A month of rain means lots of mushrooms. This was all one bike ride with two stops to explore all the fungi..
This last one is a coral fungus. Looking at my mushroom book, it looks most like a cauliflower fungus, but the range doesn't say it lives this far north. Also says that r. strasberri is a northern species that is similar. These coral fungus are listed as 'choice' in the edible category. Not sure how I'd cook them. And since I'm not sure what it is, not planning to go back and get some.
During Watergate, it wasn't clear whether Nixon would be able to ride things out or not until the Senate Watergate Committee played the secret tapes Nixon recorded in the Oval Office. That was the turning point. The point when Nixon supporters stopped supporting Nixon.
Trump supporters are a different breed. Some will never stop supporting him, or at least the idea of Trump. But lots of Republican politicians only support Trump because they fear losing 'his base' and his support at election time. Others also fear the damaging information Trump has on them.
But the top secret documents - their existence and the realization of what Trump likely plans to do with them, or already has done with them - feel to me like the turning point. Even if Republican politicians don't publicly voice their opposition, the public, combined with the wave of energized pro-choice voters, will make their opinion known in November.
But I want to remind folks that with Watergate, resolution didn't happen quickly.
Back in May I compared the January 6 hearings to the Watergate hearings, which I listened to/watched live at the time. I also tried to put the timing from the Watergate Break-in to Nixon's resignation into perspective. From that post:
- The break-in occurred May 28, 1972 (50 years ago).
- Nixon was reelected in November 1972
- Alexander Butterfield testified about the existence of the White House tapes before the Watergate Committee on July 16, 1973.
- Nixon resigned August 9, 1974.
These events just plodded along. Here's a detailed timeline.
God. This is awful. He has betrayed our country in the worst way imaginable.
— RSMe (@7104child) August 27, 2022
Known Timeline:
— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) August 27, 2022
1. 7/31/2019: Trump spoke with Putin (NYT)
2. 8/3/2019: Trump issued a request for a list of top US spies (The Daily Beast)
3. 10/5/2021: "CIA Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants". (NYT)
4. 8/26/2022: Documents at MAL Could Compromise Human Intel (NYT) 1/5 pic.twitter.com/rqNqRZUQL2
The Republican majority of the Alaska Redistricting Board created elaborate stories to justify pairing a Muldoon house district with Eagle River. When that was rejected by the Alaska Supreme Court, they made even more passionate pleas to keep JBER with Chugiak in a state senate district. It was mostly about the military connections, and how the holy soldiers would be deprived of their representation if paired with the unholy (read: Democratic) downtown.
Simpson: "The most partisan is the proposed pairing of JBER and downtown. This would diminish the voice of our valued military personal. I can’t accept that. I will vote for 3B."
Simpson: "I find the pairing of 23 and 24 ER and Chugiak the more compelling solution. Pairing JBER with downtown overlooks a conflict of interest and opens us to a challenge to that constituency. Chugiak has developed as a bedroom community for the military families. They send their kids to middle school and high school there. That testimony was compelling to that pairing."
Marcum: "I’m very uncomfortable with Option 2 because it moves JBER and links it with D17. It makes the least sense for any possible pairings. Downtown is the arts and tourism, not what makes up JBER. It is used to wake up the military community. Choosing option 2 is an intentional intent to break up that natural pairing. JBER should be with Chugiak" [note, these were my notes and I suspect I missed some words, but I did get the tone and intent correct.]
Marcum: "I would like say on behalf of our military. Implications for military will be major. Dominated by downtown voters. JBER voice will be lost. Ironic that those who have sacrificed the most."
You can see each of them and Member Binkley on the video on this blog post.
[UPDATED August 31, 2022: I knew I had their comments and my responses somewhere, but couldn't find them when I wrote this. They're in this post - at the end. My comments are in red which should make that section easier to find.]
So, let's look at that lost voice. . Here are the results from House District 18 for August 16 primary election. Those brave soldiers barely whispered
Catholic Social Services has a host of programs to help various communities. RAIS - Refugee Assistance and Immigration Services - is focused on new refugees coming to Anchorage. They help them get housing, English lessons, jobs, into school, and other help as needed. One of the most visible activities is the Grow North Farm, on
Mt. View between Bragaw and Airport Heights.
As you can see from the sign, they are open weekday afternoons from 4-7pm.
