Ice bed: A polar bear naps on an ice bed carved into a small iceberg in the far north, off Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. Winner of the People’s Choice Award. Nima Sarikhani/Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
British amateur photographer Nima Sarikhani called it an honor to win the award for the dreamy scene “Ice Bed,” captured off Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, saying that the image “stirred strong emotions,” such as hope, in those who saw it.
“Whilst climate change is the biggest challenge we face, I hope that this photograph also inspires hope; there is still time to fix the mess we have caused,” Sarikhani added in a press release.
Organizers said more than 75,000 people voted in the competition — a record number.
“Ice Bed” was chosen from a shortlist of 25 images, which was previously narrowed down from around 50,000 entries. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London.
Douglas Gurr, director of the Natural History Museum, described the winning shot as “poignant” and “breathtaking.”
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Napping polar bear image wins top wildlife photography prize
Ed note: My friend and publisher Greg Shaw has deep roots in Oklahoma, Washington DC and Seattle. Greg is in the midst of an eclectic career–speech writer, Microsoft Director, Walla Walla Sweets baseball team owner, publisher (Clyde Hill Publishing), former Crosscut CEO and now author of a book of poetry (Rust in August). Here are his reading suggestions.
Better late than never. Here are the books I most enjoyed reading last year.
Reading is a very personal experience. For this reason, you will notice that I’ve included a few stories about why these books resonated with me.
A reviewer compared this novel with To Kill A Mockingbird – a drama built upon legal and social justice. The author of Stealing is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, and her setting is northeastern Oklahoma where I once worked as a journalist, including for the Cherokee Advocate tribal newspaper. This is a sweet and then terrifying story of a young Cherokee girl who ends up in the nightmare that was Indian boarding schools. I can imagine some saying, why read something so depressing? My response: this novel is about the greatness of the human spirit and the beauty that is Cherokee community culture.
In my early twenties I was a speechwriter for the Secretary of the Interior, a cabinet position focused on our public lands and the environment. During that brief time, I read every naturalist and environmental book I could get my hands on. It’s a rich bookshelf. Brinkley, one of the most engaging historians in generations, brings to life the Long Sixties, stretching from the late 1950s into the 1970s. This is the story of activists, including scientists but also artists, pushing America toward environmental reform is as strategic as it is inspirational.
Steven Wright has for a very long time been my favorite comedian. Deadpan and cerebral, he can make you think differently about the world in only a few sentences. Harold is the story of bright boy with a load of insights and a load of laughs. Ideas arrive on the wings of birds, literally. Readers may or may not agree with me, but it reminds me in some ways of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
If you love literature, read this. Genius. Diaz explores truth and deception behind unfathomable wealth and the writing of a bestselling novel from 1937, Bonds. Winner of the Booker Prize for 2022.
If you love literature, read this, too. Verghese is a treasure. Set in Kerala, India, the novel tells the story of three generations in which at least one family member dies of drowning. In this region, water is everywhere. It is a beautifully told story with the medical insight you would expect from this professor of medicine at Stanford University. It’s an Oprah’s Book Club chose this for 2023. Oh, and the audiobook is narrated by the author who has a stunning range of voices and accents! (Continue for more great suggestions)
It’s the most miserable time of the year: tax season.
Americans are about to spend millions of hours and billions of dollars filing their federal income taxes, and they are pretty sure they know who is responsible for their pain: The misanthropes at the Internal Revenue Service.
But we’re here to convince you that the I.R.S. is not the problem.
Yes, it should be easy to file taxes. And yes, it should be free. That’s how it works in the rest of the developed world, and it could very easily work that way here, too. It is absurd that America’s tax system is so antiquated and complicated that most people must pay someone else to help them pay the government.
So what is standing in the way of progress?
Watch.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on The IRS is not the problem
Historically, U.S. currency has been the domain of men, but the U.S. Mint is ever so slightly adjusting the gender balance this year with new quarters depicting American women.
