Gramping, Comparing Earthquakes, And Lunching With An Old Friend

Yesterday I took my grandson to the California Academy of Science.

I wanted to do a redo of their earthquake reenactment room.  I'd been there with him before.  I didn't

Earthquake Simulation Room Cal Academy

remember it being very scary at all.  Certainly not like November 30 quake in Anchorage a couple of months ago which shook us back and forth for 30 minutes.

So I wanted to go back and compare it to our recent quake.  Well, it did shake about as much as the quake we were in.  But it doesn't give you a sense of a real earthquake.  It's a small room like in a house, but there are hand rails to hold onto all around.  You know what's going to happen.  There are other people in the room with you.  It shook back and forth mimicking the 1989 quake, and then the 1906 quake.

But this was more like the entertainment of an amusement park ride.  You go there to experience it.  It is different when it arrives announced in your own house or office or elsewhere in your environment and starts up and you have no idea how much bigger it's going to get or how long it's going to last and whether your house is going to hold together.

So, yes, physically, you get a sense of an earthquake in this room.  But psychically, not at all.    We went on to watch the Foucault Pendulum knock over a couple of pegs and then to the rain forest.






There's the several story netted rainforest with lots of tropical butterflies and there are smaller exhibits along the path that winds up to the top.   Like the one that held this bright green lizard.






Then at the top, you take an elevator down and you end up below the water at the bottom of the rainforest.




It was great to be on an adventure with my grandson, just the two of us.  And there were plenty of other grandparent/grand child visitors there too.

Today, after dropping him off at his pre-school we stopped at a great little  hardware store in Japan Town, but they didn't have the Chinese picture hanger I was looking for.  But they have so many interesting things.

A bit later we went for lunch with PK who was in my Peace Corps group.  In fact he was the closest volunteer to my town.  Except that there were no roads between his town and mine.  You had to wander by motorcycle through the rice paddies to connect.


We passed this bear gargoyle on the way to meeting him and his partner.







P was in the hotel business in San Francisco for many years so he took us to a couple places we never would have found.  First, to eat at Belden Place.

From Wikipedia

"Belden Place itself is a one-lane, one block long street running south from Pine Street to Bush Street, parallel to and in between Montgomery and Kearny streets, immediately south of the Bank of America tower. It is roughly between Chinatown and the Financial District.
In 1990, restaurateurs Olivier Azancot and Eric Klein opened Cafe Bastille, the mainstay that set the modern tone for the area. The French, Italian, and Catalan establishments are popular with locals, tourists, and office workers, and are generally considered on par with the city's best casual full-service European restaurants.[3] Notable restaurants in the alley itself include Sam's Grill, Cafe Bastille, Cafe Tiramisu, Plouf, B44, Belden Taverna, and Brindisi Cucina di Mare. Nearby are Café de la Presse (though modest and unassuming, a favorite hangout of the city's political and social elite) and Le Central. Also nearby are the Alliance Française, the French consulate, and the Notre-Dame-des-Victoires Church (where mass is still celebrated in French) and an affiliated elementary school. In the vicinity are several other restaurants, cafes, hotels and other French-related institutions along Bush Street and Claude Lane, another nearby alley.[2]"

 In summer the canopies are gone, but it was a nice day and we sat under the canopy and had a delicious Italian lunch at Tiramisu.  (After the yellow tarps.)








Then to see the courtyard at the Palace Hotel.

From the Garden Court Restaurant website: 

"When the Palace Hotel opened its doors in 1875, the Garden Court was the carriage entrance to this grand hotel. A parade of famous guests visited San Francisco's Palace and stood in awe of its magnificence.
In 1906, following the earthquake, the Palace closed its doors for the first restoration. Three years later, the carriage entrance was transformed and The Garden Court was unveiled. Since its debut in 1909, The Garden Court has been recognized as one of the world's most beautiful public spaces
With its incredible architecture, dome stained glass ceiling and Austrian crystal chandeliers, The Garden Court became the site for some of the nation's most prestigious events. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson hosted two luncheons in support of the Versailles Treaty which ended World War I. In 1945, the official banquet honoring the opening session of the United Nations was held in The Garden Court."

P and I first met at Peace Corps training in DeKalb, Illinois in 1966.  We don't see each other often, but it's great when we do.  

Joel Sartore's Photo Ark

 Here's a post I forgot to put up.  We stopped at the Annenberg Space For Photography when we were in Los Angeles.

