Category Archives: Writing

Labor Day Blessing

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“Retire from what?”

The Chicago Tribune says Jimmy Buffett asked that question once when they asked him about retirement. He died September 1, just as the Labor Day weekend began, from an aggressive skin cancer called Merkel cell cancer. In his lifetime, he succeeded first in making a name in the music world with a unique style that focused on the “play hard” part of life, but he also marketed his persona and brand with a vengeance because he also worked hard. I recall watching a segment of 60 Minutes in which he described himself as a workaholic, utterly contradicting the world of leisure his songs seemed to evoke.

Work hard, play hard. Retire from what? What difference does it make if you love what you do and life has rewarded your passion?

Jimmy Buffett on the USS Harry Truman, 2008. Photo from Wikipedia

Jimmy Buffett died at age 76. At 73, I can easily imagine living many more years, but I doubt that I will become a billionaire, nor do I care. Life has, in my humble view, already rewarded my passions just by letting me continue to enjoy what I do. One friend and colleague said, “which is never,” when in a jousting, friendly conversation, I allowed that maybe, just maybe, there would be a day when I would stop working.

The only question for me is whether I work for pay or for the love of the challenge. Life since I “allegedly retired” (my phrase) from the American Planning Association more than six years ago has mixed both elements, as I expected, though the specific combinations of activities and assignments has shifted in unexpected ways. I realized when I left that I had reached a point in life where my wife and I could live well enough with our “cushion,” the pensions and Social Security and IRAs we had earned and invested. Everything else was a bonus, though sometimes that bonus gets used to help family and special causes.

I have done far less book writing than I planned, my teaching has paused at the university level but morphed into professional training, and, as readers have noticed, I took on the challenge of learning how to manage a documentary film operation and develop the script, while using long-standing interview skills to capture content. I am volunteering my time on the film because we are developing it on a shoestring (to get started, at least) and because the whole point of this labor of love is to change hearts and minds about planning for disasters and climate change without worrying about getting paid for it. Put another way, it was in large part my idea. No one asked me to do it, though many have been grateful for the opportunity to be part of it. But I still get paid to teach and to consult, though I am dialing back the latter to make room for the work of passion. Recently, I spent a couple of weeks writing a grant proposal that may allow a church to install a solar rooftop. More on that later if we succeed. A higher power can thank me for helping lead his people into the paradise of renewable energy and mitigating global warming.

“Retire from what?”

As long as the work puts a smile on your face, as long as you can blur the lines between work and play, and take pride and joy both in whatever you achieve, who cares whether anyone calls it retirement. Yes, as we get older, health issues start to take a toll. In another month, I will be forced to sit back and recover from some serious surgery, but I was 69 before I faced the first surgery of my life, for cataracts. (Don’t worry. In the tradition of making lemonade out of tropical lemons, I have decided the coming convalescence is perfectly timed for watching the Cubs in the National League playoffs.)

Jimmy Buffett died too soon, in my opinion, but a higher power than I gets to make those decisions. We do not live forever. Make your time worthwhile and let it make you happy until the very end.

“Retire from what?”

Why do people think I coined the term “allegedly retired?” Passions add value to life. Live your passions while you can. And remember to eat a cheeseburger in paradise.

Jim Schwab

P.S.: This blog, also a labor of love, just topped 40,000 subscribers in the last few days. I hope I have added some joy and provoked some creative thought for all of you. And a special thank you to Allison Hardin, who designed a special T-shirt for a surprise “retirement” party for me during the APA National Planning Conference in May 2017. It read, “Ask me about my blog.”

Envisioning a More Resilient Future

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One reason I have long loved being an urban planner is that, ultimately, planning is about imagining a better future. Or should be, anyway. Although I was in my early thirties before I returned to school for a pair of graduate degrees in Urban and Regional Planning and Journalism (a very unusual combination, I soon learned), I was intrigued with the creative process as early as high school. At the time, I applied it mostly to writing, but I learned in college that creativity was valuable for just about any endeavor. Much later, I was enthralled when I read University of Chicago psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s path-breaking 1990 book, Flow, a study of the creative process. By then, I was already in the throes of writing my own books and learning where my planning credentials could take me.

While most planners never write or publish books, we all are quite accustomed to producing plans, reports, and other documents for consumption by the public, public officials, and other decision makers. We learn how to present these materials and visualizations in public at meetings and hearings. Visual depictions, for example, of what a neighborhood not only is, but could become, are standard fare. Many of us learn to work with various kinds of visualization and design software that create renderings of future versions of boulevards and parks and other public spaces. What architects do for individual buildings, we try to do for entire neighborhoods and cities. In the process, we try to feed and amplify the public imagination for what could be, hoping to find options for improvement that will appeal to a public that may be looking for alternatives to an unsatisfactory or uninspiring status quo. Whole books and software programs, such as CommunityViz, have been devoted to sharing strategies with planners for accomplishing these visionary goals.

The written word and visualizations are two ways, often combined, for helping people see new possibilities or change the way they see the familiar. I have used them for decades, in evolving ways, to help people better understand my own planning specializations, hazard mitigation and disaster recovery. When a natural disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake has shaken a community’s assumptions about its own future, it can be time to think about rebuilding in a way that makes that community more resilient in the face of future events. I helped advance the idea of pre-disaster planning for post-disaster recovery, that is, thinking before a disaster even happens about what would expedite the recovery process and allow the community to emerge stronger and more prosperous than before. This has become known as finding the “silver lining” in the dark cloud of disaster recovery, building hope during a process that can take years or even decades in the most drastic situations.

Left to right, crew members Jim Schwab, David Taylor, and Kim Taylor Galway toast the film project at Royal Peacock, Sarasota, FL, June 18, 2023

Even when I left the American Planning Association (APA) at the end of May 2017, I largely envisioned a continuation of my hybrid journalistic and planning career in the form of books and teaching, for the most part, augmented by various consulting jobs. It was only after conversations with high school classmate David Taylor at the 50th reunion of our Brecksville, Ohio, Class of 1968 in June 2018 that another idea took shape. David, a Purple Heart Vietnam Veteran, had taken a very different path in life after recovering from war wounds, by becoming first a photographer, and later a videographer. After retiring from a marketing position with the U.S. Postal Service, he opened his own studio and has done film and photography work for veterans and environmental groups, as well as traditional assignments like weddings.

