We're Back In This Strangely Warm And Smoky Anchorage

Coming home after a time away means getting back into the routine.

The non-stop from LA is a nearly five hour flight.  (The same as Buenos Aires to Lima)   We didn't get pre-check, but they bumped us up to first class which was nice.  The lights below us kept reminding me we had left LA, not Seattle.  Eventually, the descent began.  It was 3:30am and when I looked out the window, I could see bits of the Chugach peaks and glaciers, though the ground was still fairly dark despite the dawning horizon.

Soon we were home.  It was hot and stuffy when we opened the door.  We dragged our stuff in and found the box of mail our house sitter had gathered.  He also left our fridge with lots of goodies including Korean takeout.  Thanks C!

After sorting some mail - why did GCI send us a bill?  We don't have GCI.  The bill was for $0, but why?  I crashed and slept til about 10am.  The toilet upstairs had been disabled - the note said it kept filling with water, so this was to shut it off.  The deck was full of aphid sap or honeydew - from Wikipedia:

"Honeydew is a sugar-rich sticky liquid, secreted by aphids and some scale insects as they feed on plant sap. When their mouthpart penetrates the phloem, the sugary, high-pressure liquid is forced out of the anus of the aphid. Honeydew is particularly common as a secretion in hemipteraninsects and is often the basis for trophobiosis.^[1] Some caterpillars of Lycaenidae butterflies and some moths also produce honeydew.^[2]Honeydew can cause sooty mold—a bane of gardeners—on many ornamental plants. It also contaminates vehicles parked beneath trees, and can then be difficult to remove from glass and bodywork. Honeydew is also secreted by certain fungi, particularly ergot.^[3]Honeydew is collected by certain species of birds, wasps, stingless bees^[4] and honey bees, which process it into a dark, strong honey(honeydew honey). This is highly prized in parts of Europe and Asia for its reputed medicinal value. Parachartergus fraternus, a eusocial wasp species, collects honeydew to feed to their growing larvae.^[5] Recent research has also documented the use of honeydew by over 40 species of wild, native, mostly solitary bees in California.^[6]"

This leaf is full of shiny, sticky honeydew as is the wood of the deck.  In fact the whole deck was sticky as were the deck chairs.  Eventually I hosed it down so we could sit out there.

Also did some serious watering in the yard.  The record high temperatures along with the lack of rain has had a serious effect in the yard. Our house sitter did water the raspberries up on the top of the hill.  It's odd though - parts of the yard look fine - the high bush cranberry is lush and the little ferns are healthy, but in other parts, some are wilted, even crinkly dried out.  And there's new planting work I didn't finish due to the rebuilding of the deck.  Lots of cotton wood shoots here and there.

Emptied suitcases - well we each had a small rollon suitcase and backpack, so not too much.  Found the things that seemed to be missing - a t-shirt I'd bought in Buenos Aires as well as a puzzle for my San Francisco nieta.  (A much easier word to write than granddaughter.)

Then I double checked on Youtube about what I needed to fix the toilet - here's the seal that was the problem - and rode over to get a new seal.

My route to Lowe's let's me bike through the Helen Louise McDowell Sanctuary, which was particularly relaxing yesterday.  The vegetation is shrinking the boardwalk a bit.  Nature landscaped this park, not CarlosThays.  People just added the boardwalks.

Got my new seal and rode home.  Not all the way as wonderful as the Sanctuary.  Also had to ride along Tudor.  But after Buenos Aires and Santiago, Tudor, one of Anchorage's busiest streets, looks pretty rural.  But it was a hot Sunday so there wasn't much traffic.  And the air is still smoky, hazing the mountains in the background.

It's nice to be doing this post on my MacBook instead of the iPad I got for the trip.  Blogger works here without all the bugs it has on the iPad.  But I did figure out some workarounds to make it possible to post, though not easily.  I might do a post on that for people struggling with it.

More to do as we ease back into Alaska.

Moving North, While Remembering South - Carlos Thays, Park Designer

If all goes right, we’ll be in Anchorage tomorrow.

Transition is that time where you brain adjusts from one environment to another.  I’m still, for instance, ready to say Buen Día and gracias and quiero.   I’m still looking at the dinner bill and computing it in pesos and dollars.  Invisible  membranes reach out from my brain to the many wonderful people we met.  How are they doing?  Feeling their love and sending back mine.

I'm  trying to hold onto Argentina and Chile as long as I can.  To be, at least partially there, as I slide through LA reality and into Anchorage reality.   I looked through my pictures to find some that never got posted, but should.  I’ve got two particular pictures of trees.

