Kit Bakke's Blog, page 4

Parochial: “limited or narrow outlook”

A beach apart

One of the interesting aspects of traveling outside the US is to look at our country from a distance, through others’ eyes. Here is a thought-provoking example from London written by Terry Eagleton in his review of two books, The Madness of Crowds and The Problem of Everything. 

“Because the US is a deeply parochial society, not much given to seeing itself from the outside, what seems obvious to an external observer—the fact that the more baroque forms of political correctness represent the latest outbreak of good old-fashioned American Puritanism—seems not to be much recognized at Yale or Columbia. Sectarianism, holier-than-thou-ism, the gulf between the reprobate and the elect, the scanning of words and actions for the least flicker of ideological impurity: all this has a history as old as the nation itself. There’s nothing new either about the claim that if my experience is radically different from yours, you are incapable of understanding me. It used to be known as middle-class individualism, and involves confusing sympathy with empathy, as well as making a fetish of immediate experience. Once upon a time, the self was hermetically sealed off from the selves around it; now it is cultures…”

 

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Visiting Germany

Brandenburg Gate at October Festival of Lights

What do you think of when you think of Germany? We spent several weeks there in October—so Octoberfest tends to come to mind. We did see lots of beer, but no fests. In fact, some cities have their Octoberfests in September.

Other connections we Americans might make about Germany is to cars (German engineering, etc.) and that there are no speed limits on their freeways—still true even though the German Green Party recently proposed limits as a fuel-saving climate action. This was rejected by the German parliament as deleterious to the German car industry and to German pride. However, a number of cities in Germany (and in other large European cities) have banned diesel vehicles that emit certain levels of particulates and nitrogen oxides.

Also, of course, it’s hard for me to think of Germany without thinking of the two World Wars, the Nazis, Hitler and the extermination of Jews. During our visits with several German friends, we heard stories about how their fathers were taken prisoner by the allies in World War II. One was captured by the British in the defeat of Rommel’s troops in north Africa. He was held there, along with a number of Italian prisoners. The German soldier prisoners were a tattered and starving lot, in much worse shape than the Italians. His father told him that when the British assigned the Italian prisoners to kitchen duties they (the Italians) helped their German allies by tossing extra loaves of bread over the fence into the German compound. When the British discovered this, they replaced the generous Italian bakers for other Italian bakers, but the clandestine food pipeline continued. Finally, the British put Germans in the kitchen. The extra bread rations disappeared.

One more story, this from another German friend. She is a psychologist, and volunteered to be a first responder as a grief counselor at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, held in Munich, in case there was a repeat of the 1972 Munich Olympics when Palestinian terrorists murdered eleven members of the Israeli team. When all went smoothly in 2006, not a killing in sight, she told me she felt good, for the first time in her life, about being German.

Of course there’s also the Berlin wall. A month ago, November 9, was the 30th anniversary of the fall of the wall. (You’d think the world’s political leaders would have learned by now that walls don’t work.) When we arrived in Berlin, the city was celebrating a Festival of Lights.

Giant birds at Berlin Festival of Lights

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My Uncle Phil

My mother had one brother, Philip. Earlier this year, I traveled kitty-corner across the country to sit in a hard plastic folding chair on a jetty at Cape Canaveral Florida staring 14 miles north toward the Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A for five and a half hours. Why? Because a tiny capsule containing a few grams of my Uncle Phil’s ashes were attached to a satellite that was part of the payload of the SpaceX falcon heavy rocket scheduled to be launched sometime during the middle of the night.

Uncle Phil had died in 2015. An engineer, he’d worked for NASA for 23 years in several positions. He was the highest ranking official on site in 1986 when the rocket carrying the Challenger crew exploded, killing seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe a New England public school teacher. It had been Uncle Phil’s idea to send a teacher into space, who could then teach and inspire children to become scientists and explorers. It fell to Uncle Phil to spend time with the families of all the astronauts after they had watched their loved ones die high in the sky.

On one visit to us in Seattle, he brought several samples of the tiles being considered to cloak the front of the Space Shuttle to keep it from burning up as it re-entered earth’s atmosphere. We all sat on our living room rug and spread the tiles out, fingering each one while Uncle Phil explained their pros and cons. One of the major requirements was that not only did the tiles need to resist the fierce atmospheric re-entry temperatures, they had to fit on a curved surface and not fall off from the tearing winds re-entry generated. He talked to us children as if we could contribute meaningfully to the decision of which tile was best. I’ve never forgotten the sense of curiosity and comradeship he engendered.