Dave had followed my career for decades, starting with the publication of my first book, Raising Less Corn and More Hell (University of Illinois Press), in 1988. As I grew into my role as a leader in hazards planning, he became fascinated with what planners do in that realm, regarding them as “unsung heroes” of the recovery process. Further conversations led to a visit to his home in Sarasota, Florida, in February 2019, which included a presentation at a Florida Atlantic University symposium in West Palm Beach, and eventually that fall into the idea of producing a video documentary about the role of planning in helping communities address threats from natural disasters and climate change. As chair-elect at the time of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division (HMDR), I took that idea to the executive committee, and they chose to sponsor the project.

Devastation from Hurricane Michael, October 2018. Photo by David Taylor

Thus began, for me, a new way of thinking about how to engage the public on these issues. I had no experience with film as a vehicle for this process, except as a viewer, but the idea captured my imagination. What can one do with film that would be different from the written word? As the script writer, how would I think about the narrative differently? Moving out of my comfort zone forced me to think even more creatively than usual, but I welcomed the experience because I sensed that it might give us a new way to capture people’s emotions and imagination around an idea whose time was overdue. The United States, and the world, were suffering ever more massive losses from natural disasters, in part as a result of climate change, and needed new ways to approach the problem. Maybe the kinetic visual impact of a film could help affect that, if crafted with the right forward-looking perspectives in mind.

It would not be easy, and I readily understood that. Moreover, the first question was how to pay for the project. Movies are inherently more expensive to produce than books, and involve at least as much work in most ways. But if we could pull this off . . . .

Fortunately, incoming chair-elect Stacy Wright was able to arrange a $5,000 donation from Atkins, a consulting firm, to start the ball rolling in the fall of 2019. I became chair of HMDR on January 1, 2020, but the COVID pandemic intervened within weeks and by March 2020, we had to shut the project down and wait for the best. It was the fall of 2021 before we were again able to move forward. We created a Video Project Advisory Committee to provide guidance on the project. It consists of leading voices in the hazards planning subfield. We also began to assemble teams of regional volunteers who could assist us with logistics and recommend leading planners for interviews and advice.

We chose to name the film Planning to Turn the Tide because of the metaphorical implications of seeking to reverse the growing tide of losses of life and property from natural and other disasters. Well aware of the impacts and trends of climate change, we know that the number and costs of America’s billion-dollar disasters has risen rapidly in recent decades. We also know that planning can make a difference.

Outdoor interview with Julie Dennis, owner of OVID Solutions (also a member of Video Project Advisory Committee) in Blountstown, Florida, July 2022. Holding camera is Kim Taylor Galway; to her left is videographer David Taylor.

In the meantime, we raised additional donations from other consulting firms* and won two small grants from the APA Divisions Council to help us get started. We announced our project in May 2022 at the APA National Planning Conference in San Diego and recorded interviews with leading hazards professionals at the Association of State Floodplain Managers annual conference two weeks later in Orlando. By mid-July, we had recorded 14 more interviews in the Florida Panhandle, mostly in Panama City, following the area’s recovery four years after Hurricane Michael struck as the first Category 5 storm to reach the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. In that visit, we had extensive support from both City Hall in Panama City and the Bay County Chamber of Commerce, which provided its board room for a recording studio for an entire day.

Local entrepreneur Allan Branch explains his restoration efforts at History Class Brewing in downtown Panama City, July 2022

By then, our main problem was that we needed an easy way for people interested in supporting the project to make donations. Fundraising can be hard work, but there is little reason these days to make it harder than it needs to be. APA worked with us over subsequent months to create a dedicated donations page where people could donate online. Because we were the first division in APA’s history to attempt a project like this, we were also the first to need such a mechanism, but by late March of this year, it was ready. The donations page, which you can also reach with the QR code below, channels donations directly to HMDR and tracks the donor information for us, so that we can recognize our supporters appropriately (unless they choose to be anonymous). You can help keep this project moving ahead by donating now, and I sincerely hope you choose to do so. You will be helping us sell the concept of resilient communities to America.

If you need more information on the project itself, visit our project information page. I will be adding new posts regularly as we continue our work, including short blog videos summarizing what we are doing along the way. Please stay in touch.

Jim Schwab

*Early Supporters:

Atkins

APA Divisions Council

Michael Baker International

JEO Consulting

Association of State Floodplain Managers (in-kind donation)

Jim Schwab Consulting LLC

OVID Solutions

Richard Roths, AICP

Clarion Associates

Punchard Consulting

 

Hidden Treasures in Plain Sight

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My mother was definitely a neatnik. Everything in its place, but don’t keep too many things in the first place. If something did not have an obvious use, get rid of it. A sentimentalist, she was not.

She lived her life in the suburbs of Cleveland, which is where I grew up. At the age of 29, however, I effectively “flew the coop,” a phrase I’ve hyperlinked for the benefit of anyone unfamiliar with its usage. I moved to Iowa, took the helm of a public interest group, later transitioned to graduate school at the University of Iowa, and after completing my degrees, ended up in Chicago. The rest is history, both personal and professional.

That meant that, on occasion, my parents visited our home in Chicago, though I far more frequently visited family in Cleveland. On every occasion that I can recall, at some point she would look around and ask, “What do you want with all these books?” The obvious answer was that I have a voracious reading habit, which she mostly did not share. That made it difficult for her to fathom the extent of the collection, not to mention that most of the books held no attraction for her. Her firstborn had a depth of intellectual curiosity that was also hard for her to fathom, though it clearly drove my academic success, which she respected.

It’s not that the collection was messy. As needed, I have acquired and assembled bookshelves, and I keep the collection well organized. Unlike some bibliophiles, I give away some books that I cannot imagine using anymore; I believe in thinning the herd. My mother, who also was frugal, surely wondered how much all those books had cost. In truth, while I spend a modest amount on books, I have also benefited from my writing habit, something else that was a bit foreign to her, though she tried to understand it as entrepreneurial activity. That habit meant that, as a volunteer book awards judge over many years with the Society of Midland Authors, I received dozens of annual awards entries in either biography and memoirs, or adult nonfiction, the two categories I judged in various years. Judges are permitted to keep the submissions. Some were worth keeping; others, I gave away after the contest was over. Other books arrived as review copies, also complimentary. I have occasionally reviewed books on this blog, but have also done so in magazines and journals.

