Category: My life

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Reopening My Favorite Passage

They closed the gates of Ft Meyer after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.   I didn’t know they were reopened.  Actually they are not open to through automobile traffic, but bikes can use the bike route that goes through Ft Meyer and Arlington Cemetery. 

Going this way saves me around ten minutes riding and it lets me avoid ten minutes worth of the least pleasant and most dangerous part of the ride.  To transit Ft Meyer, I need only show my government ID and be polite to the guards. As you can see in the picture above, Ft Meyer is nice to with well kept period architecture.  After riding along the quiet streets of the base, you come out into Arlington Cemetery and it is all downhill from there. 

I like the idea of going through and past all the monuments.   My ride now takes me through Arlington Cemetery, across Memorial Bridge, past the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument and then down the Smithsonian Mall in sight of the Capitol.   I often stop to read the plaques and later look them up on the Internet.  The whole idea of a memorial is to remind visitors of the event or concept.   Daily exposure to history really does work, at least for me. 

A good example is the statue above.  It is Phil Kearny.  I knew about Ft Phil Kearny, which guarded to Bozman Trail in Wyoming.  The Bozman trail is essentially I-90 these days and we stopped off at the fort on one of our cross country trips.  But I never knew much of anything about its namesake.  After seeing the statue, I did a little reading.  Phil Kearny was a respected professional soldier and Union officer killed in the Battle of Chantilly, not long after uttering the ominous words, “The Rebel bullet that can kill me has not yet been molded.”

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Lucky to Live in Washington

I spent the day with Alex in Washington showing him what a great place it is to be. He is finishing with NOVA this summer but will not start JMU until spring semester and worries that his brain will atrophy, so we are working up a work-study-exercise regime.  I think he is beginning to understand how lucky he is to have this opportunity. I don’t think there is any place better than Washington to pursue this kind of self-education, since we have all the free museums around the Smithsonian, think tanks, parks, monuments … But you have to do it deliberately.

We started off at AEI with panel discussion on regulation of greenhouse gases.  Alex thought the guy from the Sierra Club made the best presentation. You can read about it here. I agree. He was mostly talking about the problems of coal. Coal is cheap but dirty from start to finish. In Appalachia, they remove whole mountains and dump them into the valleys.   We can reclaim these lands with good forestry, but we all probably better off not doing it in the first place. 

After that, we just blended in with the tourists.   Our first stop was the wax museum.   You can see some of the pictures.    You really feel like you are standing with the person.   They are very careful to get the heights and shapes close to the real person.  

We next went through the aquarium.   The National Aquarium in Washington is not nearly as good as the one in Baltimore, but it is worth going if you are in the neighborhood.     This is the first time that I saw a living snakehead.   These are terrible invasive species that can wipe out the native fish.  They are very tough and hard to get rid of.   They are semi-amphibious and can literally walk from one pond to another.    The take-away is that if you see one of these things crush it with a rock or cut it with a shovel, but do not let it survive. 

Finally, we went over to the Natural History Museum. We have been there many times before, but I learned a few things. Alex pointed out that the Eocene period was warmer than most of the time during the Mesozoic and, of course, much warmer than today.  According to what I read, the earth was free of permanent ice and forests covered all the moist parts of the earth, all the way to the poles.  It is interesting how trees adapted to living inside the Arctic Circle, where it is dark part of the year and always light in summers, but the sun is never overhead and always comes as a low angle, so trees needed to orient their branches more toward the sides. 

Alex rolled his eyes when I was excited by a new (I think temporary) exhibit on soils.  I didn’t learn much new, but I like looking at the actual exhibits.  Soil is really nothing more than rock fragments and decaying shit, but very few things are more complex, more crucial and more often ignored.

Anyway, we had a good day and “met” lots of celebrities like Johnny Depp above.  We had lunch at a place called “the Bottom Line” on I Street.  I had a very good mushroom cheese burger.   Alex has the Philly cheese steak sandwich.

The skeleton above is a giant sloth.  I don’t know how that thing could have survived.  Must have been one big tree that thing hung from.

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Merrifield Town Center

The redevelopment around the Dunn Loring Metro and the Merrifield Town Center is moving slowly but inexorably along.   The plan has been in place since before we bought our house in 1997.  Basically, the plan is for something like a metro transit-oriented development like in Arlington from Ballston to Roslyn.   We are a little farther out and this area will be more car friendly.  For example, they are widening Gallows Road,  so they had to tear down various fast food places (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut etc).  There is still nothing in those places, but farther down they have started to build condominiums and planning the town center too.

