I was at FSI last week taking the seminar in new trends in public diplomacy. I didn’t get that many new insights, but it is clear that some of the infatuation with the new media is wearing off, or maybe just becoming more routine. The new media is an essential tool, but we all recognize that it is not the panacea that it seemed to be. Most importantly, you still need something interesting to say.
It was a tough few days, since I took the seminar during the day but still had to do my promotion panel assessments. I could work from home via computer (another great thing re technology) but it was like having two almost full time jobs. But it was worth the time to get involved. You never know how much you learn because very often once you hear something related to what you know you think you just knew it already.
I keep going longer on the bike trail when I ride my bike to FSI and this time I took the more round about way that I used to use before the built a kind of bike bypass. They put up a new sign explaining that this particular part of the park had been a dairy farm until 1955. It was the last working dairy farm in Arlington. Some of the local homeowners have a sweet deal. They live right up against the park, which gives them a really big backyard that they don’t have to mow or pay for. I suppose the downside is you cannot kick people out.
Arlington is a pleasant area. Above is one of the streets on the way to FSI. Below is the place where Chrissy & I lived when I first came into the FS. We lived in the downstairs apartment, one bedroom. We thought it was really luxurious, but it really wasn’t. The back is up against a park trail, so it was very nice.
Below are sunflowers planted near my bike trail. The thing that is important to notice about them is that they are there at all. Somebody planted them and nobody knocked them down, despite the fact that dozens of people pass each minute. I think that says something about the neighborhood.
There are some tip-offs about the quality of a neighborhood. Flowers are an indicator on the plus side, as is general neatness and lack of litter. It also is a good sign if you don’t see lots of security fences or signs warning about loitering or trespassing. The character of the dominant dog population also makes a difference. Labradors, golden retrievers and terriers are good; pit bulls and Rottweilers not so much. I am suspicious of places where there are bars or sliding screens on shops, especially liquor stores. Being able to see more than one liquor store from any one spot is also a red flag. Lots of advertisements for lottery tickets is a bad sign and a big clue that you have crossed into a less desirable part of town are those places that cash checks 24 hours a day or give payday loans. If you see storefronts advertising bail bonds, get the heck away from that neighborhood. But sunflowers are good.
Above are sprinklers near the Potomac. I found a place right in the rain shadow of a couple trees so that the water didn’t get to me. I sat there a few minutes enjoying the peaceful sound of the spraying water until it started to rain. That evening we got more than an inch of rain. If you sprinkle your lawn or wash your car it evidently increases the chances of rain.
Above it the Ripley Center at Smithsonian, where they often hold the lectures I attend. It is like the tip of an iceberg. That little structure is the entrance to a vast underground complex of halls and museums. They didn’t want to put lots of buildings up on the Mall, so they put them under.
We attended the hearing for the six guys accused of beating Alex. It was painful to hear the story of how these thugs attacked him, unprovoked, and started to kick him in the face. Evidently there was a pattern of attacks.
I don’t want innocent people to get in trouble and I know that is why we have all the complicated legal procedures. It is good that the system is stacked in favor of defendants. But their lawyers were clearly fishing. They asked the cop on the stand all sorts of questions clearly designed to tax his recollection, things that really didn’t matter and/or things he could not have known.
Alex took the stand to tell what he knew, which wasn’t much. He only knows that he found himself on the ground being kicked. None of the lawyers for the defendants cross examined him. I was glad for that; he could not have added anything, but I thought the lawyers might try to cloud the issue somehow.
I made a special point of staring at the defendants as they were identified. They didn’t show emotion. During the recess they all went into the bathroom and I got to wait in line among them. None of them looked at me. I don’t know what that means, if anything. Maybe they had to go to the bathroom really bad and that was all that was on their minds. I cannot tell who is guilty just by looking. I was hoping they would brag or say something that I could bring to the attention of the authorities, but they were completely silent. They were very savvy defendants, which I think is significant.