Shortly after moving to Chicago, I carried my mother’s tradition of frugality into uncharted territory by discovering that Powell’s, a chain of used bookstores, had the habit of putting discards on the sidewalk outside their E. 57th St. store and letting customers take what they wanted. At the time, I lived and worked not far away, so this was very convenient. I would flip through the pile to find what I considered hidden gems and take them home, quietly building my collection and sometimes immediately indulging in great finds. Like a bear drawn to honey, sometimes I also entered the bookstore to find something I was willing to pay for. Used books, often in good condition but cheaper, have exactly the same information as the new versions—imagine that! And unlike a used car, they don’t lose value. They just sit on the shelf, patiently awaiting their opportunity to expand your mind.

I must also acknowledge that my wife and I, on gift dates like birthdays and Christmas, often recognize each other’s reading interests with gifts. Jean’s tastes tend toward mysteries and spy thrillers and similar genres, on one hand, but also, since the rise of Donald Trump, toward the cornucopia of investigative journalism that has arisen in his wake. He is almost certainly the greatest focus of such political journalism since Watergate. My own interests are so varied that I must pose a challenge for her, but she often turns to environmental books and biographies as reliable pleasers. Her instincts about my interests are usually quite accurate.

By now, you may be wondering, after a few weeks of radio silence on this blog, why I am writing a paean to books, including old ones that may need the dust blown off before use. I will confess that recent events, both personal and professional, have kept me off balance enough to delay a new blog post. That is largely an incoherent story of distractions large and small and often unrelated and not worth relating. But the evolving circumstances induced me to spend more time reading, at a deliberate pace, books that I had previously put aside, books that have offered me a different way to see life and the world—even the universe—around me.

The point is that these are not brand-new books that just arrived on my doorstep. While I often may cite and hyperlink older works as sources for facts I use in blog posts on various topics, I have seldom centered whole discussions on them. But thank God they were sitting here because I am realizing some of them deserve attention in their own right, even if they are no longer “hot off the press.” One book, for instance, discusses in searing imagery the impacts of trauma on refugees seeking asylum in America. One hallmark of wisdom for any of us is to realize, no matter how much we know or think we know, how much more we can learn as long as the capacity is still in us. Much of that learning may come from books that in the past just never got our full attention.

So, don’t be surprised if I center a few articles in upcoming weeks and months on those very books, whether they are just three years old or ten or twenty years old, or even older. I will certainly be selective and purposeful about it, but I will give them their due while also discussing current issues and examining the new books that come my way. But I simply want to share the gems that have emerged from those back shelves. They are giving me a whole new motivation to learn and share.

Now, if someone could just come over and help me find that missing copy of Les Miserables . . . .

Jim Schwab

Buridan’s Blogger

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Source: Shutterstock.com

In the fourteenth century, French philosopher-priest Jean Buridan, a student of William of Ockham, posited the hypothetical story of a donkey that starved to death while situated equidistant from two delicious bales of hay. The fictional donkey was supposedly a victim of indecision and thus the object of intense navel gazing among those who want to debate the existence of free will. No one ever asked, to my knowledge anyway, whether the donkey was mentally ill or simply traumatized and thus incapable of acting on his own behalf. Mental health, after all, was not well understood in the Middle Ages. That’s one of many reasons why the term “medieval” has derogatory connotations.

I mention this because it has nothing to do with why I have produced nothing on this blog for two months. Despite not just two, but a multitude, of topics to choose from, I failed to choose any, but I can certify that I am neither mentally ill nor incapable of satiating my hunger to address the vital issues of the day.

I simply failed to find adequate free time to do so because numerous other personal and professional priorities intervened. This blog has always been the product of a creative mind seeking yet another outlet beyond those provided in other aspects of my life. Put simply, I prioritized other attractions or compulsions beyond a couple of equally intriguing blog topics. Even donkeys are more creative in their choices of food than Buridan’s paradox suggests. But I won’t take the comparison any further.

The simple fact is that this blog is and always has been a sideline activity, subject to interruption by more urgent demands on my time. Over the past two months, my wife and I took a weeklong vacation in which two grandsons, 12 and 17, accompanied us as we circumnavigated the shores of Lake Michigan. I may yet write about that in various ways, but I have not found time. Instead, when I returned, I reported to duty at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for a prostate biopsy. The results were ambiguous, or so I was informed, so I get to do it again in a few months. At least they put you out, so you don’t know what the doctor is doing while he is doing it, but it certainly blows your day. I was also busy on planning consulting work, launching my fall semester University of Iowa disaster planning class before Labor Day, professional volunteer work, and then helping a daughter who became the victim of a hit-and-run accident involving four vehicles on I-80 just after the holiday. She is largely okay, but for a minor head injury that causes headaches, but her car has been totaled, and I just helped her find a replacement. Before I knew it, weeks had gone by in which this blog remained a back-shelf priority.

Multiple bales of great blog topics remain in front of my fertile mind, waiting to be chewed on. Trust me. I’ve been dying to tackle them, but my brain is not starving. Instead, it was overwhelmed by the shiny objects on the other side of the barn. This blog, however, remains important to me as a unique form of public service that seems to be of value to nearly 32,000 subscribers. But it is also a one-person show. I am my own writer, illustrator, editor, and administrator. Ain’t nobody here but me, and Google Ads does not generate enough money for a fast-food dinner, let alone to hire help. As slugger Pedro Cerrano says to his voodoo god Jobu in Major League, before hitting a home run in a playoff game, “I do it myself!” (Yes, I skipped the preceding obscenity. This is a family blog, after all.)

Jim Schwab

Collateral Damage

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For those who have noticed, it has been more than five weeks since I last posted to this blog. It has been a rough stretch, but it could have been much rougher. At least to my knowledge, I never have contracted COVID-19. Not that people weren’t asking, especially relatives.

There were the holidays, of course, and who wouldn’t take it easy for at least a few days?

Then came the call on Christmas Eve, around 8 p.m. CST. It was my younger sister, choked up, reporting that our mother had died about an hour earlier at 8 p.m. EST. It was not entirely unexpected. She was living in a small nursing facility near Cleveland. My younger sister and brother live nearby. At 103, our mother had lived a very long life, overcoming more obstacles and health threats than I could imagine, but time takes its toll on all of us. In her last few days, she could barely speak, was on oxygen, and finally on morphine as hospice nurses took charge of her situation.

My mother, Hazel, at 100th birthday in 2017.

Still, Christmas Eve is not an ideal time for such news. It completely dampened the tenor of the evening at our house, as I shared the news first with my wife, and then with six grandchildren who were present. We all went to sleep that night knowing that my mother, who survived our father by more than 13 years, would no longer be a presence in our lives, though she would certainly be a memory. Losing a parent is almost always a tectonic shift in one’s life. Losing a parent in the midst of a pandemic, even if not to the pandemic, adds an extra element of sadness to the event. Funerals have become small events since last March. There is no need to add to the death toll.

