Category: General Thoughts

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Understanding great structures

I just finished this course. I generally prefer the audio to the video because I can listen while walking, but this one needs to be video so you can see the structures. I have been watching while using the climbing machine at Gold’s Gym. It is perfect, since I have no place else to go and have to give it my full attention. When I tried to watch these courses before, I always tried to “multitask.” I suppose running while watching is multitasking, but when you get in the rhythm the body goes auto-pilot. I recommend the course. Next time at the gym, I will start one on geology.

Reference – http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/science/understanding-the-world-s-greatest-structures-science-and-innovation-from-antiquity-to-modernity.html

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Urban Waterways in Anacostia

I attended the Urban Waterways Symposium to better understand urban environmental issues. They are very different from the ones I am used to. A big difference is that the people involved do not own the land they are trying to conserve. There are lots of rules and lots of other stakeholder. If I notice some erosion that could use some rip-rap, my only concern is how much the rocks will cost and if I can get the kid to move them. It is not so easy in an urban environment.

Former DC Mayor Anthony Williams was the keynote speaker. He was very interesting and funny, but maybe more cerebral than lots of politicians. He joked that it was strange for him going from being a big wheel to an ordinary guy. He jokes that people used to come out to meet him; now he has to be careful not to get a ticket when he parks and walks in by himself. He talked about the need to plan for the 21st Century, pointing out that cities had often shunned their waterfronts in the past but now they embrace them. The Anacostia was still not very embraced. He also contrasted the type of conservation advocated by guys like Theodore Roosevelt (maybe my tradition) and the needs of an urban population. The Roosevelt model conserves nature. People are visitors or living from the natural resources. An urban model has people in but not of nature. They need to be integrated.


I also attended a panel discussion on gentrification. This is an interesting subject with lots of points of view. One of the concerns of people in Anacostia is that if they make it too nice they will be displaced by rich people. One of the speakers talked about gentrification the way I might talk about invasive species. It is a different point of view from mine. I suppose I would be the gentrifier if I moved in and Mariza is doing that with her house in Baltimore. I thought about how close Anacostia is to downtown DC and how the parks are really nice. I could become an invasive there.

I thought about my old neighborhood in Milwaukee. Growing up there, I thought it was the way it was always and would be. I still feel a little possessive about it, although I have not skin in that game anymore. It is only a landscape of memory. Neighborhoods are much more transient than we think. Few of the old neighbors are left. The new people think it has always been that way. Parts of Bay View are gentrifying. It is funny that relatively rich people move into the old worker housing and consider it a step up. I suppose the difference is that they have only a couple people in these houses that used to have families of five or ten kids.
It makes sense to reach out where you go. When I bought the tree farms in Brunswick County, I tried to get to know people so that I could fit in better. I found people were welcoming. They knew things I wanted to know and would share information. It must be as true in the urban environment, maybe more so because there are so many more people around. I want to learn more about this environment and will attend more of these conferences.
My picture up top shows the Thurgood Marshall Academy, a public charter school, where the conference was held.   It was a old building but very well maintained.   Next is the panel on gentrification.  Below that is MLK Avenue right outside the school and at the bottom is Anacostia Metro.  It is difference from all the other stations I have seen. It does not have the high, vaulted ceilings (although they tried to keep the general look with cross arches) and it barely underground.  Sunlight comes in from upstairs.
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Needing less

Sometimes we need less. In fact, there is some advantage to single people living in very small spaces, since it encourages them to get out of the apartment. The limited space also discourage accumulation of lots of stuff. But you know what will come next. Activists will discover the “injustice” of the small space and demand a “livable” standard.
Fairfield Inn where I stay in South Hill has a kind of mini-suite with a bedroom separated by a half wall from a kind of sitting room. The King Suite, which is 375 sq Feet, would be sufficient for an individual or a couple w/o kids. They would have to be organized and frugal, i.e. not have too much stuff, but it could be pleasant enough. That would be a nice design for an apartment building.
Reference
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Creole culture

I learned a few things today. First I attended a talk by a poet from New Orleans about Creole culture with Mona Lisa Saloy I visited New Orleans a couple years ago and walked all across the city from the French Quarter to the causeway so I feel a little like I know the place, but it was good to learn a bit more about aspect of the culture.

The creole culture is very old. Mona Lisa described how it was formed from a mix of French and African strains. It is hundreds of years old and related to the Caribbean cultures nearby. She showed pictures of Mardi-Gras, which reminds much of Carnival in Brazil
Smithsonian is doing a series of lectures on “intangible culture.” By its nature, intangible culture is hard to grasp. It is the culture carried in the hearts and minds of people, manifest in behaviors and not in stuff. That means that it is by nature also dynamic and ephemeral and must be renewed with each generation.