The authorities are still waiting for DNA evidence. Human blood was splattered on one of their shirts. You have to wonder how it got there and if it is Alex’s it will prove that the guy in question at least came close enough to get splashed. Until that comes in, they had enough evidence to hold only one of the guys. As I wrote above, I don’t want innocent guys punished. But they caught these guys at the scene where they were identified at the time by witnesses. Maybe they were not all involved, but the probably all know who was involved. There is no honor in protecting bad guys.
Alex is philosophical about this. He doesn’t want them punished very much, since they are young and perhaps inexperienced. But anybody who would hit a stranger from behind and then commence to kick him in the head and face is dangerous to society. I can understand, if not accept, assault during a robbery, but they didn’t try to rob Alex. It takes a special kind of evil personality to want to hurt a stranger purely out of hatred. I have never even contemplated doing anything like that and I don’t think many people do. It is our civic duty to get these kinds of people out of circulation until his attitude improves or his energy diminishes.
A witness clearly identified the one guy they were able to hold. That is how they got him. She said she had seen him earlier too. Evidently he attacked a customer headed into the gas station with his money in hand. The witness said that the perp hit the customer in the face, took the money and taunted him saying, “What are you gonna do now?” and walked away. That is why she could identify him with such certainty as the one who attacked Alex when he showed up a second time. I stood next to him when waiting in the bathroom line. He just looked at his shoes and seemed very harmless. He was wearing a suit and had cut off the dreadlocks he sported a couple months ago. He didn’t look much like the picture we had seen before. You cannot judge guilt by looking at people and they tend to behave differently in the courthouse than they do on the street.
Despite my move to the new building, I still have to go down to the old area both to work out at Gold’s Gym and to make it possible to get on the Metro.
As I think I have explained before, I ride only one way. It is 17 miles from my house to the my old USIA building by the route I have to take on my bike to avoid traffic. I used to ride both ways, but 34 miles a day is a lot and it is daunting to have to ride home after a long day’s work. Maybe I have just become wimpier in my old age, but I enjoy the ride to work most days, while the ride back was just a chore. I have developed several rationalizations, the foremost of which is that the one-way trip extends my biking season because I don’t have to worry about darkness in spring and fall. I also don’t worry so much about the weather. If it is not raining in the morning I am okay. I don’t have to worry about late afternoon storms. Finally, it is fairly comfortable in the early morning, but often enervatingly hot by the afternoon.
Besides all that, I think my Metro-bike combo helped get me promoted. I cannot get on the train with my bike until after 7pm, so I used to hang around work until then waiting. Sometimes I actually did some useful work, but probably as importantly I was SEEN to be at work. I always told the truth; I told people that I was merely waiting for the train, but they didn’t believe me, so I got points for consistently “working” late.
Now I generally leave work around 6:30, which give me plenty of time for a leisurely ride along the Smithsonian Mall and my vigorous but short workout at Gold’s Gym. You can see the Smithsonian with the shades of evening on the longest day of the year. Along the way I have observed traffic enforcement. Cars can park along the main streets during non-rush hours and lots of people evidently don’t know when that period ends. When rush-hour starts, tow trucks fan out to ticket the cars and pull them off the road and onto the grassy verges. It must come as a bit of a surprise to hapless tourists. It is a little hard on the grass. The tow truck below, BTW, is NOT doing the grass towing. I don’t think it is ever legal to park on that part of 14th Street and we all pity the fool who parked there just before rush hour. His vehicle is going to a public impound in DC, from which it may never emerge.
BTW – my title “tow the line” is a variation on the saying, “toe the line.” I know the difference. The latter saying is based on conforming to a military line. The former is just wrong, but it does create an image that could make sense. A tow truck, I suppose, could tow a line.
Today was simply beautiful bike weather. It is unusually fresh and cool for the season. It was around 60 degrees for my ride this morning, with a nice tail wind and beautiful blue skies and low humidity. This is not the usual middle of June weather in Washington.
I manage to fall off the bike yesterday. I tried to jump onto the path too precipitously after passing some pedestrians spread all across the path. I left a little skin on the pavement and today it hurts like mad. I guess it is like a burn. It is a scrape just deep enough to excite all the pain receptors but not deep enough to turn any of them off. The leg is a bit worse, but they are not the kinds of things that take too long to heal. I had to wear short sleeves so as not to stain a good shirt, since some blood is still rubbing off.