We celebrated a slightly subdued Christmas, but we wanted to maintain the joy for the grandchildren, who range from 6 to 17, and their mothers. There was a more than ample dinner, much of it planned before the news arrived, and the kids played with their new gifts. Nonetheless, two of them, Alex, 11, and Angel, just two days away from his 17th birthday, made clear they wanted to come with Jean and me to Cleveland for their great-grandmother’s funeral. That was already a full load for our 2018 Chevy Malibu.

Christmas, of course, was on Friday, which meant that my siblings in Cleveland would not meet with the funeral home staff until Saturday to settle on plans. Over the weekend, they learned that, because of COVID-19, the funeral home was backed up, and the funeral could not occur until Tuesday, December 29. Their pastor had another funeral Tuesday morning, so he could not arrive until later, so, while visitation was permitted to begin at 11:30 a.m., the service began around 1:15 p.m. Pastor Brad Ross, of Triune Lutheran Church in Broadview Heights, Ohio, kept it reasonably short out of necessity. The cemetery was also backed up, and we would need to complete the interment service no later than 3 p.m. That meant we were all leaving the funeral home no later than 2 p.m. This was a very different environment from the more relaxed and expansive schedule that accompanied my father’s funeral on a sunny May day in 2007. The last pandemic that had ever ravaged the world on the scale of COVID-19 had occurred in 1918 and 1919, just a year or so after my mother was born. I kept thinking of all the changes she had seen in her lifetime, but they were often hard to imagine. The best I could do was try to broaden the lens of my own 71 years, but it never seemed like enough. Cars were new on the city streets when she was born, and she graduated from high school during the Great Depression. Our nation was already sending men into space while I was still in elementary school. We can imagine, but can we relate?

My niece from upstate New York, Cheryl, provided the one family contribution to the service, which was otherwise a short homily and some scriptural readings from Pastor Ross. Cheryl has a beautiful voice. With instrumental accompaniment from a recording, she sang “The Old Rugged Cross.”

Through it all, and it was brief, I had flashbacks to moments of both separation and engagement with my parents, particularly my mother. I was always well aware that she was less than pleased when I said I was moving to Iowa in January 1979, at age 29 taking the helm of a small nonprofit public interest advocacy organization. In her mind, such a move could be justified if I were working for some large firm that wanted to transfer me there, but the type of job I had sought was, in her mind, a waste of time and talent. I stood my ground because I knew already that I was profoundly restless in Cleveland, striving to redefine myself and find a new role in life, and this modestly paid position posed a challenge to my intellect, my moral fiber, and my emerging sense of identity. I was a “child of the Sixties” who believed passionately in positive social and political change, but it was more than that.

Even while in Cleveland, I had often written and spoken in ways that revealed some innate, but not yet well-developed, skills at communication. I had published several op-eds in The Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s major daily newspaper. But I did not feel that anything I was doing was plumbing the depths of my skills and beliefs, so it was time to move on and immerse myself in an entirely new environment. Had I been more daring, I might have joined the Peace Corps, like my long-time college friend, Jim Quigley, who spent two years in the Marshall Islands. That surely would have driven my mother over the edge. “Why do you want to do that?” would have been her first question.

Within three years, I shifted gears in Iowa to become a graduate student at the University of Iowa, pursuing two Master’s degrees in urban and regional planning and journalism that have become the cornerstones of my career for four decades. She first greeted that, too, with some skepticism, wondering why I wanted to “struggle” for a few more years like that, but she acquiesced. She had no choice because it was all on my own dime or with my own student loans. To be fair, however, I must emphasize that both my parents strongly encouraged all of us to attend college.

She may also have feared that I would never return to Cleveland. I visited often, but she was right. Cleveland no longer held much allure. In the end, with Jean, who was from Omaha, I ended up in Chicago. Life offered a far bigger palette here on which to paint my career.

A long-time high school friend of mine who also now lives in Chicago, Larry Barr, theorized recently that middle-class parents of our generation—and my parents were blue-collar middle-class—tended to want success for their children through conventional careers. Getting hired by a big company was a sign of economic security. Many of us Baby Boomers had a more creative streak and wanted to discover who we were. That made our parents nervous about our prospects in life. My extended search stretched into three and a half years of graduate school because I used the journalism training to refine what I had always sensed were powerful writing skills that had not yet been refined and tested, and I wanted to push the development of those skills as hard as I could while also refining a clearer sense of my own values in life. I emerged from the University of Iowa, not a different person, but a far more mature and determined person than when I started. In the years that followed, I turned a Master’s Project in Journalism into my first published book, followed by book tours and a review in the New York Times. I was far more confident than when I had enrolled, and my vision of what was possible grew exponentially.

That was the point, Larry suggested in a recent conversation. Skeptical at first of such personal searches for self-definition and meaning, our parents could nonetheless embrace success when it was staring them in the face. The kid is getting published. He’s an author, and a planner. He must have known what he was doing.

A few years later, a second book emerged, my role at APA had grown, and things just kept evolving. During one visit to Cleveland, they listened as I was interviewed with another panelist on the local NPR station. Not everybody’s kid gets such positive public attention. They reported enjoying the discussion.

There was no denying that, whatever differences of opinion we still had—and there were plenty—I seemed to have planted my stake in the world. I might not have become an automotive engineer for Ford or GM, but their doubts had been resolved. (My father would love to have been trained as an engineer, but college seemed out of reach in his youth, which is sad. He had some amazing mathematical and mechanical skills, and the world would have benefited from providing him such an opportunity. He worked as a truck mechanic in a chemical plant, but was a beacon of stability throughout his life.)

Those are the essential reminiscences after all these years, and they all passed through my mind during the funeral. I was a pallbearer and took my place in the procession with nephews and my brother, but before we left, I asked for a moment to grab my overcoat, as I was feeling a bit cold. We loaded the casket into the hearse, and our parade of cars followed to the cemetery.

It was about 23°F., a damp, chilly day as we reached the cemetery in Hinckley, about a 20-minute drive from the funeral parlor. I was not especially comfortable as we brought the casket to the burial site and listened as the pastor intoned a final prayer before we all left, most of us for my brother Jack’s house, where he and my sister-in-law, Tina, had a casual dinner of sandwiches and pasta salads ready for all of us. They also had a small cake for a joint birthday: Mine had been on December 20, and my other sister, Nancy, who lives in Pennsylvania, was born on New Year’s Eve.

