Got A Teacher Who Made A Difference In Your Life? Reach Out And Let Them Know

 I got this email yesterday morning:

Dr. A:

It's been many years since we last connected.  My last memory was the day in your office (Spring 2002 perhaps) when you suggested I apply for the Presidential Management Internship program.  You took time that day to complete the faculty portion of the application as it had to be postmarked by midnight.  It's amazing how a seemingly small moment can have such a dramatic impact on one's life. I have worked for the Federal Government for much the time since and have had a successful career that has allowed me to grow in ways I would have never imagined. 

Thank you.  

Teaching is such an important job, whether it's primary school or graduate school.  You have the chance to change people's lives.  Whether it's helping them believe in themselves, giving them the tools to think critically, helping them understand how some aspect of the world works, or supporting them to take the next steps of their lives.  

And while a good teacher works hard to prepare a lesson and how to present it, you never know what random comment or action will have the most impact.  A number of times students have told me how something I said really made a difference.  And usually it was something off the cuff, not a part of the prepared lesson that clicked for that student.  

This email comes 20 years later!  I've often argued that student teacher evals should be done five or more years after the class, when the student has had time to process what actually took place and can more objectively assess a class and teacher.  I've had several cases where students have told me that the first few classes they thought I was too demanding, expecting too much of them, and that it was only after a year or more that they finally realized what I was up to and suddenly it all made sense.  

Teachers' pay in money these days is paltry compared to the education required for the job, the time and effort good teachers put in.  Teachers' real pay is psychic, the knowledge they've made a difference.  So pay up and let your teachers know.

Think about a teacher who made a positive  difference in your life.  I know that all of you can think of at least one or two such people without any effort.  Look them up, find their contact info and tell them.  Do it now.  

And support schools and teachers who are under attack from the anti-Woke mob who are afraid of letting students search for truth, who are afraid of anyone who believes things that expose their own hypocrisy.  

It's important to know that the Right has been crusading to move public tax money from public schools to private school for a long time.  All the attacks on school budgets, curriculum, teachers, LGBTQ+ content and kids, they're all aimed at making public schools so bad that voters agree to fund private schools with public money.  If you haven't read this Washington Post story, you should.  

And it's why letting teachers know that you value their work is critical, so they don't simply quit, but rather hang in there until we get past these attacks and reestablish the importance of public education.  If the teachers are driven away, we'll lose this fight.

The Wind And Clouds Fight It Out In And Over Anchorage

 

Anchorage doesn't have a lot of what I'd call 'weather.'  By that I mean that generally things a relatively calm.  It rains, but not too hard.  Snow falls quietly.  In the Anchorage bowl the wind generally is a light breeze at most.  We almost never have thunderstorms.  No tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards.  

But this week we are a weather battleground.  The first several pictures are from my Tuesday bike ride.  It wasn't particularly windy on the ground, but clouds were moving furiously, seemingly trying to cover up the blue and block the sun.  Was I going to get my bike ride down before it started raining?  (I did.)

It rained Thursday morning and I assumed that I'd be driving to Grow North Farm for the weekly vegetable pickup, but the sun came out about 2pm.  So did the wind.  Here are the trees in the backyard in the wind.

But the sky looked blue enough, the clouds not too threatening, that I biked to get the veggies.  It wasn't bad most of the time.  Lots of tree debris on the trails, but basically little stuff.  

On the way back, as I was about to cross the Glenn Highway, it looked like there was rain coming down to the west (I didn't quite catch gray curtain in the photo),

 but to the east, the sun was dappling the Chugach range.  

This morning it's both cloudy and quite windy again.  It rained a bit, but not now.  But I want to get this up before the power goes out.   

Unchecked Reporting From A Source Who Hadn't Yet Figured Things Out

This is a tale about a journalist who writes an article based on what a friend with a new high level job in DC told her.  She pretty much writes what he says.  But it turns out his story is wishful thinking.  I just offer this as an example of bad reporting in case anyone is collecting such stories.

[Aug 31, 2023 - I've made some minor edits that, at most clarify, but don't change anything substantive.]

Miles Taylor writes in  Blowback about having arrived at the Department of Homeland Security to be "John Kelly's top intelligence and counter-threats advisor."  Taylor came into this position having worked as a Congressional staffer and in the W. Bush administration.  He'd been warned against taking a job in the Trump administration, but was pleased that someone like John Kelly would be in a high level position where he could help keep Trump in check.  

And, in fact, he was told early on that Kelly and allies had already kept Trump from doing some crazy shit.  [Sorry, that's not my style, but it seems like the most appropriate way to say it. "Prevented him from taking dangerous actions" just seems too tame.]

So barely a month on the job Taylor meets with a journalist friend.*

"Not long after starting, I caught up with a reporter friend.  We sat outside drinking cocktails not far from the White House, enjoying unseasonably warm April weather.  I confidently told her there was an "Axis of Adults" emerging inside the Trump administration - comprised of Kelly, Mattis, Tillerson, and others - who were keeping it on track.  She pushed back gently.

"They know what they're up against?"  she asked.

"They realize this is a tumultuous White House," I explained, "and they were serving as a leveling influence over fractious personalities . . .protecting the country from enemies both foreign and domestic." (pp.53-54)

Let's be clear here.  Taylor's been there a month or less in April 2017.  