Way back when I first came to DC, I had a spectacular fall near Arlington Cemetery. I fell and slid on my back across the wet pavement. It made a very conspicuous but not deep wounds, much like today’s but all over my back. I washed it off when I got to work, but it wasn’t finished and I ruined one of my shirts. Lesson learned.
There is a sequel. I was discussing biking a couple years later with my colleague George Lannon in Brazil. He said he would never ride to work because of the danger. When I inquired further, he said that he had once seen “some a-hole” slide clear across the road on his back near Arlington Cemetery. That evidently put him off biking forever. Small world.
I ride past that place almost every day. I haven’t fallen there for twenty-five years.
Last Friday was bike to work day. I noticed an unusual amount of bike traffic that day, but now it is back to normal. The weather has been good for biking, warm but not hot with gentle winds. I have been at FSI this week, which is a little more than half way as far as my usual ride, but since I have to make the return uphill trip, it is a little harder.
I see some of the same people on the bike trails, which is not surprising. Most of the people riding at that time are commuters like me. We tend to ride faster and more consistently. I am very consistent in my biking times. Only a strong wind makes significant differences.
People who bike only occasionally or for leisure are less predictable or consistent. Sometimes I see someone way ahead, but when I catch up and pass, they go faster and pass me back. Then they slow down again until I pass again and the game continues. One of the habits some bikers have is a kind of lock colonization. People leave their locks attached to bike racks, presumably because they are too onerous to carry around every day. I think some people just forget about them after a while and they accumulate.
Most people walking dogs on the trail are okay, but some have bad habits and so do their dogs. The offensive dog walkers have their animals on long leases. The dogs run back and forth across the path, alternatively getting in the way and setting up a rope barrier across the trail. Dogs have become dumber and less agile. They used to be alert. Old time dogs knew when you got close and would leap out of the way with alacrity. Many of today’s dogs are like slow-witted drunks. They stare blankly as you come up on them and often don’t move until the owner pulls them away. I think they are too cosseted by their owners. It has dulled their instincts. Maybe there is more inbreeding too. Those little designer dogs seem to be the stupidest.
I haven’t really figured out the runner etiquette. I run to the extreme side of the trail or on the gravel verge. It is easy to bikes to pass me. Some runners insist on running down the center line. I give them as much space as I can when I am riding, but if they are striding the center there is not much space to give them. The center runners tend to be the crankiest. Some of them complain when you pass them about not getting enough space or warning. Shitheads. I just keep on going. But most of the runners are good. I think the ratio is like I used to tell the kids. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people are good, but you pass more than 100 people.
There is one old guy I have been seeing for more than ten years, a barrel chested guy with a Marine style haircut. I never talk to him but he seems so familiar that I wave at him when I pass.
A big snapping turtle was stranded in the middle of Shreve Road when I rode home. Cars were swerving to avoid it and I didn’t figure it was long for this world. His shell would have done him no good against the car tires. At the pace he was going, I wondered how he got that far w/o getting squashed. A guy stopped his car and we kicked it along until it ambled to safety on the side of the road. Another passing motorist suggested we grab it by the tail on the assumption that it couldn’t snap us in that position, but both of us were afraid of the thing. It opened its mouth threateningly as every time we nudged it and everybody knows that those things can snap off a finger if they get a good shot. There is a wetland on the side of the road where we shooed him. The other side is just a construction site. It seemed like the thing was crossing from the verdant swamp to the rocky construction site. It would have been a mistake, but turtles don’t do a lot of hard thinking.
Why did the turtle cross the road? To get to the Shell Station.
If there is significance in numbers, this birthday is significant. I am double nickels now and it was double nickels the year I was born. You notice birthdays that end in zero or five. They seem like milestones. This one really isn’t, beyond the numbers. Nevertheless, it is an occasion to pause and think about past, present and future. But I don’t have any profound thoughts today.