The economic downturn slowed some of the plans, but is not stopping them.  Above is the old multiplex cinema.  It is shut down now.  They owned a really big area of parking lots.  Originally, it was a drive in.  Anyway, much of the parking area will eventually be developed into condos and retail space.  Parking will be in multistory parking garages.   Below is the old surface parking lot.  There is a series on History Channel called “Life Without People”.  It shows how fast nature returns when people leave.  You can something of that here and it has only been a year.

Below used to be a Pizza Hut.  It is always amazing to me how small the footprint of a building looks when the structure is gone.  

Below are shops in the new Merrifield Town Center.  It is a good example of mixed use.  There is residential on top, parking below and retail on street level, all within walking distance of the metro.  I am glad they are building, if slowly.  The shops are a little yuppified.  I got a ice cream cone that cost $5.23.  It was a fancy cone, but that is a little too much to pay, IMO.  It reminds me of the old story about the horse who walks into a bar.   The bartender says, “We don’t get many horses in here.”  The horse replies, “With these prices, I am not surprised.” 

Below are dawn redwoods.  Chrissy had them planted at our complex when she was home-owner association president.  They will be one of her lasting contributions.  Dawn redwoods are related to our redwoods and sequoias as well as baldcypress.  Like baldcypress, they are deciduous and they look like baldcypress, except dawn redwoods are more pyramidal.  In their native forests in Sichuan and Hubei Provinces in China, they grow rapidly to around 90 feet.  They were thought to be extinct until  groves were discovered in the Chinese mountains in 1948. Since they are recent introductions to Virginia, nobody is sure how big they will get here, but they are growing very fast and strong.   Sometimes trees grow better away from their native ranges.   California redwoods, for example,  were introduced to New Zealand.  There are some growing there that are around 150 years old and doing even better than they do in California.  Experts expect that within a few years the tallest redwoods, so the tallest trees in the world, will be in New Zealand. Redwoods may live 2000 years, but they do most of their growing early in their lives.

One more joke – A horse walks into a bar.  The bartender asks, “Why the long face?”

Below – neglect can be a good thing.  This is one of those drainage holes that they usually keep mowed.  Evidently, they lost control of this one and it is more distinct.  I like the cattails. 

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Espen Graduates

Espen graduated today.   Our last kid is now graduated.   He will study computer engineering at George Mason University this fall.   Espen has done well in school and I believe he will do well in life. He has an internship at Lockheed-Martin over the summer.  It will give him great experience. 

A graduation like this is bittersweet.   I am proud of my boy and glad that he is well on his way as an adult, but I miss the child and the baby I held.   Time flies.

I was happy with the public schools the kids attended.   George C Marshall is a good HS and the kids got a good education there. They held the graduation at the same place as Alex’s, at DAR Constitution Hall.  This is the link from Alex’s graduation.  Alex & Espen have been working out as you will see when you compare the pictures.

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Sweet Smell of Memory

This is the season for the smell of linden. It is a pleasant but elusive fragrance. The strange thing is that if you get really close to the blooms, you cannot smell them.  The fragrance overwhelms the senses in such concentrations.  That means that you can only catch a whiff on the breeze. It is a very Central European smell.   I remember it from my first visit to Germany.   The lindens are so prominent and pungent in Poland that they named their seventh month (our July) lipiec, which comes from their name for linden. 

In Northern Virginia we have a variety of introduced European lindens.   Fashion affects trees too and you could probably date neighborhoods by the mix of trees.  Many of the lindens we see today were planted twenty or thirty years ago.  Since then, zelkovas, pears and various kinds of cultivars I don’t even recognize have been more in style.  

The American versions of lindens are basswoods.   They are taller than their European cousins but the flowers are less conspicuous and the scent is there but a little less apparent.   Basswoods don’t grow around here naturally; at least I have never seen one.   We are just past the edge of their range.  They are more common farther north and throughout the Midwest and they are very familiar in southern Wisconsin, where they tend to team up with sugar maples and – near lake Michigan but not inland – beech trees to form climax forests any place where the soil is deep enough.

Bees are fond of basswood flowers, which bloom in June and July. There is even a specific kind of honey made from basswood nectar.

Smell is persistent in memory and the linen smell brings back so many for me.  I remember the lindens were blooming when I went to Minneapolis for my MBA in June 1983 and even today the smell brings back those memories.  I bet I could do statistics better under a linden tree. There were a couple big basswood trees on the road from Chrissy’s family farm in Holmen and that image pops back too at the smell of the lindens.   But the most interesting memory connection comes from my visit to Germany in 1979.  When I smell the lindens, sometimes I can taste the beer.   Sense memory is complex. Evidently the sense of smell is tied closely to the emotional memory in the amygdala.  I am sure somebody has done scientific studies that explain it but I don’t feel like looking it up.