Which brought up the name Carlos Thays.  It shows up on streets and in parks all over Argentina.  But until now I haven’t looked him up.  I knew he had designed parks.    From his Wikipedia page:

"Born Jules Charles Thays in Paris, France in 1849,^[2] Carlos Thays arrived in Argentina in 1889,^[2] after he was recommended by Jean Alphand to Argentine pioneer Miguel Crisol, who contracted Thays to design Sarmiento Park in Córdoba.^[1] During     his time in Córdoba Thays became infatuated with the young country and decided to spend the rest of his life in Argentina. After moving to Buenos Aires he was named the city's Director of Parks & Walkways in 1891.^[2] This position gave him significant influence over the design of the city's open spaces, and his legacy is still strongly felt in the city's  open spaces today."

Here's the Parque San Martín, in Mendoza.  I just couldn't keep walking without pulling out my camera, the vision was so striking.

And yes, this is a Thays designed park.  We walked over to this park our first morning of our first visit to Mendoza.  (Mendoza was located perfectly to be our starting point for San Juan and then Santiago and back.)  And I was struck by how beautiful the trees were and how they were located just perfectly.  Here are two pictures from that morning in the park.  Mostly, I was chasing all the birds with my telephoto lens - not very successfully - but I couldn't help notice the trees.

I don't know if Thays designed the landscaping for this river that flows through downtown Córdoba, but he did design Sarmiento Park in Córdoba, so if he's not directly responsible for these trees, I'm sure it's his influence.

One of Thays' largest undertakings was the Parque Tres de Febrero,[2] a sweeping area of open land covering several square kilometers filled with thousands of trees, flowers, many fountains, and monuments in the barrio of Palermo.


Well we stayed in Palermo when we first arrived in Buenos Aires and I was struck by the trees there too.  Here are a couple of pictures from there.

The Wikipedia page doesn't say anything about Thays visiting Santiago, but I'm guessing, from the parks we saw in downtown Santiago, that his influence reached there as well.

Travel and Leisure has pictures of some of his parks and more about him as well.  I posted a little on the Rose Garden earlier.  He also did the Botanical Garden which we walked around, but never got in - it was closing one time and on our last day, a Monday, it was closed too.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, . . ."

I knew that title quote above was the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities  but I didn't realize that the first
sentence went on for the rest of the first paragraph.  Here's the rest:

 ",,,it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we ha nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."  

If you are wondering what was happening 'in the present' that caused Dickens to liken the year 1785 to his own times,  the Dickens Museum website tells us:

"A Tale of Two Cities was published at a time when there were considerable diplomatic tensions between Britain and the France of Napoleon III, whose Second Empire regime was not considered very stable by many in Britain. This would doubtless have given a contemporary significance to Dickens’s tale of the French Revolution of 1789."

Dickens' own time, that is when he wrote the the newspaper serial that would become the book, was 1859.  It was also a tumultuous time in Dickens' own life as he divorced his wife and mother of his ten children and split from his long time publisher.

The description of 1785 certainly resonates in today's USA.  But I'd quote one more part from page 2 of the book.  It's after he compares the monarchs of England and France in 1875 and how those in power could not imagine that anything would change.

They took less notice of what was happening in the American colonies, Dickens suggests, than they did of stories of ghosts on Cock Lane.

"Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America:  which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through an of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood."

And so we see today far more focus (alas, by the media as well as people - who are influenced by what the media say is important) on Trump's outrageous Tweets and affairs, than on more important imminently momentous matters in the earthly order of events - like climate change.

And I note that Dickens, in 1859, saw the creation of the United States as so important to the human race, as we today fight to keep the idea of democracy alive in North America.

Reading good fiction, I learned as an undergraduate English major, offers us the wisdom of the world's most insightful observers of humanity.  While few completely escape their own times' world views, they do see deeply into the strengths and weaknesses of humans, and those insights are valuable lessons for the present.

University Of Alaska Cuts Part Of Koch Plan To Cripple Climate Science in Alaska?

Alaska Public Media had a story this morning on how the cuts to the university budget could decimate the climate change research being done by University of Alaska faculty.  Research that is critically important to our understanding of climate change and how fast it is happening.  It's important to the state, but also important to climate change research worldwide.

In a previous post I speculated that the hit Dunleavy made on the University was intended to wipe out expertise that could challenge the reports Outside corporations submit for permitting their extraction of Alaska resources.  That's totally consistent with the goals Dunleavy's patrons - the Koch brothers and others.

But I wasn't thinking big enough.  A hit to the climate change research being done in Alaska would also be consistent with the Kochs' climate change denial agenda.  (See the Koch sponsored climate denial organizations list here, for example.  Or here.)

