Catch Up and Slow Down

I was lying half awake in bed at 4 a.m., unable to return completely to sleep after using the bathroom. My mind kept rolling over various competing obligations and necessities, and the thought hit me:

“You must catch up while slowing down.”

Frankly, that made about as much sense to me in the moment as it probably does to you upon reading it. One’s subconscious mind can shed strange light sometimes. The whole idea is as paradoxical as it is imperative. And yet, I mention it because I strongly suspect that many people can relate to it at some level.

We get caught in situations. Mine is partial explanation of why it has been weeks since I last posted on this blog, but that is a minor measure of the overall impact of a combined events and circumstances. As a professional urban planner, I can state flatly that life does not always follow our plans. It springs surprises and throws nasty curveballs.

Work piles up, even if much of it, in my case at the moment, is pro bono or volunteer work. The thought that I am sharing occurred last weekend, and I wrote the first four paragraphs above that morning. I got sidetracked until now, but there’s no better time to finish a blog post than now–I guess.

Let’s go back almost two months. On April Fool’s Day, aka April 1, I flew with my wife (Jean) and a teenage grandson (Alex) to Philadelphia to attend the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference. This was important to me on several levels, including my role as immediate past chair of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, which keeps me on the Executive Committee until the end of this year. Even then, I will still be involved, primarily in charge of a documentary film project, but I will save that topic for my next blog post. You can see the work piling up already. Being there allowed me to network with numerous people about numerous issues and projects and attend our division reception, where we announced a fundraising campaign to support the film project. Over breakfast, it gave one colleague from APA’s International Division an opportunity to recruit me for its Ukraine Rebuilding Action Group. But it was also a chance, during spring break for the Chicago Public Schools, to tour parts of a historic city with Alex and Jean.

A much earlier request to speak at a conference in Georgia set me up to fly back to Chicago on April 4 to stay overnight and fly the very next day to Atlanta. The occasion was the Larry Larson Speaker Series of the ASFPM Foundation at Lake Lanier, attached to the annual conference of the Georgia Association of Floodplain Management. Our distinguished panel was addressing issues of disaster resilience from federal, state, nonprofit, and local planning perspectives.

Little did I know my own resilience was to be tested. Wicked weather sweeping through the Midwest and South that week created havoc. By the time I arrived at O’Hare International Airport, having neglected to check for cell phone text messages, I learned that my flight to Atlanta was canceled and no others were available that day. I needed to be at Lake Lanier by that evening, so I conferred with the event organizers. I had to cancel my flight and hotel room and ended up speaking the next morning by video connection, missing out on personal interactions but delivering my comments anyway. Perhaps my own most notable remark was that I no longer wanted to hear any local official say after a natural disaster that “no one could have foreseen” the event. If the event happened, I said, it was always within the realm of possibility. “What you’re telling me,” I said, “is that you may not have spent much time thinking about it beforehand.” Terri L. Turner, a long-time colleague and recently retired development services administrator for the city of Augusta, Georgia, told me later that there was a ripple of laughter in the audience after I said that. Floodplain managers too often know the truth of such assertions.

Within two weeks, I discovered that my personal resilience was to be challenged in more significant ways. By mid-April, I experienced a sudden problem on the bottom of my left foot that appeared to be some sort of lesion or blister. Not sure, the best move seemed to be a consultation with my primary care physician to see what he thought. That happened on April 19, but he was also uncertain and referred me to a podiatrist. However, the very next morning, I reported to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for a previously scheduled prostate biopsy, which produced its own complications over the weekend. I might have just waited those out restfully if I had not been scheduled as co-instructor for a week-long online, all-day FEMA class that week, which was largely an exhausting experience. In mid-week, I left right after class adjourned for a follow-up appointment with the urologist to learn the results of the biopsy, which were reassuring but will involve some further measures this summer.

I finally managed to see the podiatrist the following Monday. He determined a need to biopsy the growth, a decidedly painful and messy experience even with a local anesthetic. I went home with a bandaged foot that I needed to protect for several days until it healed. A week later, however, I learned that the growth was benign; surgery would still be beneficial though not urgent.

Somewhere, in between all this, my printer died. I bought a new one from Best Buy but asked that the Geek Squad do me the favor of installing it. After all, I bought it the day of the foot biopsy. Our aging electric mower also died, and I brought our 19-year-old college student grandson to Home Depot to help buy a new one. I let him assemble it and mow the yard. I’m fine with mowing now, but for a few days, it was decidedly not a good idea.

By now, the second week of May had arrived, and a number of commitments beyond the FEMA class were amassing a backlog of work for which I needed a rapid rise in stamina, which I have mostly managed to generate. Nonetheless, I wish I had more energy and more hours in the day. That does not even speak to family obligations as summer arrives and school ends, and I dream of a vacation while arranging to see doctors in August. I’ll figure it all out, but as I said, life throws curveballs. The value of being 73 is that one has presumably learned something about how to handle matters more efficiently and wisely. I am applying that wisdom to regain control over those pending tasks and establish priorities. I am learning how to catch up and slow down at the same time.