Someday I will plant a garden with lindens, lilacs, marigolds, hawthorn, honeysuckle, lavender & jasmine.  Those produce the nicest smells.

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Getting Old

The old keep getting older and the young must do the same.  I am 54 years old today. Assuming that I live to be 108, I am middle aged.  I went running yesterday and ran my record worst time for a late spring run. I only measure the middle mile, so that it is not a sprint or a worn out finish. I used to run it in under six minutes.  Yesterday it took almost ten. Fat guys and women now sometimes pass me AND stay ahead. Running still feels the same.  Maybe my watch is defective.  Maybe all watches are defective. Maybe I will just leave the watch at home, since none of them seem to measure my running accurately. I still do ten chin-ups after each run. Since I never try to do more, I don’t know that I have become weaker in that respect.  I am pretty sure I have but since I don’t know I have plausible deniability.   

I am also not as quick as I used to be mentally. This is an interesting situation. I sense that my raw cognitive power has declined, but in compensation I have more experience so I respond better to some challenges. Emotional intelligence is higher, in other words. I am also better at judging situations so that I can do things I am better at doing and avoid the ones where I am weaker.

I read an article a long time ago about useful intelligence and how it develops over a lifetime.   Young people have more raw brainpower, but they lack the perspective and experience to make it useful in all fields.  The raw brain v experience makes the most difference in pure reasoning such as math.   If a person has not achieved something extraordinary in math by the time he is twenty-five, he never will. Achievements in physics come just a bit later and on it goes. In fields where experience and perspective make the most difference, older people do better.   Historians, statesmen and diplomats continue to get better.  They do their best work when they are fifty or more. That gives me a little comfort as I hobble down the the winding path.  The picture, BTW, is me cutting a path through the prickly brush on the tree farm.  The machine ran out of gas long before I ran out of brush to cut.  I suppose that is a metaphor for life.

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We Shall Not Soon See Their Like Again

Chrissy’s father died today.  He was ninety-three and had a full life.  

A lot happens during a life that spans almost a century.  It is hard to imagine life on a farm in the hills of western Wisconsin in 1915.   The work was still done mostly by muscle – human and horse – and the world after dusk was lit only by fire.  Electricity wouldn’t come out to the farm until the rural electrification program during the depression.

Arnold Johnson served in Patton’s army in World War II.  He was injured in battle and spent time in a hospital in Britain. After the war he returned to the farm that had been in his father’s family since they immigrated from Norway in the middle of the 19th Century.  He married Pearl Olson and they built a life together. Seven children followed.  Chrissy was number six, born when Arnold was already forty-five.

Pearl and Arnold enjoyed the kind of life you cannot have anymore.  They grew up in the green valleys (coulees formed by glacial melt waters in an area not glaciated) of western Wisconsin among generations of friends and family.  People didn’t move as much back then.  They didn’t have the kinds of opportunities we have now, but there were compensations.  They were held in place long enough to create multigenerational communities.

I was always impressed by how many people they knew and how many people knew them.   Into his eighties Arnold would do “meals on wheels” to help the “old” members of the community.   He helped mow their lawns and make their lives easier.  Community was important.

You should not mourn for the life well led and Arnold Johnson led a good life.   He did his duty to defend his country in its time of need.  He raised cows and crops that helped feed our people and lived his long life in a green, peaceful and pleasant corner of the world.   He and Pearl raised a family of seven children.  Their hard work provided enough to launch all of them into successful adulthood.   There are now fifteen grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren so far.   And when he died in old age, he was loved and missed by many. 

We should all wish to accomplish so much.

After they are gone, we always regret not paying closer attention to what the old folks tried to tell us.  We lament that we didn’t listen as well as we should have or get to know them as well as we could have. I talked to Arnold about the history of his farm and about his experience in the war, but not enough. There are things I would like to know that are now unknowable.  Young people don’t usually ask.  It is difficult for them to appreciate the experience of the older generation until they have reached an age where they have experienced some of the same sorts of life changes. By then it is too late.  Memories fade or are lost entirely.

Arnold was the last of his generation in our family. The “greatest generation” – the one that survived the Great Depression, fought World War II and rebuilt the country after those challenges – is passing away.   We shall not soon see their like again.  Now we are the old folks. 

We may never again visit Holmen or the old farm.  That part of our lives is finished.   The kids have vague memories of Wisconsin and the memory will disappear entirely in the next generation.  Young people have a hard time understanding that old people were not always old.  They also won’t listen until it is too late.  That is just the way it goes.  Old men forget and yet all shall be forgot.

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The Simple Life

Mariza moved to a new apartment.  It was not far from her old place.  Espen and Mariza’s boyfriend – Chris – helped.  Alex had to work.  We had to make a few trips in the pickup truck.   I told her that she has too much stuff, but I don’t suppose that it true in comparison to most other people her age.

