The sun went down as we were driving back from visiting an old friend of my mother's. And when I say old, I'm not exaggerating. E is 99. She lives alone in her home, though her daughter lives not far away. She walks well. She looked good - certainly not anything like 99. She talks like she always has. Hearing's a problem, but her daughter was there and used voice transcription on her phone to help out. She gave up driving a few months ago when there was a problem with the steering wheel that she decided not to get fixed. I've known her at least 65 years. It was a delightful get-to-gether. She's one of the last of my mother's generation still kicking.
Even driving in LA traffic, nature puts on amazing shows.
While it's been sunny and the air has been clear (you can see the snow capped mountains to the east and Catalina Island to the west), it's been a bit nippy for LA (I'm using Santa Monica weather on my phone) - in the 50s (F) today. I did various odds and ends around the house as we get ready to return home and by 3pm I'd put off my bike ride to the beach. Chilly. But a call to a friend in Anchorage embarrassed me and I put on a windbreaker over my sweatshirt and got on the bike a little after 4pm and rode down to Venice Beach. The sun was directly in my eyes when there weren't trees blocking it. I had a right taillight blinking in hopes that blinded cars could see me in the bike line. Most people biking, skateboarding, scootering, and walking had on sweatshirts and warm coats. But there were a few bare chested runners as well.
The sun was getting very close to the horizon - which means there's about 30-40 more minutes of daylight. The surf was low. This is just north of Venice in Santa Monica.
And this is turning around with my back to the sun and the bike and my shadows stretched way out.
And finally, as I went up Rose Avenue from the Venice Boardwalk, I turned around to get one last picture. This time I was able to get the building to block the main part of the sun.
We dropped the family off at the airport Monday. It was a beautiful sunny day with blue skies and t-shirt temperatures. The sky was clear and you could see snow up on Mt. Baldy. We like walking along Ballona Creek, but thought since we were coming from the airport we could start at the ocean end.
There's a bike trail along the creek that goes at least to Culver City and connects with the beach trail south to nearly Palos Verdes. North, it goes through Marina Del Rey and then connects with Venice and Santa Monica trails. I've marked in red our walk from the beach to Lincoln and back.
We saw the hummingbird hovering first. It's iridescent ruby throat flashing brilliantly. It flew off and then quickly returned an lighted on this high bush. I'm still fighting my auto-focus on my Canon Rebel. I've read instructions, but the auto-focus has trouble figuring out exactly where I want to focus. For most things it's not an issue, but for birds far away or tiny birds relatively close, it's frustrating. I'm open to links that could help. I left the image small because you can see how out-of-focus the bird is when I cropped it bigger.
And I couldn't get the iridescent flash, though you can see the emerald wing suggesting it.
The egret is much bigger and easier to get in focus.
I was fascinated by the egret's toes as it started walking. It didn't respond to my request that it get a less difficult background. You have to look carefully. I counted four toes.
I originally thought these might be sanderlings, but the legs seemed the wrong color. Maybe a type of sandpiper. I couldn't tell for sure.
The water here is where the marina opens to the Pacific, not the Ballona Creek side of the trail. You can check here.
You may have read about large waves this weekend in Southern California. The waves didn't seem huge, but they crashed pretty much straight down. The bike trail on he beach was covered with sand and the high tide lines were way, way up on the beach.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski said that it may be legal for state courts to disqualify former President Donald Trump from running in the 2024 election, but that doing so would be “politically fraught with peril.” https://t.co/1eLC8XvjAX
So imagine, Arnold Schwarzenegger decides to run for President and he's getting good polling results. But someone sues to keep him off the ballot because he wasn't a natural born United States citizen.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
Would Sen. Murkowski or any of the others talking about "fraught with political peril" say we shouldn't enforce the Constitution because it would be "fraught with political peril" to do so?
Well that's exactly what is happening with Murkowski and others who want to keep Trump's name on the Colorado ballot. As President, he, at the very least, gave aid and comforted those trying to overthrow the election of Joe Biden by storming Congress and stopping the ratification of the election. (And we don't even know who all he showed or sold secret documents to yet.)
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Trump's denials are no different from the denials of any accused criminal who tries to twist words and find legal loopholes to avoid the legal consequences of their actions.
Does he really have to be tried for insurrection? We all watched it live. We watched the Jan 6 committee reviews of video tape and listened to witnesses, many who were Trump appointees who were with him in the White House on January 6.