"The reporter ran a story in the Daily Beast --"New Power in Trumpland: The Axis of Adults" - and asked to use the quote.  I agreed, hoping others would take comfort in knowing it wasn't all chaos in Trumpland." (p. 54)

Let me also say that Taylor has turned out to be one of the most consistent Republican voices against Trump.  He was the guy behind the Anonymous letter to the New York Times, while he was still in the government. The letter that alerted the world to how bad things were in the Oval Office.  I give him credit for sharing his early-on-the-job naïveté.  He goes on:

"In hindsight, I was probably sending the message to a few particular people - like the mentor who'd reached out to warn me against going into the administration.  And maybe, I was still trying to convince myself." (p. 54)

He closes that section with:

"I fell asleep easily in the early days knowing I'd made the right decision.  The Trump administration was starting to function, thanks to capable deputies who knew how to run the government. 

Like most bedtime stories, this turned out to be fiction." (p. 54)

So I googled Daily Beast "New Power in Trumpland: The Axis of Adults" and there it was.  As a blogger I have some sense of the dynamics of getting stories.  But since my blog is a hobby, not a job, I don't have the pressure to impress anyone or to get lots of hits.  The times that's happened it was simply because I managed to get an idea or story that took off.  

But I've read criticisms of reporters getting cozy with sources and then being used as conduits to publish an administration's story the way the administration wants it told. Or covering the strategy of the elections instead of the issues. (See for example Jay Rosen's "The savvy turn in political journalism.") I'm guessing this story would fit into savvy, but wrong.  So here's part of that Daily Beast story.

"There’s a new band in town that’s guiding national security by quietly tutoring the most powerful man in America. Never-Trump Republicans who’d been apprehensive about President Donald Trump are celebrating the trio’s influence, calling Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Homeland Secretary John Kelly the “Axis of Adults.”

Through near daily contact with the trio, as well as Trump’s National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster and CIA director Mike Pompeo, Trump’s world view appears to be morphing more closely to match hawkish conservatives of the Bush administration.

They point to the men’s influence in the Tomahawk strike in Syria—in contrast to Trump’s isolationist slogans on the campaign trail; the outreach to China, compared to Trump’s threats to launch a trade war; a possible escalation of the war in Afghanistan; and Trump’s hardening stance toward Russia.

None of these key national security chiefs were part of the Trump campaign, or movement. They are seen by those who work most closely with them as loyal to the office of the president but still getting to know the man himself, said a senior administration official, speaking anonymously to describe the interactions just 11 weeks into the fledgling presidency."

That's Miles Taylor, the "senior administrative official speaking anonymously." 

So, the reporter meets a friend for drinks (she didn't mention that part) and he relates his early impressions of the new administration.  Things he's been told.  And which he tells us, a few years later in his book. he soon realized were fiction.

But she got her story for the Daily Beast, a story that simply reported Taylor's fantasy about how the adults were taming Trump.  She accepted her friend's (an anonymous senior administrative official) story as true.  And the Daily Beast ran with it as true.  And it was true in the sense that a senior administrative official said it.

I guess I'd also call into question a story that outs those adults - it likely put them on a Trump watchlist as people who thought they were smarter than he was.  

How did this "Axis of Adults" fare?

Wikipedia says that as head of Homeland Security Kelly 

According to the New Yorker, 

Kelly left the DHS with a reputation as one of the most aggressive enforcers of immigration law in recent American history. His record belies the short length of his tenure. In six months, Kelly eliminated guidelines that governed federal immigration agents' work; vastly expanded the categories of immigrants being targeted for deportation; threatened to abandon the Obama-era program that grants legal status to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children; and has even broached the idea of splitting up mothers and children at the border to "deter" people from coming to the U.S.[39]

The DHS under Kelly "became one of the few branches of the federal government that has been both willing and able to execute Trump's policy priorities."[39] Unlike other agency heads, Kelly did not clash with Trump.[38]

Who bent whom to his ways? Seems he was bent enough to be asked to be Trump's Chief of Staff, but that's when things went south..  

"On December 7, 2018, CNN and others reported that Kelly and Trump were no longer on speaking terms and that Kelly was expected to resign in the coming days.[55] On December 8, Trump announced that Kelly would be leaving at the end of the year.[56]"

Tillerson and Mattis tried hard to be the adults, but it didn't work out.  From the Atlantic

"Now [December 2018] Mattis was becoming more and more isolated in the administration, especially since the defenestration of his closest Cabinet ally, the former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, several months earlier. Mattis and Tillerson had together smothered some of Trump’s more extreme and imprudent ideas. But now Mattis was operating without cover. Trump was turning on him publicly; two months earlier, he had speculated that Mattis might be a Democrat and said, in reference to NATO, “I think I know more about it than he does.” (Mattis, as a Marine general, once served as the supreme allied commander in charge of NATO transformation.)"

But then a lot of people thought they could be the adult who could check Trump's impulses.  

That's all.  I just wanted to highlight this one example of an anonymous source who didn't really know what he was talking about getting reported as truth, with apparently no further fact checking.  

