Mushrooms And The Buses - More Denali Pictures

 Here are some more pictures from Denali - the Alpine Trail and the Healy Overlook Trail.  

This was the Alpine trail.  Nature's a pretty good landscape artist.  

I'm not sure what these black mushrooms are, but they're pretty cool.  

I think these are puffballs.  

Ever since I read Richard Wright's  The Overstory, I realize that 'rotting' log just doesn't convey the process of giving back life that trees do after they die.  They're homes and food to untold species from small mammals, birds, and too many insects to even think about.  And then they give back all their nutrients and atoms for other trees and plants to use.  "Rot" has too negative an image.  And this is why we compost most of the food scraps from the kitchen.  Watching the compost heap full of scraps and leaves and other green plants slowly turn into rich compost - a factory of worms and all sorts of little critters - transforming the 'waste' into new plant food reminds me every year  that nature doesn't need humans to sustain the planet.  

Best as I can tell from my mushroom field guide is that these tan fungi poking up out of the ground like fingers are possibly strap coral mushrooms or pestle coral mushrooms.  

I just liked the look of this clump of tree trunks on the side of the trail.  

And when we got to a road we thought (correctly) was a shortcut to our car, we passed the bus lot.  It would appear that they are using a lot few buses this summer, even though they are only allowing half as many people on.  We had no interest at all on a bus ride with strangers for hours and hours.  But if this were my first and probably only trip ever to Denali National Park, I might have thought differently.  

There was another row of buses to the left and another to the right.  

More Denali Pictures and Thoughts

You can drive into the park 12 miles to Savage River.  From there on you need to take the bus or get a special permit to drive.  At Savage River there's a wonderful 2 mile loop trail which I've posted about in the past.  While people stopped in the parking lot, relatively few went on the trail.  And only we had masks ready to pull up if people were nearby.  The first view is from the bridge looking southeast.

There are lots of rocky outcroppings along the trail.  

And lots of lichens.  

The trail comes along Savage River on one side for a mile.  Then you cross a bridge and come back the other side.  You can see the sun on the water despite the mostly cloudy day.  

The Alpine Trail starts near the Savage River campground, and if you take the whole trail, gets you to the Savage River Trail parking lot where the pictures above are from.  We started on the Alpine Trail once and got a ways in, but turned back.  Then we went to where it ends and watched a mother bear and several cubs go up the trail we would have been arriving on had we continued the hike.  

The Alpine Trail is  lovely with totally different terrain and vegetation from the nearby Savage River trail.  Here's a tiny waterfall in the creek you go by.  

And this is from the road driving back to Riley Creek Campground.  This is an example of why you may easily miss the wildlife around you.  There is a herd of caribou in this picture.  No, don't even try.  I could barely spot them in the original higher resolution version of this picture and I knew where to look.  We found them the most common way to see wildlife - see other people looking through binoculars out into the distance.  It took a while with my binoculars until I saw them.  They were the only large animals we saw.  And a ground squirrel and a bunch of tree squirrels.  There was also a golden eagle flying around at this spot.  

Despite the forecast of rain, we had a rainless Wednesday and the sun was making its location known through the clouds enough that we could see our shadows most of the time.  It was a fine day and the campfire at the end led to a delicious meal.  

I look at this picture and it's hard to believe we've had this van since 1998.  It replaced the one we'd originally bought in 1971 after we got married and honeymooned on a road trip from LA to the Great Slave Lake in the Canadian New Territories.  Followed by a summer trip to Mexico, British Honduras, and Guatemala the next summer.  Then we had kids  and didn't take a long trip until we drove up to Alaska.  I remember when we finally sold the first one after 24 years (and my mechanic telling me the holes in the floor couldn't really be repaired), that my son told me that he and his sister got worried.  After all, we'd had the car longer than we'd had them and they were concerned we might get rid of them next.  We finally got new sleeping bags last year, but we still have some stools and a hatchet that were in the original van.  (As I write that I realize they're in the picture.)