We've heard the tape of Trump demanding of the Georgia officials:
"All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have," Trump says, according to audio of the call. "There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you've recalculated."
He's a known liar and he knew he lost Georgia and was demanding the Georgia officials overturn the election by finding him the votes he needed.
So what is this "political peril" everyone is so worried about?
First, I'd ask, when did we start inserting political consequences into court proceedings? Yes, it's happened, but it isn't supposed to. It's the rule of law, not the rule of the mob that courts are supposed to uphold.
Second, what crystal ball does Murkowski have that tells her there will be political peril? No one knows what will happen in the future. So this is just conjecture of what might happen. Sure, there are lots of Trump supporters who likely would be very angry.
Propagandists on the Right will tell Trump's supporters that this was an illegal prevention of Trump's right to run for office. Is that a reason to ignore the Constitution? Absolutely not. This is a phantom peril. Of his most rabid supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6,
"Approximately 723 federal defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on Jan. 6. Approximately 454 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration. Approximately 151 defendants have been sentenced to a period of home detention, including approximately 28 who also were sentenced to a period of incarceration."
"Approximately 714 individuals have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges, many of whom faced or will face incarceration at sentencing."
I'm not saying Trump supporters won't make lots of noise, maybe do damage, and generally try to reenact another January 6. They have already made death threats against the judges on the Colorado Supreme Court. Trump isn't calling on his backers to stand down. But we have police. We have the National Guard. We have the military if we have to put down another insurrection.
Third, if Trump is on the ballot and loses again, we are just as likely to face political peril then as now, maybe more so. If they successfully bully the courts into ignoring the Constitution now, Trump supporters will be even more emboldened to try to prevent a peaceful transition again.
Surely it's a better option to uphold the Constitution now and remove Trump from the ballot now and let his various court cases play out. Let's face this speculated political peril now rather than later.
Fourth, if the court ignores the plain language of the US Constitution and allows Trump to be placed on the Colorado ballot (and in other states if Colorado is successful in this), then we are already in political peril, we've already stumbled out of democracy and the rule of law. The fact that we are even debating this says we are already one or more steps into the fascist dictatorship Trump has already said he would head.
Fifth, Gerald Ford, after he became president when Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace, also feared political peril if Nixon were prosecuted. So he pardoned Nixon. While I think that decision was wrong - and set up a precedent for Trump to grasp at - it didn't violate the law or the Constitution. The president has the power to pardon. But when pardoning Nixon
"Ford announced that he had pardoned Richard Nixon for all crimes he committed or "may have committed" while president" (Washington Post 2006)
which tells us he fully believed that an ex-president can be tried for acts committed while president - something Trump has said couldn't be done.
Sixth, Murkowski and others have said that the people should have the final say by voting. But no matter how much people would want to vote for Schwartzeneger or Trump, the two are constitutionally ineligible to be president. We don't vote on whether to ignore the Constitution.
"Political Peril" here is the bogey man the Right (and some on the Left) are using to justify ignoring the clear language of the Constitution. Remember, this fight is for the man who spent years spreading the lies about Obama being born in Kenya and not being a natural born US citizen.
Trump's whole strategy is to cause distrust of every US institution and then to say that "I alone can fix it." The idea of "political peril" is part and parcel of his game plan. Democracies don't make exceptions for bullies who threaten violence if they don't get their way.
That is exactly what is happening here. Arnold Schwarzenegger is NOT a natural born US citizen and is not qualified to run for president.
Donald Trump supported an insurrection to overthrow the vote of the people and maintain his position as president even though he lost the popular and electoral college votes. And he isn't qualified to run for president.
Let's face whatever peril lies ahead now instead of next November when that peril might reappear if US voters vote for Biden over Trump once again. Let's stop that peril now rather than let the Trump machine work to more effectively falsify the election results than they did in 2020.
I'm a casual jazz fan. Sort of like I'm a casual birder. I go out of my way to observe birds, but I don't obsess. I don't keep a life list. And I'm more an unquestioning appreciator of jazz, but not someone who could tell you why I like it or the technical things the musicians are doing that captures my attention. Nancy Wilson probably is the person to blame.
Of course, I've heard the name Bill Evans. Usually a when a KJAZZ announcer says something like, "and Bill Evans on the piano." That usually happens after the piece was played.