Right now, the President of the University of Alaska should be tapping foundations and large donors around the country and around the world to help keep the university running until we get rid of our governor.

But it seems to me that saving the climate change research in Alaska should be a top priority and a great way to gather support for the University of Alaska in general.  Alaska is one of the most climate affected states.  Maybe not so much by numbers of people affected, but by the huge physical impact climate change is having on our land, oceans, sub-surface permanent-frost, our glaciers and ocean icepacks.

The Public Media piece featured one climate change researcher from Juneau.  He talked about how his research funding from Outside of Alaska brought in way more money than his salary.  How many other such researchers can there be in Alaska?  Let's make a wild guess of 50 statewide - researchers who are regular UA faculty.

Let's say their average salary and benefits come to $100,000 apiece.  It could be more, but that's an easy round number to work with and will give us a ballpark figure.

$100,000 X 50 = $5,000,000.   In today's world, that's not a lot of money.  Forbes say there are 5000 families in the US with over $100 million - and that's just "cash deposits, securities and life and pension plans." Not real estate or businesses or art.

Surely amount those 5000 there are people who would be willing to pay the salaries of Alaska's climate researchers for a year.  Even if my estimate is way off and we need $10 million, that's chump change for billionaires.

Jim Johnson, how many million dollar donations have you brought to the University since you became president?  Now's the time to huddle with Rasmuaon'a Diane Kaplan to get some leads on where to get the money to save our climate researchers.  Not to mention the other threatened faculty.

Meanwhile, I'd call on retired faculty in the state,  many of whom get good pensions, to volunteer to teach classes for free in the fall if there are gaps in their specialties so that students can get the classes they need to graduate.  I've already sent a message to UAA's chancellor offering to teach and to help sign up others..  (And if we're really lucky, we won't have to because the legislature and the governor will find a way to avoid these big cuts.

Thoughts On Returning To The US After A Month In Argentina

I wrote this yesterday.

I’m over the Pacific just west of Acapulco, about three hours from landing in LA.  We’ve been out of the US for just over a month.  This is the longest stretch out of the US since  twelve years ago when we were in Thailand for three months where I worked as a volunteer with an NGO that helped poor farmers.  .  

As our return was nearing this last week, I began to think about Jews who traveled outside of Germany - or other countries the Nazis would take over - during the 1930s and then returned.  Many, if not most, ended up in concentration camps.  Should I seek political asylum in Argentina?  

No, I’m not a target.  Yet.  For now the targets are people with darker skin than mine.  Jews are in a strange never-never land.  They’re, as always, in the scopes of white nationalists/neo-Nazis, but the president’s son-in-law is Jewish and his daughter converted.  Being pro-Israel is a conservative thing now, probably because of strong Evangelical Christians support of Israel.  So, what happens to Jews who have serious questions about the way Israel is treating its Arab citizens and the neighboring Palestinians?  

But that’s an aside to the terror Trump is causing among Central American immigrants to the US.  This fear isn't unlike what Jews, LGBTQ folks, Communists, Romani, and others felt about the Gestapo arriving at their door.  You can say that they aren't intentionally killing people on the border, but that came later in Germany as well.  People just knew it was bad and they may not see their families again.  Same as now.  This fear affects more than those seeking asylum - a perfectly legal thing to do.  It includes those in the US without documentation, including all the dreamers, and those with papers who could find themselves targets anyway,  The same thing happened in Argentina in the 70s and 80s, and in Chile under Pinochet.  In the later two places the US was supporting the abusive governments.  

And I thought about all this as we lined up in Lima for our last leg of our trip home.  Nearly all the people with us on this plane are NOT native speakers.  I didn’t hear anyone speaking English.  It was all Spanish, maybe some Portuguese.  Many dark skinned people.  We’re on a Boeing 787-8. Maybe 300 people.  How many planes like this fly into the US everyday from the south?  

What does that say about Trump’s policies on the border?  And the ICE raids? (Yes, I realize this past weekend’s raids didn’t actually happen in the scale expected.). Does it mean that all the focus on the border is simply for show?  Does it mean Trump isn’t worried about legal immigrants as he says, just undocumented ones?  Does it mean Democrats ought to acknowledge the many people flying in legally?  Probably all those questions are more complicated than yes/no answers could cover.  Clearly the treatment of people seeking asylum on the border is outrageous and easily preventable if the Trump administration cared at all.  But there’s also a high level of incompetence in the administration, and most likely the contractors for the camps are making a fortune.  

But what happens next?  Are things going to return to normal after the 2020 election?  