And I'd also like to compliment the folks who designed the Riley Creek campgrounds.  The spots of the cars and tents had absolutely no mud even though it had rained a lot before we got there.  And you're a very good COVID distance from the other sites.  Though you have to go into the Mercantile (a small grocery there) to claim your reserved campsite.  But the visitor center is closed.  There are two masked rangers behind plexiglas barriers giving information to tourists, many of whom were not wearing masks.  This was really the most contact with others since early March and only our second outing.  And we only did this to let the carpet guy install our carpet that came last fall, but they held up installing until the kitchen floor was put in.  But the bamboo flooring didn't come til really late.  It got in, but there wasn't time to put in the carpet.  So our life has been on hold to a certain extent since last fall when we started putting as much stuff as we could downstairs so we could clear the upstairs.  Then the virus hit and I didn't want anyone spending a couple of days in the house.  

But we've had time to learn more about how the virus spreads and other friends have had workers in to do things with no bad consequences.  So we decided on the Denali trip to be out of the house while the carpet went in.  But the carpet installer had a longer estimate for the work than the salesman.  So only the living room and the hall were done, not the upstairs bedrooms.  But I'm delighted that this got us up to Denali.  And the carpet looks great and we're going to be very careful about what comes back upstairs and what gets given away or tossed.  

Great Short Denali Trip - Brief Intro

 Left Anchorage Wednesday to let the carpet guy install some carpet that's been long delayed for various reasons and then COVID.  Decided he could do it while we were gone.  Forecast was for rain and we had rain on and off on the road up.  

But as we pulled into our campsite the sun came out.  It was cloudy all day Thursday, but no rain, and the sun was visible thru the clouds most of the time.  Here's a view from yesterday.

It rained during the night but it stopped this morning and we're just back from a hike.  Going to head home.  This is just an appetizer.  

Late August Colors

 

‘Black Lives Matter’ or ‘Shut up and dribble?’ That’s the choice America has to make

 That's the title of a piece from Leonard Pitts.  Below is an excerpt which just seems so obvious.  

White people often think you can buy your way out of race. They refuse to grasp that racism doesn’t care how much money you make or how many diplomas adorn your walls. Thabo Sefolosha of the Houston Rockets earns a reported $2.5 million a year; New York City police broke his leg. Danielle Morgan has a bachelor’s degree, two masters and a Ph.D. Campus cops at Santa Clara University knocked on her door and required her to prove her house was her house.

Money is not enough. Education is not enough. Excellence is not enough.

But enough is enough. That’s why the NBA called time out."

Yet watching the Republican Convention this week, it is clearly not obvious to lots of people.  

The sordid history of the gun toting McLoskeys from St. Louis has been chronicled.  Yet they were featured as heroes at the convention.   The 17 year old murderer in Kenosha is being feted as a right-wing hero, yet he killed two protestors and the police ignored him even though people were telling them he was the shooter.   Trump and his storm troopers spent four days trying to stir white fears that black Americans will overrun their neighborhoods and loot and rape and murder.  And that people like me are intent in destroying the United States.

We know why Trump is doing this.  To help him win the election.  Plain and simple.  And because he has no concern for black Americans unless they can help him get reelected.  (A couple of black women shown as Trump supporters told the NYTimes they were told the video was for something else entirely and they aren't Trump supporters.)  To say Trump has no black friends is meaningless, because Michael Cohen has said Trump has no friends period.

Perhaps these fears just reflect what white people know - that whites have treated blacks like shit* since the first Europeans and blacks arrived in the Western Hemisphere.  And they fear that if blacks gain some semblance of equality, they will do the same to whites.  I think this is the fear of those who know they are guilty, know they deserve to be punished.  But the oppressed tend to just want to be treated decently and fairly.  They don't want to act like their oppressors.  They want acknowledgment.  Look at the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa.  Look at restorative justice examples. 

Yes, some oppressed people have turned the tables and become oppressors themselves.  Israel, despite being the home of many holocaust survivors and their children, treats many of their Arab citizens badly.  But these Arabs weren't the Jews' Nazi oppressors.  Most Jews get along quite well with the German government - which did apologize and did give and is still giving reparations to Jewish Holocaust victims.

The simple point that Pitts makes above is that it doesn't matter how rich or educated or important black Americans are.  When they or their children are out in public anonymously, they are seen by many whites (and other people of color even) as trash and are vulnerable to all sorts of abuse from regular people as well as law enforcement and other institutions.  Until that ends, this is a racist society.  And there are two fronts this needs to be fought on:

1.  Individual prejudices - conscious or unconscious beliefs that blacks are inferior, not as competent, dangerous, and any number of other stereotypes all people raised in the US (and elsewhere) have absorbed.  (Any white who would be disturbed to hear their son or daughter wanted to marry a black person carries this sort of prejudice.)
2. Systemic racism - organizational structures and procedures - that set up more and higher obstacles to blacks than to white Americans as they try to pursue the American dream.  Things like Jim Crow and poll taxes in the past, and systematic voter suppression today such as disenfranchising felons and black neighborhoods by deleting them from the voting records or limiting the number of polling places available.  And the kinds of laws and procedures that are aimed at making a disproportionately high number of blacks into felons.  Both  #1 and #2 reinforce each other.  