These posters were on the street light poles on my bike ride to the beach, but I'd never been to the Annenberg.

This museum is in Century City and is free, but parking is $4.50.  But if you get there after 4:30pm, it's only $1.50.  Since it's a small space and it closes at 6:00pm, there's enough time.

Joel Sartore is the photographer.

The photos are magnificent.  I only had my little camera to take pictures of pictures.  This one is a close up of his photo.

Despite humans' greater abilities to think and communicate, those abilities too often are used to destroy the natural habitats of these animals.  Whether by turning natural spaces - forests, plains, jungles, shorelines, wetlands - into farmland, oil fields,  mines, housing, battlefields, or simply cutting the trees or taking all the fish, we have radically endangered a multitude of species.

And that's not to mention how climate change further threatens the animal world.

This exhibit is a reminder of the mass plundering humans have done and the diversity of amazing animals we're likely going to wipe off the face of the earth.   Sorry this is blurry, but it's all I have of this message.

Sunrise Seattle

We're on the move again.  To help our son with the other grandkids while his wife is traveling for work.  As cool as it is to take the ferry back and forth to Bainbridge Island, it makes the trip to the airport a long one - especially when you have to go early because the next ferry would be cutting it close.  But an advantage of getting up early is the sunrise.

Here's a closer view of downtown Seattle.

These are with the good camera.  We're normally good at keeping our luggage down to a minimum, but this time we worked on getting rid of all unnecessary weight.  So for quick pictures, I'm going to go with the phone.  My Canon Powershot stayed behind.  No books this time.  Some magazines.  We're down to two backpacks and a relatively small duffel bag.  But this is only a short trip - returning Wednesday.

There are repeated announcements for the flight at the gate next to ours.  It's going to Puerta Vallarta and they're calling passengers to check their passports.  The announcement:  "If you hear your name, or something like it, please come to the counter."

Miscellaneous Bits And Pieces

I've been working on a post in reaction to the Covington High School buzz.  (I'm trying to think of a reasonable name for the many social media/mainstream media phenomena that cause a temporary ringing in our ears, then are gone as something else gets our attention.  This is clearly not a good way to get an understanding of what's happening in the world.  Well, this is my problem.  This parenthetical comment was not what I was writing about, but could become a whole post on its own.  And the Covington post is raising so many issues that I can't tie it all together.  But maybe that shouldn't be my goal, since the world itself is messy.  But the whole point I used to think, was that a blog post should make at least a small part of the universe a little less opaque.)

Also working on the lack of useful instructions for people who sit in the emergency rows in airplanes.

My daughter invited me to her Barrecor exercise class yesterday and it was much easier than the high intensity workout my son took me to three years ago in San Francisco.  After the one - in which I made it through the routines without embarrassing myself - I ached badly for three days.  But today, no new aches or pains.

Today I did a bike ride, which here on Bainbridge Island means lots of ups and downs through big trees.  And water.  There was a raft of water birds at my turnaround spot, and a view of Seattle.

And the sun came out and lit up downtown Seattle across the channel.  Here are two different pictures - one from my old Canon Powershot and the other from my new used iPhone 7.


I like the Canon result better, but maybe it's because I tried to enlarge the iPhone image too much.


Getting good granddaughter time while we're here.







And Murkowski voted to open the government without requiring $5 billion, or is it $7 billion now?

And Dunleavy's new commissioner of administration apparently lied to the a Senate committee about his background.  But, hey guys, he went to a Christian college, that's all Dunleavy had to read.




And finally, I recommend this video be shown at the School Board meeting when they discuss the minimum times kids should get to be at recess and lunch.  Right now it's being whittled down to nothing, which means teachers have kids with way too much unused energy who can't sit still in class.  (I couldn't figure out a way to embed the video itself, so you get the whole tweet.)

#MostWatched Principal gets students up and dancing pic.twitter.com/Yc7cDmtpAN

— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) January 24, 2019

So, it's not that I don't have anything to write about, rather there's too much, and I'm trying to write the posts so you can read and get the bigger sense of things.  Not easy.  Remember that once each day ends, it's gone.  So don't complain about waiting in line - take those seconds or minutes and enjoy your life.  Try thinking about something important.  Text your members of congress what you're thinking they should do.  Send a note to someone you care about.