I retold the story that when I moved to Madison, I carried everything with me in a duffle and backpack.   It wasn’t really a completely valid comparison.  I didn’t have any furniture because I had apartments that had furnishings.  Mariza doesn’t have too much in the way of clothes or other things.   She is good about not having too much more than she needs.   The big thing is that she doesn’t yet have a car and uses the light rail system or walk.  

Mariza’s street is below. It is a nice renewing neighborhood.  Not too far away, the nice houses like those you see in the picture are still boarded up.  The second picture is taken from Mariza’s back window.  The neigborhood declines literally on the other side of the tracks.  Espen and I drove through some of these neighborhoods on the way home.  Espen told me about the Dave Chappelle routine on the subject.  Chappelle can be offensive, BTW, so viewer discretion is advised on the link.

Simple is better

A simple life is better. When people get too much stuff it begins to oppress them. It is sad to see so many of those storage places popping up. I understand that you might store your possessions that you use seasonally or episodically, but that is not what is usually going on. 

You just cannot own enough to make you happy.  Of course, it is possible to have so little that you live in misery.   This is not really a problem in the modern U.S. anymore for most people.   Most of us have the opposite problem, although sometimes we are so busy grabbing more that we miss what has happened. 

The really good gift a person can give himself or others is examined experiences  You are better off spending that money on something where you do or learn something new.   I think the examined part is also important.  Experience is a great teacher but only if you pay attention.   

I am not a proponent of recession, but it does have some useful effects.  People are becoming more frugal again.  The economic boom times really lasted from 1982 until the beginning of last year.   The two recessions were mild.  We all got used to having more and more.    Pew Research finds that people say they “need” fewer things than they did last year.  This is a good trend.   Of course 8% think a flat screen TV is a necessity and 23% say the same about cable TV and 31% evidently figure that a life w/o high speed internet is not complete.    I guess we didn’t know how poor we really were before these things were available.    

Below – sic transit gloria mundi.  The overgrown monument was set up by one of Baltimore’s mayors, one John Lee Chapman. The original was set up in 1865.  It was renewed in 1915.  It probably was not on a freeway on-ramp at that time.  Now it is isolated by roads and a bit overgrown.   Notice in the background are trees-of-heaven.   Those are the invasive species I have to fight all the time on the farm. They are okay in the disturbed ground of the city.   The thing that makes them invasive is the same thing that makes them good city trees:  that they can grow fast in almost any conditions.

One more thing – this is the Mormon Temple.  I see it as I drive by on 495 on the way back from Mariza’s house.   Usually I am going too fast to take a picture.  We hit a traffic jam today long enough to get a shot.  It is more impressive than my picture shows, but this is the best I could do w/o endangering myself or others. 

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Battleship Wisconsin

I went down to Norfolk for Virginia Forestry Association meeting.   I have a lot to write from the meeting, but Norfolk itself was interesting.  Among the attractions is the Battleship Wisconsin.

I didn’t know that the battleship Wisconsin was docked there but I really enjoyed the visit.   You can find some of the details at this link.    

Battleships were the symbol of power for almost a century. They were made obsolete by the advent of sophisticated airpower & precise missiles, at least that is the usual explanation.  And it is true as far as it goes.  But there is more and it becomes clear as you walk around the ship.

A battleship is very much a product of the mechanical age.   It reminds you of an old factory and it is a giant machine in the early 20th Century sense.   It is filled with precision instruments and designed to be run by machinists and engineers, lots of them.   Loading the guns took big crews.  Keeping the rust off the boat took big crews.   Oiling the cogs and cranks took big crews.   A modern ship doesn’t have to be so big to carry the firepower and it doesn’t need the really big crews to make it work. 

As with factories on land, a lot of the tasks once done by vast crews of semi-skilled men are now done by machines.  The precision devices are replaced by electronics.  The calculations done by scores of engineers are now done instantly by computers.   We can no longer afford battleships because we no longer can afford the big crews needed to run them and we no longer need them anyway since a much smaller package can pack a much bigger payload.

Above – the battleship deck is made of teak wood.  It protected the steel deck below.  I wonder how much it would cost for such a well constructed teak deck now.  I don’t think I could afford even a small one at my house.

A battleship is beautiful and graceful.   Like a medieval castle, which was also a complicated engine of war, it now seems more a work of artful engineering than a very large lethal weapon.   But that is what it was.   It is worth seeing for all the reasons above.

Above – battleships were classy.  This is the silver set from the Wisconsin.  It was a gift from the people of Wisconsin to the USN.   My mother and father were taxpayers back then, so I guess my family helped buy it.