If you run into folks who don't get this obvious reality, see if you can get them to read.

White Rage, by Carol Anderson, looks at how the Supreme Court used States Rights after the Civil War to ignore disenfranchising blacks in the South through poll taxes, set up laws that resulted in the arrest of blacks for 'loitering' and then taking them as prisoners who were given to white businesses as essentially prison slaves until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  States rights was also the excuse to ignore cases of lynching and other killings of blacks.  How school integration was avoided to leave black students in poorly funded public schools.  And how the War on Drugs continued the policy of imprisoning blacks. (And this continues today as Trump encourages white supremacists to take up guns to protect whites.)

I know, lots of Trump supporters don't read books.  But a number do have college educations, even from prestigious universities.  And if they don't read, let them watch the movie 13th, about the 13th Amendment. 13th is on Netflix and in libraries and covers similar ground as White Rage.

*Sorry, sometimes euphemisms aren't strong enough, the stark truth doesn't come through.  The infrequent use of expletives means that when you use them, they have more impact.  They haven't been 'normalized' and neutered.  

Alaskans - Did You Know Expirations For Driver's Licenses Are Suspended During the COVID-19 Emergency?

 I didn't either. 

My wife's license is expiring soon and she wanted to renew it. She called to see if she could renew it online or by mail.  Well, you could, they said, but you're over 69 so you have to come in. 

She got an appointment for 3:45pm, but there was still a long line.  BUT people were masked and keeping their distance and the clerks were separated by plexiglass or something.  Neither of us have had any symptoms and it's been a week or so.  

But I did send an email to the Director of the DMV and the Assistant Director.

The email back to me was also shared with someone in the Department of Administration (I'd copied by State Rep and State Senator).  Today I got an email from the person at DOA.  It says: 

". . . attached please find the Order of Suspension 2, on page 24 please find, the DMV AS 28.15.101(a) is suspended. This suspension applies to the expiration date of all driver licenses, and we have asked that this suspension be continued."

Clearly, the clerk my wife talked to by phone at the DMV didn't know this.  And neither did the Deputy Director of the DMV who originally responded to my email with:

"It is possible for your wife to renew her license online at https://online.dmv.alaska.gov/DMVMailInRenewal/index.aspx if she is younger than 69. For those 69 years of age and older, Alaska has a statute (AS 28.15.101 (c) (2)) that states that if an applicant is 69 years of age or older on the expiration date of the driver’s license being renewed then their license may not be renewed online or through the mail, which is why we’re limited."

 So I'm letting others know this.  The snow tire ban through September is also suspended.  There are lots of things on the list of suspensions.  A lot have to do with health procedures, fees, etc.  Also there are a lot on Retirement and Pensions.  

The whole list is below.  

07.30.20 Order of Suspensio... by Steve

Why DNC Rightfully Warned Us About Four More Years

And it seems the RNC is trying to turn it around and scare the Trump base into thinking Biden will be even worse.  Here are two examples.

1.  Truly scary Trump nomination.  The guy is a Harvard Law professor who believe the US should be a Catholic based authoritarian theocracy:

Trump Nominates Adrian Vermeule to ACUS

" . . .in an essay for The Atlantic, Vermeule proposed a new legal ideology that would disregard the Constitution altogether. According to Vermeule:

Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being…. The Court’s jurisprudence on free speech, abortion, sexual liberties, and related matters will prove vulnerable under a regime of common-good constitutionalism…. So too should the libertarian assumptions central to free-speech law and free-speech ideology—that government is forbidden to judge the quality and moral worth of public speech, that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric,”  and so on—fall under the ax. Libertarian conceptions of property rights and economic rights will also have to go, insofar as they bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources."

 Vermeule's Wikipedia page gives more details about his very unAmerican philosophy.  If you're wonder ing about his connections with William Barr, you're asking the right questions.  Here's a piece linking Barr's ideas with Vermeule's.