*He calls her a 'reporter friend.'  Reporter is probably the better word.  But it's also a bit ambiguous whether she is a friend who is a reporter or a reporter who became a friend.  I'm guessing that she was a friend first, but that's not clear. 

Despite Blog Post Supply Chain Problems - Here's Hamilton and Irma Vep

Blog post are backed up waiting to get through the Panama Canal equivalent of from my brain to my fingertips.  Floating out there are posts on the Unhoused (not a local issue), Nature as a science based replacement for more supernatural gods, and some words about the Fifth Circuit.  All those posts are fairly heavy and need me to think and edit and research more and so they just float there waiting their turn. Unlike the Panama Canal delay, this one is not water related.  The worker is just distracted.  

This week, for instance, my Peace Corps training roommate from 1966 in DeKalb, Illinois and his wife visitor and we're kept  them busy understanding why we still live in Anchorage.  But it's not like we haven't seen each other since 1966.  We've been in each others lives as much as people separated by a six hour plane ride can be.  But it's been a while since they've been in Anchorage.  Their kids were just a bit older than their grandkids are now when they were last here.  

Besides taking advantage of the sunshine on various outdoor adventures their urban bodies could handle, we went to see Hamilton Tuesday night and Thursday night we saw The Mystery of Irma Vep at Cyrano's.  [I'd note this post got partly written and when I tried to upload these pictures, the Air Drop didn't work again - after being fine for several weeks.  This time rebooting the computer fixed things.]

Hamilton was the first time we've been to a big entertainment event since COVID restrictions.  We've been to a few movies, but at times when we were the only ones, or almost the only ones, in the theater.  We were all masked Tuesday as were some of the ushers and a small number of other patrons.  But we learned a family member (out of town) just had COVID and a 50th wedding event in Anchorage was cancelled because two people had COVID.  While I realize that for fully vaccinated people it's not likely to be fatal, a mask is still much less disruptive than being sick for a week.  

I'd found the soundtrack of Hamilton at the Internet Archive and listened casually for the previous week on the assumption that musicals are more enjoyable if you know the music.  And that rap is easier to understand if you hear it more than once and can read the lyrics.  

The ADN had a letter this week noting that a number of Hamilton viewers said they sat next to someone who had memorized the Hamilton sound track and sang along with each song.  One member of our group at one end sat next to such a person.  As the ADN letter writer wrote, "We didn't pay to listen to you."  Maybe they should have a sound proof section for those who want a sing-along experience.  You know, like the churches that have glassed off space for people with crying babies.

But we did have a good time and enjoyed the spectacle.  While there were four empty seats near us, the place was packed on a Tuesday night. (And I suspect the four empty seats were sold, but the people weren't able to attend.)  

The Atwood holds 2056 people.  Our seats were not the most expensive at a bit over $100 each.  So, just to make the math easier, let's assume an average of 

$100 per ticket X 2000  seats X 17 performances = $3,400,000.  

So, 34,000 people will have spent $3.4 million for a couple of hours of entertainment in Anchorage. Most of that money, I assume, will go to the actors, stage people, and the touring company, and various ticket sales agencies.  Not much of it will stay in Anchorage.  Some of the people attending will go more than once.  And some will be tourists, like our friends who were here from Chicago.  

The other theater event we went to this week was The Mystery of Irma Vep at the relatively tiny Cyrano's.   But this is very local theater with local actors and production.  And the price was less than one-third of Hamilton.  

This was a bit disorienting because Cyrano's has moved from its long time downtown location to the old Out North location which also presented performing artists almost always with an LGBTQ link.  I still think I'm at Out North, even though all the plays listed on the wall are Cyrano productions that were presented at the downtown location.  It was sort of like being at a friend's house, except they've moved and another friend has moved in with all their furniture.

The play was a little silly - a British murder mystery romp with two actors playing six, maybe seven parts, including a werewolf and a mummy. The Dramaturg's* note in the program said, among other things:

"The script of The Mystery of Irma Web - A Penny Dreadful  requires that both actors who are cast be the same sex and is a licensure requirement.  Insead of two men, Director Krista M. Schwarting believed that two women could successfully accomplish the same goal."

She also mentioned that the play involves those two actors to make 35 costume changes.  

The opening scene takes place in an English manor.  For the second scene, the stage was transformed with folding doors into an Egyptian tomb. 

While the play itself didn't hold much deep meaning for me, the two actors were excellent, deftly staying in accented character through all those costume changes.  

*I didn't really know what a dramaturg was either.  The program says she was professionally trained in Dramaturgy.  Merriam Webster online says a Dramaturg is a specialist in Dramaturgy.  And that Dramaturgy is:

"the art or technique of dramatic composition and theatrical representation"

That's not terribly helpful.  So I went to Wikipedia:

"A dramaturge or dramaturg (from Ancient Greek δραματουργός dramatourgós) is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programmes (or helps others with these tasks), consults authors, and does public relations work.[1][2][3] Its modern-day function was originated by the innovations of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, an 18th-century German playwright, philosopher, and theatre theorist.[4]"

OK, so that's one post through the canal.  

"There lies the main difference between childish imaginings and imaginative literature."

 

From Ursula LeGuin's No Time To Spare, a book of essays that chews on topics from old age to writing.  In "It Doesn't Have to Be the Way It Is"(June 2022) she muses about what liberties storytellers can take with reality before losing their readers.  

