Month: May 2008

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Buried in Dust, with no Coca-Cola, Losing Hair

Dust Everywhere We had some big dust storms while I was gone, but my can was tightly closed so I thought I might avoid some.  I was wrong.  I write the word on the book to show the dust.  This deposited since I was gone.  Note the color.  It is not the kind of dust you find around the house.  All my clothes were dusty. My toothbrush was dusty.  My bed was dusty.   It just didn’t show up well in the pictures, so the best way I can show is with the dusty books above.  They were relatively clean when I left.

Usually, I sweep up or dust a little every day.  It is always dusty, but usually not this bad as a result.  You really don’t appreciate how much dust there is until you go away for a while. 

When I first took over my office & this can where I live, I was a little annoyed with my predecessor.  I though he left the place a bit gritty.  Now I understand that he just moved out a couple days before I moved in and that is all it takes to make the place as dusty as the Addams Family mansion.

It makes me much better appreciate places like the chow hall.  They always keep that place really clean and continually are winning the dust wars. 

Office transition

My staff members are still in tents.  I am in an office can.  It is not unpleasant and my colleagues were very good to me.  They dusted it, so I can home to a relatively clean environment there.  Good to have a little help from your friends.   They are suffering mightily, however, with the heat and the dust in the tents.

Office space geography is a challenge.  I like to do MBWA – management by walking around.  Lots of little problem can be solved before they become big problems and lots of opportunities can be generated before the sparks are lost if the boss is just there to nudge.  Good management is not really rocket science and just being there is much of the secret to success.  That is how I can add value to my already great team.  This office/tent arrangement makes it much harder.  I have to make a special point to walk out to the tent.  I see that I could easily get stuck and isolated in my office can.   There are certainly many things to do in the office, but usually when you are sitting at the desk you appear busier with important things than you actually are.  As I said above, I believe in peripatetic management.  It helps build the team and empowers every good worker. 

Fortunately, this construction period won’t last too long.   I talked to the guys actually doing the work and even the pessimistic scenario says end of May.  They are putting the wiring behind the walls (instead of hanging in front), repainting, giving us a real ceiling and generally improving the area.  My team members will also get two Plexiglas windows, like I have.  I think natural light is important and this will take away from the cave atmosphere.  It looks like we might get something that looks like a real office. 

The guy doing the construction told me that it will still be dusty, however.  Even if they seal the windows and make the doors tight, we cannot avoid the dust.

A Cola Free Environment

The chow hall has a serious problem – no diet cola of any kind.  We have no diet Coke AND no diet Pepsi.  This is a serious problem with the hot weather setting in.  I don’t know how long the crisis situation will persist.  The guys I talked to did not seem to know.  They are waiting for a shipment.

I have a supply in my refrigerator.  A dozen cans, which is good for a couple of days.  I fear I may be forced to drink diet Sprite (which they still have) or even … water.

UPDATE:  Since I wrote this, diet Coke has returned, hallelujah.

Hair Today; Gone Tomorrow

Speaking of water, on the way up I met a woman who was going to Baghdad.  She asked me if I thought the water here made your hair thin or fall out.   I don’t know what made her think I would know anything about hair matters.  Of course, maybe she just thought that I understood bald.   

My speculation is that it is not the water, but the dust.  This dust is alkaline and it always covers everything, including people.   I no longer really have a hair problem, but I do notice that my skin gets dry and flaky.  When I was in the U.S. I noticed it was not so much a problem, but it starting in again now.  Living in this desert is like daily exfoliation using 20-Mule-Team Borax.Maybe hair is related.  Or maybe the hair thing is just perception.  I didn’t have much hair when I arrived.  I don’thave less now.  Long, pretty hair is not much of a concern to me or to most of the guys I work with.

Working in Iraq

Maybe I complain too much.  I really like my colleagues here & the job we are doing together.  When I am done with Iraq, I don’t think I will miss anything about the place, but I will miss the people I work with, both Americans and Iraqis.   Why can’t I get a job like this in a nicer place?

Below – I had limited success with sunflowers.  My colleagues kept them alive while I was gone, but only three came up.  Maybe that is emblematic of all our work in Iraq. The construction workers have been very good and careful in avoiding them.