Anyhoo, this essay kept me in bed reading this morning. (Yes, I know. It's not a good idea to look at my phone in bed, but so what?)
So just listen to the Bill Evans Trio as you read the article. This is the first recording in 1961 with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian.
Or if you don't think you have time for a long article, here are some excerpts while you listen:
"But things started going wrong even before Mitchell arrived at Reeves Sound Studios on East Forty-Fourth Street. First, his luggage went astray en route from Florida. Then there was a surprise waiting for him in the control room: Miles Davis, one of his musical heroes, who had taken the extraordinary step of composing a new melody as a gift to Cannonball. Mitchell was supposed to play Miles’s part.
That wasn’t going to be easy, because the tune, called “Nardis,” was anything but a standard workout on blues-based changes. The melody had a haunting, angular, exotic quality, like the “Gypsy jazz” that guitarist Django Reinhardt played with the Hot Club de France in the 1930s. And it didn’t exactly swing, but unfurled at its own pace, like liturgical music for some arcane ritual. For three takes, the band diligently tried to make it work, but Mitchell couldn’t wrap his head around it, particularly under Miles’s intimidating gaze. The producer of the session, legendary Riverside Records founder Orrin Keepnews, ended up scrapping the night’s performances entirely.
The next night was more productive. After capturing tight renditions of “Blue Funk” and “Minority,” the quintet took two more passes through “Nardis,” yielding a master take for release, plus a credible alternate. But the arrangement still sounded stiff, and the horns had a pinched, sour tone.
Only one man on the session, Miles would say later, played the tune “the way it was meant to be played.” It was the shy, unassuming piano player, who was just shy of twenty-eight years old. His name was Bill Evans."
. . .
"By now I’ve heard so many different interpretations, in such a far-flung variety of settings, that a Platonic ideal of the melody resides in my mind untethered to any actual performance. It’s as if “Nardis” were always going on somewhere, with players dropping in and out of a musical conversation beyond space and time."
, , ,
"When Russell first mentioned Evans’s name, Miles asked, “Is he white?”
“Yeah,” Russell replied.
“Does he wear glasses?”
“Yeah.”
“I know that motherfucker,” Miles said. “I heard him at Birdland—he can play his ass off.” Indeed, the first time Evans played a beginner’s intermission set at the Village Vanguard—Max Gordon’s basement club, the Parnassus of jazz—the pianist was astonished to look up and see the legendary trumpeter standing there, listening intently."
. . .
"By the time he recorded the tracks on Kind of Blue, however, Evans had already decided to leave Miles’s band. After his baptism of fire on the road, he was physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted, but he also felt more confident about pursuing his own vision. He had a specific goal in mind: achieving a level of communication in a piano trio that would enable all three players to make creative statements and respond to one another conversationally, without any of them being obliged to explicitly state the beat. This approach came to be known as “broken time,” because no player was locked into a traditional time-keeping role; instead the one was left to float, in an implied pulse shared by all the players. Evans compared broken time to the kind of typography in which the raised letters are visible only in the shadows they cast.
That kind of collective sympathy, akin to three-way telepathy, demanded major commitment from the trio, and required high levels of personal chemistry. Evans met the perfect fellow travelers in two young musicians named Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian."
. . .
"Evans was a polite junkie. For decades, he kept tabs on how much money he owed various friends, and he always endeavored to pay them back, even if his benefactor had long forgotten the debt. But among the people disturbed by his accelerating decline was the fearlessly outspoken LaFaro, who had no problem confronting the pianist in the bluntest terms. “You’re fucking up the music,” he would say. “Look in the mirror!”
It was in this combative atmosphere that Evans made his second attempt to commit “Nardis” to vinyl, at Bell Sound Studios, on February 2, 1961, under Keepnews’s watchful eye. Though Keepnews gamely tried to keep everyone’s spirits up, the whole session seemed jinxed, with Evans and LaFaro openly arguing about the pianist’s drug use and Evans suffering a splitting headache. By the time the ordeal was over, both the players and the producer assumed that the tapes would be quietly filed away and never released. “We had a very, very bad feeling,” Evans recalled. “We felt there was nothing happening.”