When he retired from NASA in 1988, Uncle Phil continued to be interested in space travel and exploration. He was particularly invested in ideas that allowed rockets come back to earth in shape to be used again. Having his ashes carried into space as part of the SpaceX rocket program, which has pioneered successful recovery and reuse of its boosters and other rocket parts, was especially fitting for Uncle Phil. It’s nice to know he would approve.

The two Falcon heavy boosters returning to their pads.

 

Uncle Phil, all of space is waiting. Bon Voyage!

 

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Currently Traveling

I’m currently traveling. Please come back later. Here are two photos. Can you guess what city I’m traveling through?

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North to Alaska!

Denali in all its glory

Just back from a couple weeks in Alaska, partly by land and partly by sea, traveling with good friends. A first time for all of us, and not really high on our lists of places to visit. But why not, we thought; let’s go see.

We started with a flight from Seattle to Fairbanks and then worked our way south by train to Seward, where we took a boat that stopped in towns along the panhandle ending in Vancouver. We spent several days in Denali, where it was sunny every day. We saw the mountain three days in a row, after many people had warned us that we’d probably not see it at all: it’s wrapped in clouds over 330 days of the year.

Spawning salmon near Mendenhall Glacier

Here are some of the memories I took away from the trip. Bottom line, it’s worth a visit!

Alaskan natives are the only indigenous tribes (they use the word clan) which never signed any treaties with the US that put them on reservations. The clans comprise roughly five major groupings, with very different languages and cultures which are well-represented throughout the state.

The Klondike gold rush was terrible! It actually happened in Canada, not Alaska, although a major route to the panning fields was through Alaska. It was a horrible journey by foot across mountains and snowfields and each person was required to carry in two thousand pounds of equipment and food, requiring multiple trips, or else the Canadian authorities wouldn’t let you in (because they knew you’d die if you didn’t have food or shelter and there wasn’t any there, so you had to bring it yourself). The rush was actually fairly short—barely two years. Most of course never struck it rich; but many of them said that in the end it didn’t matter—the adventure was the thing. I think it was really all about testosterone.

Gulf of Alaska: high wind and waves

On our very small sample, we found the Alaskan people generally friendly, eccentric, eclectic in their knowledge, and opinionated. Perhaps that’s the result of a lot of winter downtime. Every little town we visited from Fairbanks down to Ketchikan had a quilting/fabric/knitting store, so needlework must be a popular way to while away the long dark winters. I bought some lovely soft yarn spun from dog hair.

We had a little downtime ourselves. I read three books on this trip: My Soul Looks Back by Jessica Harris, Ghost Stories by Edith Wharton, and Icebreaker by Horatio Clare. I recommend them all.

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Protest by any other name…

In Protest on Trial I use the words “protest,” “dissent” and “activism” mostly interchangeably.

“Resistance” is another word you frequently see in the context of people voicing concern or opposition to the status quo as orchestrated by governments, religions or corporations.

One of the good things about the variety of wording is that it allows for a very large continuum of action that can be adapted to the type of change being promoted as well as the opposition’s choice of weaponry in response. In Protest on Trial, I list many such stops along the continuum, including boycotts, strikes, petitions, public demonstrations, civil disobedience and revolution.

This variety is on my mind this week because I just saw the musical HAMILTON and a day later, the movie THE POST. The former is about a full-scale military revolution, and the latter is all about the amazing power of words in the hands of a free and responsible press. The former created a brand-new country; the latter turned up the flame on the anti Vietnam war movement and helped topple the Nixon administration. History tells us that there is room for it all, and that none of it comes without consequences.

PS the poster is an original silk screen from my days working at the SDS National Office in Chicago in 1968/9. The guy who designed and made it was a terrific artist. I’ve forgotten his name–if anyone can identify him, please let me know.

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Seattle Times covers Protest on Trial

Want to read a chapter of Protest on Trial? The Seattle Times Pacific Northwest Magazine for this weekend, May 5-6 excerpts a chapter of the book, and includes additional material from Kit. The photos are terrific! it’s great online, but the hard copy is even better.

Seattle Times on Protest on Trial

Five of the seven Seattle conspiracy case Court in Tacoma yesterday after pleading no contest (which has the effect of a guilty plea) to contempt-of-court charges stemming from their December, 1970, trial. From left were Joe Kelly, Jeff Dowd (side to camera), Susan Stern, Charles (Chip) Marshall, 3rd, and Michael Abeles. Persons in the background were not identified.