It wasn’t until 1979 that the Susan B. Anthony Dollar became the first U.S. circulating coin to feature an American woman, and her successors were at first far and few between. The Sacagawea Golden Dollar Coin was issued in 2000 and Helen Keller appeared on Alabama’s state quarter in 2003. In 2022, though, the Mint got busy. The bureau’s American Women Quarters Program became its first circulating coin program dedicated exclusively to women. The four-year series, which has already featured depictions of Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou, and Sally Ride, will have introduced 20 new quarters into circulation that show women by the time the program wraps in 2025.
[Image: U.S. Mint]
This year’s designs include depictions of the “Queen of Salsa,” Celia Cruz, and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor. Cruz, the Cuban-American salsa singer, is shown on her quarter with her signature catchphrase “¡AZÚCAR!,” or Spanish for “sugar!” while Walker, a Civil War-era surgeon, is shown in hers wearing her medal.
[Image: U.S. Mint]
Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink (D-Hawaii), the first woman of color to serve in Congress, was a coauthor of Title IX, and she’s depicted in her quarter design wearing a lei with documents representing her signature legislation in front of the U.S. Capitol. (Continued)
Sloane Crosley with Ben GibbardGrief is for PeopleFri 3/1 at 7:30PM | $5-$25 Sliding Scale | In-Person Sloane Crosley with Ben Gibbard Grief is for People Praised for her humor and sharp wit, essayist and novelist Sloane Crosley delivers her first memoir Grief is for People, exploring how loss can take many forms. Crosley seeks to upend the traditional grief memoir and offer both consolation and challenge to standard conceptions of mourning. Crosley’s talk is for anyone in a current time of sorrow or who has experienced a loss and might welcome a discussion beyond platitudes. Tickets to this event are free for ages 22 and under!Get Tickets
The move to a long-term care facility is often difficult but necessary for frail patients. For their partners, it can mean a new set of challenges.
After moving his partner of 33 years to a nursing home, Joseph Drolet, a retired lawyer in Atlanta, said his fear of what would happen to her if he died or became disabled has abated.
Ed Note: This article reminds me how fortunate we are to have the memory care support at Skyline, and caring for the caregivers. Also it’s fortunate that we have the nearby resources of the Memory Hub and Frye Museum.
Even as the signals of approaching dementia became impossible to ignore, Joseph Drolet dreaded the prospect of moving his partner into a long-term care facility.
Mr. Drolet, 79, and his beloved Rebecca, 71, both retired lawyers and prosecutors in Atlanta, had been a couple for 33 years, though they retained separate homes. In 2019, she began getting lost while driving, mishandling her finances and struggling with the television remote. The diagnosis — Alzheimer’s disease — came in 2021.
Over time, Mr. Drolet moved Rebecca (whose surname he asked to withhold to protect her privacy) into his home. But serving as her round-the-clock caregiver, as she needed help with every daily task, became exhausting and untenable. Rebecca began wandering their neighborhood and “getting dressed in the middle of the night, preparing for trips that weren’t happening,” Mr. Drolet recalled.
Last year, when he determined that Rebecca no longer really knew where she was, he felt it was time to move her to a nearby memory-care residence.
Putting a spouse or partner in a nursing home, for any reason, represents a fraught transition for a couple, one that can mean release from the sometimes crushing burden of caregiving, but can also be accompanied by lingering depression, anxiety and guilt, studies have shown.
“That everything was on my shoulders for the care of a very vulnerable person — that stress left,” Mr. Drolet said. After Rebecca left, “the 24-hour duties could be taken by somebody else.” His constant fear of what would happen to Rebecca if he died or became disabled also abated.
Still, as he visited her daily, Mr. Drolet felt his exhaustion “replaced by feelings of guilt and anxiety.” Was Rebecca being cared for as well as he had cared for her? Though she seemed content, the answer, he said, was no.
After his visits, he said that he would, “go home to the house, where everywhere I look is the reminder of her absence.” He wept during our phone call.
“When one relinquishes the day-to-day responsibility to the staff, that may come as a relief,” said Joseph Gaugler, a gerontologist at the University of Minnesota who has led much of the research on patients’ transition to institutional care. Dr. Gaugler has found that “for caregivers, feelings of depression and burden actually drop quite significantly, across multiplestudies.”