Mona Lisa read some of her poetry and it was a performance worth hearing. I imagine that the poem just do not have the same heft if you just read them. The beauty of intangible culture is also it poignancy. You have to be there. It can be experienced and enjoyed but not preserved and only imperfectly transmitted. I recall once driving from Payson, Arizona to Phoenix. It is a beautiful drive down the piney mountains to the desert floor. I remember sublimely beautiful purple clouds at sunset. I thought of taking a picture, but I knew it would not do it justice. We stopped to enjoy the moment, the colors and the warm breeze and the feeling that cannot be expressed. This is how I understand the concept of intangible culture. That is the intangible, cannot be touched or maybe recedes when you try do touch it or have it. It can be described but not really transmitted.
Funny thing. It is what you cannot express that gives life meaning.
Reference
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Asians more wealth than whites in America

Changing demographics something new and the same old American success story. Various immigrant groups have surpassed the wealth of native born populations. If we look at America in twenty-five year intervals, we would find that people were pretty much sure that not too much had changed recently but it was going to. They would be right about the second, but not the first.
At some points in our history, outsiders have included, the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Jews, the Poles and … well lots of others. Each time the established people thought THIS time these guys would never fit in. As erstwhile newcomers integrate into the American mainstream, everybody starts to think this was just inevitable. We remember our struggles or those of our family and forget that we are now part of the establishment and so are they.
Reference
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Net Neutrality

The internet is an excellent example of government, businesses and people each doing their parts to innovate. Like all good relationships, no partner was too overbearing. They played important but separate roles. Government was a catalyst for innovation and provided R&D muscle, but not manage or plan innovation.

Innovation is synonymous with inequality. Early adopters take the risks and reap benefits. When innovations go mainstream, they turn. Some fret about “fairness”. Pocket calculators were “for the rich” some advocated bans in the interests of fairness. We talked about digital divides. Some demanded government create basic computers for all. The market got there first.

Regulation need not slow innovation, but it usually does. The quest for “fairness” slows innovation. It is a trade-off between innovation & inclusion.W developed one of the most remarkable systems in history and in a short time and made it generally available. Careful not to break it.
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FS and political appointees

When I went off to my first FS job in 1985, I was told that my job was to represent the American nation, not only the current occupant of the WH. Of course we advocated administration policies, but we also brought in speakers and programs of legitimate American opinion that disagreed. America does not speak with one voice and neither did we. When I managed the speaker program in 2007, I specifically directed that our speakers represent the diversity of American opinion, again not only the point of view of the current occupant of the WH. It is a tribute to wise political leadership that I not only got away with that but also prospered.

It is a difficult balance. Of course, we work for the President, but we expect that a wise president will recognize his limitations and know that the American government is greater than the American president and that the American nation is greater than both.

In an always uncertain world, we can never know which of our efforts will be most successful and useful. That is why we need to have lots of things working, some of them contradictory. It is the strength of diversity not that any particular option is best but that among the many some will be the right ones.

I have worked with political appointees who were excellent. They bring an important perspective that we professionals usually lack. But the effectiveness comes more from the tension between professionals and political than from the harmony among them. If the balance tips too far in the political direction, we will be missing out on having different paths forward when conditions warrant or political leadership changes, as it always does.

Whether we welcome or dread it, all professionals must look forward to working for a different political leadership and serving a new president with equal vigor as we serve the current one, just as we served the predecessor as eagerly as we do the current leader.

In my experience, political appointees often do not understand this. They think that their man in the WH is the culmination of some sort of historical process, that we are happy to be rid of the old guy and embracing the new. This is true for some of us sometimes, but we must curb our enthusiasm or distaste because that is what professionals do.

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George C Marshall and Loudon County

George C Marshall was a model soldier & civil servant. Winston Churchill called him the organizer of victory in World War II and FDR relied on him. He took his duty very seriously and was uniformly excellent the things he did. He was crucial both to winning the war and securing the peace after the fighting was over. The Marshall Plan is probably the greatest act by a victor in any conflict in world history. But he was a fantastically modest man. He never pushed himself forward and unlike most other great men of the time refused to keep a journal or write memoirs. Winston Churchill quipped, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” Marshall refused to make is easy even for others to sing his praises.

Alex and I visited his house in Leesburg today. It is a modest place considering the greatness of the man, but houses were generally smaller back then. Marshall was attracted to the garden. Gardening was his hobby and preferred method of recreation. He also rode horses.
The house is modestly furnished, but the furnishings are interesting as they reflect Marshall’s career and many of the great people he knew. He spent a lot of time in China and has furniture and art from there. Madame Chiang stayed at the house her gifts are still there. There was a painting by Winston Churchill. A copy still hangs there depicting a scene in Morocco, but the original was worth too much and was sold at auction. There are two portraits of Robert E. Lee, one as a young man and the other the more familiar one when he was older. Marshall admired Lee and tried to model his own behavior on Lee’s.

This was the first house Marshall really owned, having lived in U.S. Army quarters most of the rest of his life. He and his wife shopped estate sales for most of the other furniture.
The house is complicated because parts of it accreted onto older structures. There is an original house literally swallowed by a newer one. You can see this in one of the halls, as the internal wall has windows that used to face outward.