I struggled to enjoy it all, but it soon became apparent to everyone—most notably, Tina and Jean—that something was wrong. I was looking pale, feeling cold, and lacking energy. I sat near the fireplace and simply watched a movie, The Princess Bride, that was on the living room television. It was still early in the evening when we left for our hotel room with Angel and Alex, and I fell asleep beneath the covers not long after 8 p.m., a remarkably early time for me. There was by then no question that I was ill.

The hotel, relatively empty and operating post-holidays in pandemic mode, offered a simple complimentary breakfast of either a bagel with cheese, egg, and sausage, or without the sausage, and orange juice in a small plastic bottle. The dining area had been closed months ago. Amenities were minimal. Alex went to the lobby to get the breakfast for all of us, but I passed on the bagel and simply drank the orange juice because I was feeling queasy. Even that proved a big mistake. By the time we had packed the car and checked out, I was getting nauseous. As Jean, who had committed to driving the entire trip without my help, pulled out of our parking space, I said urgently, “Pull up to the front door.” She looked puzzled, and I repeated, more firmly, “Pull up to the front door!” She did so, and in a moment, I was racing for a bathroom, and the orange juice departed my stomach like a liquid missile. Now I knew I was in trouble, and a six-hour drive down the Ohio and Indiana Turnpikes, plus I-90 in Chicago, lay ahead.

On the way home, we discussed what to do about my situation when we got there. I avoided both food and drink the entire time in order not to test my stomach. If it was empty, there would be no emergency. I was decidedly uncomfortable when we visited service plazas to use the bathroom because the weather was at first rainy and cold, though it improved in Indiana. I used her cell phone to call an urgent care center near our home and was told that, unless I needed a COVID test, I could be treated as a walk-in.

In Chicago, however, I discovered that one needed to get the attention of someone inside the urgent care center for someone to come to the door to let you in, and two ladies standing outside indicated they had been waiting a half hour for someone to respond. I said I would become a wreck if I stood outside that long, so I drove home.

After I rested a bit and warmed up, Jean took me to the emergency room at nearby St. Mary’s Hospital. I expected that they would test me immediately for COVID-19, as they had done last May, but to my surprise, the admitting clerk simply asked about symptoms and referred me to a nurse. Within minutes, I was in a treatment room with a doctor. No COVID test ever happened. Dr. Jorgensen ascertained instead that I had a viral sinus infection. Because the infection was viral, not bacterial, they could not administer antibiotics but would have to let me wait it out, while advising that I continue using Flonase to clear the sinuses and Tylenol for headaches or fever. He prescribed Zofran for the nausea, which I used for maybe two days before that symptom disappeared. An attending nurse attached saline fluids intravenously to relieve dehydration that, no doubt, had materialized from my precaution in not eating or drinking during the trip. “We’re putting the fluids where they matter without testing your stomach,” he assured me.

I spent the New Year’s weekend either in bed or lazily reading newspapers and books until I got drowsy. My siblings and in-laws were calling and texting to find out how I was doing, and to make sure I had not contracted coronavirus. I reassured everyone that no such diagnosis was in the works, but some worried anyway. You never know, and we all know someone who has suffered, and one illness can lead to another. But in my case, it did not.

What it led to is my current anxiety. Work piled up as the first week of January rolled on and I struggled to regain my normal energy level, which happened but far too slowly for my satisfaction. I never lost my sense of taste or smell, a key COVID trait, and when feeling energetic enough, I continued to craft some wonderful meals as my inner chef, another part of my creative identity, reasserted itself. Lord, I would hate to discover someday that ginger/sesame-marinated salmon tasted like paste or wallpaper!

By January 6, I was more or less back to work, albeit at a slow pace. Then came another opportunity to feel sick, but the symptoms were emotional and were triggered by the President himself, inciting an angry, deluded crowd of supporters to attack the nation’s Capitol, killing a Capitol police officer, and creating a new day that will live in infamy, alongside Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That some Americans were proudly doing this to their own country was by far the worst part. I found the news consuming what little free time I had mustered by then. Emotionally, it felt like collateral damage to a political system gone badly awry.

By Friday, a new disturbance arrived, though I was able to take it more in stride. I received a notice from the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) that an unemployment claim was filed in my name at a local sheet metal manufacturer, where, of course, I had never worked. It was clearly a fraudulent claim and was followed the next day by a benefits debit card from a bank in Cleveland. I spent Monday of this week requesting cancellation of the claim at IDES, taking other protective measures, and filing a financial fraud report with the Chicago Police Department. I do not believe in letting this activity go unreported. Providing evidence may add ever so slightly to a case against some perpetrator somewhere who needs to be brought to justice. I learned that IDES had been hacked in 2017. If so, although it happened under a prior administration, Gov. J.B. Pritzker needs to take ownership of the solution. Too many such issues in Illinois linger from one administration to the next, with computer systems not updated, problems not fixed, issues unresolved. The avalanche of claims under the current pandemic-caused recession has only exposed existing vulnerabilities. It is time for states and the federal government to get serious about addressing these challenges.

As for me, I am feeling better and getting more done every day, though I am still checking in with doctors in the near term. As for the nation, I hope we can all feel better after January 20, but I don’t envy President-elect Biden or his administration for the work that lies ahead. We have a viral infection in the body politic for which the only vaccines are truth, respect, and common sense.

Jim Schwab

The Eyes Have It

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I might have thought by now

you would have found the exit

from the hall of mirrors.

But no. You are mesmerized

by its dreamy distortions,

imprisoned by its illusions.

Perception arises from wave

lengths and shadows, reflections

against a shifting surface.

Tall becomes short, wide

becomes narrow. Eyes bulge,

then shrink into shocked sockets.

You must linger to feed the hunger.

Within the funhouse walls,

where the insecure, the paranoid,

the narcissistic control the asylum,

the Great Sphincter,

sustained by his Ras Putin coterie,

emits his daily surprises

to the surprise of no one

but the angry, the gleeful gullible,

the sheep led to COVID slaughter

while wildfires consume the hallways.

Is the funhouse aflame?

Now that changes the climate

amid the melting glass

of the deteriorating mirrors.

Alas.

 

Jim Schwab

 

 

Well Done, Faithful Servant

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Poster for a presentation at which John Fuller discussed his experiences at La Universidad de los Andes in Venezuela in the 1980s.