"The fantastic tale may suspend the laws of physics - carpets fly; cats fade into invisibility, leaving only a smile - and of probability - the younger of three brothers wins the bride, the infant in the box cast upon the waters survives unharmed - but it carries its revolt against reality no further.  Mathematical order is unquestioned.  Two and one make three, in Koschei's castle and Alice's Wonderland (especially in Wonderland), Euclid's geometry - or possibly Riemann's - somebody's geometry, anyhow - governs the layout.  Otherwise incoherence would invade and paralyze the narrative.  

There lies the main difference between childish imaginings and imaginative literature.  The chid "telling a story" roams about among the imaginary and the half-understood without knowing the difference, content with the sound of language and the pure play of fantasy with no particular end, and that's the charm of it.  But fantasies, whether folktales or sophisticated literature, are stories in the adult,  demanding sense.  They can ignore certain laws of physics but not of causality.  They start here and go there (or back here), and though the mode of travel may be unusual and here and there may be wildly exotic and unfamiliar places, yet they must have both a location on the map of that world and a relationship to the map of our world.  If not, the hearer or reader of the tale will be set adrift in a sea of inconsequential inconsistencies, or, worse yet, left drowning in the shallow puddle of the author's wishful thinking."

I don't know how many of you, reading this, were spurred to think about how childish Trump's stories are.  What's charming in children's stories definitely doesn't age well when told by adults.  

And what does this tell us by Trump's audience?  

"The hearer . . . of the tale will be set adrift in a sea of inconsequential inconsistencies, or worse yet, left drowning in the shallow puddle of the author's wishful thinking."

To be fair, LeGuin does distinguish between oral and written story telling.   In the previous essay, "The Narrative Gift as a Moral Conundrum" (May 2022) she writes:

"Storytelling is clearly a gift, a talent, a specific ability.  Some people just don't have it - they rush or drone, jumble the order of events, skip essentials, dwell on inessentials, and the muff the climax.  Don't we all have a relative who we pray won't launch into a joke or a bit of family history because the history will bore us and the joke will bomb?  But we may also have a relative who can take the stupidest, nothingest little event and make it into what copywriters call a gut-wrenchingly brilliant thriller and laugh riot."

While Trump does have a presence, I'm not sure he fits this description of story teller either.  It's more like he embodies the misery of his followers and allows them to act out their frustrations and blame their problems on anyone but themselves.  Trump was, up to a point, the successful version, or their own angry selves.  

 

Taking Advantage of My Air Drop Working Again

 My phone asked me to log in with my Apple ID today.  On a whim, I tried Air Drop after and it worked.  So, in what I hope is a long window, I'll put up some pictures.  

Grow North is the farm in Mountain View where the Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service of Anchorage Catholic Social services grows food for the summer and operates a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with once a week pick ups and sells fresh vegetables and some baked goods as well during the week.  You can't get much fresher food in Anchorage unless it's from your own garden.  

The garlic and the picture of the farm are from last week.  

This week's box includes:

• Classic cauliflower,
• Crunchy kohlrabi
• Unique malabar spinach,
• Tasty bok choi,
• And some lovely sage for the herb of the week!

From the email that CSA subscribers get:

"Malabar spinach seems like it would retain similarities to that of regular spinach. The plant uses the name spinach in it, yet the ironic part of that the two could not be more different. Malabar spinach grows on a vine, granting it the nickname of vine spinach, whereas regular spinach grows from the ground (like many leafy greens)."  

This Goose Lake as I rode by  The ducks hang out here because its's  spot where people feed them.

On a completely different bike ride, out past Taku Lake, they've had the big blue sign up much of the summer, but the little one just popped up.  If you can't read the small sign (which I'm guessing you can't) it says, "We are upgrading the skatepark!"  It also says the construction budget is $1.2 million. I know we've had inflation over the years, but really?  $1.2 million for curved concrete?  Curious how much profit the contractor, also listed as "Street Maintenance and Grindline Skate Parks LLC" is making.  I realize they may be doing more than just the skateboard park, but it would be nice if there was a watchdog group which gathered all the data on summer construction projects and evaluated how the money was spent.  

In other construction news, the ACS fiber optic team was out on Crescent in Geneva Woods today.  We're on the Lake Otis side, but all this area is getting wired.  That bright orange wire is popping up all around the neighborhoods.  

And it's mushroom season.  Here are some making appearances in my yard.

Don't have time now to research these.  The orange one is an amanita - hallucinogenic and al over Anchorage now.  It can also make you really sick.  Not planning on eating any, though I'm waiting for the King Boletes and the Shaggy Manes.  

But I have started eating the olive bread I made last night.  It came out well.  The one in the back is a dill experiment.  (We got lots of fresh dill from Grow North Farm last week.)

Meanwhile J got off the phone this evening with her long time friend (does 45 years count as long time?) who lives on the Haleakala foothills in Maui.  Her house is far from Lahaina, but there is also a fire up in that neighborhood as well and she's been evacuated and is staying with friends.  If I recall right, Maui has its share of eucalyptus trees, and their oil burns easily.  May the fire be quickly extinguished and your house survive.  

". . .the spoken word is no more than breath."