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It's not all about Protest

While Protest on Trial: the Seattle 7 Conspiracy, my latest book, is getting most of the publicity this spring, it’s not the only one out there.

Dancing on the Edge, my Young Adult book about grieving, discovery, real and imaginary friends, traveling in England and 12 year old Dot’s irritating aunt has been reprinted by Chatwin Press and is available in paperback and Kindle.

Starred by Publishers Weekly, the reviewer wrote, “with complex characters and eloquent prose, it’s an absorbing story of a girl’s surprising path through her grief.”

Earlier this week I had the chance to talk about Dancing on the Edge with school teacher and blogtalk radio host Laura Moe. Here’s a link to our conversation, which itself traveled widely—beginning and ending with Dancing on the Edge, but extending to my other two books as well, including Miss Alcott’s Email, which is being reprinted this year in honor of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Little Women. More on that to come!

The post It's not all about Protest appeared first on Kit Bakke.

It’s not all about Protest

While Protest on Trial: the Seattle 7 Conspiracy, my latest book, is getting most of the publicity this spring, it’s not the only one out there.

Dancing on the Edge, my Young Adult book about grieving, discovery, real and imaginary friends, traveling in England and 12 year old Dot’s irritating aunt has been reprinted by Chatwin Press and is available in paperback and Kindle.

Starred by Publishers Weekly, the reviewer wrote, “with complex characters and eloquent prose, it’s an absorbing story of a girl’s surprising path through her grief.”

Earlier this week I had the chance to talk about Dancing on the Edge with school teacher and blogtalk radio host Laura Moe. Here’s a link to our conversation, which itself traveled widely—beginning and ending with Dancing on the Edge, but extending to my other two books as well, including Miss Alcott’s Email, which is being reprinted this year in honor of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Little Women. More on that to come!

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Amazon's Bananas

How do you read that? “Amazon is bananas”? Or “Amazon’s gone bananas”? Or maybe just plain “the bananas of Amazon”?

If you picked the last one, you’d be correct. This afternoon I walked by an Amazon building (there are dozens in Seattle, stretching from Lake Union north to downtown—small two story buildings to forty story glass behemoths, not to mention three geodesic domes melded together like soap bubbles).

Amazon’s Bubbles in downtown Seattle

Walking by one of the smaller buildings was a small shed with a homemade sign “Community Banana Stand.” Two people were sitting on chairs behind a row of wooden packing boxes filled with bananas. People walked by and took a banana. I had to find out what was going on. Besides, I was a little peckish myself.

I went up to the banana boxes and subtly looked around for a cash register. None in sight.

“What’s going on here?”

“We’re giving away bananas.”

“Gosh, how long has this been going on?”

“About a year and a half. We’re here every day giving away bananas.”

By then I was hooked. A million questions sprung to mind. Turns out they give away around 10,000 bananas every day, five days a week. Who knew? Certainly not me. I talked to the man and woman (called “banistas” of course) behind the banana boxes for about 10 minutes—it was midday on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr Day, and during that time probably twenty bananas found new homes.

I asked about un-given away bananas. What did they do with them? Once a week, people from the Urban Rest Stop come by and pick them up to make banana bread or muffins to give to their clients. The Urban Rest Stop is a wonderful local organization that provides showers and laundry facilities for homeless people. Most homeless people have jobs, about 70% by their count, and so need showers and clean clothes on a regular basis. The Urban Rest Stop opens at 5:30 am and runs to capacity until 9:30 pm on weekdays with slightly shorter hours on Saturdays and Sundays.

The guy giving away bananas also said he’s made banana sorbet or granita from some of the leftover fruit. Totally delicious, he said and as easy as mushing up a few bananas, freezing them in a jar and then breaking them up with a fork.

Googling around a little, I see that free bananas are not universally loved. The Wall Street Journal thought maybe local fruit and veg sellers would lose banana sales. Maybe this is just one more of Jeff Bezos’ campaigns for world domination. All this press, though, was from mid 2017—nothing more recent. The criticism reminds me of the excellent documentary Poverty Inc. about how donating our used clothing to the developing world prevents indigenous small businesses from succeeding. Not sure that exactly applies to giving away bananas in booming Seattle, but interested to learn more.

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