Life has been good so far and most things worked out better than I planned, although I can’t say that I ever really had a smart plan. Maybe that’s why things worked out. You don’t have to be smart if you are lucky and I have been lucky.
Religions, regions, firms, families, clubs and even individuals often have distinctive cultures that help determine the choices they make. You might object that these things are ephemeral, but all cultures are ephemeral. Some last a short time, some a long time, but none is forever. When we try to keep them as they are, we create either cultural museums or graveyards. America has been home to many cultures, many that you don’t notice toady because over time they melted into the American mainstream, making their contribution by not remaining separate. It is pluralism that worked for us.
Pluralism allows a variety of different philosophies and organization types to coexist, jostle together and produces disparate results that together are usually better than from what would seem a more logical planning process. It requires an acceptance of inequality and pluralism thrives when central governments exert only generalized authority (as was the case in the U.S. through much of our history.) Pluralism creates a kind of cultural marketplace of choice, where the most adaptive ones succeed and all of them collide, collaborate, combine and constantly change into something else.
Pluralism works because it allows the greater society to take advantage of productive arrangements and systems that might be destructive or dangerous if applied too widely or too long. The difference between a life giving medicine and a life taking poison is often in the dosage and the application. Pluralism allows us to take advantage of the positives of many systems w/o suffering the ill effects that would afflict us if they were widely applied. People can choose to live under particular rules that might be odious to others, and it works much better if one standard does not cover the whole society. We enjoy a kind of a la carte cultural menu in the U.S. We are free to copy the best and leave the rest. None of us has to keep all the aspects of the culture we were born into, and few of us do.
I thought about this as we visited Old Salem in Winston-Salem, NC. Many people confuse this Salem with Salem, MA famous for the witch trials. Both were founded by religious groups that followed a kind of a localized theocratic socialism, but they are otherwise not very similar.
Old Salem is something like Colonial Williamsburg on smaller scale. I found it really interesting because it told the story of the Moravian settlement. I knew almost nothing about that before. It is well worth the visit. The people who work there and play roles make products by hand using the old methods. But they don’t always remain strictly in character, which allows them to explain a little more about how things are. The gunsmith, for example, told us that there is a good demand for his custom products. Their products go to high end collectors and museums. The market is strong, he said.
The people who work there really seem to like their work. The guy in charge of the organ played us several of the pieces used in the churches and sang along. He had a good voice. Everybody enthusiastically told us about the history of their location and of the community in general.
Salem, NC was consciously founded as a commercial and agricultural colony of the Moravian protestant sect, which traces its roots to Jan Hus, a century before Martin Luther. They seem to have been practical people who sought the elegance of simplicity. Society was divided into groups, called choirs, based on status – young men, young women, male children, female children. married men, married women etc. When they died, they were buried according to their choir, not with their families. The graveyard, called God’s Acre, has flat tombstones, so that nobody is above anybody else. The Moravians clean the graves and scrub the stones each Easter.
The Moravians were good planners and were very well organized. They trained their people in useful trades and skills and produced simple but high quality products. One of the reenactors told us that Moravians supplied good products at reasonable prices and that they were honest. Having all three of those things at the same time was rare on the frontier. Their community prospered. Their location in the middle of North Carolina also contribute to their prosperity. It was right on the wagon road and had access to the growing North Carolina frontier, with its cheap land and good soils.
Organization was the key to success and organization and the needs of the community circumscribed personal choice. Boys were trained in trades, which were chosen for them by the church authorities, so that supply of labor met demand. Nobody could actually own land in Salem; it was all leased from the church and held on conditions of good behavior, including attending church and living a moral life. Women could marry when they were eighteen. Men could marry when they could demonstrate the ability to support a family. A man would build a shop and a home and then petition the church for permission to marry. He could submit a specific name if he had a girl in mind, but that match might not be approved. If he didn’t know any girls he especially liked, he could make a generic request and the church authorities made suggestions.