 In No Time To Spare Ursula LeGuin writes about her fascination with words.  

"When asked to talk about what I do, I've often compared writing with handicrafts - weaving, pot-making, woodworking.  I see my fascination with the word as very like, say the fascination with wood common to carvers, carpenters, cabinetmakers - people who find a fine piece of old chestnut with delight, and study it, and learn the grain of it, and handle it with sensuous pleasure, and consider what's been done with chestnut and what you can do with it, loving the wood itself, the mere material, the stuff of their craft.  

"Woodworkers, potters, weavers engage with real materials, and the beautify of their work is profoundly and splendidly bodily.  Writing is so immaterial, so mental an activity!  In its origin, it's merely artful speech, and the spoken word is no more than breath.  To write or otherwise record the word is to embody it, make it durable, and calligraphy and typesetting are material crafts that achieve great beauty.  I appreciate them.  But in fact they have little more to do with what I o than weaving or pot-making or woodworking does.  It's grand to see one's poem beautifully printed, but the important thing to the poet, or anyhow to this poet, is merely to see it printed, however, wherever - so that readers can read it.  So it can go from mind to mind."

I put my Ukrainian English learner through the opening charges of Jack Smith's indictment this morning. His English isn't good enough to do that alone, but he can grasp the key points of this historic document with the help of a guide. There are words he should know, and I'm trying to connect him to the fact that he is living when we are facing the most important trial in US history. 

We examined words like defendant and prosecutor.  "Claim falsely" made sense when I pulled him back from his wrong turn ("falsely is like waterfall?", no, false is the opposite of true) and after several attempts to explain 'claim' he realized he knew the term from 'baggage claim.'  I started the lesson with a slice of bagel and a gob of raspberry jam, which I spread with a knife.  So I could use the image when we came to 'the Defendant spread lies . . .'  

Smith's indictment is amazingly clear for a legal document.  He (and his associates) knew it had to be understandable to the average American adult.  It's not dumbed down, but rather most of the legal jargon is couched as tangibly as possible with sentences as grammatically simple as possible.  Not the long convoluted sentence encrusted with Latin terms you often see in legal documents.

'The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.' [Link to the indictment]

OK, 'outcome-determinative' is not an everyday term, but 'outcome' of an election is not hard to get. 'Determinative' is clearly related to 'determine' which is fairly common and not to hard to make clear.  I talked to a lawyer friend and asked if perhaps that term 'outcome-determinative' was a translation from the Latin.  He said, "No" but suggested it was probably a legal term of art that has been an important phrase in other cases. That led me to Google and I found this sentence in 

"An "outcome-determinative" test was set forth, the essence of which was that if the determination of an issue would have a decisive influence on the outcome of the case, then that issue was one of "substance." [from a 1965 North Caroline Law Review article]

 While in the indictment sample above says the defendant has the right to publicly say falsely there was 'outcome-determinative' fraud and even to say he actually won, the indictment uses this term eight more times later on to demonstrate that Trump knew his attempts to overturn the election were based on lies about election fraud and lies that he had won.  The term is used in a list of presidential advisors who told him there was no evidence of 'outcome-determinative' fraud, starting with:

"The Defendant's Vice President-who personally stood to gain by remaining in office as part of the Defendant's ticket and whom the Defendant asked to study fraud allegations-told the Defendant that he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud."

Earlier in a previous LeGuin chapter "Readers' Questions," the author writes that it is relatively easy and interesting to respond to vary specific questions of 'imaginary fact,' like one about her use of the name Sparrowhawk.  

"Is this the New World sparrow hawk, Falco sparverius, or one of the Old World kestrels . . .?"

But that more general questions are much harder to respond to - questions like, 'why do you write?" and the most vexing questions are about meaning.

"Meaning - this is perhaps the common note, the bane I m seeking.  What is the Meaning of this book, this event in the book, this story . . .?  Tell me what it Means.

But that's not my job, honey.  That's your job. . .

"Meaning in art isn't the same as meaning in science.  The meaning of the second law of thermodynamics, so long as the words are understood, isn't changed by who reads it, or when, or where.  The meaning of Huckleberry Finn is."

I imagine law fits in somewhere between fiction and science.  Ideally, much closer to science, but the current Supreme Court majority has moved it much closer to fiction.  And legislation in some Republican dominated states to change how history is taught, or medicine is practiced, are also attempts to create fiction - an alternative reality.  

Terms  like 'outcome-determinative' come to have specific meanings in law, in an attempt to make it more science-like and less interpretive than fiction.  But even science articles are only attempts to capture reality in words.  Sometimes they are successful, over even close.  Other times new discoveries prove the old writings inaccurate.  

For those of you concerned about why I chose the title of this post, I can only say it was the most poetic phrase I found in LeGuin's paragraph on words.  But my brain took this post in other directions.  But it's still the most poetic phrase.  Would you rather I title this Outcome-Determinative?  Even 'outcome-determinative' when spoken is no more than breath.

GCI To Abandon Internet. Will ACS Follow? But Alaska.net Has Value GCI.net Doesn't Have

The Anchorage Daily News reported the other day that GCI (one of the local phone and internet companies) will end its email service by mid 2024.  