The growing season seems to be in its prime now. These are pictures from Thursday when I went to pick up my CSA box. CSA is Community Supported Agriculture. Community members subscribe to get weekly produce boxes. Details vary from program to program, but the RAIS program pick up is on Thursdays. But there are lots of vegetables for anyone to buy, even without a CSA subscription.
This is a summer only market. It's scheduled go through the end of September.
I was going to post some links to different posts I thought worth reading. But the first one is probably more than enough.
The real Joe Gerace - Lex Treinen worked on the article that exposed Bronson's Anchorage Health Department head for adding non-existing masters degrees to his resume and led to Gerace's resignation. This link takes you to background on that piece - the work and revelations that led up to it. It's good, open book, here's-how-I-got-this-information type journalism.
"A few days later, I was in Fairbanks sitting on a beach. I called a former business associate of Gerace.
'I’m surprised Joe’s in charge of the homeless in Anchorage,” the man said, “I remember we used to drive down 3rd Avenue where the homeless shelters used to be. Joe would talk about taking out his rifle and shooting the people camped there.'”
After lengthy background investigation and some personal interactions earlier, Treinen finally calls Gerace to confront him with the evidence he's found of padded resumes. While Treinen thought he might be hung up on, the interview lasts over an hour. It seems like Gerace knows he's cornered and while he starts out putting up some resistance, it's just bravado. before he gives up. He's almost begging Treinen to not be too harsh on him.
I asked him about his guard service. He dodged. I pressed again, trying to nail down a detail, or at least an acknowledgement of dishonesty on his resume. He squirmed like a slippery salmon. Sometimes his words were too confusing to understand his answers. Sometimes he made excuses. But sometimes he acknowledged he’d lied, like when I asked him about the 5 combat deployments he listed on one of his resumes.
Me: Were you deployed in combat?
Gerace: No.
Me: You wrote on that Visit resume that you have five combat deployments.
Gerace: Did I write that?
Me: You wrote that. Do you know why you would have written that?
Gerace: Can you show that to me? Does it say that?
Me: Yes. On the Visit resume that was shared with me.
Gerace: I don’t think I wrote that Lex.
Then Treinen moves on to the masters degrees. Here he just folds completely. He knows his lies have caught up with him. Perhaps a load has been taken off him as he confesses.
" I asked him about his MBA, which he said was from Henry Cogswell College.
Me: We checked with them, and they said they don’t they didn’t offer a Masters of Business in the year that you got. How was it you could have got it?
Gerace: I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t answer that question.
Me: You don’t know how you got a master’s degree?
Gerace: Wait, wait, stop. I do. I went to the classes in Everett, Washington.
Me: Do you know why they would say that they don’t have any record of that in the state of Washington doesn’t have any record of that degree?
Gerace: I don’t know, because I’d have to ask them because there was some when the school closed, there was some heavy confusion about how to even get our stuff.
He refused to say where he would have got his Masters in Physician Assistant Studies as well. I wound down the conversation an hour and a half into it and he promised to send me copies of his degrees before the end of the day. Still, it was surprisingly cordial. Several times he tried to elicit sympathy, talking about protecting his former partners from harm that might be caused by publishing this story, or talking about the decades of service for people he’d claimed. He told me a stroke he had last week had left him partially paralyzed on his left side, and he was having trouble concentrating. Finally, he half-heartedly begged for some sort of mercy.
'You’re gonna destroy my credibility all over I mean, I get you have to do it. Can you just not say that Joe’s not — fine, Lex, just do whatever you need to do,' he said."
Definitely worth reading for Anchorage folks.
My sense is that Bronson got elected because of two issues - the COVID mask requirements and the Golden Lion planned conversion to a drug rehabilitation facility. The Kriner crowd supported him on the masks and a group of Geneva Woods NIMBY's supported him so he'd shut down the Golden Lion plans. And that seems to be his basic agenda. I'm sure there's also some national GOP help since they are so into local government control. And censoring libraries is a big deal for them, which would explain our library director fiasco.
Oh, yeah, he wants to buy a giant tent to put the homeless in. The Assembly blocked that and it looks like Bronson might have pushed the homeless to the Centennial campground so he could argue there's no option left but going back to the tent idea. So now we have to find the link between Bronson and the tent manufacturer. I'm sure it's there, but it's just one more thing I haven't had the time to pursue.