Listening back, however, everyone was shocked to discover how well the trio had played. Upon the album’s release, Explorations was hailed by critics for its bold, unsentimental reinvention of well-worn standards like “Sweet and Lovely” and “How Deep Is the Ocean,” the dynamism of the group’s interactions, and the sublime sensitivity of Evans’s phrasing and voicings. Humbled by the inadequacy of his own ability to judge how well the session had gone, Evans began to think of “the mind that thinks jazz” as something larger than the consciousness of any individual musician, as if the music organized itself at a higher order of awareness that wasn’t always discernible to the players. The rendition of “Nardis” that appears on the album, a refinement of the arrangement that the trio had been playing on the road, became the default canonical version in the absence of a Miles original—the basis for twenty years of Evans’s performances, and for hundreds of interpretations by others."
And here's Bill Evans live in Paris in 1979 playing a very different Nardis with his second trio members.
"In 1979, the pianist formed a new trio with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbera. The presence of Johnson in particular—who was, in the words of former trio drummer Eliot Zigmund, “very young and open, and very, very respectful of Bill”—seemed to revitalize the pianist, and for the first time in years, he sounded like he was searching again. After buying a cassette recorder, he began taping and listening to his own performances, going all the way back to unreleased music he’d made with LaFaro and Motian. He was also paying close attention to the work of the young pianists he had generously mentored over the years. After listening to a solo recording by Warren Bernhardt called Floating, he told his girlfriend, Laurie Verchomin, that he had entered a state of bliss, hearing 'the music between the notes.'”
Note: Someone in the household heard me listing to whole the 1979 album, responded, "It sounds like 'hold' music." While parts are soft, slow, and soothing, this is definitely not hold music, but it would be nice if it were used that way.
At some point, after three years in Thailand, I was convinced that science had ignored the health benefits of capsaicin - the part that makes hot peppers so spicy. Surely, I thought, this heat helped to preserve foods, in a different way than salt does.
Today this 24 year old paper popped up on Twitter that confirms my assumption. What I didn't recognize was that garlic and onions are even better at the killing and/or inhibiting the growth of microbes. Though I did assume the high use of garlic in hot climates had some health benefits too.
The authors write in the overview:
"We wondered if there are any predictable patterns of spice use and, if so, what factors might underlie them. In this article, we summarize the results of our inquiries. We found that spice use is decidedly nonrandom and that spices have several beneficial effects, the most important of which may be reducing foodborne illnesses and food poisoning."
Prediction 1. Spices should exhibit antibacterial and antifungal activity.
And this chart shows that
Prediction 2. Use of spices should be greatest in hot climates, where unrefrigerated foods spoil especially quickly.
They looked at cookbooks from 36 countries to see what spices were used, how many recipes included spices, how many spices per recipe, and which spices. The used a climate atlas to rate the climate in each of the 36 countries.
Prediction 3. A greater proportion of bacteria should be inhibited by recipes from hot climates than from cool climates.
". . . the mean fraction of recipes that called for each one of the highly inhibitory spices used in those countries increased significantly (Figure 8a). However, this correlation did not hold for less inhibitory spices (Figure 8b). There was also a positive relationship between the fraction of bacterial species inhibited by each spice and the fraction of countries that used that spice, indicating widespread use of the spices that are most effective against bacteria."
There are a number of other things they looked into (ie. cost of spices, lemon/lime juice increases anti-microbial power of spices).
So one question I have relates to the fact that our bodies rely on microbes to keep us healthy. My awareness of this came well after 1999 (when the spice article was published) and I'm not sure how well it was known in 1999 or by the authors. Do spices harm the gut biome?
The article is written in clear language that should be easy for most people to understand most parts. It also has pictures of spices as well as straightforward charts.
Paul W. Sherman, Jennifer Billing Author Notes BioScience, Volume 49, Issue 6, June 1999, Pages 453–463, https://doi.org/10.2307/1313553 Published: 01 June 1999
They use' microbe' in some places and 'bacteria' in other places. Since I wasn't completely sure about what each term meant, I found this American Society for Microbiology page "What Counts As A Microbe?"
I was out in the car yesterday when it started raining so hard I had the windshield wipers to the fastest speed and I still had trouble seeing through the wet on the windshield.
Sun did make cameo appearances throughout the day.
Today it was sunny when I got up - though there were lots of exciting clouds, ranging from white to almost black.
This iris opened since yesterday and the sun seemed like a good opportunity to get on my bike for a ride along the beach.