My next post, coming very soon, will share the biggest project currently on my plate. I hope you will find it as fascinating and exciting as I do. Resilience matters.

Jim Schwab

 

P.S.: While editing this piece for publication, I learned that a Sunday feature article in the Chicago Tribune, in which I was quoted, has appeared online here. The article discusses the impact of climate change on urban heat and social disparities in the city. In addition, the two links below provide methodology for the article and searchable maps:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-viz-chicago-heat-disparities-climate-change-20230526-mzsazq6xa5b6rejv3rtvfefwoi-htmlstory.html

https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-how-we-reported-on-heat-disparities-in-chicago-20230525-hsdhhgzgwrc7tffcre6ftanphi-story.html

Thanks to reporter Sara Macaraeg for alerting me to the article’s release.

Going Viral

Now I know what it feels like, or may have felt like. Kind of. Sort of.

I will never experience, in all likelihood, the very worst the COVID-19 virus can inflict on human beings. I was lucky in many ways. First, the virus just never found me as a target until early October of this year. Second, I am very physically fit for my age, and I don’t suffer from any chronic conditions that often expose people to more severe reactions to the virus. Third, by the time COVID-19 found me, I had the two initial shots of the Pfizer vaccine, and later a Moderna booster. My only failing was not having obtained the more recently released Omicron booster, but there is no question that vaccines made my path far easier than was the case for those who suffered earlier in the pandemic.

I spent most of my COVID time not knowing I had it, though there were indications that aroused my suspicions—just a bit. Late Sunday, October 9, I experienced some mild cold symptoms, but I sometimes have sinus problems that become more persistent as Midwest weather changes in the fall. On Monday, I began to experience more of a cold and struggled through online meetings, two about a video project, one preparing for an upcoming online training workshop. In the evening, I was supposed to volunteer with

It’s a lot easier to get a test now than at the height of the pandemic, when tests were as scarce as the places that provided them. Now you just pull up for an appointment, take the kit through the window, tickle your nostrils with a swab, and hand it all back to the pharmacist.

signature collection to help place our incumbent Chicago alderman, Daniel La Spata, on the municipal ballot next spring, but I called it off because I was not feeling well. By the next morning, I took a nasal swab COVID test at Walgreen’s, but the test came back negative the following day. As a result, I assumed I simply had what I called “the ordinary crud” of a normal cold. Just deal with it for a few days, I thought, and get over it.

I made no real changes to my plans and tried to maintain my normal pace. The previous week, curiously, had included my participation as a consulting expert in two online symposiums, both lasting two and three-quarter hours, on Tuesday and Thursday for a project at Johns Hopkins University addressing pandemic community recovery. I moderated the final panel on Thursday, dealing with the use of metrics, which are essentially statistical targets, for tracking the many variables concerning social equity and public health factors that would guide such recovery. In other words, COVID-19 already had my intellectual attention. I had no reason to suspect It would seize my medical attention as well.

But I was wrong on that count. By that Tuesday, some of the infamous COVID-19 fatigue was settling in, and the cold was tightening its grip. I had planned to attend a program of the Society of Midland Authors at Cliff Dwellers in downtown Chicago that evening. As on Monday night, I never made it. It seemed wiser to stay home. It was becoming a pattern.

Nonetheless, I spent Wednesday morning at a dealership service department. While in the waiting room, I met online with two planned guest speakers for my online University of Iowa class, which meets in the fall semester on Thursday evenings. I was very much looking forward to letting Linda Langston and Kehla West take over the class a week later because, in my opinion, both are impressive members of the natural hazards professional community and could share valuable insights. “Planning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery” offers graduate planning and public affairs students serious comprehension of the natural-hazard threats facing our communities. Linda is a former county supervisor of Linn County, Iowa, who had helped lead her community through the 2008 floods that overwhelmed Cedar Rapids and into the recovery that followed. She later worked nationally on resilience issues with the National Association of Counties before returning to Cedar Rapids as a consultant. Kehla works with Region 5 of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Chicago. Although she was doing me a favor by sharing her federal government experience, she regarded it as a great honor to be asked to speak to a class in which she was once a student. I was enthusiastic about sharing my virtual stage with them for two hours. The meeting was a breeze.

All right, this is a simulation of what I may have looked like, but it’s probably close. I found myself waking up in a seated position on the couch more than two hours after falling asleep early in the afternoon.