The ACUS, by the way,  is the Administrative Council for the United States.  What does the ACUS do?  Here's what their webpage says:

"ACUS is an independent federal agency charged with convening expert representatives from the public and private sectors to recommend improvements to administrative process and procedure. ACUS initiatives promote efficiency, participation, and fairness in the promulgation of federal regulations and in the administration of federal programs."

2. Who is Miles Taylor and why did he resign from the Trump administration?  

First, who he is courtesy of Wikipedia:

"Miles Taylor is an American former government official who specialises in security and international relations. He was formerly a Trump administration appointee who served in the United States Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019, including as Chief of Staff to former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Acting Secretary Chad Wolf."

Second, why he resigned.  This high level Trump official resigned when Trump told him and others to keep all immigrants out of the US.  When Trump was told it was illegal, Miles Taylor says that Trump replied, "I don't care.  I'll pardon you all."

💣s away https://t.co/Tdb7LOnp6Z

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) August 25, 2020

Before you get too depressed, here's the Economist's forecast for the election as of yesterday.  

They give Biden a 90% chance of winning the electoral college vote and 98% chance of winning the popular vote.  We're still over two months from the election.  But these kind of numbers mean that if Trump wins it will be like the vote in Belarus.  And it make me think the pollsters in the election in 2016 were only wrong because they didn't consider voter suppression and tampering with voting machines.  

Random Thoughts On COVID-19 Impacts Now And Later

 Impact On Kids 

There's lots of talk about the debilitating impacts on the mental health and development of kids with schools out of session.  But I haven't seen anything (I did look, though not exhaustively) on all those kids for whom school is torture because they are shunned, picked on, bullied, beat up, or otherwise made to feel miserable at school.  For them, distance learning is probably an improvement.  

Medical Waste

I've been appalled for a long time about medical waste.  I think it started when I accompanied someone to the ER for a twisted ankle that was swelling.  It was winter here in Anchorage with lots of snow.  We got into the ER and they pulled out some sort of chemical ice pack, they twisted it and put it on her ankle.  I don't recall the price of the item - over $50 at least.  All the free snow and ice you could want, perfect for molding in a plastic bag on an ankle, was just outside the door.  

When you get a shot, the syringe and needle is tossed.  My mom was a lab technician and I remember the autoclave (there's a word that's been sitting idle in my brain for decades just waiting for this post, I even forgot it was there) where they sterilized the glass syringes and the needles.  Now things get tossed. 

When my mom caught MRSA in the hospital - new doctors kept coming in and each put on a whole set of protective clothing before entering.  (They all wanted to do new tests which required drawing more blood from my poor mom.)  They saw her for less than five minutes, then tossed all the protective gear when they left.  

While I don't know how much this kind of waste adds to the total medical costs, I do know it contributes to the landfill problems, including plastics and ocean plastic gyres.  

But when PPP were in short supply at the beginning of the pandemic, medical personnel began wearing masks all day instead of throwing them away after each patient.  Hospitals found ways to sterilize PPP. 

I hope there are people rethinking our throwaway hospital practices.  How can they reduce what they add to landfills, reduce the use of the raw materials, reduce costs?  All the medical supply companies will be fighting them all the way.  It would be interesting to see the role of medical supply company lobbyists play in the developing the rules hospitals must follow in these practices. 

Food

The whole way my household gets food has changed radically.  We use an app and then go pick it up 'curbside' in the parking lot.  (There really isn't a curb involved.)  I'm getting better finding what I'm looking for with the app.  I buy less spur of the moment things because I don't see them.  And I realize that we have at least one new staple in our fridge - cottage cheese.  It's an easy to 'prepare' snack that's probably healthier - and less expensive - than the Talenti gelatos in the freezer.  Also, without going out to eat, our food bill has gone way down.  

Will we go back to in-store grocery shopping when this is over?  I  suspect so, but I don't know, but when we're pressed for time I'm sure we'll use the apps.  And I know there will be a huge demand for restaurants.  And there will be plenty of people ready to open restaurants to meet that demand.  

Laws of Nature versus The Rules of Men*

The notion of social construction - things that are created by humans - is becoming clearer during the pandemic.  Often these are institutions that people just assume are 'natural', fixed, the way things are.  Like slavery once.  Like women not voting.  Like until death do us part heterosexual marriages.  (And the * in the heading is to emphasize that until very recently in the US, nearly all laws were made by men.) 