[UPDATE 10:14 pm:  And the ADN had an article today about how three major oil companies have carbon pricing already built into their long term plans, the House has reintroduce a carbon fee and dividend bill, and the Senate is working on one too.  There is good news.  But as Vox notes:

"But what’s gone largely unnoticed is that Exxon’s proposal comes with a massive catch: In exchange for a tax, the company wants immunity from all climate lawsuits in the future."]

1964 Alaska Earthquake - I Learn From The Author That A New Book Is Coming Out Soon

I didn't think to take Jon's picture
This profile was  on the edge of
a picture of the children's march.

I also met author Jon Mooallem at the MLK children's march yesterday.

His daughter is a friend of my granddaughter.  It was only later that I realized that I'd crossed paths with Jon before.  We hadn't met, but  I posted about his book Wild Ones:  A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America in December 2017.  I didn't get around to reading the whole book, but I was struck by his observation about how many animals are in kids' lives - in books, on pajamas and sheets and cereal boxes,  or stuffed - yet many are disappearing in the real world.

I probably wouldn't mention meeting Jon, except that he's writing a new book on - Alaskans are you paying attention? - the 1964 Alaska earthquake.  I told him I'd recently read a book on that earthquake, and he said Henry Fountain's book (which I posted about in 2018) came out just as he was submitting his proposal.

The new one will focus more on the three days after the quake, and on Genie Chance broadcasting on KENI that connected Alaskans and communicated to the rest of the world.  There is also a tie-in to social scientists who came to Alaska to study how communities deal with a catastrophe.  And there are other story lines that get followed  - like Frank Brink's AMU production of our town that was scheduled that weekend.

As I was getting more information, I found a 99%Invisible broadcast featuring Jon with a radio spoken drama about the earthquake, which I'm sure was an early presentation of notes Jon had already then put together.  (It's good listening, part of the legacy that This America Life has had on broadcasting story-news. And check out the name of the music group on the show.  A kind of tribute, Jon told me in a followup.)

So this post is a heads-up that there's a new 1964 Alaska earthquake book coming out around the beginning of 2020 (that's only a year away)  and you can get a preview at 99%Invisible.

Here's a bit of the transcript from the 99%Invisible website, but you really should listen to the audio.

JON: And one of KENI’s biggest on-air-personalities was a woman named Genie Chance.
Genie was 37. She’d grown up poor in Bonham, Texas then came to Alaska with her husband a few years earlier looking for opportunity. They only sort of found it, at first. He sold used cars. She watched their three kids at home. But Genie loved radio. So she started working construction every morning, in exchange for childcare. Then she’d go to work all afternoon at KENI.
Back then, women usually covered cooking or fashion. But Genie turned herself into a gutsy roving reporter, driving across Alaska with a mobile radio unit in her car. She flew with smoke jumpers, covered Arctic warfare exercises, reported from Inuit villages and crab boats.
Genie’s voice was part of the city. Everyone in Anchorage trusted her, respected her—and in a way women journalists weren’t always respected in 1964. Later, a New York paper would celebrate her as:
VOICE/ROMAN:“An Alaskan housewife and mother of three children who does a man-sized job with a radio microphone.”

I should have put up a link to Jon Mooallem's website when I first put this up this morning.

MLK Day Spent With Kids Writing Letters To Politicians And Marching To Post Office To Mail Them

I'm near Seattle visiting family and so I want along with my daughter and granddaughter to the  library for an event to honor Martin Luther King and to fulfill his legacy.  It was called the Children's March for Peace and Justice.  From the announcement:

"Honor the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Write letters to the leaders of your choice, asking them to work for peace or thanking them for acts of kindness. Then march to the post office to mail our letters. Bring posters or banners from home. All Ages"

We ended up outside because the main room was so full.  Kids were making signs and writing letters in keeping with the day.  There were cards and envelopes for those who were going to do more drawing than writing, and stationery as well.


Kids were asked what topics they might want to write about and the younger ones did seem to need a little more help.  Here's one asking President Trump to be more kind.

Kids also made signs for the march.  

Eventually, everyone got their signs and letters together and we marched about a mile to the post office.  Here's the tail end of the march.

And, some more, and there were just as many beyond - down the hill.

And finally to the post office - which was closed for the MLK holiday - where people put their letters into the mail box.


I'd note that I try hard not to show faces of kids without parental permission.  So I've smudged all the identifiable faces I saw, and smudged the letter where it had a name on it.