But most days that week, with increasing frequency, the afternoon was not. I no longer even remember which day was which, but I know that on several occasions, I would hit a wall of fatigue by late morning or early afternoon, and work would grind to a halt. One day, this happened around 1 p.m., and to regain some energy, I went downstairs from my home office to sit on the living room couch. I simply disappeared into deep slumber, with no recollection of anything. Sometime well after 3 p.m., I woke up, looked at the clock, and wondered where my day had gone. For someone very conscious of pending deadlines and obligations, it was deeply frustrating. At the end of the day, I like to know what I have accomplished. I did not want to find that I had lost a major chunk of my day to exhaustion. It became hard to believe that a mere cold had done this, but I kept thinking about that negative test. It was not COVID. I was just worn out fighting a cold. But day after day, I watched in growing alarm as the number of tasks falling behind schedule kept growing. The will power and drive that sufficed in normal circumstances to overcome such deficits never materialized, and the gap widened instead. The spirit was willing, but the flesh fell asleep, day after day.

That Thursday evening, I taught my class as usual. But it was not so usual. It became patently obvious that I was struggling with my voice, with sinus difficulties, with watery eyes, with fatigue, but I plugged away for two hours. By Saturday, in a phone conversation with someone about a potential film grant proposal, I struggled again in the conversation because my voice was weak, but I pushed ahead because the call was important, and the proposal deadline was at the end of the month, just two weeks away.

And so it went. If a meeting was on the telephone or online, I could make it work even if I was exhausted after it was over. If it was in person, I would cancel. Fortunately, most meetings, including a debrief with Johns Hopkins about the symposium two weeks earlier, a HUD guidebook review panel, and a Midland Authors board meeting, were online, usually via Zoom. I had contacted my doctor over the weekend of October 15-16 through a patient portal, and he asked me to come in, which I did by Wednesday, October 19. He made some suggestions but accepted the negative COVID test result. Following his advice, I began using a Neti pot to control the sinus congestion—and it works, by the way. In combination with Flonase (after the Neti pot), it has been effective. The fatigue, however, took its own good time to fade away.

The next day, Thursday, I had class in the evening, the one at which Linda and Kehla would speak in tag-team fashion about local and federal perspectives on planning for disaster recovery. That afternoon, Jean tested positive, much to her surprise. In our pre-class banter on Zoom, I mentioned that to Linda, who repeated it to Kehla when she logged on: “Jim’s wife tested positive for COVID.” Kehla immediately expressed her regrets. They taught the class, I offered occasional commentary, and for the most part, I got to rest my voice and conserve my energy.

But I had also decided at that point that getting another test the next morning was imperative. By mid-day Saturday, a Walgreen’s e-mail informed me that I had tested positive. I discussed it with an emergency room doctor, and later my primary physician, who said the symptoms we discussed just a few days before sounded a lot like COVID to him at the time. The ER doctor stated that, based on our discussion of what led me to get tested again, I had probably had COVID all along and may unwittingly have infected Jean. The verdict of these two men made sense to me, but of course, it was now after the fact. I was actually near the end of my COVID experience before I ever knew for certain that I had it.

Alex, to right of candle, after baptism service, with me at far right, Pastor Nancy Goede, Pastor Matt Stuhlmuller, Alex, sponsor Kornelius, and members of my family, including Jean, far left. I later wondered about any unintended exposure I may have cause through unawareness that I even had COVID at that point.

If there was one situation that brought some regret–it seems not to have produced any adverse consequences that I am aware of–it was that, not believing I had COVID, I joined others at our church for our grandson Alex’s baptism on October 16. Mass spreader events were at one time rather scary propositions. But there I was, unaware, part of a ritual and celebration that was a happy event but could have infected others. The following Sunday, I stayed home because by then, I knew I had contracted COVID.

Although I am certain that skeptics of the vaccines (and I know some) would say this was just one man’s opinion, the ER doctor stated that the vaccines had surely helped make my case milder (and Jean’s was milder still), and that the vast majority of those now being hospitalized or dying from the virus are unvaccinated. The statistics I have seen on the subject seem strongly to suggest as much. But people love to argue from anecdotes, which are easier to understand than statistical data, and the resistance will surely continue. The COVID-19 pandemic seems closer to having run its course after nearly three years. All pandemics eventually lose steam.

COVID is no longer half as scary as the ghost lady and her companion on Halloween. Okay, just kidding. But that guy is freaky.

By the following week, with minor help from a cough suppressant the ER doctor prescribed, I was able to regain energy and focus on the tasks that I had neglected for almost two weeks. They were too important to me to do otherwise. One was completing a grant proposal for a film project I am leading under the auspices of the Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division of the American Planning Association. The deadline was October 31, and with significant money at stake, I was not about to blow it. We had been laying the groundwork for weeks, but I needed to write some powerful explanations of our project and submit all the necessary documentation, which I did by that morning. I was able to walk our grandson through the neighborhood for Halloween and pass out candy afterwards, while triggering the spooky voice of our alabaster “ghost lady” without being noticed. She impressed only the very young, drawing only amused yawns from tweens and teenagers.