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You Just Wait in Q8

The big base at Ali Al Salem has a reasonably good chow hall, a nice MWR and a decent, if not great place to sleep.  But the whole installation is like a giant waiting room in a giant bus terminal in the Twilight Zone.

First you have to get all your papers stamped.  This is a fairly efficient, if confusing process.  Suffice to say, go to one tent to mill around until you figure out what to do, but do not leave until there is some kind of stamp on your travel orders.  That stamp is what lets you fly or take the bus.  W/o that stamp you will become a resident of the place.

Below C17 loading.  People get on first and wait for the gear to be loaded.

Another tent is where you catch the flights to Iraq.  You have to sign up for the place you want to go.  It might take a long time or not to get out.  In my case this time, I was very luck and got out the same night I came in.  This is uncommon. 

After sign up, you have to attend a general roll call twice a day.   If you fail to show up, you lose your place.   You also have to attend a specific role call for the flights going where you want to be.  You are not guaranteed a space.  They read off the names of people for whom they have space.  If they read your name and you say “here”, you get manifested for a specific flight.  That does not guarantee you will go or that the flight will fly, but it is a necessary step.

Each flight has a show time.   You show up will all your gear and get ready to wait.   In my recent case, we had a 2315 roll call where they told us we had a midnight show time.  We got on buses at 0145; the plane took off at around 0315 and we were in Al Asad a little more than an hour later.

After show time, you go on “lockdown”, which means you cannot leave the terminal expect to go to the bathroom.  Even that is risky, since they may call your flight at any time … or not.   You want to be around when announcements are made.  That is why you need a buddy system.  Make sure that you ask someone to listen for you if you need to make a head call.   In my above example, we were locked down for an hour and 45 minutes and this was three hours and fifteen minutes before the flight.   Makes you appreciate air travel in the U.S., bad as that can be.   For me, this was a great trip. Sometimes people get stuck for days or weeks.

C17 above – you can see the moving plates.

Our flight was a C17, which is an enormous, cavernous aircraft, like a flying warehouse.  The floor has rollers and modules that make it easy to switch out cargo or seats.  They just lock them into place and that is it.

I like the C17 because it is faster and marginally more comfortable than a C130.  Beyond that, there are lots of seats on the C17, so you usually don’t have to worry so much about getting bumped off it.  Despite my exalted civilian protocol rank, I get no priority, so I am liable to get bumped if someone or something important comes along.

An experienced traveler more than 5′ tall tries to get a seat on the side or in the very front.  It is a tight fit.

Above – reading lights are not so good in flight.

Back to Al Asad

We arrived in the early morning and it was comfortably cool.  I was happy to feel that weather.  As soon as the sun came up, however, it started to get hot.  Within about a half hour you could feel the difference.  It still is nothing like it will be, but we have the harbingers of heat all over the place.

Above – the road to Camp Ripper.  It reminds me of the closing scene of the old “Hulk” TV show, when David Banner has to hit the lonely road.

I decided to walk down.  It is only a 25 minute walk and it was pleasant in the early morning calm.  I am really glad I did that.  It gave me a better impression of Al Asad as I returned and took a little of the edge off the dread I was feeling on coming back.   This is an unpleasant place, but it is not that terrible.  I also looked forward to getting back to the job and back to my friends and colleagues working here.

Below – a new dawn in Al Asad.

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Protecting People not Places

Above is Boyton, Va, about 30 miles west of my tree farm.  It is a very charming place, but not growing very much.  It once sat on the main lines of communication.  Not anymore.  

I am hoping to buy another piece of forest land down in Brunswick County.  This would be 114 acres, about 90 acres in 12-year-old loblolly pine, the balance in stream management zones with natural regeneration hardwood stands from 1940.   This part of the state is Virginia’s “wood basket”.   The population has dropped over the years and collapse of the tobacco industry has pushed lots of worn out or marginal lands into trees.   That is why land is relatively cheap.  The soils are good for growing pine trees but not so good for other things.   In addition, the soils can absorb significant amounts of biosolids w/o creating a pollution problem.   This region should produce wood.  It is what it is good at doing. 