People like the Moravians made very valuable contributions to the development of North Carolina and to America, but most of us would not want to live under their strict rules, nor would those rules necessarily be adaptable to a wider society or changing conditions. In a pluralistic society, they were able to survive and prosper with the implicit conditions that they produce something useful for the wider America. W/o access to political power, they could not impose their views outside the fold. In fact, the ultimate punishment for those who consistently did not play by the rules was to be kicked out of the community. In other words, at base it was a free-choice association. You could leave if you didn’t agree and you could be forced to leave is others didn’t agree with you.
In a pluralistic society, individuals have the right to belong to whatever group that you want provided they will take you. All the individuals involved have the choice and they have to work out the particular relationships. It has to do with freedom of assembly. You can choose your friends and associates and should not be forced into any group membership. Groups themselves have no right to exist beyond the choices of their individual members. This is an important distinction. Pluralism as we have used it empowers individuals to be members of groups of their choice. If you empower groups over individuals you have a type of corporatism or fascism.
There were advantages and disadvantages to being a member. Leaving out the spiritual benefits, which believers would have considered the most important aspect of their lives, on the pragmatic side members, on average, were more prosperous than their similarly situated neighbors. Of course, they had to accept the strict rules, which included devoting large parts of your income, energy and time to the collective and one of the important reasons behind their success was their adherence to the rules. Would it be considered unfair that others couldn’t get the advantages w/o buying the whole organization?
Pluralism demands diversity and requires inequality of results. These are the things that choice will inevitably produce. We sacrifice pluralism and choice in exchange for greater equality. This may be a wise decision at times, but we should be aware of what we are doing – getting and giving up – and not hide it by misusing terms like diversity or multiculturalism. It should be about choice to the extent possible and that means picking up both ends of the stick and living with the results of our poor choices as well as our good ones.
The pictures are from around Old Salem. They include the gun smith, the organ master and some of the buildings. The flowers and the flowering tree are catalpa. They are also called Indian cigar trees, because of the long seed pods. I took a picture of this tree because it was so full of flowers and unusually beautiful.
The Biltmore is the biggest house in America, built by George Vanderbilt in the 1890s. It is part of a enormous estate. When Chrissy & I toured the house, the gardens and the general area, it changed our point of view a little. An estate this size is not all about the owners and it is not really about a house as a place to live.
The first thing I noticed is how much the place resembles a hotel. Hotels tended to copy many aspects of these mansions. The “winter dining room” at the Biltmore is a classier version of the Holidomes I used to like so much at Holiday Inns. Beyond that, these big houses were a lot like hotels in their functions. They were set up to host, entertain and feed guests with a large staff devoted to doing it.
The second thing I noticed is how much the owners of this estate played their role. The Vanderbilts always seemed to be on stage. They changed their clothes dozens of times a day. There were specialty clothes for walking in the eating each of the meals, playing tennis, sitting in the library or walking in the garden. Below is the gate to the Estate. After you pass through the gate, it still takes you around 15 minutes to drive to the actual estate buildings.
My first impulse was to dislike the Vanderbilts because they had piles of money and engaged in conspicuous consumption on a grand scale. But they did a lot of good with the money too. This massive investment in the hills of North Carolina employed lots of people and not only maids, butlers and kitchen staff. Building the place required a massive labor force, as did building and maintaining the gardens. Of course those things are still a type of consumption. But the estate also included working farms and forests. Some of the science of forestry was invented on the estate. Gifford Pincot, the father of American forestry worked here. I learned how to use a “Biltmore stick” to estimate timber volume when I studied forestry in college. I never knew were the word came from. I guess I just figured it was named after some guy named Biltmore. It was named after the estate because its use originate here.
Fredrick Law Olmsted designed the gardens, the same landscape architect who designed Central Park in New York. He also designed some parks in Milwaukee, including West Park (which became Washington Park), Riverside Park and Lake Park. Olmsted was expert in the use of water in the landscape. Above is a bridge over the bass pond he created at the end of the garden. Below is the rose garden.