It's election day in Alaska and I had a four hour shift - from 10:30am- 2:30pm - today at a local polling place. Below are things that struck me about today. But first an explanation of this unusual election
As a preface to non-Alaskan readers, this was a particularly unusual election.
Turnout Seems High [UPDATE August 17, 2022: The unofficial primary results for Senate seats show a wide variation in turnout from district to district. Some in the teens others in the thirties. But absentee ballots and mail-in ballots would seem to still be out. Where I worked today had 30% as of the latest results]
There were 100 votes when I got there (2.5 hours after the polls opened) and 260 votes when I left at 2:30.
The person who organized this group of poll workers sent out emails about how primaries and special elections tended to be slow and that we should bring something to read or otherwise occupy our time.
So, in my four hour shift, 160 people voted. If I'm calculating right, that comes to one vote every 90 seconds.
So, is that a lot? There are 1800 on the register for that polling place. So by 2:30pm 14% of the voters in that precinct had voted. We've had municipal elections with 20% of voters voting. And there were 5.5 hours left for people to vote, and the after work hours tend to be the busiest.
Also, there were some disabled voters, whose votes do not go in the voting machine so they aren't in my tally. Also there were some questioned ballots that aren't in my tally. (People who weren't on the voting list for this precinct, didn't have ID, etc.)
And, of course, a lot of people voted early or by mail. So based on the precinct I worked at, voter turnout is pretty strong.
A friend working another polling place says they had 600 votes by 3:30pm.
The Voting Machine
My job was helping people get their ballots into the voting machine. It's a Dominion machine. The company that sued Rudy Guiliani and Sidney Powell for defamation and is also suing Fox News. That suit was allowed to proceed recently. The instructions are to pull the ballot out of the privacy sleeve a little bit and then push the ballot into the slot. But most people were having trouble with that. The ballot wasn't catching enough, or maybe they were squeezing the privacy sleeve which kept the ballot for pulling out. So I started telling people to pull it out about four inches. That really wasn't much better.
Finally I told people I would stand way back so I couldn't see their ballot and they could then pull the ballot out of the privacy sleeve altogether and put it in the slot. That worked easily at least 90% of the time.
Once the ballot goes in, you have to check the little screen on the machine. If all is good, a message flashes saying it was successful and there's a check mark. But that's up for maybe 3 seconds and then it's ready for the next ballot. If you aren't looking for it, it's easy to miss.
But if there is a problem, the screen tells you, very specifically. Things like voting for two candidates instead of just one. Or on the ranked choice part, that people marked more than one candidate the same ranking. Or that they put in two write-in candidates. Then you have a choice of pushing a button to cast the ballot anyway, or to return the ballot. Then they can tear up that ballot - and turn it in to be saved in a special envelop, and they can have another ballot. But they can only do that twice. Most of the time the ballot was successful.
Other than the ballots being tricky to insert into the machine while in the privacy sleeve, the machine worked well.
Civility
All but one voter were polite, friendly even. Most thanked me for volunteering*. No one objected to my suggestion that I would stand way back and then to take the ballot out of the privacy sleeve. They listened and nodded politely and did it.
There was one exception. And this lady wasn't rude to me, but she shared her opinion in an angry tone (but again, clearly not aimed at me) and said, "This election is totally fucked up." This was not a young voter.
Who Voted?
I wasn't signing people in so I couldn't see the political affiliation of the voters. And that really wasn't relevant since everyone now gets the same primary ballot. I'm not even sure that information was on the register.
It seemed to me that the people voting were far more likely to be over 50 than under 30. Perhaps this just reflected that I was there mid-day when younger folks are working. (Though that's probably less a factor in 2022 than 2019.) The vast majority was white.
Most were not wearing masks. But there were people wearing masks as well. All the poll workers wore masks.
A few people had kids with them.
Write-In Votes
You can only choose one write-in candidate for the ranked choice part of the election. I found that out when the machine alerted me that someone had put in two write-in candidates. Afterward we talked about that. The consensus seemed to be that there could only be four finalists in the ranked choice part of the vote. It was speculated that had Al Gross not dropped out after being the fourth candidate, there would have been no write-ins allowed. But I don't know for sure.