Even if the Democrats win the presidency and the Senate, I’m not sure they will.  Trump has pushed the norms of governing in the US so far beyond respect for the law, for decency, for precedents, for freedom of the press, for respect for one’s opposition, that it will be hard.  And Trump and his supporters will fight any loss in the streets and in the courts.  (Or the long shot possibility is that they will lose their steam.  But don't count on it.  They have lots of guns.)

But what if we don’t have a fair election, or a fair enough election, to get rid of Trump and the Republican majority in the Senate?  By that I mean more cyber and other propaganda from abroad and from conservative billionaires.  I mean voter suppression and hacking  voting machines.  Germans didn’t think that Hitler would last, but he meddled with the system, and the burning of the Reichstag, which many think the Nazi's instigated.  And so he stayed in power.  Trump’s majority on the Supreme Court leaves us with no guarantee that justice will be served if elections are challenged.  We already have the Florida election decision that gave Bush the election in 2000, from a less conservative court. And the court majority just recently had no objection to political gerrymandering.  

So asking about returning isn’t the silly question some might think.  And I’ve only been talking about the US.  I haven’t mentioned the catastrophe that is Alaska after Dunleavy’s vetoes weren’t overridden.  

These are dark times.  I guess the main reason to return is to fight to get my state and country back.  


[We didn't seek asylum in Lima.  We're back home.  And I know Argentina will stop dominating my brain very fast.  But it's time to more seriously and intensely work for a better Alaska and USA.]

Buenos Aires Tour Part 2: San Telmo And More

This is a continuation of our tour of parts of Buenos Aires with Carolina and Belem.  Part 1 which covers La Boca is here. 

While we were with Belen, Carolina had moved the car so it was close to the museum and we then went off to San Telmo market.  Again, we were dropped off and with Caroline walked the open market, saw the church, and bought some home made soap.

 Here’s where we got dropped off, with the church behind this muraled wall.

And across the street was a very spiffy looking apartment building.  
     
     
       

  

We went in to look at the church.  

 You can learn more about San Telmo - who was born in 1175 and was the patron saint of fishers and sailers in the south of Italy at the church website.

I got fascinated by the floor tiles.  They have this Escher like patterN, and then in a spot of light, I saw that it was made up of pentagonal tiles.  I want these in my house somewhere.  

J liked the tiles out in front of the church.  

Here’s the street market from in front of the church.  

We got to what looked like a larger square that was filled with booths that looked more like a flea market and then up another street passing musicians, a magician, until we got to the San Telmo market.  It was teaming with people.  It’s a regular neighborhood market shops selling all sorts of things - fruits, vegetables - beautiful fresh vegies - meat.  And lots of little places to eat.

On the right, they’re making empanadas.  

We got a couple of vegetarian empanadas - the best I’ve ever had - and a humita chala, which was a mix of corn and onions and something else wrapped in a corn husk.  I am going to have to figure out how they made that because it was delicious.  

I found a Youtube of someone preparing humita chala.  This is not an Argentine version because she adds some spicy sauce at the end, but it’s close enough for now.  

We wandered around a bit more.  At one point a car was trying to figure out where it wanted to go and the car behind it almost touched it and honked.  Hands flew out the windows of the first car.  I was in sympathy with them.  They pulled into a parking place, but someone called out from a window to say they couldnt.  But Belen told them we were just up the street and leaving so they followed us and all was well.

From there we wandered over to ‘the most expensive part of town”. Puerto Madero.  It’s on an island and there are only a couple of bridges there.  Lots of fancy high rise business and residential buildings.  

We stopped and Belen wanted to show us the very fancy Faena Hotel,  in a refurbished old brick building.  We didn’t see much, but this long red space was striking.  There’s a lot of money involved here.    Belen asked for information on a tango show they have.  “It’s not ‘a’ tango show, it’s ‘the best tango show” was the response.  It’s $250 a person.  I asked if that was pesos or dollars.  Dollars.  Is Lady Gaga in it?  Belen smiled.  

Then we got caught in a traffic jam.  Nothing was moving.  Well, sometimes the bridges are pulled up to let boats pass.  In 15 minutes we were off the island and headed by the Colon National Theater and then by the old Synagogue.  

We went through Recoleta - below is the church by the cemetery - and then back to where we are staying.  

It was a gorgeous sunny day, in the upper 60s.  But it got chilly in the late afternoon.  