Yet nursing-home placement poses particular challenges for spouses compared with other family caregivers. An early and often-cited 2004 study of long-term care for patients with Alzheimer’s disease found that spouses were more often depressed before placement than other family members and more likely to be depressed and anxious afterward.
“Spouses are deemed to be more responsible than sons or daughters,” said Richard Schulz, a retired social psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh and lead author of the study. “Institutional care, in some circles, is viewed as giving up, relinquishing responsibilities one shouldn’t relinquish.”
Adult children and siblings are less likely to have shared a home with the patient for decades and to experience its emptiness after the person leaves. However attentive the family members may be, if they also have jobs and families of their own, “we don’t expect them to do as much,” Dr. Schulz added. Only spouses took that vow about sickness and health, until parted by death.
Dr. Schulz’s study found that nearly half of spousal caregivers visited institutionalized loved ones at least daily, compared with only about a quarter of caregivers who weren’t spouses.
Family members undertake multiple tasks on those visits. In nursing homes, family caregivers are so apt to assist with personal care like feeding and grooming, as well as with mobility, activities and socialization, that one recent study called them “an invisible work force.”
“Too often, institutionalization is thought of as the end of family caregiving. It’s not,” Dr. Gaugler said. In fact, shouldering the new tasks of overseeing care, advocating on behalf of the resident and monitoring the staff means that “in some ways, there’s a chance of substituting one set of challenges for another.” (continued)
Ed note: The scam described seems unbelievable because there were so many red flags. But it did and does still happen. If anything like this is in your life, talk to a trusted family member or advisor. The scam attempts seem to be increasing and more clever over time. Remember, don’t click on links unless from a trusted source; the Feds don’t call you; listen to your bank and financial advisor.
Between June and October last year, I was scammed.
It was by someone impersonating the chair of the Federal Trade Commission who said my money was in danger. I was threatened with arrest (for money-laundering and child porn) and with breaking the law if I told anyone (my children, friends, banks). I was told that the people threatening my savings would be caught if the government “secured my money.” Once the case was closed, my money would be returned.
I didn’t discover the lies until months later. By then, the money was gone. My career was in tatters. I had to retire. I hope a pension is forthcoming. I’m an academic with degrees in earth sciences, I had been teaching college for 30-plus years and am not so easy to intimidate, but they got me. I had lived in a scientific bubble, unaware that this could happen.
What did happen? And what were the red flags I missed?
On June 2, 2023, my computer screen flashed with a message that it had been hacked and that I must phone an 888 number to get a technician. Red flag #1. I called the number; don’t call numbers like this.
I was redirected to the “Chairperson of the Federal Trade Commission.” Red flag #2. A federal official will never call you. I was told some accounts had been used for fraud and theft, and there was a “pending arrest warrant for money-laundering and child pornography.” Red flag #3. Arrest warrants are never issued by phone and/or text message.
I was then told I could not tell anyone about this under the Privacy Act. Red flag #4. The U.S. Privacy Act of 1974 does not apply to civilians; it applies to employees and officials of the federal government.
I was told to send $187,000 to the federal government to “secure my account(s) to keep money launderers from using it.” Red flag #5. A request for a large amount of money, to be delivered immediately.
I was told that once the money was received, my “case would be closed and all money would be reimbursed.” I withdrew half the money from a bank and my retirement savings. Bank managers repeatedly asked if I was being pressured to make these withdrawals. I lied; no one would crack this wall of secrecy, I vowed.
By mid-August and my forced retirement, the scammers had more than what they said they required but insisted on the retirement-based balance in my accounts. The scammers described in great detail how the funds were to be delivered. I made withdrawals, deposited money, withdrew more money. I even turned over bitcoin.
An Oct. 10 text from the “FTC chair” said my case was closed; documents and cashier’s checks would arrive at my home in a week.
But eight days later, everything came crashing down. I happened to see something from a bank that I had taken notes on in July. I knew everything, instantly. The whole picture unspooled; the entire operation was all lies. I had believed it and was robbed of $400,000 and $80,000 in taxes.