But that was just the beginning of a list of tasks and projects needing my urgent attention. I had promised to create a case study of Hurricane Michael recovery to present to my students on November 10. I finally completed it just an hour before class. On Saturday, November 12, I hosted with Amanda Torres, formerly the city planner for Rockport, Texas, an all-day training workshop on hazard mitigation and disaster recovery, offered as part of my teaching commitment with the University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs. I had two documents I had promised to review, for which I sought and received additional time.

During the illness, I stopped my exercise routine. I currently visit the gym twice weekly with a rotating routine of exercises. After the illness had run its course, I still missed the workouts in favor of catching up on work. Before Christmas, I will turn 73. I find the exercise vital to good health at this stage of life, and I became anxious about the six-week gap that developed before I finally resumed the workouts on November 16. I have taken to them with relish. I simply feel better because of it, and I can finally spare the time again. Two days after Thanksgiving, I ran into a former trainer I worked with at X Sport, Michael Caldwell, who told me about his new work with companies on employee fitness and ergonomics, noting the serious toll on many people of failing to pay attention to such issues. I wished him well in his new enterprise. He seemed pleased that I was returning to form, just as he had always respected my resilience in the past after some injuries and surgeries.

But I also know that I am very fortunate. I find absolutely no evidence that I have developed any long-term COVID symptoms. I never fell victim to COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic despite a short-term hospital stay in May 2020 on the only floor with non-COVID patients. I have even discovered the accidental grace of hundreds of presumed strangers who, in successive waves in October and November, registered as new subscribers to this blog at a time when I was seldom posting anything. I wanted to change that but just could not get it done. Their attention to my blog despite several weeks with no new posts encourages me to get back into the ring. I must have offered something in earlier posts that still attracts readers, and I hope to keep it that way for a long time. I hope this humble story adds to the blog’s overall value. I shall certainly try my best.

Jim Schwab

Hidden Treasures in Plain Sight

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

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

About Blowing That Whistle

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

Twenty Thousand and Rising

What astounds me about what I am about to say is that the last time I posted to this blog was July 24, more than a month ago. There are reasons for that, but in the meantime, despite the lack of new articles, this blog continued to find new subscribers—and their numbers just yesterday crossed the 20,000 mark. Already, the numbers have exceeded that threshold by a few dozen. I would have expected the increase to decrease until I wrote something new. I can only assume that past writings have continued to propel interest despite my lack of activity. That fact is profoundly humbling.

I wrote twice in July. The other post occurred on the July 4 holiday. It detailed my cataract surgery in June and offered some medical history concerning the procedure. What followed, in addition to two trips to Colorado and one to Washington, D.C., between mid-July and early August, was a mad rush connected to a fall semester course I teach for the University of Iowa’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, as an adjunct assistant professor. But this year, the decision was made to move my class online, which meant a great deal of added work to make that change possible. And just to complicate matters, in mid-August, my laptop suffered a hard drive failure that delayed my timeline. I then worked to restore course-related files, an odyssey I will not detail here. It would be an overdose of minutiae.

I have been teaching in Iowa City since 2008. After the massive floods that struck much of eastern Iowa and some neighboring states in June of that year, the planning program began an urgent search for a way to add curriculum related to natural hazards and to make itself more relevant and useful to communities in Iowa needing assistance with flood recovery. It was easier to import such expertise than to develop it among existing faculty, apparently, because they soon made an offer for me to teach beginning that fall. I am an alumnus of the program, and they knew me well. At the time, I was already co-instructing such a course at the University of Illinois-Chicago with colleague Richard Roths, although that ended after the spring 2009 class the following year. But the arrangement with the University of Iowa has continued. The course has grown and evolved over time, naturally, just as the subject matter for “Planning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery” has also changed. Every year is a new adventure and an exercise in updating teaching materials. As I like to say, it is hardly like teaching Shakespeare. The script is rewritten with each new major disaster. Recent years have added multiple exclamation points to that statement.

Thus, while the subscriber count was climbing yesterday, I was preparing for and then presiding over the first online class session for URP:6280 last night, with eleven students in attendance. I still have work to do in reformatting PowerPoint files from past years and recording lecture videos that used to be presented in a classroom. But I discovered yet again that, from the first class to the last, my students are inquisitive and thoughtful and have very good reasons for choosing this course as an elective in pursuit of their Master of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning. As before, some make clear that they see this as possibly the most important class they will take. Some past students are now in leadership roles in the field of hazard mitigation and disaster recovery planning. They are not deluded about the challenges that communities will face under the influence of climate change, demographic shifts, and other factors. They want to do the planning that matters.