Starting this summer, John Fuller will find something new to do with his time. He is retiring after 41 years on the faculty of the University of Iowa, where he has been a professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning (SURP) since 1979. But he has been much more. He had cross-postings in the Departments of Economics and Geography. He was the resident expert on transportation planning. At times, he chaired the planning school, and from 1979-1995, he was executive director of the Legislative Extended Assistance Group (LEAG) of the Iowa Legislature, which initiated policy research on issues of legislative importance. He also directed the Institute of Urban and Regional Research from 1979-1983. That is where I began working for him.

I have known John for nearly half his life. When I entered the planning program at Iowa in January 1982, he immediately hired me as a graduate research assistant, probably recognizing talents I did not yet know I had, and trusting that high GRE scores portended success. By the time I left in the spring of 1985, just before marrying my wife in Omaha that June, I had completed one of those LEAG studies, possibly one of its most consequential ones, The Farm Credit Crisis in Iowa, examining a financial meltdown in the farm sector and its consequences to communities in rural Iowa. John was aware that I already was undertaking a Master’s Project in Journalism on the subject, which I would ultimately turn into a published book (Raising Less Corn and More Hell, University of Illinois Press, 1988), and convinced legislative leaders to engage me on a policy study. It was a highly formative experience that allowed me to exhibit writing skills that became a cornerstone of my career as it evolved.

John was big on creating opportunities like that for people in whom he had confidence. I am proud to this day that he had such confidence in me. I know that other such expressions of confidence made a similar difference for many others over the decades that followed.

John had already had a meaningful career before he ever arrived at the University of Iowa. He completed a bachelor’s degree in economics at San Diego State University in 1962. He went on to earn a Ph.D. at Washington State University before undertaking a winding path through the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, initially as chief of economic analysis, until he was secretary of the Wisconsin Highway Commission in 1976-1977, just before becoming deputy executive director of the National Transportation Policy Study Commission during the Carter administration in Washington. From there, he moved to Iowa City, where he has remained. He has, however, become a long-time fixture at the federal Transportation Research Board, where he has served on many committees and in many capacities. Often, if I came to Iowa City and John was not there, it was because he was at a TRB meeting in Washington, D.C.

John escorts youngest daughter Elizabeth (Libby) in 2016 wedding.

By the time I met him, John was married to Kathy Fait. They have four children who are today scattered across the landscape in places like California, Houston, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Retirement may afford them both the chance to visit children and grandchildren more often than they already do. That will surely be appreciated. Meanwhile, they can enjoy their large home on a hill in West Branch, whose primary claim to fame is that it serves as the home of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, just a short bicycle ride away. Not surprisingly, John is the chair of the West Branch Planning & Zoning Commission.

At the University of Iowa, he found his lasting home, but he may also have found himself. In fact, he and Kathy may have carved out a joint mission that made them unique. Increasingly over time, John found ways to connect with students, and Kathy assisted by making their home a place where foreign students particularly felt welcome. Charles (Chuck) Connerly, who became the SURP director in 2008, states:

John spent his career dedicating himself–through his teaching and his kindness–to his students. In the classroom, John was always staying abreast of the latest trends and issues in transportation so that his students were always well aware of the key issues in this important field. He dedicated his career to transportation, and his students greatly benefited from his commitment.

John was also committed to the welfare of our students in planning, especially our foreign students. As a Fulbright scholar himself, John worked very hard to bring Fulbright students to our planning program. Every year there would be at least one Fulbright scholar and often two or three. These scholars, from all over the world, contributed greatly to the quality of our student body and to the overall quality of the educational experience for all our students.

But John, along with his wife Kathy Fait, also made sure that foreign students felt welcomed at Iowa. They would pick students up at the airport, help them negotiate the first few days of their time in Iowa City, and would provide them with stuff that these students, often from warmer climates, would need–such as winter coats and luggage. As an advisor and Director of Graduate Studies, John worked hard to make certain that each of our foreign students was able to complete their studies here, even when some of these students got off to a rocky start. Because of this good care, Fulbright has always looked to us as a good program and university at which scholars can be placed.

John Fuller with me at his daughter’s wedding.

I can attest to much of what Chuck says. He arrived amid the infamous 2008 floods that forced the evacuation of more than 10 percent of nearby Cedar Rapids and wrought damage to the Iowa City campus totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. The school contemplated how it could play a bigger role in assisting Iowa communities with hazard-related problems and considered adding material to its Master’s degree curriculum. Long after most professors would have lost touch with their students, John was very much aware of my work on the subject for the American Planning Association. “Why not bring back Jim Schwab?” he asked, and urged hiring me to teach such a course. I hurriedly designed the course that summer for the fall semester. I have been teaching variations of it ever since.

Of course, I needed to drive out from Chicago to do so. John and Kathy offered their home as a place to stay while I was in town, usually the spare bedroom in the basement. Often, in breakfast conversations, I learned from Kathy of the latest delegation of foreign visitors they had been entertaining. I also learned during that first fall course of a flood refugee named Fred from nearby Coralville, to whom they provided emergency housing for several weeks. The door seemed always open if they could find a way to help.

Badminton, anyone? John found ways to stay fit, including playing in a badminton club.

The Fullers also have an abundant garden in their ample backyard, and I am sure I was not the only one who sometimes drove away after a visit with bags of apples and vegetables they had deliberately picked for me in order to share their cornucopia. It is just part of who they are.

As a result, even classmates of mine, like Kirk Bishop, now a planning consultant in Chicago with Duncan & Associates, who never took a class with Fuller, can say, “I remember him well. Even in our occasional passing in the hallways he was always quick with a smile, a nod, or a hello. A good soul. Fond memories indeed.” It is a rare occurrence when someone can distinctly remember, more than 35 years later, a professor who never taught them. It is a level of personal impact that is exceedingly hard to achieve.

In ordinary times, under ordinary circumstances, a long and distinguished career would likely be celebrated with a farewell gathering of students and faculty and staff, perhaps in a restaurant or some party setting, perhaps at some university facility adequate for the purpose. People would mingle, share stories, and salute the honoree with best wishes for a healthy, happy retirement. Unfortunately, these are not normal times, and no such gathering would have been safe or appropriate.

Chuck Connerly and others did the next best thing, at least for the time being: They hosted an online happy hour via Zoom, which I mentioned in my last blog post. That too was unfortunate, because, while I am told that at least 40 colleagues and SURP alumni joined the discussion, I was not only unable to do so because of my sudden hospitalization, but unable as well to even tell anyone why I was not there. I still regret that, even though I could do nothing about it.