This is the last block on Rose Ave as you get to the beach in Venice. The border between Los Angeles (Venice is a neighborhood in LA) and Santa Monica is about a block to the north (to the right in the picture).
Parts - not many - of the bike trail had a couple of inches of water and some sand.
Headed north, Santa Monica pier is up ahead.
There are a few wooden walkways from the bike trail to near the water. I wanted some pictures from near the water. Above I'm looking north.
Below I'm looking west.
And below I'm looking south back toward the pier. This is NOT a black and white photo.
It was at this point, as I was picking my bike up out of the sand, that a life guard in a truck came over to me and said that NOAA reported there was a thunderstorm due in the next half hour and to clear the beach. (There weren't that many people out anyway, only a few down by the water.)
At this point I felt the first rain drops. The temperature was in the low to mid 60s F and felt warmer when the sun was on me.
As I rode back, the palm trees along the palisade in downtown Santa Monica were nicely silhouetted.
And below I'm approaching the Santa Monica pier from the north. I hadn't seen the ferris wheel turning when I passed by the first time and it certainly wasn't moving now. Nor did I see any action on the roller coaster.
It never rained too hard, despite the ominous clouds. Some blue and some hint of sun if not actual sun were always visible.
On the way home I stopped at the 99 Cents store. But most of the shelves were empty. The cashier said January 5 would be their last day. They did have produce. Two avocados, an artichoke, and some broccoli cost me $2.
When I got near home, it wasn't raining, but there was water gushing down the hill to the flat area. It had rained very hard while I was gone, but not where I was. Later my granddaughter took this picture when it rained heavily again and you can see some of the rain coming down, though the picture doesn't capture how hard it was raining.
The rain seems to have fallen here and there over short periods of time as clouds moved through. The following list shows rainfall in inches as of 7am Thursday for the five days prior. There's a lot of variation and this doesn't count what fell yesterday and today.
Oxnard 6.13
Porter Ranch 4.82
Culver City 3.43
Westlake Village 3.31
Downtown LA 1.98
Bel Air 3.27
Long Beach 1.24
Van Nuys 4.30
Santa Monica 1.80
Northridge 4.54
Whittier 1.51
Pasadena 1.61
Castaic 2.53
I found different numbers when I googled Los Angeles annual rainfall. (Some variation is surely due to location.) But the range was between 12 and 14 inches!
This is all a reminder that the earth itself is doing fine. The changes brought on by climate change, the loss of species, are irrelevant to Nature. The landforms and oceans will survive and evolve without us.
The coming climate catastrophes are only catastrophes in the eyes of humans. I'm not sure what the animal and plant species that are being threatened know or feel. The earth has experienced many changes over its billions of years. Our hominid ancestors only appeared around seven million years ago. And individual human lives are like flashes of lightening (which I never did see today) in comparison.
Waste in packaging is another thing that has become normalized. Unless it's egregious, we just wade our way through it, without even thinking about it.
I felt this one qualified as egregious.
The pills came in these three plastic bottles inside the box behind.
Each plastic bottle had 14 - FOURTEEN - pills!
When I put them all into one bottle they reached up to the blue line. (That was supposed to be an arrow pointing down to the blue line.)
That's about 1/5 of the bottle. There were three bottles, so only 1/15 of the bottles' volume was actually needed for the pills. That's not counting the box the three bottles were packaged in.
So the contents needed about 7% of the packaging (again, not counting the box this was all in.) So about 93% of the packaging was unnecessary.
OK, I get that stores don't want to sell things so small that it's easy for a shopper to put something into a pocket or purse without paying. There have to be more creative solutions to stopping shoplifting. If humans can figure out how to get to the moon, they can figure out how to not pollute the earth with excessive packaging.
I'd also note a story in the LA Times Sunday. Mike Hiltzik wrote a follow up to the big story earlier this year that stores were losing $45 billion to organized crime shoplifting.
Politicians and the media both repeated the fabricated number without question. And law enforcement agencies love it because such stories help them get ever increasing budgets to fight crime. But for them crime means the guy who shoplifts $30 worth of groceries, not companies that steal billions from their employees and customers.
Why do I add all these other issues to a simple story about badly packaged pills? Cause everything has a context. Telling stories without the larger context is just relating miscellaneous anecdotes. There's a lot more context for this pill story, but I'm just adding a little here so that readers at least think about the larger context and maybe even add more themselves.