Although I have not written much for this blog lately, that will change very soon. I had to keep my priorities straight, however; my students had to have their materials ready on the course website by Monday, August 26, as classes started, and it was my obligation to make that happen. After Labor Day, I can gradually shift some of my attention elsewhere. My recent travels, to San Francisco in April, Manitoba and Cleveland in May, and to Colorado and Washington in July and August have supplied me with excellent subject matter for at least several future posts. I relish the prospect of making up for lost time with subscribers both new and old. Thanks to everyone for their support and interest.

Jim Schwab

Why I Agree with Mother Jones

Personally, I would rather be learning or teaching than shouting on any given day.

Last night, I read one of those publisher columns that are often boring and laborious, but this one nailed it. Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein recounted a conversation with a veteran editor she admires who inquired about the partisan bias he perceived in the monthly magazine. Unquestionably, the magazine is known for a left-wing tilt, but it should be better known for its investigative reporting and willingness to ask hard questions. Over the years, after all, Mother Jones has not gone out of its way to spare Democrats, but it certainly is riding herd on President Donald Trump.

And for good reason, although Trump is a symptom of a problem and not its origin. He is exploiting deep divisions and tribal instincts in a nation that seems unsure what it wants, but much of which is troubled by the extent of the deception, corruption, and amorality of the current administration. Bauerlein insists that the media can “stand for something” while remaining fair and accurate in its reporting, and I agree. She also notes that trying to report from the middle while merely relaying contrasting statements from “both sides” of the political spectrum is really reporting from nowhere because it lacks a moral anchor. There are multiple reasons for asking tough questions and engaging in investigative reporting, but two stand out: 1) Public officials often, but not always, cut corners, lie, or shade the truth to advance their own ambitions or protect the tribe; and 2) such questions are the ingredients of serious analysis that gets to the bottom of a problem and advances the quality of our national dialogue. Surely, the latter has been hitting new lows in recent years.

So, my title for this post does not mean that I always agree with everything I find in Mother Jones, nor does it mean that the magazine expects that all its readers will do so all the time. The real point is to advance the quality of the dialogue. And in that respect, I think publications like Mother Jones are essential to the survival of American democracy.

The subject of the purpose of the news media has always intrigued me, in part because, in addition to my M.A. in urban and regional planning from the University of Iowa, I also earned a second M.A. in journalism, way back in 1985. I recall a class conversation with one local newspaper editor. He clearly adhered to a school of thought that held that reporters need to be objectively neutral at all times. When someone asked him about news coverage of third parties, he noted that they got little coverage because they had such limited followings, so the focus was on the “two sides”—the Republicans and Democrats. When that person followed up by asking how third parties would ever get a hearing if all the news media followed that logic, he had no good answer. What we heard was mostly pre-Internet circular logic. We will cover such movements when they matter, and they won’t matter until we cover them. The shallowness of the paradigm of “two sides” immediately struck me: The media seeing itself as impartial mediator was an inadequate framework for finding the truth, which is not always or necessarily located in the middle. (Anyone still believe in slavery?) As Bauerlein observes, the middle moves, depending on how the two sides are defined. It matters whether the right is John McCain or Steve Bannon, whether the left is Nancy Pelosi or the Socialist Workers Party. And no, they are not the same. Where was the middle in Hitler’s Germany? Where was the middle in the segregated, Jim Crow South? Where is the middle when voter rights are being suppressed, so that some less privileged citizens are denied a voice through the ballot box? Whose voice matters (or should)?

Ultimately, it is not partisan to insist on accuracy, truth, human decency, and honesty. It is simply good for democracy and good for society. It is not helpful, on the other hand, simply to accept undocumented Twitter-fed nonsense from a President, a Congressman, or any other public figure without subjecting it to some standards of accuracy, which is why the Washington Post has maintained its inventory of more than 5,000 false or misleading statements by Trump since he took office. It may not be feasible for the Post alone to maintain such an inventory for everyone in a prominent political position, but he is the President, after all, and there are other Internet platforms for tracking political honesty among lower candidates and office holders of all parties at the federal, state, and local levels. These are not partisan sites, for the most part, but they are important tools for voters and activists who want to assess the accuracy of what they hear and read.

One reason I chose to react to Bauerlein’s comments is that they also touched upon  much of my own philosophy regarding this blog. When I launched “Home of the Brave” in April 2013, I had no idea who would be reading it, or how many, but now there are nearly 19,000 subscribers, and probably some smaller number of regular visitors who have not yet chosen to register a subscription. I get virtually nothing out of the enterprise except the deep satisfaction of sharing knowledge and perspectives, but being a veteran planning professional as well as a trained journalist, the quality and reputation of what I publish is central to my identity. I also recognize special responsibilities once a readership grows to that size. While I certainly have a point of view on numerous topics, I have sought to emphasize research and analysis over advocacy. Indeed, given my penchant for taking readers deep into the subject matter in my own areas of expertise, while insistently using plain English, I have been pleasantly surprised at how many people have chosen to read this blog on a regular basis. I would rather slake a popular appetite for truth than simply express opinions. If I get something wrong, and someone can prove it, I want to hear from them. To that end, my reading diet is aggressive, and I try to share what I learn when I think I have discovered something that matters. I am always open to recommendations regarding new books and research reports. All the best journalists I have ever known have been equally ravenous readers. It is their best defense against “fake news.” They are not only not the enemy of the people; they are vital resources for a thoughtful public.