There was some dispute about whether non-certified candidates could be written in. I mentioned that I'd asked about the difference between certified and uncertified write-in candidates at the election office last week and they said there was no difference. But another worker said someone who wasn't certified couldn't take office. That might be, because my question was about what happens to someone's SECOND vote (in the ranked choice voting), if they voted for a non-certified write-in candidate first or second. The answer was, there is no difference. In both cases your next vote would count if no one got 50%+1 in that round.
One Odd Incident
At one point I noticed there was a woman who had been at a voting booth (one of the two without privacy covers) for a while. I guessed about 30 minutes already. And then our precinct captain asked me if she had voted. She was gone, but I didn't notice her if she voted. (I was the person staffing the voting machine.) One of the people signing people in said she saw the women walk by when I was helping someone else vote. Yes, she'd signed in and been given a ballot. She was holding a privacy sleeve (and presumably a ballot inside) when she walked out. Someone checked the trash cans outside the gym we were in, but there was no ballot.
All the ballots are given out in numerical order and in the end all the ballots have to be accounted for. Torn up ballots are counted. Challenged ballots are counted. All the ballots that go into the voting machine are counted. Fortunately someone so the woman walk out with a ballot - though she didn't realize the significance until we put it all together. So that ballot got an special report to account for it.
I Voted Stickers
The last part of my job was to make sure there were enough stickers for people who voted to choose from. Really. We first make people choose who to vote for and then when they think they are done, they have to choose which I Voted Sticker they want.
There's the traditional Alaska flag sticker. One that shows three different sets of shoes below the voting curtain, and then three different Alaska Native themed stickers. At times it was busy enough that I was down to two or three stickers left on the chair.
Voting Location Changes
[UPDATED August 16, 2022 6:40pm] I forgot this point when I first posted. A lot of people voting today were used to voting at a church nearby. They went there first. One of the early morning poll workers put up a sign on the church door to come to our location. But some of the people coming from the church were not listed on our register. The poll workers were able to look up the voters (on their phones) to find out their new polling place. It was a couple of miles away. Another sign was then added to the church door. But this is an issue that Redistricting Boards should consider more carefully when the draw their lines. I know my old polling place is now in another district and my new polling place is further away. Seems to be an issue. Of course, this is also the first time many people are voting after Redistricting is in place for the next ten years.
I'm not sure how the ranked choice votes are tallied. [UPDATED August 18, 2022 1:15am: From the Division of Elections website
"Ranked Choice Voting Tabulations
Ranked Choice Voting results will not be available until August 31, 2022 once all eligible ballots are reviewed and counted."
Here's the link for the primary election unofficial results.]
First all the votes have to be counted. Then one candidate is dropped and all that candidate's second choice votes have to be distributed to the remaining candidates until someone has over 50%. That obviously has to be done centrally when all the votes are in. So it may be a while before we find out the winner of the special election. And I don't know how the public verifies that the second and third choice votes are properly allocated. I guess will find that out in the next week or more.
*I mentioned that a lot of people thanked me for volunteering. I was, in fact, volunteering. The Division of Elections has a program where a non-profit can volunteer to run a polling place. Instead of paying the staff, the non-profit gets paid. But my understanding is that most people working at polling places are paid. And there's nothing wrong with that. Just a clarification.
The liatris is blooming as it usually does this time of the summer.
I haven't dabbled in dahlias for a long time. This one plant zoomed up about five feet with a stem at least an inch of diameter. All the others are between one and two feet high with no blossoms. I have no clue why. I would assume it has to do with the soil, but this one is in a pot with two others that have done nothing much.
Even on gray, rainy days the bike trails (this one through UAA) are beautiful and refreshing. Though on this stretch it would be nice if the huge bulges were smoothed out. Someone has marked them with blue paint, but four to six inch humps at the bottom of a hill are more excitement than I need.
Jacob asked in the comments in the last post about whether the US was headed for another civil war. I'm thinking about that. We probably need to consider the concept of civil war beyond the US Civil War. At this point I doubt we'll have a civil war in the last US Civil War style. The split among people is not nearly as regional, and from what I can tell, the craziness has been stoked a lot by Russian compromised politicians and social media bots that whip up extremist fervor. More like, if democracy is defeated, it will come from the long term Conservative campaigns (Kochs, Federalist Society, wealthy) to capture the courts and local and state governments in order to gerrymander elections to keep Republicans in control in states, and to have enough influence on redistricting to skew Congressional elections to the right. The Senate, because every state has two Senators, is already skewed to the right.