I understand that email giants like Google Mail have much glitzier email options than a local telephone company is likely to match.  But I am concerned that we will be down to just a couple of totally dominant email companies before long. 

[If you don't want to hear about ACS sluggishness and fiber optic, skip to the bottom.] 

Since I don't have a GCI account I wasn't worried.  But I do have ACS - formally the Municipality owned telephone company that went on its own and later got bought out by ATN International.  While technical help is still reasonably good when I call, trying to get information about anything else is almost impossible.  

I had much better response from the FCC in Washington DC when I complained about a rate increase that was going to be used, ACS said, "to upgrade internet speed."  Since I'm in a mid-town pocket that still gets 1 MBPS, I tried to find out if my neighborhood was planned for optical fiber.  No one could tell me.  I got answers like:

ACS: They don't show the maps.

Me:  Why not?

ACS: Because they don't want angry customers when it doesn't happen as scheduled.  

Me:  Is my neighborhood even scheduled at all?

ACS:  I can't tell you that. (I don't know.)

The FCC sent them communications saying they needed to respond in 30 days.  When they didn't, FCC said that was unusual.  Same thing after 60 days.  After 90 days someone said they'd bump up my request to someone who could do more.  Still no response.

When I called the FCC again, they said they'd gotten a response.  I said I didn't.  FCC (not ACS) sent me a copy.  I had objected to paying increased amounts to pay for upgrades if my neighborhood with the slowest service ACC has (my package was grandfathered in and they don't offer internet in my neighborhood any more) wasn't going to be upgraded.  

ACS' response was:  We are unable to upgrade service.  Of course I checked out other options, but in Anchorage we're limited.  GCI customers complain about GCI bitterly.  Aurora Broadband can't reach my neighborhood.  (Note - I'm in midtown.  Just over a mile from ACS headquarters.)

So about five weeks ago I was surprised when a young man was at my door to sign me up for ACS fiber optic.  He said it would be ready in 3-4 weeks.  Then email I then got from ACS said 9-14 weeks.  But they really are putting in fiber optic lines (they're bright orange.)  I talked to a supervisor who said he's just in charge of the outside lines (underground and by telephone pole) and someone else would be attaching it to the house.  Before the snow flies, he said.  

All that brings me around to ACS email.  Losing your email account is a pain because you have to figure out how to transfer important email somewhere else.  I suppose there must be relatively easy ways to do that.  Losing an email address called GCI.com is no big deal.

But ACS email addresses are Alaska.net.  Therewhen Alaska USA Federal Credit Union changed its name to Global Federal, the letters to the editors at the ADN were swamped with complaints.  

I'm worried that I will lose my Alaska.net email address the same way.  And I have no confidence whatsoever that ACS and its East Coast owners care one bit.  They'll follow GCI's lead and force us to find other email providers.  

They don't realize that many of us would rather have a balky email account that isn't part of a giant corporation that likely is data mining our email.  And with the Alaska.net in the name, we feel the same way that Alaska USA members felt.  

So I hope there's some local entrepreneurs ready to buy or otherwise acquire the Alaska.net email addresses should ACS decide to abandon it.  

Climate Reality Spreading - 'Death' Valley Adds Another Victim

The weather around the world this summer is likely to convince a lot of people that climate change is serious.  That it is changing the conditions of living that we have simply taken for granted and assumed would continue.  

LA Times reporter Hayley Smith, started this story talking about covering disasters including floods and wildfires, but the heat at Death Valley

 ". . . was a different kind of beast, something most people alive have yet to experience. One park visitor described it as like an open oven; another like a blow dryer to the face . I imagined it was more like the surface of the sun, or like someone had left the lights on in hell. 

It was in those circumstances that I met Steve Curry."

She was interviewing tourists at Zabriski Point.  Then she caught my attention:

"Suddenly, my colleague, photojournalist Francine Orr, spotted a lone figure scrambling up a nearby canyon and snapped his photo."

Francine Orr sounded familiar.  I checked my blog to be sure.  Orr spoke to this year's Alaska Press Club Conference in April about photographing COVID victims inside a few LA hospitals during the pandemic. She had gotten permission to photograph patients inside a hospital just as COVID was about to start and she took striking photos.  

I posted them on my COVID page (You can scroll down to April 18, 2023, but I'll repost them here since I never put them up here in the main part of the blog. The photos and the presentation were powerful.) 

Francine Orr, LA Times at AK Press Club Conf

Over the weekend I attended the Alaska Press Club Annual Conference and the last speaker I heard was Francine Orr of the LA Times.  She's a photographer who got permission to take pictures in a hospital in LA just as COVID was beginning and continued doing that for a couple of years.  If people had been seeing her pictures daily, perhaps more people would have taken more precautions.  Here are a couple of the pictures she showed.  

Francine Orr, LA Times at AK Press Club Conf

Francine Orr, LA Times at AK Press Club Conf

Francine Orr, LA Times at AK Press Club Conf

But back to Death Valley and Steve Curry.  

"He was from the Sunland neighborhood of Los Angeles, he told us from beneath his wide-brimmed straw hat. He was 71."

He was on his annual hike there in Death Valley and they offered him more water (he had one water bottle), a reprise in the air conditioning of their car, even a ride back to the trailhead.  