If only we could retrain more of America to step outside its current groupthink and exercise their mental muscles to question, not just react, to be open to new information, and to value independent thought, we might get past our current bumper-sticker debates and engage in some serious, rational conversation. And we might learn to show more mutual respect for what we all have to offer.

Jim Schwab

Standards of Public Behavior

Like John McCain’s assuredly final book, The Restless Wave, I read Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, by James R. Clapper, in large part because my wife bought it for me. The usual pathway to my desk for books I discuss in this blog is that they get sent as review copies from a publisher.

Not so in this case. Jean follows much more news in her retirement, hears about books by current and former public officials, and occasionally chooses to bring one to my attention by buying it. She knows that I am likely to read it, though it may take a while if I get bogged down with other business. I am also unlikely to read the entire spate of such books in this age of Trump because I don’t have enough time. They seem to be multiplying like rabbits.

Clapper is quite clear that he never envisioned writing such a book until he retired, in large part because, as a largely nonpolitical intelligence officer, his accustomed role was to lie low and avoid publicity. At the peak of his career, as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) under President Barack Obama, he says, he saw his mission as “speaking truth to power.” Like any other high-ranking administration official, Clapper had better and worse days, agreements and disagreements, with the President, but retained a deep respect for the occupant of the office both because of the importance of that office and the dignity of the individual performing the job. Any individual who has ever held a responsible position in business or in public life knows well the profound difference between disagreement and disrespect. In the end, the boss calls the shots. Moreover, Clapper makes clear that, as first a military officer, and then a civilian intelligence professional following his retirement from the Air Force, he served under successive administrations of both parties and retained the same respect for those above him.

He spends most of the book laying the groundwork for the final chapters about life at or near the top of the system. He details his childhood, in which he once managed inadvertently to hack through his family’s television into the communications system of the Philadelphia police, into college and the Air Force and training as a military intelligence officer. Like most public servants, he did not perform his job in his early years with any expectation of someday becoming the nation’s chief intelligence officer. He simply grew into a role that eventually put him repeatedly in front of congressional committees, testifying at hearings about everything from Benghazi to budgets to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The time he invests in illuminating a background that has otherwise been largely out of the limelight helps us to understand the journey he has made from a lowly son of another itinerant military professional to someone with deep insights into where the nation has lately gone astray.

It is almost surely the unnerving experience of watching Donald Trump become president, even as the evidence of Russian meddling in the U.S. election system was mushrooming—much of which he was at times unable to discuss because the information was classified, or the investigation was underway and under the purview of the FBI, not the DNI—that seems to have dislodged any reservations he once had about sharing this story in a memoir. Like McCain, he uses the aid of a speechwriter, but neither man ever set out to be a professional writer. Still, it is perfectly clear that it is Clapper who assembled the facts for this intriguing book. The insights are clearly his own.

What troubles Clapper is hardly surprising, once one understands the philosophy that has guided his career, one commonly shared among lifelong public servants. There are certain expectations of loyalty to the nation, of the dignity of public service, and of public decency that seem to drive Clapper. No doubt, these motivations also affect many others on the growing list of critics whom President Donald Trump has recently targeted for loss of their security clearances. The sheer amateurishness of this dangerously autocratic move on Trump’s part, already applied to former CIA Director John Brennan, is apparent from the fact that several people on the announced list of those targeted for such scrutiny no longer have security clearances anyway. Would someone explain to Trump the Petulant that you can’t strip a security clearance that does not exist?

This appalling ignorance of history, law, and policy, and the consistent refusal to listen to advisers, certainly the refusal to accept the value of truth spoken to power, all appear to have played a role in driving Clapper, who is on Trump’s list, to construct his memoir and share his fears of the direction in which current events are leading the nation. There is a moment when respect for the office of the presidency is overshadowed by concerns about the abuse of power, as was the case under Richard Nixon. But this week’s events are beginning to suggest that even Watergate may not stand as the worst abuse of presidential power in American history. We cannot be afraid to say so. Clapper, who has made the round of news shows in recent months, states frankly near the end of his book:

I don’t believe our democracy can function for long on lies, particularly when inconvenient and difficult facts spoken by the practitioners of truth are dismissed as “fake news.” I know that the Intelligence Community cannot serve our nation if facts are negotiable. Just in the past few years, I’ve seen our country become polarized because people live in separate realities in which everyone has his or her own set of facts—some of which are lies knowingly distributed by a foreign adversary. This was not something I could idly stand by and watch happen to the country I love.