I haven't posted about the Israel-Gaza* war for a variety of reasons, the key ones being the unreliability of the many accusations flung back and forth, the very complication of the issues including all the action going on behind the scenes that we don't know anything about.
I've come up with a list of about a dozen issues that I see as important for anyone trying to understand what is happening and why. Surely there are more. And they all have threads that wind into the other issues.
Guerilla Warfare
One of the issues is the nature of guerrilla warfare. Having been alive as the Vietnam War (or the American War as the Vietnamese call it), Afghanistan - first Russia and then US - I've learned a little bit about guerrilla warfare. We see it when a militarily weak group of people feel badly mistreated and take on their overwhelmingly powerful perceived oppressors.
Here's Wikipedia's summary:
"The main strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare tend to involve the use of a small attacking, mobile force against a large, unwieldy force. The guerrilla force is largely or entirely organized in small units that are dependent on the support of the local population. Tactically, the guerrilla army makes the repetitive attacks far from the opponent's center of gravity with a view to keeping its own casualties to a minimum and imposing a constant debilitating strain on the enemy. This may provoke the enemy into a brutal, excessively destructive response which will both anger their own supporters and increase support for the guerrillas, ultimately compelling the enemy to withdraw. One of the most famous examples of this was during the Irish War of Independence. Michael Collins, a leader of the Irish Republican Army, often used this tactic to take out squads of British soldiers, mainly in Munster, especially Cork."
In this case, Hamas are clearly the guerrillas against the overwhelming military strength of Israel.
For me, the nature of guerrilla warfare got much clearer when I saw the movie The Battle Of Algiers, sometime in the 1970s.
I'd strongly recommend watching this film for anyone who wants to understand what is happening now in Israel and Gaza.
The Internet Archive has posted the film and has links to embed it in blogs and other websites. I have never before posted a full movie like this and it feels a bit wrong. You can also watch it at the Internet Archive.
Aside from showing guerrilla warfare from the point of view of the guerrillas, it's a classic example of cinéma vérité. It's just a really well made movie.
Without understanding the underlying reasons a group uses guerrilla warfare tactics, it's hard to understand a war in which guerrilla forces fight against a much more dominant culture.
History shows us many examples where overpowering military advantage eventually loses to an organized, but much, much weaker resistance movement. But there are also examples of that weaker unit being crushed. My sense here, though, is that the ruthlessness of Israel's response will create millions of more resisters among the Palestinians.
Astute readers will have figured out that I've once again avoided the topic of Israel and Gaza. Yes, and no. It's much to complex a topic to deal with in one post. I'll refine my list of key issues and then post the list. Then I'll cover as many of the issues as I have the stomach for in other posts - some on just one issue, others may combine a few.
In the meantime, I'd challenge readers to come up with their own lists of the key issues. Then you'll be able to compare your lists with mine and, I hope, improve my list in the comments.
Make some popcorn and enjoy the movie.
*I've labeled this Israeli-Gaza war, but one could also say Israeli-Palestinian war.
I was out-of-state when my doctor's office called to set up a telehealth appointment for me. The date they wanted was when I was going to be back in Alaska. I thought, wow, this is great. If I'm out-of-state, I can still have an appointment with my doctor if needed.
But they said, "No, you have to be in Alaska."
For me, that makes no sense. If I need a doctor when I'm not in Alaska, I'd rather see my doctor than a one I don't know. [Of course if there's a need for physical contact or tests, it's not going to work as well.]
So when I had my appointment, I asked, "Why can't we do this if I'm out-of-state?"
The nurse, the doctor, and the doctor's supervisor (this is through Providence) weren't exactly sure. They'd been advised that it had to be Alaska only. Licensing seemed to be a possible reason, but they weren't sure. And they couldn't cite any documents I could see for myself.
Whether this was a state law, regulation, Providence policy or something else, they didn't know.
So I decided I would try to track this down. Here's what I've found out so far.
During COVID emergency health declarations waived some interstate telehealth barriers, and much of what first pops up in searches are pandemic era webpages, some of which have dates on them.