This part of Loudon County is very pleasant, rolling hills and lots of green. It is full of historical sites, mostly well-maintained. We also went to a place called the Oatlands, not far from George C Marshall’s place. It was a big estate that grew mostly grains. Later it became mostly a residence. There is a wonderful garden in that traditional Virginia style.

The house at Oatlands had lots of interesting stories. We met a delightful old lady who seemed to know all of them.   She told us the about the family, related to “King” Carter, once the richest man in the colonies and about the Corcoron side of the family that endowed the famous galleries.   Behind a door was maybe the most interesting thing, if small.  It was a lock of George Washington’s hair. One of the extended family members, Robert Livingston, was the one who administered the presidential oath to Washington and got this as a gift.  The family had quite a network.

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A great man I had never heard about

Westmoreland Davis lived a long and interesting life. He was born into a rich Virginia family that had most of its money investing in Virginia state bonds just before the Civil War. It seemed like a good safe investment. His father died and left his mother with those bonds and not much else. But Westmorland came back. He got a full-scholarship to VMI and then went to UVA and Columbia to study law, went into the law and made a fortune. After he made his fortune in the law, he decided to do something completely different and become a farmer.

Loudon County in those days was a backward, rural area with soil depleted by poor farming practices and tobacco. Most of the farmers still practiced farmed the way their grandfathers had but with less to work with. It was not an auspicious place to start, although I suppose no experience in farming might be a bit of an advantage when those with experience are doing things wrong.

There were other pluses. Westmorland was well-financed. He wanted his farm to make money, but it really didn’t need to. But his biggest advantage was his scientific mind. He scanned the world for best practices, tried them out in Virginia, improved them and then shared them with his neighbors.

Besides providing a good local example of what could work, his main vehicle to communicate was a magazine called “The Southern Planter.” In this, he discussed what he had learned and he never wrote about anything he had not understood or tried himself. He brought in better quality animals, including Guernsey cows to improve Loudon dairy herds. Among his biggest contributions was more extensive liming of the soil. Liming to sweeten soil was understood, but imperfectly. Westmorland discovered that it took a lot more than most people thought, or could afford, so he also worked with suppliers and railroads to lower the costs.

Besides farming, Westmorland’s passion was fox hunting. He was the master of the hunt, which meant that his job was to get permission from local landowners to cross their land and offer compensation for any damage. This and his farming examples put him in touch with lots of people and he became locally famous and well-esteemed. Which helped in his next unusual career move; he ran for governor of Virginia. And he won. He came into office at an interesting time, in 1918 just as the U.S. was getting into the full swing of World War I. Of course, troops from Virginia were participating.

Virginia governors, then as now, can serve only one four-year term. After his term, Westmorland ran unsuccessfully for Senate and then returned to his farming. He became one of America’s leading producers of turkeys.

I learned about this great man who I had never heard of before when I went with Alex to visit Morven Park, his home in Loudon County. As part of Alex’s classes on preservation, he has to visit various local historical sites in order to analyze how they are presented. My pictures show the outside of the Morven Mansion. Taking pictures inside was not allowed. Pity. Westmorland traveled the world and collected all sorts of things. The house is kind of a museum. It is very pleasant and bright. He had a whole wall of Flemish tapestries that were very nice, but you can imagine some of furniture in the collections on the set of the Adam’s family.

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Science beats superstition – for now

I went to the signing ceremony of a book about the Kennewick Man at the Natural History Museum. Douglas Owsley, the author, is a real hero. He stood up to the forces of politically correct superstition to get the science done.

The Kennewick Man skeleton was discovered in Washington State back in 1996. At first they thought it was the skeleton of a settler, since he did not have characteristics of Native Americans. They were surprised to find that it was more than 9000 years old.
At that point, the local Indian tribes claimed him and demanded that scientific investigation stop. They wanted to destroy the remains, i.e. rebury them and not tell where. According to their creation myths, they had always been there, so anybody from there was theirs. “From our oral histories, we know that our people have been part of this land since the beginning of time. We do not believe that our people migrated here from another continent, as the scientists do.”

I am not a believer in creation science, whether usual or native varieties. I respect that some people do believe this stuff, but I don’t believe we should give them the authority to veto science, but this was what was happening. Read the linked article. I think you will be appalled by what our government mindlessly did. They went so far as to destroy (vandalize) the site.

The lesson is that science is never really settled. We should never legislate science or stand in the way or inquiry. Pre-history is more complex than we like. The ancestors of the Native American were not the only ones and maybe not the first to enter North America. Telling this story should be the work of historians and scientists, not tribal leaders, politicians or bureaucrats.

We are still not safe. The remains are still held by the ACE and the tribes are still trying to get them bones “back” so that they can remove them forever from scientific study. But we have learned a lot already. An important lesson already is that races are not permanent. This man would belong to none of the modern ethnic groups or races. We are always in a state of change.