"The park service advises visitors not to hike in the park after 10 a.m. during extreme summer temperatures, but Steve was chipper. He said he was an experienced outdoorsman, and he was determined to finish his round-trip solo hike to Golden Canyon.

"Already, a scalding wind was blowing through the park, overheating our electronic equipment and turning metal door handles into hot irons. Francine and I could bear only a few minutes of it before diving into our cars for the relief of air conditioning, but Steve was persistent. He said he had completed extensive training and was getting ready for another hike in August. 

"What we now know is that Steve did finish his journey, but just barely. He collapsed outside the bathrooms at Golden Canyon at about 3:40 that afternoon and died shortly after. Though the coroner has not yet confirmed his cause of death, officials said they believe it to be heat-related."

 

Smith tells us she ended up meeting Steve's widow and wrote his obituary. 

"He said he was an experienced outdoorsman"

The world is changing.  Our experience of the world as we have known it doesn't necessarily prepare us for the world that is here today and the one it is evolving into because oil companies and their allies have been spreading and continue to spread misinformation to continue making money.  Foolish venal people are not a problem if the consequences of their folly only affects them.  But in this case the world is suffering and will continue to suffer because of them and the people unwilling to stand up to them.   

"It's been two months since I blogged. Considering that I am . . ."

From Ursula LeGuin's No Time To Spare:

"It's been two months since I blogged.  Considering that I am on the eve of my eighty-fifth birthday, and that anyone over seven-five who isn't continuously and conspicuously active is able to be considered dead, I thought I should make some signs of life.  Wave from the grave, as it were.  Hello, out there!  How are things in the Land of Youth?  Here in the Land of Age they are rather weird."

While for me, it's only been four days, and I still have daylight between now and 85, I am over 75 and don't want to be considered dead yet.  

For years and years I blogged pretty much daily.  And when I'm engaged in an important story (say Redistricting) blogging does take front and center in my life still.  But I've also given myself permission to take days off.  But don't want to have too many blank pages here.

So here's a list of other distractions:

1.  Technical - Getting photos from my phone to my laptop stopped working

I thought I'd conquered this, but the AirDrop stopped working again and the original fix didn't stick. Photos are an important part of this blog (at least for me).  Monday, when we went for a hike, I took along my bigger Canon so I could use the memory card to get the pictures onto my MacBook.  After two photos the battery stopped working.  

So I reverted back to the phone.  I'd find a way.  I figured I could upload the pictures to Blogspot (the blog site I'm using) on my phone. Easy Peasy.  But I couldn't.  I googled.  Here's what I found on google support::  (Google bought Blogspot long ago as well as other independent apps I've used for the blog)

"If your photo is on your phone, it is probably in Apple Photos. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no direct upload from Photos to Blogger. You must therefore export the image to your phone as a jpg. Then you can upload it into Blogger using the "from device" option in the Blogger post editor.

I do not know how to export the image to your phone as a jpg. But once you copy it into Blogger, you can delete the jpg file."

Or on Apple discussions

"iPhoto pictures no longer upload to Blogger with Mojave 10.14.6 update installed"

I've been thinking I might need to get a more current iPhone and even upgrade my laptop (it's about nine years old and the letters on six keys are no longer readable), but I have pulled out my old Canon Powershot and I'll use that until then.  It has a memory card I can insert into my laptop.  But as I think about it, I'm sure the newer laptops no longer have a spot to insert a memory card.  

2.  Other things - Reading online

Twitter and Spoutible - Despite everything, Twitter still alerts me to important items of (I hate to use this term because it's so overused) 'breaking' news, particularly Anchorage and Alaska related things.  Mainly because I've been careful to pick who I follow, I don't get a lot of garbage tweets. But as Twitter goes X-tinct,  Spoutible is getting more 'useful' Spouters (useful here meaning people who put up things I want to hear about) but I'm still getting too many "Hope you all are doing great this morning!" Spouts.  There's nothing wrong with them, but that's not why I'm on Spoutible.  

Spoutible also got its Android app up and then a couple of weeks later the IOS app was ready.  I downloaded it, but I couldn't type in the login info.  My keyboard didn't work.  Their announcements had said that the iPhone 7 still had some problems, so I deleted it.  When I downloaded it again a few days ago, I could log in.  But the keyboard doesn't work when I try to reply or to Spout.  

I've put Twitter and Spoutible under Reading.  I spend way too much time on these apps.  They were supposed to give me tips for blog posts (and they do) as well as back up information I can use to support my arguments on the blog.  But they are also addictive.  It's like fishing or slot machines, you're always hoping the next one will be good, and enough are, that you keep casting or putting more money in, when you should just walk away.  

3.  Other things - Reading books

I've got the following three books that I'm actively working on:

Boy, I didn't realize how relatively poor the images are on the Canon Powershot compared to my phone.  Demon Copperhead is for my September book club meeting (but I thought it was for August so I started it because it's long). No Time to Spare is the August book.  It's essays Le Guin wrote late in life (as the quote at the beginning of this post suggests) and so far it's focusing on being old.  She's not sugar-coating things.  Blowback is by Miles Taylor, a Republican who worked as a high level Homeland Security appointee in the Trump administration and is using the book to warn people about how crazy Trump is and the kinds of things to be expected in a second Trump administration.  Because Trump wanted to do them (and in some cases did) during his presidency.  But this time, Taylor warns, Trump and the conservative interests that back him, are better organized to make them happen.  Basically like establishing a Fascist regime supporting the wealthy and making life harder for everyone else, particularly those who aren't white, Christian, heterosexual men.  