You couldn’t take pictures in the house. It was a nice place. As I said, it reminded me of a nice hotel, so if you have been in a nice hotel, you have an idea. It must have been really impressive 100 years ago. Today we are accustomed to big buildings (like hotels). At the time the Biltmore had new innovations such as electricity, indoor bathrooms and refrigeration. Now everybody has those things. The rich today can live a very opulent life, but the practical difference between being rich and poor is smaller because being poor is a lot less miserable than it used to be.
I don’t much like coffee, but I like cream and sugar mixed with coffee. I am especially fond of the French vanilla cream, but I put so much of it in that I need a strong coffee to stand up to it. IMO, the best coffee for my purposes is the Sumatra coffee at Pilot. Pilot is a truck stop station, which usually has the least expensive gas on the highway. The bathrooms are clean and they are usually lively places, so I stop at Pilot whenever it is reasonably convenient.
McDonald’s is okay in moderation
Above is the McDonald’s in Asheville, one of the fancier McDonald’s I have visited. It was hosting lots of old people while we were there. My father always complained about old people when he used to shop at Pic-n-Save. He said they were so slow and they always just stood around in the way. And I used to make fun of him. Maybe you have to be almost old yourself to make these kinds of judgments because I am beginning to understand his point. It took ten minutes to get at the straws, napkins and catchup. Evidently how many napkins to take and whether or not you need a straw is a decision that requires more thought than some people can give it in less time.
I have been eating at McDonald’s since HS. They used to give you a free Big-Mac for every A you got, which was a good marketing strategy. I didn’t get many free Big-Macs, but I did get to think they were good. Some people go on about fast food being bad for you, but it doesn’t hurt in moderation. “Nothing too much” is a good life guide. I used to have a minor cholesterol problem, but then I got a low dose of Lipitor and the problem was solved. Any problem you can afford to buy off is not a problem; it is merely an expense. I call my daily dose of Lipitor my “cheeseburger tax.” Maybe someday it will kill me, but not today.
Granny’s Country Kitchen
It isn’t always fast food. Other food can have lots of calories and cholesterol. We stopped off at Granny’s Kitchen just past Hickory, NC. Chrissy & I both had the pulled pork and French fries. Chrissy didn’t eat all of hers, so I helped out. We have been trying to go to local restaurants when we travel to get a little more of the local flavor. The trouble is that there is less & less local flavor that is worth eating unless you have inside local knowledge. Various franchises are pushing them out or at least away from the places convenient to the major highways.
Boutique hotels
We stayed at the Grand Bohemian hotel near the Biltmore Estate. It is in the Biltmore Village, a kind of ersatz central European hamlet set the southern hills. The Grand Bohemian is part of the Marriott’s “Signature Collection” of boutique hotels, i.e. ostensibly ones with special or unique character. It is different, but I don’t know that I like the character. It is European-like and made to look like a hunting lodge. I used to visit one like it near Bielsko in Poland. That one was used by the Hapsburgs in the 19th Century. It had character and I liked it. But the one in Asheville is not a hunting lodge. Hunting lodges are set out in the forests and fields. This one is surrounded by busy roads … and the ersatz village.
These Central European style buildings are just not suited to the Carolina climate. They are designed to hold heat and support roaring fires. These are things that are not really appropriate in North Carolina. It doesn’t get very cold around here, but it is hot and humid a good part of the year. Of course, our modern society defeats the weather with air conditioning, but still it looks funny all buttoned up in a hot climate.
Weird weakness
The hotel has a nice health center, however. I don’t use treadmills very much. I prefer just to go outside and run. But these had TVs attached, so you could just walk along and watch TV rather than couch potato it. I lifted some of the weights. Something strange happened last week. My right arm got 1/3 weaker. I noticed I was bit clumsy and when I tried to use the one-hand weights, I found that my right arm couldn’t do curls with 45 lbs, as usual. My left arm did okay with the 45lb (which I have been using for 30 years BTW), but with the right I could do only 30lbs. Otherwise it was normal, just a lot weaker, but really only with the curls. I can still do chin-ups and presses. It also sometimes has that tingling feeling, like when you sleep on it. If it doesn’t get better maybe I will have it checked out.