I started reporting the scam right away: local police, the FTC, FBI, IRS, federal lawmakers and banks. Will I recover my money? I highly doubt it and do not count on it. I am using food banks and hoping to return to employment.
At age 76 I’m healthy and strong but what if someone else in this situation were not? It’s a painful question.
Be safe and look out for each other.
Linda Khandro is a geologist, earth and space science educator, musician and artist in Shoreline.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on I’m a college professor. I fell for a scam that drained my life savings
Ed note: Punxsutawney Phil’s winter predictions were in on Feb 2nd. He’s right 40% of the time–much like our political polls. No shadow this year so we’ll have an early spring. He seems to be right about.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Nine more months to endure
February 21: Managing Money: A Caregiver’s Guide to Finances
March 20: Understanding Alzheimer’s & Other Dementias
April 17: Healthy Living for Your Brain & Body
A free in-person education program on a topic related to Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Light refreshments will be provided.To register, email Kimber Behrends or call 206-529-3865.
Posted inDementia|Comments Off on Alzheimer’s Association Education
Serving on non-profits boards, I was obliged to attend DEI training sessions. Among other things, I learned that assimilation was cultural genocide. I then cursed my immigrant grandparents. Seduced by assimilation, they deprived me of my Irish heritage– a diet of boiled potatoes and a sixth-grade education.
However, after finishing DEI training, I realized how transformative these sessions were. I now advocate DEI training to embrace the maligned minority group to which I belong, the Left Handers.
Here is what studies have shown about a marginalized minority group that:
During the Middle Ages were thought to be possessed by the Devil.
According to Joshua Goodman, a Harvard economist, left-handers scored 10 to 12 percent below average on measures of cognitive skill, even after controlling for health and family background and have “more emotional and behavioral problems.”
Other academic studies found left-handers had shorter life spans, anger-control issues and insomnia, experienced high levels of prenatal hormones, allergies, birth trauma, and immune disorders.
Professors would be fired for suggesting an ethnic or religious group was genetically inferior. Where are Harvard, MIT, and Penn when left-handers need them?
Left-handers, 12% of the population, are the only minority group that is routinely subject to hate speech, handist slurs such as gauche, sinister, adroit, awkward, and dexterous. Perversely, the over-educated believe that use of such words marks them as articulate rather than narrow-minded bigots.
In Seattle uttering the phrase “a Jewish compliment” or “an Asian compliment” would be punished by Impalement or the Breaking Wheel, while “a left-handed compliment” prompts a knowing smile.
The language police demand substitution of “unhoused” for homeless and Latinx for Latino. Immigrants challenged by the English language are “Emergent Bilinguals.” Lefties get no anodyne euphemisms such as “the equally handed.” We are simply clumsy.
All right-handed people should attend DEI sessions on Handism to learn what life is like for the equally-handed. They will sit at left-handed desks and smear ink on their hands as they write from right to left. At the dinner they will suffer the microaggressions of constant elbowing, and table manners that demand oafish, uncouth and graceless actions.
For a week they must use left-handed tools and utensils: peelers, doors, handrails, measuring cups, tape measures, cameras, zippers, trowels, rotary cutters, ice cream scoops, paint rollers, handguns, rifles, box cutters, utility knives, garden pruners, wire cutters, strippers, wrenches, pliers, Swiss Army knives, tweezers, pie cutter/server, corkscrews, breadknives, chainsaws, circular saws, weed whackers, grinders, sanders, other power tools, and spiral notebooks.
DEI trainers need no tests to reveal unconscious bias. In every language, the bias is explicit: The English word left comes from Old English lyft, meaning idle, weak, or useless. Other languages suggest right means correct and left means wrong, clumsy, or bad.
I conclude that dextronormative oppression is world-wide pandemic.
Today, several states across the nation will celebrate the legacy of Fred Korematsu. Although the Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution is not recognized in Washington state, I urge everyone to remember the stories not only of Korematsu, but also of Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru “Min” Yasui, Mitsuye Endo and others who brought legal challenges to the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans.