But we are assured that, when the day comes that such a gathering can be done safely, the School will honor John with an in-person gathering for those able to attend. When that day comes, I will drive four hours to Iowa City to attend. After all these years, and all the kindnesses he and Kathy extended, it will be the least I can do. It is especially important to recognize when someone has turned a career into a mission to serve.

Jim Schwab

Isolated Adjustments

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I miss my gym already, closed just two weeks ago. There was a profusion of equipment to keep anyone in shape, whether you were working on legs, biceps, core, cardio, some combination, whatever. Here at home, I have small barbells, some ankle weights, and perhaps most importantly, a newly tuned 26-inch bicycle. There are other bicycles in our garage, mostly to accommodate grandchildren but also one my wife uses. We were out briefly yesterday for a ride in the neighborhood before the blustery spring winds brought more rain.

Closed entrance to the 606 Trail at California Ave.

A friend joked a few days ago that, after closing the Lakefront trail, adjacent parks, and beaches, and the 606 Trail plus park district field houses and playgrounds, Mayor Lori Lightfoot may have been praying for rain to enforce the stay-at-home, social distancing restrictions in effect throughout Illinois. If so, she got her wish over the weekend, but the weather is changing already, and Chicagoans are likely to take advantage of it. That’s okay, as long as we use those big park spaces that are still open to maintain social distance and help slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

Alex at a closed entrance to the 606 Trail.

Quite frankly, just one week ago, after picking up my bike from a nearby shop that performed the tuning, I used it to ride a portion of the 606 Trail, feeling the liberation that comes with such a small adventure. That was Monday afternoon, and the closures came on Thursday. I was not surprised. The 606, which is a great community-building amenity in normal times, seemed far too narrow and crowded for public safety in these times. I have not returned. Future rides will be on winding paths in the 700-acre Humboldt Park, where one can move past other human beings without encroaching on personal space. And I can still invigorate my body and spirit with some healthy exercise.

Humboldt Park is open, but the playgrounds are closed.

So, what is this blog post about, exactly? It is about adjustments in the time of COVID-19. But let me be clear. I am sharing the adjustments being made in our three-member household, and everyone else is making their own. Each set of adjustments is unique, yet many of us can learn from one another. I am also painfully aware that we are safer and in a better position financially than many people who have lost jobs or are suffering lost income, or have a sick family member. I can empathize, while knowing their experience will unquestionably be very different. And I wish such people the very best. Our nation is in for one tough slog against a ghastly microbial enemy.

My wife and I are both in our early seventies, but our three-member household includes an 11-year-old grandson, for whom we assumed guardianship two years ago. His mother has long faced mental health challenges. Two weeks ago, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) closed, and as of now, they will remain so until April 20. After that? Who knows? At first, the closure was for two weeks, but that would have ended today. Officials at all levels of government have underestimated the scope and duration of this problem, but the important thing is that they are learning daily and adjusting strategies, as we all are. Universities have suspended semesters and moved classes online. A friend of mine who teaches at an area community college admits to being “dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century” as he learns online teaching skills. I, on the other hand, have already been teaching online for the University of Iowa. My one class each year occurs in the fall, so the question is whether we enroll enough students to move forward by August. The odds seem good, but so much changes so quickly. Again, who knows? I will have to wait for the answer.

I practice what I call “alleged retirement,” which involves a part-time mix of teaching, consulting, public speaking, and writing. At worst, my wife, Jean, a retired teacher, and I can live off our pensions and Social Security. We would have to retrench if I had no outside income, some provided by the university, but we could survive. That makes us feel far more secure than I know is the case for gig workers, restaurant and hospitality workers, travel and tourism workers, and many others affected by shutdowns and restrictions aimed at containing contagion.

Jean in front of Moos School, now closed because of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, precisely because she is a teacher, my wife works with Alex on reading and math, so that lost school days do not translate entirely into lost learning. But that has involved its own learning curve. In the first week, we both noticed Alex’s ability to refocus his time on television and video games. We were busy figuring things out in that week of canceled St. Patrick’s Day events and the Illinois primary, in which Jean was an election judge. But we discussed the situation, and Jean quickly began to insist on specific hours for learning exercises. I am grateful, and hope Alex is, for her knowledge of teaching methods to keep him fresh on everything from multiplication to vocabulary expansion. I can only imagine what single mothers with four children no longer attending school must be doing to cope with the situation. Many in Chicago or rural Illinois or throughout America do not have Internet, or lack personal computers, and lack daily connection with the schools that kept their children busy until just recently. We have a 16-year-old grandson who is a high school sophomore. He is staying with his father, who works long hours in a warehouse to pay the bills. While we provided Angel with a small laptop at Christmas, I have noticed that CPS is not updating information on Aspen, its grade- and assignment-tracking online program, so we have no idea what, if anything, he should be doing in his classes. I used to help him with courses like Spanish, but now I have not a clue what he should be doing. It is as if CPS just vanished into thin air. The only solution from a learning perspective may be to extend the school year in June—but only if we have coronavirus under control by then. Otherwise, you could take his lost opportunities and multiply them by the tens of thousands across the city.

Jean works with Alex on spelling.

Then there is the drumbeat of coronavirus news to which people can subject themselves if they sit in front of the television all day long. I choose not to do that because I find that one hour of news tells me 90 percent of what I need to know, barring some breaking announcement, and the rest is repetition. I read the Chicago Tribune thoroughly each morning. My wife knows counselors and others who suggest limiting exposure to such news to reduce anxiety. She has taken to using some online meditation one of them has provided, and it works for her. I don’t share the anxiety because I am a different sort of person. My professional experience in the urban planning field is heavy on planning for disasters and disaster recovery. I read the news with an analytical eye, looking for clues to what we, as a society or region or city, can do better, and often turning that into commentary on this blog, but also applying it in various planning tasks. Since I retired from the American Planning Association (APA), many of those tasks have been pro bono activities, such as serving on policy guide task forces and chairing APA’s Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. There is no shortage of opportunities, and I am grateful every day for the chance to contribute something through all those channels. It’s not all about earning money. Just helping makes our lives richer; how we do it depends on our skill set and interests.