And so, he quotes General George Patton about how to move forward:

                “The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine. When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead.”

And hence the book’s title. It is an intelligent choice. Like Clapper with the presidents and superior officers he served in a five-decade career, I could probably question or object to some points he makes, but his larger points are impeccable. They are about honor and truth and service and honesty. Either you believe these ideals exist and matter, or you don’t. America must decide.

Jim Schwab

Flood of Events in Just Two Weeks

Life can produce very sudden turns of events. The turmoil and destruction dished out by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma may have been predictable in the abstract, that is, events that could occur at some point someday, but that means little when the day arrives that a hurricane is bearing down on your shores.

More than three months ago, I retired from the American Planning Association to move into a combination of activities I had tailored to my own skills and interests, which I have previously announced and discussed. Over the summer, I began setting the stage for introducing these new enterprises, but my wife and I also took time for a long-awaited excursion to Norway to celebrate this new phase of our lives. I began to share that story in August with blogs about our journey.

Meanwhile, I began work on the creation of Jim Schwab Consulting LLC, my solo planning practice. Just two weeks ago, with the help of a web designer, Luke Renn, I unveiled a business website that is a companion to this one. You can find it at the link above. But when we began to construct the site in mid-August, I had no idea what would ensue. By the time we had completed the new website, Harvey was making landfall on the Texas coast and dumping unimaginable amounts of rain in the Houston metropolitan area, and then on Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas.

As Harvey was losing steam and moving inland, Irma, initially a Category 5 hurricane, devastated the small island of Barbuda, the smaller part of the tiny Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda. Officials estimate that 95 percent of the island’s buildings were damaged or destroyed, and residents have been evacuated to the larger island of Antigua, partly in advance of an anticipated second attack by Hurricane Jose, following in Irma’s wake, that mercifully did not come to pass. That would have been bad enough, but the storm also badly rocked St. Thomas and St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, sideswiped Puerto Rico and the northern coast of Cuba, and finally passed through the Florida Keys, demolishing much of the community there, and sped up the western coast of Florida through places like Naples and Tampa. Irma was so huge that its waves and winds also buffeted numerous coastal communities in eastern Florida, no doubt shaking many people in Miami Beach to their core.

I will soon complete the tour of Norway on this blog, but it seemed more important to offer some insights, in some small way, into what is happening and will be needed in the recovery in Texas. Irma has been too large an event for me yet to absorb its totality and even begin to understand how I can possibly enhance what people know from the daily news barrage that has accompanied it. I am sure emergency management personnel at all levels are already weary but patriotically staffing their posts.

Planners like me must prepare for the much longer endurance test known as long-term recovery planning. While it is far too easy to say what, if any, role I may be asked to play in this drama, there have been conversations. Recovery, unlike emergency response, will take months to unfold. I will do my best to share what I learn. It is important because long-term recovery provides the opportunity to hash out major questions of the future and the resilience of the surviving communities. It has always been possible to learn from experience and to improve so that we lose fewer lives, suffer fewer losses, and rebound more quickly in future disasters. But possible is not certain. It is up to all of us to decide that we will rebuild with a resilient future in mind.

Jim Schwab

Map of Irma as of 9/12/17 from NOAA website.

The Fine Art of Stepping Down

“The cemeteries are full of indispensable people,” or variations thereof, is a quotation that has been attributed to many, including the late French President Charles de Gaulle, but according to Quote Investigator, actually belongs to an American writer Elbert Hubbard in 1907, using the phrase, “people the world cannot do without” and the word “graveyards.” But QI notes numerous sources over the years, many of which may well have borrowed from or built upon the other. The point is clear: None of us lives forever, and the world finds a way to move on without us. We can make an impact, but so can others. And we can come to terms with those facts long before we arrive at the cemetery.

Although it was not made public until January 9, I decided a few months ago that it was time to leave my post at the American Planning Association as manager of the Hazards Planning Center. There are two other such centers at APA—Green Communities, and Planning and Community Health—each of which has had at least three different managers since the National Centers for Planning were established in 2008 as a means of making clear APA’s commitment to certain leading-edge topics in planning. I have so far been the only manager for Hazards.  More importantly, I built that center’s portfolio atop an existing legacy of work in the field of planning for hazards dating back to 1993, when I agreed to manage a project funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that led to publication of the landmark report, Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction. I did not at first foresee the ways in which that effort would forever alter the arc of my career in urban planning. Looking back, there was nothing inevitable about it. While I was http://www.statenislandusa.com/heavily involved until then in environmental planning, almost none of it involved disasters. Once I sank my teeth deeply into the subject matter, however, there was no letting go. The Blues Brothers would have said that I was on a mission from God. Increasingly, I became aware of the high stakes for our society in properly planning our communities to cope with natural hazards.