I'd note that as I sat there and watched parents coach little kids about whom to write to and the topics to write about, I thought about conservative groups coaching their kids on anti-abortion messages.  Is this different?  I think it is in some ways and isn't in others.  In both cases, kids are being taught to participate in their democracy - to voice their opinions.  And in both cases, the parents' opinions strongly influence what the kids write.  But what I saw today was more about American values in general - freedom, democracy, tolerance, and peace*.  There was also some environmental ideas including global warming.  There wasn't anything here that advocated for limiting other people's ability to do anything - like control their bodies, like seek freedom and opportunity.  I didn't see any signs that demeaned anyone, instead it was about pushing basic democratic values.

*Given how many years the US has been involved in wars in the last 100 years, I'm not sure that peace is really an American value any more, or if it ever was.

Camera Fun With Lunar Eclipse

I found a great website that gave me exact instructions on how to use my camera to shoot a lunar eclipse in 2014. You can see the eclipse pictures I got then at this link.  (There were three posts that night and there are links to the other two there.)

But that link (to how to shoot an eclipse with a Canon rebel) doesn't work any more.  I learned a bit more tonight about my camera, but not enough.  And my little tripod just isn't steady enough.  But here are some shots.

Sometimes not being able to keep the camera completely still offers more surreal pictures.

Here's the blood red moon in complete shadow.

I did a much better job in 2014 and recommend looking back there.

How Much Does The US Owe African-Americans For The Unpaid Work They Did?

[Consider this post more like notes about a concept.]

I came across this Newsweek  article about how much reparations for African-Americans would cost if they were reimbursed for the work they did as slaves.

". . .[Craemer]  also has come up with what he says is the most economically sound estimate to date of what reparations could cost: between $5.9 trillion and $14.2 trillion.

Craemer came up with those figures by tabulating how many hours all slaves—men, women and children—worked in the United States from when the country was officially established in 1776 until 1865, when slavery was officially abolished. He multiplied the amount of time they worked by average wage prices at the time, and then a compounding interest rate of 3 percent per year (more than making up for inflation). There is a range because the amount of time worked isn’t a hard figure. 

Previous estimates of reparations have ranged from around $36 billion to $10 trillion (in 2009 dollars), Craemer says. Those calculations mostly looked at wealth created by slaves as opposed to services provided, resulting in underestimates. Craemer believes that “the economic assumptions underlying [his method] are more sound” than those used in previous papers."

It's really hard for people to give back what they stole, especially after enjoying it for a long time and assuming that it was rightfully theirs.  My step-mother told me stories about getting back to her home after being in Nazi work camps.  Neighbors had taken over her family's home and she saw her family furniture and other belongings in the houses of other neighbors.  But it's not simply the labor of black slaves that allowed many white southerners get rich and pass that wealth on to their heirs for generations.

From American Slavery: Separating Truth From Myth,  Daina Ramey Berry writes:

Myth Four: Slavery was a long time ago.
Truth: African-Americans have been free in this country for less time than they were enslaved. Do the math: Blacks have been free for 152 years, which means that most Americans are only two to three generations away from slavery. This is not that long ago.
Over this same period, however, former slaveholding families have built their legacies on the institution and generated wealth that African-Americans have not had access to because enslaved labor was forced. Segregation maintained wealth disparities, and overt and covert discrimination limited African-American recovery efforts. [emphasis added.]

Some of those covert discriminatory practices included red-lining, restrictive covenants, unequal school, job discrimination, and internalized racism that still causes people to make discriminatory assumptions about black Americans.

War reparations are not anything new.  The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law defines them this way:

"1 War reparations involve the transfer of legal rights, goods, property and, typically, money from one State to another in response to the injury caused by the use of armed force. While often considered a sub-category of reparations obligations existing under the classical theory of internationally wrongful acts and State responsibility law, the practice of claiming and paying war reparations in fact dates back to ancient times and presents several specific features."

International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTA) puts reparations into a larger context of transitional justice:

"Transitional justice is rooted in accountability and redress for victims. It recognizes their dignity as citizens and as human beings. Ignoring massive abuses is an easy way out but it destroys the values on which any decent society can be built. Transitional justice asks the most difficult questions imaginable about law and politics. By putting victims and their dignity first, it signals the way forward for a renewed commitment to make sure ordinary citizens are safe in their own countries – safe from the abuses of their own authorities and effectively protected from violations by others."