"In the incoming Senate, Democratic senators will represent at least 20,314,962 more people than their Republican counterparts — and that’s if we assume that Republicans win both runoff elections in Georgia. If the two Georgia seats go to the Democrats, the Senate will be split 50-50, but the Democratic half will represent 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half."
That's from a November 2020 Vox article.
The quick answer, I got from the Division Elections yesterday, is No.
I'd read online that only write-in votes for write-in candidats who had registered and were certified would count.
Normally, a write in candidate wouldn't really matter. But on a ranked choice vote, if you pick one as your first or second choice, it could matter if no one gets 50% of the vote on the first round. Then the candidate you vote for second would get the vote if your write-in candidate is dropped.
But when I asked my question in the voting room (at the Division of Elections on Gamble near Fireweed) they had trouble actually answering. There were no instructions about who the certified write-in candidates were in the voting booth. It just said how you could write in a name. So then I asked someone else.
 |
| Instructions in the voting booth |
Is there any difference in how a certified write-in candidate is treated and just writing in Donald Duck?
If I put Donald Duck as my first choice would my next choice get my vote in the second round, the same as a certified write-in candidate? The person couldn't really answer my question.
She walked me down the hall and got someone from the Division of Elections to respond. In the end, the Division of Elections person said it didn't matter if the write-in candidate was certified or not. If you vote them number one and it goes to a second round, then your second choice would count.
Even if it's Donald Duck? Yes.
When I asked what the point of getting certified was, I was told that maybe more people would know you were a candidate.
I guess it's good that we learn in a special election before we're faced with new questions in every race.
It wasn't easy deciding how to vote. My first choice was easy. But do I really want to vote, even third or fourth for Sarah Palin? Or for Nick Begich? Both are Trumpers, apparently happy with the Supreme Court's abortion ruling. And that Trump keeps saying the election was stolen. The one is mostly fireworks and an attention addict, but the other seems more problematic because he's smarter and hardwired with Fundamentalist upbringing and pro-business ideology. Palin will get tired after a while, but Begich could do real damage. Wouldn't have to even think about this without Ranked Choice Voting. And without Ranked Choice Voting, Palin and Begich would take votes away from each other giving Peltola a path to win. Why didn't Santa Claus come in fourth?
Meanwhile we have great "I've Voted" sticker options.
Bear with me as I wander a bit. In the end I will recommend you watch Woman in Gold on Netflix.
My mother used to send me clippings about a woman, Maria Altman, in LA who was suing the Austrian government to win back paintings by Gustav Klimt, stolen by the Nazis from her family, with the main attention on the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, who was the beloved aunt of Maria Altman.
It turned out that Maria Altman was someone my mother knew. My mom would shop at her small dress shop. They became acquaintances, if not friends, because they had both fled the Nazis as young women and they both worked most of their lives. Sometimes my mom just related things Maria Altman told her about the progress (or lack of progress) in the proceedings to get back the paintings the Nazis stole from her wealthy family's Vienna house. The problem was, the main painting was valued at an estimated $100 million and was considered the prize painting by an Austrian artist in the eyes of the Austrian government.
One of the ironies of the story is that this great Austrian painting so valued by the Austrians, is of a Jewish woman. But her name was removed and the painting was called Woman in Gold.
Because I'd been hearing about the lawsuit, when the movie was released in 2015, we immediately went to see it in Anchorage. At that time, we were flying monthly to visit my mom who was then 93 and pretty much bedridden. I really wanted her to see the film, but taking her to a theater would have been a real production.
I'd been hearing about how good Netflix was and googled "Netflix, Woman in Gold" and got a page which suggested we could watch it there. So that was when I signed up for Netflix. But then when I searched for Woman in Gold, they didn't actually have it. My initial experience with Netflix wasn't a good one.
However, there are other modern German language films which my mother and I did enjoy watching together on Netflix. She died that July never having gotten to see this major film about someone who knew and whose story she had followed for years.
I'd note another connection in the film. The attorney Maria Altman engaged for this battle was the grandson of Arnold Schoenberg the giant of 20th Century classical music.. Arnold Schoenberg had been a guest in Altman's family home in Vienna before he too fled to the United States and California. My mother also knew this family, though she ever met Arnold. My understanding is that they were either relatives or close friends of Melanie Swinburg who had been a stage actress in Vienna. I knew her well because she became the baby nurse of my younger brother and remained a close family friend until her death. Her crypt is with my family's in LA, next to my brother's, who died in an accident at the age of 23.