As I figure out ways I can contribute to protecting democracy in the 2024 election, books like this give me facts to convince non-voters why they need to vote. Non-voters are the key.  But I'm not giving up on Trumpers either though that's time spent doing more work for smaller gains.  

But while people say the hard core Trump supporters are a cult, immune to reason and reality, I know that people leave cults all the time.  Cult-Escape is just one of many websites (not necessarily the best) for people thinking about getting out.  I also know that the Trump cult is reinforced by trolls who spew out misinformation at high volume, whether they do it on their own, for money, or with the support of foreign governments.  They exaggerate the number of people who support the Trump world of lies.  

There are several other books, newspapers that tempt me away from the blog (all in the guise of keeping me informed and giving me material for the blog.)

3.  Other things - local events

I listened in on the Alaska Board of Education hearings on a policy to ban transgender girls from girls sports. (You can find the written testimony here, here, here, here, and here.) While I have lots to say, the anti-ban crowd made many good arguments I don't have to duplicate.  

But what no one mentioned (while I listened in anyway) was the fact that the Board began the meeting with a Christian prayer that ended with "in Jesus' name."  

Here's a government board, holding a public hearing on a policy that is being heavily pushed by Christian Nationalists (and other Christians who would legitimately reject the Nationalist part) and beginning with a Christian prayer, that excludes those who are agnostic or atheists, and members of religions that do not worship Jesus Christ.  I can only think of two reasons for this:

1. To show their power to add their religion into their governmental function - that they can get away with this
2. Because they are so sheltered from the non-Christian world that they don't realize how offensive this is to people who don't see the world the way they do.  

(A PEW Trust study copyrighted in 2021 found that 37% of Alaskans identify as in religions other than Christianity or no religion. That's more than 1/3.  Under 

"Frequency of participation in prayer, scripture study or religious education groups among adults in Alaska"

fully 69% responded "seldom or never.")

If the Board is so out of touch with people who are not devout Christians that they can open this public meeting with a Christian prayer, imagine how out of touch they are with transgender youth!  This is not a representative body of Alaskans making this decision.  Even the Alaska legislature rejected this and the Governor has now asked a body that he's (mostly) personally appointed to do what the people's elected representatives wouldn't do.  

OK, so that by itself is a synopsis of a blog post I've been thinking about.  

There was also Juneteenth and Gay Pride which I didn't post about because I couldn't easily get my photos up.  

4.  Other things - biking and the garden

I took my bike in for a service yesterday.  There's a regular clank sound every time my right pedal is forward. It's been about four years and I've ridden it a lot (for an old man anyway) each summer. As of yesterday I've biked 762 km (473 miles) since April.  Last year my goal was 1000km which I passed and I'm well on my way to doing the same this summer.  I put it down here only because it takes up about five or six hours a week.  But mentally the biking is good for my blogging.  

Reviewing this before posting I realize I left out the gardening part.  I'll just say my favorite gardening book is No Work Garden.  Much of the hill in our backyard is natural - birch, alder, high bush cranberry and other local fauna.  We've focused on perennials which come back on their own. And the front lawn, much to the chagrin of our neighbors (though they've come to accept it over the years) is clover right now along with rock garden perennials along the sidewalk.  Gardening enthusiasm is highest in the spring when the snow is gone and things start poking out of the earth.  I have put in hours of weeding and thinning, and I do just enjoy wandering the yard to see all the daily surprises.  

5.  Other things - Netflix

We're currently juggling The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, Suits, Friday Night Lights, and random other movies or short series that some variety.  After watching several seasons of Suits I've concluded we would all be much better off if we had script writers to help us with our day-to-day interactions.  

Netflix takes a toll in my blog writing time.  

6.  Other things - Tutoring English

One of the more delightful activities this spring and summer has been tutoring a Ukrainian refugee in Ketchikan in English.  His English is good enough to communicate what he needs to say, but we're adding vocabulary, pronunciation (both sounds and sentence rhythms), grammar, and cultural nuances.  We were paired by Catholic Social Services' Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service (RAIS) and it's a great match, pedagogically and personally.  We tend to have a good time even though I work him hard.  Planning lessons and actually doing the lessons take up four to eight hours a week, depending on if we meet once or twice a week.  Twice a week is the norm.  

There are other things as well - the general maintenance people have to do in their lives, paying bills, getting things cleaned and repaired, getting and preparing food (fortunately, my wife has done the lion's share of this in recent years in part because she's not that excited about my cooking), and I'm sure you can add to the list.  

But I'm committed to writing here on important topics.  But I must say, that the local political and legal events I spent so much time on in previous years are being better covered by others now.  Twitter has been a big addition there as well as more local reporters covering events.  That just wasn't the case back in 2006 when I started blogging.  And it took me a while to jump from more mundane blogging to more public affairs blogging.  

Have a good weekend.  We're having more sun and warmth than we did earlier this summer.  But compared to much of the world, the weather has been very comfortable and the air quality good.