 We got to talking about how they are building up this business.  It’s hard.  But they both know Buenos Aires well and are warm and helping people.  They seemed to be having as good a time as we were.  It was like good friends were showing us around.  They are willing to just give people basic advice - how to get into town from the airport and find a good place to stay and get a bus pass - to actually arranging everything for people including taking them around to see things.  Carolina also has special connections into some fields like polo.  

i don’t usually make recommendations like this, but if anyone is going to Argentina and wants some help planning their trip, their website is Choice Buenos Aires.  As I said in the previous post, it’s a work in progress.  These women are much better at guiding tours and planning trips than making their website just the way they’d like it.  And they also  have a Facebook page and a Twitter page.   (@aireschoice) 

We had a really wonderful day yesterday.  And tomorrow morning early, we head for the airport and our plane back to the US.  I’m not ready to go back, even though we’ve been here a month.   

Buenos Aires Tour With Small Start Up

Our host when we first came to Buenos Aires, Carolina, and her friend Belen have a small business for helping people who visit Buenos Aires and Argentina.  I wouldn’t call it a travel agency or a tour company - it’s more personal than that.  It’s like having a friend in Buenos Aires who will do what is necessary to help you make your trip perfect - even if you don’t even know what you want to do.  

And when we left Buenos Aires a couple of weeks ago, we agreed on a tour of some places we’d missed earlier.  

For yesterday’s tour we jumped into the car and drove to La Boca, one of the oldest parts of Buenos Aires.  

La Boca is the home of La Bombonera stadium, the home of Buenos Aires’ football (soccer) team - Boca Juniors.  This was, and still is, a poor neighborhood.  Lots of port workers lived and worked here.          

 These are low rise living space  compared to the more affluent neighborhoods.  This was the neighborhood that the tango was created in the brothels.






 



And this is part of the famous stadium.  Part of the scoreboard is on the upper right.

And you can see the shape of the stadium better here on the left.  There’s a line for people waiting to tour the museum and stadium.  

There are also lots of tourist shops here.  

Then we walked down to the key streets that lure tourists to La Boca and to the museum created by the famous artist Benito Quelquena Martìn.  

This sign was pointed out as an example of the kind of script that dominated this area in the past.  And then I started noticing it everywhere.

 This one below shows the building above in the past.  The date on it says 1959.  Well before it became a tourist destination.   The picture was in the artist Martín’s museum

    

Martin’s home is at the top of the museum with great views of the port - where he did a lot of his paintings - as well as of Buenos Aires. 

  

These two photos go together.  They’re from the roof of the museum and show the area.  (You can see the colorful  narrow house in the upper right of the picture above and then going to the left of the picture you get to the port.  That loop in the water is made up of recycled plastic bottles and is being used for some sort of water recovery program, but I didn’t get the details.  There are some water plants growing on the right side.

Benito Quinquela Martin is in this picture - I assumed he’s the one on the left.  The picture is from 1909.

And below is one of his pictures of workers in the port.  First a close-up, and then you can see the whole picture below it.   You can learn more about him at this Wikipedia page.  He was an orphan and adopted when he was 8.

 

I was going crazy with my camera - everything was begging to be photographed.  

I  think this is getting to be a very long post, so I’ll end here and  break up the day into two posts.  But here’s a link to ChoiceBuenosAires - the website Carolina and Belin are working on to help publicize their business.  As you can see, it’s a work in progress still.  But we can vouch for these two women’s ability help visitors to Buenos Aires make the best use of their time here.  

If Republicans Don’t Have A Problem With Detention Centers On Human Rights Grounds, Maybe They Will For Wasting Taxpayer Money

CQ reports that the US government is paying contractors over $700 a day to house children in border detention camps.  They cite an NBC report based on information from a Department of Health and Human Services administrator.

“The cost of holding migrant children who have been separated from their parents in newly created "tent cities" is $775 per person per night, according to an official at the Department of Health and Human Services — far higher than the cost of keeping children with their parents in detention centers or holding them in more permanent buildings.”

You can slice and dice the numbers anyway you want, but there are a couple of things that are obvious here:  The government is paying way too much.

This is either because:
A.  They are horribly inefficient
B.  They are making contractors very rich
C.  They have no imagination to figure out better ways to do this
D.  They want the detainees to suffer as much as possible to deter others
E.  They want the detainees to suffer as much as possible because they are sadistic
F.   A combination of some or all of the above

But we could put all these people into decent hotels and feed them well at these prices.  Someone’s getting rich.  Someone who’s probably benefiting from the new tax law.  Someone who probably contributed significantly to the Trump campaign.  (I said probably.  I don’t have the facts.  Let’s consider this a suggestion for a journalist who needs a good story.)

And yes, I agree with anyone who thinks that NBC should have given the name of the person who supplied the numbers.