So this film has lots of family connections as well as parallel family experiences, though Altman's family was fabulously wealthy in Vienna and my mother's father owned a modest men's clothing store in Dortmund, Germany.
So when I saw that Woman in Gold was finally playing on Netflix this week, we watched it. It was a very emotional experience for me for all the reasons mentioned above. Plus Helen Mirren who plays Maria Altman looks and sounds like lots of women I knew growing up. And I'm a sucker for stories of great injustice being righted. And, of course, I was sad again that my mother couldn't watch this film with us.
One final example of how the film spoke to me - a more tangible one. As a child, my parents would read to me, and translate from, Struwwelpeter, a book with tales of very 'bōse' (something between naughty, wicked, and evil) little boys.
The cover story is one I remember well - the boy who never cut his hair or fingernails. The consequences for these behaviors was grim and perhaps tells us something about the German psyche. For instance, the boy who sucks his thumb and is forbidden to suck it again, of course sucks it as soon as he is alone. And it gets cut off with giant shears and blood dripping.
I had a strange affection for this book. If the intent was to scare little children into obeying their parents, it didn't work on me.
At one point in the movie, when Mrs. Altman, at her small home, is trying to persuade Randy Schoenberg to take her case, he sees a copy of Struwwelpeter and picks it and tells her that he too was read the stories as a child.
I'd brought the family copy of the book back from my mom's house last time we were there.
So, I'd recommend folks watch Woman In Gold if they have Netflix. (Or if they find it elsewhere.)
The scenes of the Nazis publicly humiliating and beating Jews, breaking into their houses and stealing all their valuables, is a reminder of what could happen here if Republicans don't let go of their obeisance to Trump and his calls for attacking those they disagree with. And if voters don't come out in droves to overcome the GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression. The mob that broke into the Capitol and tried to overthrow the election doesn't look that different from the Austrian citizens we see. Well, actually the Austrians look rather reserved in comparison.
The last two summers I've set a goal - a mental trip - that would keep me biking all summer. Two years ago it was from Santiago, Chile to Conception, Chile. Last year it was Chiengmai, Thailand to Bangkok. This post from last summer tells you how I came up with this scheme and little bit about the previous two years.
The Chilean ride was 650 kilometers (403 miles). The Thai trip was 750 (466 miles).
This summer I chose Istanbul, Turkey to the Cappadocia region of Turkey. Playing with google maps and some city-to-city maps, I calculated that as 750 k again. Why Turkey? It's the last travel destination that I'd like to get to. When I was a student in Germany in the 1960s, as I hitch-hiked through Greece, I decided I'd pass on Istanbul and come back another time. I made that same kind of promise about the Taj Mahal, but I've since gotten to see that exquisite structure.
Yesterday I got over 500 kilometers and went to see whereabouts I am on a map of Turkey. My original estimates were that I had gotten past Ankara. But the map I pulled up was one I hadn't seen before and it was a terrific map! It was somebodies bike ride from Istanbul to Cappadocia with the route in red. And best of all, if you put the mouse anywhere on the route, it gave the distance. It was set to miles, but I could change it to kilometers.
I've written in Ankara in red (in the middle) and the arrow shows about where I am now. Of course, I'm doing most of this biking on Anchorage bike trails (though I did a little bit when I was on Bainbridge Island, but that's all hilly and mostly on routes shared with cars.)
The difference in distance appears to be based on the route. I originally did the main road from Istanbul to Ankara and the most direct route the rest of the way. This cyclist probably choose roads with less traffic that circles around Ankara and then dips further south before getting into Cappadocia. I'm not worrying about that. I'm still aiming for my 750 kilometers before the snow flies. If I get there with time to spare, I'll keep going.
The nearest town appears to be Polatli. Here's a bit of what Wikipedia says:
"Polatlı is one of the most productive agricultural districts in Turkey and is best known for its cereal production, especially barley and wheat. Polatlı is one of Turkey's largest grain stores. Sugar beet, melon and onion are also grown."
Here's the nicest picture I found of the area online from alchetron.com.
And what I'm actually seeing is more like this:
Not bad either.
