Over the following few months early last year, I spent many
hours over several weeks fashioning the article. Although I started out with a
clear vision of my subject matter, I also explored and sought more
international material than I had ever previously examined. By the spring of
2018, I submitted my draft. Over subsequent months, it underwent editing, peer
review, revision, and proofreading, and then final preparation for online publication.
Today, I received the announcement. It is online and available to the public.
So, the question for most readers, even those already
immersed in the subject matter of natural hazards, is, “What do you mean by planning systems”? Oxford did not
venture a specific definition of what they had in mind; they left that to me. I
decided that the answer was “essentially a layer of guidance or
legal requirements that sit atop plans of any type at any governmental level at
or below the source of that guidance.” In other words, the system describes
what a plan should look like, or what is expected of a plan that complies with the
framework that is established. A planning system is a statutory or programmatic
framework for a specific type of plan, in this case, one that aims to reduce
losses from natural hazard events.
This had long been important to me. As far back as 2002, while I
was at the American Planning Association
(APA), I had arranged a contract between APA and the Institute for Business and Home Safety
(IBHS) under which APA researched and described state laws that related to planning
for natural hazards, updated annually until 2010, when IBHS decided to discontinue
the contract. An elaborate matrix detailed which states prescribed planning to
address hazards and what they required, suggested, or allowed, supplemented by explanations
of specific items in a key code and by color-coded maps. In 2007, I convinced
the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
to underwrite an APA project that examined how communities could better
integrate hazard mitigation priorities into local planning processes. The
result was a 2010 Planning
Advisory Service Report, Hazard Mitigation:
Integrating Best Practices into Planning. That has led to elaboration of
FEMA guidance on this point, as well as playing a role in more recent guidance to
communities from the State of Colorado on resilience, spurred by the September 2013
“mountain monsoon” flooding that afflicted the state. The point is that I have
been pursuing this subject for nearly 20 years. I understood why Oxford had
approached me for this task.
The encyclopedia article allowed me to expand the subject in new ways,
and for those readers curious to explore the topic, I hope it proves useful. Just
follow the links in the first paragraph of this post to my article or the
encyclopedia more generally, which provides a wealth of knowledge on the larger
subject of natural hazards. I hope it provides planners and others in the
professional community engaged with natural hazard issues an analytical
framework for thinking about how we can tackle these issues.
But that is not all. The concept behind the APA/IBHS work has been
revived. Immediately after leaving APA, under a short-term consulting contract,
I helped APA prepare a new grant proposal for FEMA’s Cooperating Technical
Partners program to revive the state statutory summary in an updated and
expanded framework. Although that is not yet complete, PDF summaries of the
state-level planning framework for all 50 states are available. Click here
for the landing page with an introduction to the overall project. Then stay
tuned for the findings and overall summary of the project, which are yet to
come.
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade I am devoting much of this week to people who contributed in significant ways to my early publishing career. For the last 35 years or more, I have mixed journalism and writing skills with technical and professional knowledge to fulfill my aspirations. Many people helped make that possible.
One of them was my advisor for the master’s program in journalism
at the University of Iowa, John Erickson. I have no photo to offer from way
back then or more recently. He is now emeritus
professor, and I hope enjoying a well-earned retirement, but I have not heard
from him in a long while.
Nonetheless,
way back in early 1984, when I needed to decide on a master’s project to
complete my degree requirements, I met with him to state that I wanted to turn
my project into a published book when I was through. We had the choice of a
practical journalistic project or an academic investigation on some subject
related to mass communications. I chose the former, in the form of an oral
history project concerning a major issue in Iowa at the time–the growing farm
credit crisis.
Completely unfazed by my audacity, John quickly wrote out two
titles of books he thought would help me think through my strategy. Both
concerned oral history and interviewing techniques. I ordered the books, went
to work, and began networking across the Midwest to find farmers to interview
on the subject, eventually taping interviews with more than 70. When I had
about 140 pages of a book completed, John insisted that was enough for the
project and I should turn them in–and complete the book later. Three years
after earning my degree, Raising Less Corn and More Hell was released by
University of Illinois Press. Only after that, for fear of jinxing success, did
he tell me it was the first master’s project in the school’s history, at least
to his knowledge, to achieve commercial publication. But he provided steady
encouragement all along the way and always seemed to know I could pull it off.
Call him my chief enabler. I never gave him nearly enough credit, so this is my
feeble partial payment. Thanks, John, wherever you are.
Posted
on Facebook 1/22/19
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade Two days ago, I noted the important role played by Professor John Erickson in the development of my first book. As i roamed the Midwest collecting the interviews that were at the core of Raising Less Corn and More Hell, there were many people who were helpful, but some were especially supportive of my project from the moment we first met.
Among
those people were Gary and Mary Beth Janssen. Gary went through tough times as
a farmer in northern Iowa, and he and Mary Beth eventually moved to Emporia,
Kansas, after she studied to become a teacher. In Kansas, Gary began to grow
organic vegetables and provided fresh produce to local schools for school
lunches.