Forestry is not labor intensive as it once was.  It also does not need much in the way of infrastructure.   A particular stand of trees will only need the road about once every fifteen years.   This allows for lower maintenance and road construction costs.  It also means that a forestry area will support a lower population density.   The population will not grow and in some cases will actually decline.

Left – most southern towns have their reb statue.  This one is in Boyton in front of the courthouse.

Politicians hate this.  For one thing, it means fewer constituents and population decline (or lack of robust growth) somehow seems like a failure or at least a problem.   They often get the state to make local investments.  Everyplace, no matter how unlikely or isolated, tries to sell itself as a future tech hub.    Most of the time, these sorts of development projects fail, but they are successful just long enough to keep people trying.  It is sort of like slot machine pay off.

A smarter policy is to let regions do what they do best.    People in forest country can engage in forestry.   Given the capital intensive nature of today’s forestry, there is scope for some people to have good and high paying jobs – put not many of them.   A policy that tries to fix population on the land is silly, expensive and counterproductive.     Leave the high tech to Silicon Valley, or even the Research Triangle, which is not very far away in North Carolina.

The compassionate ask, “what about the people?”  We should ask that question right back at them.    How is it compassionate to hold people near the places they were born, where most of them cannot find good jobs and where all sorts of infrastructure is stretched to help them?   If people count, it might be better to help them move to Richmond or Raleigh, which are a little over 100 miles in opposite directions, or maybe someplace else entirely. 

Sometimes people would not have to move very far.   I already mentioned the Reseach Triangle. Southside Virginia also has some thriving regions.  South Hill is growing because of its place astride of big highways.   In addition the manmade lakes, like Lake Gaston, on the Roanoke River are magnets for people seeking leisure activity.   But there is no sense in freezing the population patterns of any particular point in history.   The land that is now my tree farm once supported a couple of large farming families.    The last ones left more than seventy years ago.  One of the places we made a wildlife feed plot and planted clover was the site of one of the homes.    Today my forestry contributes to the support of dozens of people spread around the area, but it doesn’t specifically support anybody, not even me, and certainly does not require anybody to actually live on the land and be there every day.

Nothing is forever.     Some places decline; others thrive.   The land remains, but people can move.   People should move to enjoy better opportunities.   

On the news the other day I saw a story about rebuilding New Orleans.   There was much gnashing of teeth because a couple years after Hurricane Katrina many areas remains unreconstructed.  As I understand it, the areas that are above sea level, such as the French Quarter, are already mostly rebuilt.    The low lying regions are the ones still depopulated and not rebuilt.   Good.   Some of these lowlands are best covered in wetland forests.  They should never have been developed in the first place and they certainly should not be redeveloped now that nature has reclaimed them.   Some places will gain population and some will lose.   There is plenty of land on higher ground.    Why be so stupid as to rebuild over and over in places that just don’t make sense?  This is especially true if you take into account probably effects of global warming.  It will be very expensive to rebuild these areas and it will be a colossal waste of money, as higher sea levels will inevitably cause they to be unlivable and soon.

Above is a stream management zone the often floods.  Notice how well the vegetation grows.  In the middle, if you look hard, you can see the baldcypress.  It is just leafing out.

On well managed forest land, we have stream management zones.   These are wetlands where we don’t cut because they protect water quality and soils.    They are also good for wildlife.  On my land, these areas account for around 20% of the total, so at least that much land is taken out of production.   These places flood, but it doesn’t much matter.    And when they do experience high water, they help slow the flood further downstream and let water soak in gradually.  

Building booms near seashores or along rivers have made us hostages to weather.   That is the major reason the costs of storm related losses keep on going up.  A flood along a stream management zone causes no trouble.  It may even be helpful in getting water to the roots of trees.     That same water in a developed region will cause millions of dollars of damage.   The news media will shortly be around to blame global warming or the current administration.  The actual culprit is the building on the flood prone land.   Losses will continue to grow to the extent we do that.   The government actually encourages stupid building practices by making low cost flood insurance available.   We should just say no. 

We should not treat every place equally.    Some places we should use intensely; others we should use extensively and some we should just leave alone.    This goes for natural and human communities.  However, these well might be different places at different times.   Government’s role should be to ease and facilitate transitions, not stand in the way of change or enable dumb behavior, but maybe that is too much to ask.