Reparations do take place.  Most recently in the US, reparations were paid to Japanese-American survivors of WWII relocation camps.  But such efforts are ongoing around the world. The International Center for Transitional Justice lists seven countries where they have worked to get reparations for victims:

The Philippines: Aided by many years of active engagement by ICTJ, legislation was passed that granted reparations and recognition to victims of human rights violations committed during the Marcos dictatorship. We also advised a joint commission of the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on approaches to transitional justice that the state should adopt as part of implementing the peace process, including on reparations for victims of violations, marginalization, and historic grievances.
Sierra Leone: Our advice helped to improve the accessibility of the reparations registration process for victims of the civil war. We advised on how to staff and schedule the interview and statement-taking process, to ensure that more victims in rural and hard-to-reach areas of the country could register.
South Africa: With our technical support, we helped the largest apartheid survivors’ group in South Africa to challenge the government’s limited post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission reparations policies.
Sudan: In relation to the conflict in Darfur, we analyzed the extent to which the right to reparations of victims has been incorporated into the different attempts to create a peace agreement. We used our presence in negotiations to disseminate our findings to relevant stakeholders.
Timor-Leste: We worked with parliamentarians to enact legislation to implement the reparations recommendations of the two truth commissions (the Commission for Truth, Reception and Reconciliation and the Commission on Truth and Friendship) that were established to investigate abuses that occurred during the Indonesian occupation.
Tunisia: After the overthrow of President Ben Ali in 2011, we assisted government agencies and officials to design reparations policies that would be effective and relevant to the needs of victims of the dictatorship.
Uganda: In response to long-running civil conflict, particularly in the north, we provided relevant state agencies with critical information about the reparative needs of victims, and helped to identify capacity gaps and resources that would be required to design and implement effective reparations programs. We supported civil society organizations, especially women’s organizations, to provide reparations policy proposals to submit to state authorities.

A major reparations model to individuals in the 20th Century is how the Germans calculated and paid reparations to victims of the Nazis.  My own mother got reparation checks - called Wiedergutmachen, or "making good again"- in recognition of the loss (as I understand this) of her family's business and house, her parents, and her lost education.  I'd note that despite these payments, Germany is still one of the strongest economies in the world.


Here's an article that focuses on legal history of reparation rights, particularly in the context of German reparations. .  From  "A Legal History of International Reparations" by Richard M. Buxbaum in the Berkeley Journal of International Law:

To explore these two cases in the European reparations context, five strands of thought-three general and two specific to Germany-need to be separated and then rewoven. One: whether state claims for reparations encompass compensa- tion for particularized harms suffered by a subject of the claimant state. Two: may that subject make a claim directly against the other state? Three: do claims, either by the state or its subjects, encompass compensation for harms caused by non-state actors of the offending state? This issue also raises the question of whether those private actors may be sued directly, either by the claimant state or, more typically, by the victim-subject of that state. Four (an issue historically specific to World War II): the temporary disappearance of Germany as a sover- eign state actor and the substitution of the Occupying Powers as that sovereign. Five (again, historically specific): the nature of the atrocities committed by the Third Reich against both its own persecuted subjects and those of other states that was qualitatively different from those known to modem warfare.

Japanese-Americans were given a token amount that did not reflect the total loss of property or what they might have earned during their years of incarceration.  For many, more important than the money was the acknowledgement by the US government of the wrong that was done.  Craemer's figures - into the trillions - means that African-Americans will, at best, never get more than a token reparation.  Particularly if you consider the debt the US has to Native Americans on top of the debt to African-Americans.  This is an injustice that is a stain on the US until it is reasonably resolved.

The Important Stuff

We all have obligations to make sure our community and our nation function fairly and reasonably efficiently and effectively.  But an even more important obligation is to our family.  If everyone worked hard at having a caring and encouraging family life, then our greater public responsibilities would be far less.

The reason we were in Anchorage for such a short time was to be here in time for a birthday.

Anchorage-Seattle Views

Yesterday's post was about the politics of traveling.  Here's some of the joy one can get if the weather's ok while flying south from Anchorage, just by looking out the window.  Aisle seats may mean you can get up easily, but you lose the great vistas outside the plane.

Here's Eagle River and beyond at 9:30am in January.  Light, but the sun's not up yet.

.









It clouded up quickly, and I was sitting in the exit row, so my view was often blocked by the wing. Here's further along somewhere in Southeast Alaska. (These all get bigger and sharper if you click on the image.)

Bellevue, Washington, just before landing at SeaTac.








The train from the airport.

And then on the ferry.