One of the special pleasures of my position was the opportunity every summer to attend the Natural Hazards Conference in Colorado. Here, along with my wife, Jean, and daughter, Anna, in 2007, are some visitors from Taiwan whom I had met during a conference there the year before.

One of the special pleasures of my position was the opportunity every summer to attend the Natural Hazards Conference in Colorado. Here, along with my wife, Jean, and daughter, Anna, in 2007, are some visitors from Taiwan whom I had met during a conference there the year before.

That quarter-century tenure in the driver’s seat of APA’s initiatives regarding disaster policy and practice made me, in some people’s minds at least, almost inseparable from the position I now hold. Perhaps in part because I was comfortable in working with the news media, I became the public face of APA in the realm of hazards planning. That may have been amplified to some extent by the fact that, until last year, the only APA employees working directly under me on a regular basis were interns, most of whom were graduate planning students. It’s not that I was a one-man show. I enlisted staff within the research department for specific projects with assigned hours. Given the expertise needed in this area, and my own willingness to listen to and learn from the best, most experienced people available, it was generally productive to contract with those people on a consulting basis or through partnerships with other organizations. Because APA is a professional organization with a membership of almost 40,000, those resources were readily available. I could marshal expertise far greater than any we could have hired for most of those years. Last year, however, we came to terms with growth and added research associate Joseph DeAngelis, who joined us after leaving the New York City Planning Department, where he had worked on Hurricane Sandy recovery on Staten Island. He has become a great asset to the organization.

His ability to span the transition to a new manager was one of several preconditions I had in mind over the last two or three years in contemplating my retirement from APA. More important, but a factor in adding him to our staff, was that I wanted to leave my successor with a center that was in good shape. This meant having projects underway, and funded by agreements with sponsors beyond the immediate few months after my departure. By late last year, we had won project grants from FEMA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that will all end between July and December in 2018. That gives my successor, whoever he or she may be, more than adequate opportunity to complete those ongoing projects, maintain APA’s credibility in the realm of hazards, and explore new options and opportunities that will sustain the legacy that is already in place. I understand that people like me sometimes move quickly to another organization, firm, or government agency because a huge opportunity opens on short notice. With retirement, however, there is no need for such haste. We can take time to plan well.

That leads to another precondition in which I can say that I am greatly aided by the management philosophy of APA’s current executive director, James Drinan. He believes that, when possible, we should seek a managerial replacement who can join APA in the last two or three weeks of the tenure of their predecessor. This allows the opportunity for the outgoing person to share how things are done or even answer questions about how they might be done better or differently. I recognize, for one thing, that my own package of skills is unique and unlikely to be replicated. That is fine because someone new may well be much stronger in some other areas than I ever was. And if so, I am happy for them. It is a fool’s errand to seek replacement by a clone. Ultimately, the hiring choice will belong to APA’s research director, David Rouse, but my input on what credentials and experience are most useful is likely to have an impact. We hope to see resumes from some high-quality candidates in coming weeks.

So what is next for me as of June 1? I look forward to an opportunity to explore some new options that simply have not been feasible until now. Elsewhere on this website, I describe my intended work on some future book projects, most immediately focusing on the 1993 and 2008 Midwest floods, but there are other ideas waiting in the wings. APA would like to use my consulting services as needed to aid the transition beyond my retirement, and I have agreed, but there are and may be some other offers. I will certainly continue teaching at the University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning, at least as long as they wish to continue that relationship, which has been very fruitful. And it should surprise no one if people find me on the speaking circuit from time to time. In fact, I may be much freer to accept such invitations if I am not managing a research program for APA. Finally, I shall have considerably greater free time to devote to this blog. In less than four years, its following has grown from virtually nothing to more than 14,000 subscribers as of this week. It has been a great pleasure to share what I learn through that forum.

The opportunity to spend part of an afternoon just reading a book on a 606 Trail bench beckons.

The opportunity to spend part of an afternoon just reading a book on a 606 Trail bench beckons.

But those are all activities that somehow involve work. I may well involve myself in some volunteer activities with APA divisions and its Illinois chapter, the Society of Midland Authors, and other outlets that I may discover. That too sometimes sounds like work, so let me try harder. I have written about the wonderful 606 Trail near my home; I expect to walk and bicycle there and in nearby Humboldt Park. I may well take a great novel to one of the trail’s benches (or to my front patio) and read in the middle of the day. My wife and I may travel, both as we choose and as we are invited. Anyone reading this blog must already know that I love to get around. Despite all its flaws, the world remains a fascinating place, and I want to explore it while I can. I may never get a gig (or want one) like that of Anthony Bourdain, but I will see enough. And, yes, like him, I love to explore different cuisines—in part so that, as an amateur gourmet chef with new time on his hands, I can try them out for guests at home or elsewhere. Like I said, the world is a fascinating place. Explore it while you can.

Jim Schwab