grow older, the people around me mumble more and more.  Some people speak clear as a bell.  Others sound a little fuzzy.  I can catch most of what they're saying, but key words stay sounds without meaning.

The Story

So I went to Costco to have my hearing tested.  Then the technician,  The higher frequencies weren't within normal range.  Aaron programmed a hearing aid, showed me where the ignition was, and let me take them for a ride around the warehouse.  Despite my expectations of annoying noises and difficulty pulling out the things I needed to hear, it was, in fact, like putting on glasses.  All the gauze that seemed to muffle some people's voices disappeared, and those high tones needed to interpret certain words or certain voices came through loud and clear.  (Not too loud, just loud enough.)  The technology is much better than it was.  The aids are programmed to boost the frequencies my ears have trouble with, they dampen the background sounds, adjust to different backgrounds, and they even boost soft voices.  We shopped and went back to the hearing center where he started taking the aids out.  I protested.  I can't keep them?  No, these are ours, yours should be here in two or three days.  I was really disappointed.  But they came soon and now it's been a little more than a week.

So, now I'm looking for a good name for these little guys who ride behind my earlobes, hooked into my ear canals by little clear tubes.  I narrowed it down to 'ears' and 'hears' and after a tiny sample sized opinion survey, I've decided to call them my 'hears.'  [I'm still open to better suggestions.]

And today I went to the doctor for a slightly longer ago than annual check up.  No serious issues and all the lab results came out in the normal range. (I didn't plan it, but I kind of like having 'out in' in a sentence.)  He did mention that lots of men won't get hearing aids.  I understand not wanting to display one's infirmities to the world.  But I figure every time I say, "Pardon?" or "What was that?" or "I didn't catch that" I'm doing that anyway.  And I can hear everything now.  Particularly noticeable is the alarm on my watch, which is in a high frequency.  I could hear it faintly under good conditions, but if it's covered by a sleeve or there's a lot of background noise, they only way I knew it was going off was when people told me it was.  Now it's really loud!  So are paper and plastic sounds.

The three rules I was given was NO swimming, showering, or sleeping with the hears in.

 I used to say that I didn't need hears because what I heard was much more interesting than what people actually said.  This picture is like that.  And it gives you a sense of what high frequency words and voices sounded like before I got my hears.  You get a lot of the info, but it's fuzzy.

Oh yes, one more cute feature - there's a red mark on the hears for the right ear and a blue one for the left.