But in the 1980s, while I was researching and
writing my book, Gary provided numerous contacts and referrals within the
farming community to make my work possible. We grew close enough that he and
Mary Beth drove to Omaha for our wedding in June 1985. After the book was
published, Gary was an enthusiastic grass roots promoter. Without him, much of
it might never have happened.
Unfortunately,
Gary died of complications from colon and liver cancer in September 2013. Mary
Beth has survived him, and I am still grateful to both of them.
Posted on Facebook 1/24/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade I have discovered that my biggest obstacle to completing one of these tributes every day is not writing; that part is very easy for me. I barely know what writer’s block is. It is the fact that, Facebook being what it is, I prefer to find photos of the people for whom I am expressing thanks, and when, as I did this week, I reach into the more distant past, sometimes finding those photos is a challenge. For many people involved in helping me see my first book to completion, it just takes a while. Many photos I had in the 1980s preceded my ownership of a computer and have never been digitized, if I even had a photo in the first place. It is turning out to be a major undertaking with major competition for my time. I have had to compromise. Some photos are still on their way from sources I had to track down.
While I figure that out, I want to honor someone else of more recent vintage. At the end of 2013, a year in which I took 23 trips on APA business, five more teaching at the University of Iowa, and some personal trips, I realized I needed to do something serious to stay resilient. I enrolled in a new health club (X Sport Fitness) and arranged for a trainer just before New Years’ Day. I was about to undertake the new routine when I had to delay it because of a pinched nerve in my shoulder that occurred on that holiday. A few weeks later, I began my new routine with a good trainer, but he left abruptly a year later.
Then
came Mike Caldwell, one of the most talented, thoughtful, creative, and
dedicated personal trainers I am likely to encounter in that business. He pays
very close attention to my development and ensures the routines are well
attuned to my current situation. I have learned a great deal about fitness
techniques and achieved things, now at 69, that I never did when I was much
younger. I could not ask for more and have no regrets. Particularly at my age,
fitness matters, and good advice in that arena matters even more. So here’s to
Mike, a true pro at what he does.
It is hard to know where to start in describing why the privatization
of prisons is a terrible idea. The effective abandonment of public responsibility
for the fate and welfare of people sentenced to incarceration after being convicted
of various crimes—some of whom, in recent years, have been exonerated because of
revelations of sloppy or corrupt police work—should speak deeply to the
conscience. Apparently, in some legislative circles, however, money counts for more.
The lobby for private prisons has made headway over time at both the federal
and state levels.
To find out whether and how private prisons are particularly
dysfunctional, Shane Bauer, a senior
reporter for Mother Jones, went undercover at Winn
Prison in Louisiana, an operation of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)
under contract with the state. Not totally undercover, mind you. He used his own
name, and had CCA checked him out as he applied for a $9-per-hour job as a
corrections officer, they might have wondered why someone with his background would
want to work there. But CCA has a problem. Guards working just above minimum
wage tend not to last long, and CCA needs bodies in uniforms, so the hiring process
appears less than diligent. He was hired easily and worked at Winn for four
months before it was time to leave. But more on that later.
For the record: Guards at public prisons in Louisiana, Bauer
reports, started at $12.50 an hour. Not a lot, but almost 40 percent more than
CCA was paying. Undoubtedly with better benefits.
Let me state at the outset that the resulting book, American Prison (Penguin Press, 2018), which follows his reporting in Mother Jones, is not my normal reading. Regular followers of this blog can figure out what I like to read, for the most part. But I am currently a judge in adult nonfiction for a book awards contest for the Society of Midland Authors, so this and many others arrived at my doorstep, day after day, until the deadline arrived earlier this month. Prisons, correctional policy, and the business of punishment are well outside my areas of expertise, and I am glad of that, but I know a book that demands public attention when I see one. This one will be an eye-opening experience even for some cynics. It will also be heart-wrenching for anyone with a moral core or a sense of human decency.
Before I delve into the details, I must express my admiration
for Bauer’s courage in even undertaking this project. For one thing, he had
prior experience with prisons—as an inmate. Several years ago, while Bauer was covering
the Middle East, he and two friends, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd, went hiking and wandered
too close to the Iranian border in Kurdish Iraq. All
three were arrested. He was taken to the notorious Evin
prison, where he spent considerable time in isolation before his eventual
release. Shourd was released after about a year in a separate prison. That
experience might very justifiably have kept most other people from even considering
working in a prison, but Bauer has instead developed a commitment to prison
reform. Meanwhile, the CEO of CCA, Damon
Hininger, earned $4 million in 2018, according to Bauer, 20 times the
salary of the director of the Federal Bureau of
Prisons. Just sayin’.
Bauer does not simply relate his experiences at Winn Prison.
He has done his homework on the history of making money from prisons and prison
labor. He points out that many immigrants to the American colonies were convicts
exported from England as indentured servants.