To learn more about Korematsu’s life and struggle for justice, you can visit physical sites, such as the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, or read “Enduring Conviction,” by Lorraine Bannai, a professor at Seattle University School of Law who was part of the legal team that successfully challenged Korematsu’s conviction.
After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which granted U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John DeWitt the power to remove persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast and incarcerate them in camps. Of the almost 120,000 Japanese individuals who were incarcerated, two-thirds were, like Korematsu, American citizens. At 22, Korematsu defied the removal order in Oakland, Calif., and fought his criminal conviction up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court decided in a 6-3 decision that Korematsu’s constitutional rights could be abridged in light of military necessity. The majority’s opinion drew three dissents, with Justice Frank Murphy writing that the majority opinion functioned as a “legalization of racism.”
Growing up, I never saw myself in Korematsu, despite — or more likely because — of the fact that I am Asian American. Being of Korean descent, I distanced myself from being associated with Chinese or Japanese Americans when I was younger because I felt it diminished my individuality. But as I learned more about Korematsu’s story, I realized that I had, to some degree, committed the very wrong he had protested: viewing him as Japanese rather than American.
Like me, Korematsu grew up believing that he was American, and had, in his words, “nothin’ to do” with his ancestral home. Whereas I have only imagined what it might be like to have a non-Asian last name or to have Western features, Korematsu was forced to take actions to conceal his ethnicity. After he violated the exclusion order, Korematsu changed his name to “Clyde Sarah.” And after much hesitation, he ultimately walked up to the door of a plastic surgeon who promised (but failed) to change his facial features.
Although these acts were, at the time, decried as evidence of Korematsu’s disloyalty as a potential Japanese spy, they are now recognized as evidence of our nation’s disloyalty to its citizens. These subtler harms metastasize out of the loneliness that comes from being forced to stand between two communities. Whereas I have only experienced the occasional racial slight and disagreement in Asian American organizations, Korematsu was ostracized both by the community at large and the Japanese American community. His own family rejected him for defying the law. When the Supreme Court issued its decision, Korematsu asked himself, “Am I an American or not?” He recalled that, “When I found out that I lost my decision, I thought I lost my country.”
But what makes someone American? In awarding Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom, President Bill Clinton stated that, by having his conviction overturned, Korematsu received what he wanted most of all: “the chance to feel like an American, once again.” Korematsu was American before, during, and after his case. The differences lie in the actions he took to feel more American, whether it be as simple as serving as a volunteer with the Boy Scouts of America, or as bold as demonstrating solidarity with Arab Americans following 9/11. Today, I urge everyone to reflect on how and why we can see ourselves in Korematsu’s story, and what it means to be, and feel, American.
Eugene Lee is a lawyer who lives in Seattle.
Posted inLaw, Race|Comments Off on Remembering the courage of Fred Korematsu
The Fitness and and Wellness subcommittee is bringing back the popular Skyline Virtual Walk. Among the many “walks” we have taken in the past are the Oregon Trail, Route 66, and the Pacific Crest Trail.
For those of you who have never participated in one of these events it is a community wide, non-competitive “walk” to add a little fun to our physical activity during our often dreary winter. This year we are heading to South America where we will be hiking the Andes. The Andes are the world’s longest mountain range, 5,500 miles, and second only to the Himalayas in average elevation. We’ll start in Quito, Ecuador with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one foot in the southern hemisphere. We’ll hike through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. Along the way we’ll explore Cuzco and Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley of the Incas and perhaps take a side trip to La Rinconada, at 3 miles above sea level, the highest permanent settlement in the world. Can we make it to Ushuaia,
the southern most city in the world? Your exercise activities converted into miles can help us get there.
To participate in this event all you have to do is report the amount of your exercise activities during the month of February. The Fitness and Wellness subcommittee will convert your activities into miles and, combined with your fellow residents’ miles we will work our way down the Andes. You can monitor our weekly progress by checking out the maps of South America in each tower.
All the details of this virtual community adventure will be in the packet of material you will receive shortly. Our Take a Hike in the Andes Virtual Walk will kick-off at the February 1st Happy Hour in the Cascade Tower Glacier Lounge. See you on the trail.
Reload document 
Open in new tab 