We're seeing now how the economy can collapse.  How school can be cancelled.  How our customary forms of greetings can be put aside.  How covered faces can be seen as the fashion of bandits, the assumed oppression of some Muslim women, to now a badge of political political persuasion or concern for health.  

But while we keep being enlightened about the 'made up' quality of the rules of people, the laws of nature keep steady - the sun comes up each morning, the weather does its thing, viruses do theirs.  

Science is the study of the laws of nature.  Science doesn't always correctly describe how nature works, but it's surely proving that science does a lot better than religion or politicians who want to ignore it for their own personal gain.  

I'm hoping that when this is over, a lot of the rules of men that oppress other people, that keep people poor, that destroy the natural world, that allocate wealth, will be seen as just made up rules that can be changed to create a more equitable and positive place for people to live.  

Video Conferencing

As I'm writing this post in Anchorage, I'm also on jitsi watching my grandkids in San Francisco playing with various Lego and other building materials.  We're just hanging out together doing our own things, but we can look and see each other as we do it.  It's VERY cool that we can be together like this.  I think back to my childhood when even a call to outside the local area in Los Angeles cost so many cents per minute, and international calls were dollars per minute.  This video conferencing is as amazing a change as anything I can think of.  (As I was proofing this my granddaughter pulled  apart her big brother's lego creation and he got so mad he hit her.  And she cried and told him to go away.  And now they've made up with the guidance of their dad.  

Everyone enjoy your weekend.  Time for me to get away from this screen.  

Wow! Republican Right Knocked Off A Bunch Of Incumbents In Yesterday's Primary

I haven't kept close tabs on the Republican primaries this year, but I do know there's been a split between the Party and a number of Republicans who have worked closely with Democrats in the House and Senate.  

A quick look at the results (you can see them all here) shows a Republican primary massacre of incumbents like never before.  Will this lead to new Republican dominance in the state legislature?  Or will it make it easier for Democrats in November.  Probably not in Matsu, but I'm not sure about the rest of the state.  

Here are some results:

In the Senate

Senate President Cathy Giessel lost 28% to 71% to Roger Holland on Anchorage Hillside.

Long time Republican incumbent John Coghill got 47% to Robert Myers 52% in Fairbanks.

Natasha Von Imhoff got 48% to Stephen Duplantis' 51%.

Gary Stevens lost 48% to 51% to John Cox in Kodiak. (only 95% of precincts reported, but he's down almost 900 votes 1403-1334.  Not likely.)

 Incumbent David Wilson won with 32% against seven others.

Bert Stedman comfortably kept his seat (64%)

Newly appointed Josh Revak got 64%.  

In the House, 

Incumbent Mark Neuman lost 37% to Kevin McCabe's 62% in Matsu.

Incumbent Gabielle LeDoux got creamed (20%) to David Nelson's 79%.

Incumbent Jennifer Johnston also got creamed (27%) to James Kaufman's 73%

Recently deceased incumbent Gary Knopp got 13% of the vote to Ronald Gilhman's 61% (a 3rd candidate got 24%)

Former Rep Lynn Gattis lost 28% to former Right to Life Board Member Christopher Kurka.

Bizarre Right David Eastman won 51% to Jesse Sumner's 48%.

The ruthless hand of Tucker Babcock has clearly been busy.  

Why I'm Now Moderating Comments

I've been getting a bunch of sexual spam comments lately.  When someone posts a comment I can see the comment three different ways:

1.  I see the comment itself.  (This doesn't work well for comments on old posts.)

2. I get an email telling me there's a comment, who it's from, and what it says.

3. There's a blogger page where I can see all the comments.

So I've been spending five or ten minutes a day removing these sexual comments.  They're just inappropriate for this blog.  They usually aren't up too long, certainly not over 24 hours at the most.  But taking them down quickly doesn't seem to deter the spammers.  

So I figure with the comments moderated (they don't go up until I say they can) I'm hoping that they give up and find other prey.  I changed the setting Monday and there were some yesterday and four more waiting for moderation.  

This post is for readers who comment now and then.  You won't see your comment until I get around to checking. (I don't get emails for comments now - I have to check on the blog.)  I hope after a week or two the spammers who have pushed me to take this action will have given up.  Then I'll turn off moderation of comments.  

Thanks for your patience.