A big issue IS the need to be licensed in the state where the patient is located
Another issue has to do with payment for patients on the state medicaid or other health programs
Some states allow out-of-state doctors to have telehealth appointments in their states, but the rules aren't easy to figure out for individual doctors. There are various conditions one has to meet, and one has to be sure the source of information reflects the current law, that no changes have been made
Interactive at the site which appears to be updated frequently
CCHP (The Center for Connected Health Policy) has some of the best information I've found so far. Their Out Of State Providers page has a map that links to the policies for every state. And they seem to keep it up to date. One was updated this month.
For instance, here's what it says for Arizona:
"Arizona
Last updated 11/07/2023
A provider who is not licensed within the State of Arizona may provide Telehealth services to an AHCCCS member located in the state if the provider is an AHCCCS registered provider and complies with all requirements listed within A.R.S. § 36-3606.
AHCCCS refers to Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System. The link isn't really that complicated, but if I were a physician, I'd want an attorney to read it.
"Some states have temporary practice laws to support existing provider-patient relationships and minimize gaps in care. These laws allow a provider to practice for a limited amount of time, usually less than 30 days, in another state if their patient is temporarily visiting that state for business, a family visit, or other reasons."
This includes what I would be after - treating one of their regular patients who happens to be temporarily out of state.
What states clearly or not so clearlyseem to allow out of state doctors not licensed in the patient's state to provide telehealth services to patients located in their state? Go to the CCHP map page to get details for each state.
Indiana - "Out-of-state providers can perform telehealth services without fulfilling the out-of-state prior authorization requirement if they have the subtype “Telemedicine” attached to their enrollment. See Module for requirements."
Kentucky - this one seems particularly liberal.
Maryland
Minnesota
Oklahoma
Oregon - Looks like a liberal policy
South Dakota
Vermont
Washington
Wisconsin
Most of the concern seems to be with the State reimbursing for services to Medicaid patients. There are various conditions placed on out of state providers. Note that I said 'appear to allow out of state" providers. And there were some states that might allow out of state providers who are not licensed in the patient's state, but I couldn't really tell for sure.
So, the problem doesn't seem to lie with the State of Alaska.
The issue is
with other states - some do and some don't allow it, and those that do have different requirements
with Providence for making a blanket policy rather than tailoring it to the states that allow for out of state doctors. Providence should know which
which states do not allow out of state doctors to have telehealth appointments with people in their states,
which states do allow it, and
what the requirements are for those that do
with doctors who have licenses to practice in other states letting Providence know that
I would like to think this is simply policy that hasn't caught up with technology changes and not simply stodgy hospital administrators not wanting to change or lazily using the law as an excuse
But I also understand that collecting all the necessary data and keeping it up to date is somewhat of a challenge. But I was able to do this in less that four hours, so someone in the Prov administration should also be able to do it. Especially since Providence serves Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.
I got the names of the winners at the Awards Event. Well, the ones I could hear clearly. I tried to get the names of the ones I missed but they seemed to want to post them on the Festival website before I did, so I let it go.
Later, I'll compare them to my favorites, but I'm back at the airport headed south to meet family in LA. Overall I think the choices are reasonable. There are some I never got to see. More than normal, especially for a festival that had fewer films than normal. And there were no opportunities to see a film again if you missed it when it was shown.
They will show 'the best of the fest' Sunday, Dec. 16 at the Alaska Experience Theater. They said it would be an all day showing of films and they'll put up the list sometime this week.
There were lots of shorts, but the number of feature documentaries and narrative films seemed thin. I think this is reflected in the fact that there was only one winner in the Narrative Features category. And the one comment I will make now, is that Ariel: Back To Buenos Aires which was an excellent film - the story was important and well told, the actors were terrific, and the cinematography was strong. There were no gratuitous shots of Buenos Aires, they all added to the story. It should have gotten an award. I'm not quibbling about Farewell Mr Haffmann. It was an excellent film and I could easily argue it was the best. But Ariel was also an excellent film that got shortchanged in my opinion.
Festival Directors Ida Myklebost and John Gamache at the Awards Ceremony
3rd Place: "Devil’s Instrument" by Frederik Ehrhardt
---Feature Screenplay---
WINNER: "Gramps" by John Stimpson, Geoffrey Taylor and Rapaport
2nd place: "Wreckage" by Colin Scott
3rd Place: "The Most Marvelous Man in the World" by Colin Scott and Kris Burton
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL
It was a good festival and I'll post a few more posts. One, as I said, comparing my favorites to the winners. Another to share my thoughts about the festival itself overall.
