Jottings from a Reading of an Article

I haven't sat on the hay bale in a while:  been too busy in preparing for the cold to come and thinking I couldn't take the time to sit and chew on some alfalfa until I addressed some other issues in my life.  But, some moments just speak out of turn...

Had an old friend recommend 'all of us' read and pass on an article that she brought to our attention.  Ended up jotting down some things...  The article?  Bill Moyers: Howard Zinn Taught Us That It's OK If We Face Mission Impossible: 
Some jottings that were prompted by it:

As much as I may dislike the idea, the Tea Party, as a cultural concept, did demonstrate Zinn’s sense that it’s the one seemingly random action that can cascade into effective change, but I have to wonder; have wondered for decades: is it only so far? Is the inexorable weight of a glacier’s movement the firm control of plutocracy that finds a securely sustainable balance?

Are even somewhat progressive representatives, those of them truly in power, essentially selling us moves to support plutocracy in the guise of addressing our needs? The Fed just opted to spend over 600 billion over the next nine months to buy US Treasuries, purportedly to stimulate job growth through making more money available for investment. Yet, without either expanding foreign markets for goods and services, or more money in the pockets of consumers, to spur demand for those goods and services, what business in their right mind would hire, instead of invest? So, the money literally created will likely go into the coffers of Wall St.

Another idea that’s kind of been kicking about in my mind for decades: keeping us masses in a state where we don’t overturn the bucket. Zinn points out that those civilizations’ elites that allowed too large a disparity to emerge between the elite and the masses inevitably fell. If one fails to learn from history, one falls prey to it. A sudden shudder down my back: what if this time the elite not only learns from history, but learns to find and maintain the exact balance of how far they can go (including employing mis-communication techniques) while still keeping the masses just either satisfied enough (or scared enough, i.e. ‘Shock Syndrome’ and I think the ‘Great Recession’ qualifies as just such a crisis) to not reach a critical mass?

Yet, Zinn is also right in having us not tie action to an expectation of success. Call it what you will: ‘controlled folly’ or ‘rolling the rock up the hill’; there’s really no choice. Or, there is, but I rather doubt any of us want to experience its consequences.

Our Commutes - Not Made in the USA

For much of my life, especially in the early 80s, buying American was regarded as the ‘patriotic’ thing to do; the thing to do to keep my neighbors employed. I wonder then about the wisdom of continuing to rely upon a resource that we largely have to import – oil, especially when one in five barrels of the oil that we so rely upon comes from countries that the State Department considers to be dangerous or unstable. We might concerned that the primary oil sources of Mexico, the 2nd leading source of our imported oil, will be depleted before the end of this decade.

We may consider buying American, but we’re certainly not driving American. Gasoline, which basically means cars, makes up 45% of our oil consumption. It could be said that our freeways are the arteries along which this gasoline flows, but it is not likely to continue to flow unimpeded. The US military has said that there could be serious oil shortages within the next five years.

I have to wonder then, why are we so adamant about not adopting and investing in mass transit systems, much as we did not so long ago in our interstate highways system, electrical infrastructure and phone systems? Are we so overly fond of our daily commutes, with their congestion and road rage, difficulties in finding parking, and increasing need to multi-task while we drive in order to gain back some of the time we spend on our commutes?

Even our current attempts to relieve congestion are at the cost of massive highway projects that, ironically, in the short term lead to increased congestion while those highways are under construction. And in the long term, it’s only a matter of time before those massive projects allow urban sprawl to creep farther afield and, come right back to our experiencing even more congestion.

My own city, Waukesha, is currently trying to decide what route an over $50 million dollar bypass project should take along the west side of the city. Any of the routes will essentially redefine the area. And I wonder: how many years before the city has crept out beyond those routes and more highway construction will again be needed to reduce congestion? Do any of us really believe that the projects being considered in our communities will lead to a final end to congestion? If we think about it, what do we really expect the areas around our cities to look like 10-15 years from now if we don’t take a different approach?

My own daily ordeal runs along what, from 1890 until shortly before I was born, was both the first and last route run by an electric streetcar in Milwaukee – Wells St on one end and at the other end, what are now separate cities largely only in name: Wauwatosa, Elm Grove, Brookfield, and Waukesha. Back when we were electrifying our rural areas and before we began construction of our interstate system, I could have taken an interurban train.

My own area does have a downtown trolley loop. There is a plan to build roughly a 3-mile long electric streetcar system that would connect the downtown area with much of the mid-town and eastern shore areas, but the funding for that system is still largely up in the air. The Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee (KRM) commuter rail system recently received the funding it needs to improve the rail bed and traffic signals along the existing rail along which it would run. And, as most of us know, the high speed train system that would connect Chicago, Milwaukee, and Madison has been awarded the funding it would need to be built, but given the opposition to it, may never be built, even though doing so would create over 9,500 permanent jobs, here in Wisconsin.

I find myself wondering: can we demonstrate the foresight and commitment to build the infrastructure required to meet the challenges of our era? Our parent’s and grandparents’ generations did. Will we? Or will we, in just a few short years find ourselves facing oil shortages, increasingly high gasoline costs – and still be years away from having built the infrastructure required to give us alternatives?