But clearly, the precautions we are all observing can be frustrating and lead to adjustments. Travel, in most cases, is a non-starter for the near future. Little more than a month ago, I was in Rockport, Texas, assisting the APA Texas chapter with a Hurricane Harvey recovery event that allowed Texas planners to interact with planners from New York and New Jersey who could share perspectives from Sandy recovery. Two weeks later, after a quick recovery from a mild case of the flu, I was in Kearney, Nebraska, speaking at the annual conference of the Nebraska Planning & Zoning Association, sharing knowledge and ideas with colleagues there. The first hints of a truly serious public health catastrophe were becoming clear, and that became my last trip so far this year. By March 18, APA had canceled its annual National Planning Conference in Houston, an event that has typically drawn about 5,000 people. Not this year. As a division leader, I am involved in many of the leadership discussions about what comes next in taking many meetings and sessions and other events online, and moving forward. This is happening across the board to numerous organizations of widely varying sizes, with huge impacts on the hotel, airline, and convention industries not only nationwide but across the world. Caught in the maws of this economic and public health earthquake are millions of workers.

Yet, as obvious as this seems to me, with my laser focus on news that matters, I have learned that not everyone is fully aware of its consequences. Alex’s mother invited us to visit her apartment, and Jean declined because we have no way of judging how safe it is. Then, two other people visiting her apartment suggested coming to our house to visit Alex. Again, Jean said that would have to wait, but they seemed only marginally aware of developments like restaurant closures and social distancing. Meanwhile, my mother, whose resilience at an advanced age has been stunning, was released last week from a hospital in suburban Cleveland after a brief non-COVID illness to a rehab facility, where she is confined to her room for 14 days because she had been in a hospital. Visitors are not permitted, as they also will not be when she finally returns to her retirement home. In short, although I have two siblings who live near her, I could not visit even if I chose to drive there.

But that brings me to a closing note. I can stay home not only because I am “allegedly retired,” but because I am not a health care worker. Their adjustments have been the reverse of those of most of us, involving thorough engagement, exposure to life-threatening infection, and long hours of treating growing numbers of patients. And not just in urban areas. As of today, for example, Illinois has 4,596 reported cases, resulting in 65 deaths, spread across 40 of 102 counties. Small towns and rural areas will not be immune. I just heard New York Gov. Cuomo note that COVID-19 has spread to all but one county in his state.

Amidst all our concerns, the ducks in the lagoon at Humboldt Park are blissfully oblivious to human problems with the novel coronavirus.

We’re all making adjustments, most of us in our homes, but our public health workers, doctors, and nurses are making theirs at the front lines. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude and everything we can do to support them, especially those who have voluntarily returned to work from retirement, or serve in the National Guard, and didn’t have to take those risks. God bless them all, every last courageous one of them.

Jim Schwab

Returning to Blogging as Usual

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This blog has gone quiet for weeks until now, the second time since last May. My last post was about a month ago, linking readers to a newly released podcast in the Resilience Roundtable series for the American Planning Association. I will be doing more of those in coming months and will keep readers posted. After that, of course, followed the holidays, and some of my hiatus was associated with taking a little time off.

But as in the seven-week break early last summer, the extended break this time was primarily for medical reasons. Without going into details, I had some difficult surgery January 3 that was immediately followed, in post-op, by some complications from a pre-existing condition that made for a difficult release. I am just emerging from the recovery from all that, trying to assume most of my normal duties and functions but not always finding my usual level of energy to perform them, so jobs lag. I have had plenty of ideas for articles, but not the time or energy, but that is quickly changing.  It just takes time.

Look for more very soon. One modest benefit of even a modest-length convalescence is the opportunity, when one is awake and comfortable enough, to read with focus. I did not waste the opportunity. Now I am ready to start sharing some of what I learned.

Once again, I am grateful for my readers, whose numbers have grown despite my absence from the scene, which tells me that people find recent or older writings via friends or the Internet, get hooked, and register as subscribers. That trust is precious to me, and I aim to continue earning it.

Jim Schwab

About Blowing That Whistle

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For the last four weeks, I have failed to find adequate time to write a respectable blog post. Events and past commitments have gotten the best of me. I spent four days in Iowa during the first week of this month, and two days in North Carolina the following week. In between, I was racing to stay ahead of the demands of my online teaching for the University of Iowa. One surprise request for consulting work intervened on a very short-term basis.

Why do I mention this?

Because, despite that drought of blog production, this blog has been gaining new subscribers by the hundreds weekly, a trend still underway. It seems logical to conclude, without any new posts, that the most recent article, “If You See Something, Say Something,” from September 22, remains the driving force. When I wrote it, however, I thought it an interesting turn of phrase but hardly the most interesting overall post I had ever written. I had modest expectations for the reaction it would get, and that seemed confirmed by an underwhelming reaction on Facebook.

I believe I underestimated the utterly accidental convergence of events. It was not long after that post that a whistleblower in the U.S. national security establishment complained formally about President Trump’s telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelenskiy, in which, the White House summary of the call later revealed, Trump pressed Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden in return for the sale of needed weapons for Ukraine to defend itself against Russia and Russian-allied separatists. That set in motion an entire train of revelations including testimony by current and former diplomats and other officials. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry. The house of cards in the White House has been tumbling ever since.

I simply had the dumb luck of writing what I wrote and asking citizens to become whistleblowers to save American democracy right before one of the most consequential series of events in modern presidential history. I have no doubt that my increased readership is simply the product of people searching for content on whistleblowing and similar subjects and stumbling into my blog. I can say that I am glad so many of you liked what you saw and decided to stay. But be prepared for me to explore many other subjects in coming weeks and months.

Why?

More than six years ago, after I had initiated the blog, I wrestled with its focus. Experienced blog writers seemed to suggest one needed a “subject” for a blog. What was mine? I was not entirely sure. Every subject I considered seemed insufficient.

I was an urban planner. I was an author. I loved literature. I read a lot of books and did not mind reviewing some of them. I had religious and moral beliefs and perspectives that had evolved over decades. I graduated with a B.A. in political science but later earned degrees in journalism and urban and regional planning. I had become a disaster planning expert. I did not feel whole without embracing the full extent of my far-ranging curiosity.

One morning I awoke with a special insight. The blog, I decided, was about whatever I damn well chose to write about on that day. It would express everything I had to offer, everything I felt competent to discuss. That was in 2013. It was three years later before the turn in American politics concerned me to the point that I also felt strongly that expressing my opposition to some current developments was simply a response to my own moral and intellectual center, politics notwithstanding. I would say whatever I felt I needed to say. Every so often, the urge would emerge, and I would somehow find words to say something unique.

One never knows how what one must say feeds into the larger community or national narrative. It is the role of faith to help one make that leap and join the dialogue. And that’s all I did four weeks ago. But I am overjoyed to have so many of you join me. It makes me want to wake up in the morning and write something. Stay tuned. More is coming.

Jim Schwab