References
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/oil_quench.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/100726/top-7-us-oil-importers
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_publications/oil_market_basics/demand_text.htm
http://www.trainweb.org/twerhs/tmerl.html
http://www.jsonline.com/news/waukesha/44788327.html
http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2009/04/19/milwaukee-streetcar-round-up/
http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2010/05/06/milwaukee-streetcar-takes-key-step-forward/
http://www.transitnow.org/project-status.html
http://dailyreporter.com/blog/2010/09/09/communities-pick-up-transportation-project-awards/
http://www.wispirg.org/issues/transportation/connecting-wisconsin-with-high-speed-rail

Red Barns to Road Rage

While I was licking on popsicles in the local grocery, the construction of the interstate system in Wisconsin was well underway. Years before I had a driver’s license, more than three-fourths of the state’s interstate system had been built. Nowadays, as I cross the first section of the interstate to be constructed, back in 1956 (between Goerke’s Corners and CTH-SS in Waukesha County), and continue on to work, I wonder about those days....

Two years before construction was begun on the first stretch of the interstate in Wisconsin, President Eisenhower made it clear that it was important to “protect the vital interest of every citizen in a safe and adequate highway system."  The resulting Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, opposed in the Senate by only one Senator from Louisiana, who opposed the gas tax increase included in the bill, ended up costing $114 billion (adjusted for inflation, $425 billion in 2006 dollars) and as we are well aware, maintaining that system has become increasingly difficult.

Not included in that cost, however, was the twinned dynamic of urban sprawl and the decline of our cities, as they sustained losses in tax revenues and experienced increasing stratification. Also not included in that cost was the’ undercutting’ of our mass transit systems. Not included in that cost was the need to engage in a never-ending cycle of easing congestion, only to find ourselves ever more congested as we continue sprawling outward.

For example, a new bypass along the CTH-SS corridor in Waukesha County is being considered as one proposal for connecting I-90 and Hwy 59 along the west side of the city of Waukesha. What we seem not to realize is that for every bypass we build to ease traffic congestion, we eventually increase traffic congestion as more motorists commute to other suburbs and city centers from farther and farther afield.

The senator from Louisiana might not recognize our countryside or our cities, however he would feel right at home resisting funding mass transit systems, especially inner city mass transit systems, with user fees and what could be called, ‘decongestion’ fees, such as an increased gasoline tax and taxes on tire and equipment sales.

President Eisenhower might well bemoan what he would see now. Years before becoming a proponent of the interstate highway system, while on the US Army’s first transcontinental motor convoy, the not yet President Eisenhower “experienced all the woes known to motorists and then some – an endless series of mechanical difficulties, vehicles stuck in the mud or sand; trucks and other equipment crashing through wooden bridges; roads as slippery as ice or dusty or the consistency of ‘gumbo’….”

The irony is, that even as our suburbs blend more and more into each other and the remaining red barns are giving way to named developments, those of us commuting from the suburbs are finding more and more of our day spent dealing with the ‘woes of being motorists,’ with ‘it’s a parking lot’ and road rage replacing mud, sand, wooden bridges, and roads the consistency of ‘gumbo’.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System
http://www.wisconsinhighways.org/interstates.html
http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/transportation/a_highway.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406400461.html
http://www.milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/federal-aid-highway-act/

Red barns, Popsicles, and the Electrification of Our Countryside

Our Cooperative Heritage

1985

The Wisconsin I grew up in was dotted with red barns, Holsteins, local groceries, implement dealers, post offices, and farms that had only recently been electrified. 


1972 - Cows out in pasture

 The barns were the workplaces of families, but also the place kids swung from ropes into piles of hay or built hay forts.

Lead cow bringing the herd in

The Holsteins were known by name and eccentricity; their milk hauled to the dairy by the man whose daughter I went to school with; and when their time came, those cows, their names thankfully inscribed in the herd register when successfully born, then played with as calves, were sent solemnly sent off to slaughter.

The local grocer would let us kids start licking on our popsicles long before we laid our coins out on the counter.  When the baler broke down; we’d send someone out to a town whose name I’m no longer sure of. There's been no reason to go there since the implement dealership closed.  The post office was attached to the grocery store and run by the same family, a family we saw in church on Sunday.

I drive to the family farm these days and wonder:  where have all the red barns gone?  Gone are the Holsteins that used to dot the hillsides.  The local grocery closed long ago.  The implement dealers are in the cities now, what dealers are left.  There’s still a local post office - the next town over, although its local grocery closed a few years ago.

Only recently electrified farms?

1951


An interesting story that; one that reminds me of the decisions my generation must face.  In 1925, just over 3% of farms in this country had electric service.  In 1935 President Roosevelt established the Rural Electric Authority (R.E.A) by executive order, making electrical service affordable for farms throughout the country.  Fourteen years later, the R.E.A. began financing telephone cooperatives, making telephone service available to our rural areas as well.

All the while, during which our rural areas began to see such appliances as refrigerators, the undertaking was said to be too expensive and opposed by groups arguing that the federal government should not be involved in the business of electrical power; that the government was unfairly competing with private enterprise.

Nowadays, almost all of us have electric and telephone service. Our manufacturing industries that produce products that generate, distribute and use electrical power still employ over 370 million of us.  And I, for one, cannot even remember not being able to plug in a toaster, an iron, or a refrigerator.

What I wonder about is: what would it be like if my parent’s generation, and the one before it, had not chosen to undertake the projects that made health care, rural broadband, a smart electric grid, green energy, energy efficienient lifestyles rural electric and phone service affordable to so many Americans?

References
http://naldr.nal.usda.gov/NALWeb/Agricola_Link.asp?Accession=IND43893747
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/malone.electrification.administration.rural
http://newdeal.feri.org/tva/tva10.htm
http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag335.htm