Many fortunes in the United States, sometimes vast fortunes, have been built on
free (meaning forced) labor from slaves and convicts. But the business of
prison labor being used for profit took wing mostly after the Civil War, when
the 13th
Amendment abolished slavery with one loophole: “except as punishment for a
crime.” The opportunity to convict multitudes of African-Americans, as well as
a fair number of hapless poor whites, for even minor crimes, opened the door
for leasing convict labor. That, in turn, led to horrific conditions as
legislatures, especially in the South, sought ways to reduce the costs of penitentiaries
by making them profitable—thus, the institution of the prison farm, and later,
chain gangs.
That conditions were often horrid on plantations and chain
gangs is beyond dispute. Bauer provides ample statistics and documentation including
large percentages of deaths in places like Alabama. But individual stories sometimes
often serve better to illustrate the moral degradation of prisons for profit.
Bauer supplies us with the once infamous case of Martin Tabert, a white,
22-year-old middle-class kid from North Dakota who in 1921 set out to tour the
country as a personal adventure. He ran out of money in Florida, between odd
jobs along the way, and was arrested and pulled off a train by the sheriff for
not having a ticket. Tabert wired his family for money, but before it arrived,
he was sold off to the Putnam Lumber Company for three months of work in a
turpentine camp. He worked all day in swamp water in “tattered shoes that didn’t
fit.” When he had an aching groin and lagged behind other convicts, the “whipping
boss” made him lie on the ground for thirty lashes in front of the other
convicts. After additional beating and being hit over the head with a strap, he
died the following night. The company sent a note to his family saying he died
of fever. Not satisfied with the explanation, the family convinced the North
Dakota state attorney to go to Florida to investigate. His findings, including the
company’s agreement to pay the sheriff $20 for each prisoner he sent to them,
produced a major scandal, a lawsuit, and an investigation by the Florida
legislature.
All of that highlights the fact that, for decades, some
states wavered between episodes of investigation and reform and a desire to limit
the prison budget and make the penal system earn money. One might think that,
in more enlightened times, we might get past that sort of moral cowardice and
come to terms with public responsibilities to provide opportunities for at
least the less violent or nonviolent prisoners to make amends, acquire skills,
and rehabilitate themselves for participation in what we might hope would
become a less dangerous society.
But private prisons, and major problems even at public
prisons, persist because America has not yet moved beyond moral indifference
and hard-nosed, but short-sighted notions like “throw away the key.” I do not
say that to minimize the very real challenges involved in incarcerating felons
in the first place. Bauer himself, as he details his experiences as a
corrections officer at Winn, confronts much of the moral ambivalence of handling
such responsibilities, including the head games and manipulation in which prisoners
often engaged at his expense. The moral turmoil of maintaining control of a
potentially violent setting is significant, but it also serves to underscore
the moral turpitude of trying to do so in a private prison staffed by guards
who are earning barely above the minimum wage. That, of course, cuts costs, as
does minimizing medical care for inmates and many other short cuts. Bauer plies
us with statistics including comparisons of suicide rates between public and
private prisons. But again, a personal story highlights a major problem. Bauer
tells of one inmate, Damien Coestly, who hangs himself. His suicide is not
reported by CCA, he tells us, because he died in the hospital, not at the
prison. Never mind that the scenario played out at the prison. Just get the guy out of our prison before he
dies on our watch. Good grief.
Now, at some point, you know this whole undercover operation
must end. I will not spoil the story for you, nor even share how he got so much
information out of the prison on a daily basis. But the epilogue details how and
when he decided the time had come to pack up and leave, reporting his resignation
by phone from the safety of neighboring Texas. Just read it. It is high drama, making
Bauer’s subsequent arrival at the annual shareholders meeting of CCA in
Nashville almost anticlimactic, but revealing, nonetheless. If this book does
not affect your outlook on the whole subject of incarceration for profit, I
swear, there is something wrong with you.
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade [Partners of] the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s Digital Coast program are hosting a meeting in Washington, D.C., today of the Digital Coast Partnership, an assortment of eight national nonprofit organizations willing to support geotechnical services to coastal communities across the U.S. The Digital Coast staff have been leading this effort for more than a decade, and the result is better decision making on coastal land use and resource management among the communities using Digital Coast tools and resources.
I attended these meetings and participated in Digital Coast projects until I left the American Planning Association, one of those partners, in 2017. But as of 2010, when APA joined the partnership, I found the entire enterprise a magnificent example of positive federal engagement with local governments and user communities in need of better data and easier ways to access data. And I made some fast friends because of the quality of the staff.
Leading that effort was one remarkable human being, Miki Schmidt, who has been with NOAA that entire time. Miki has a positive, can-do attitude, and helped me learn a great deal about what positive federal outreach could look like. We had numerous valuable conversations about how to move forward, and Miki repeatedly expressed his gratitude to APA for becoming part of the entire effort. But he deserves recognition for doing a top-notch job year after year, and empowering a staff that couldn’t be better. Near the end of my era, also, as depicted in the photo below, he organized a retirement “roast” at a restaurant during a NOAA Coastal GeoTools Conference. I could not have asked for a nicer tribute.
James Schwab CORRECTION: I did not realize that NOAA was caught up in the federal government shutdown and NOAA staff are not present at the meeting mentioned in the first sentence. it is a tribute to the success of the partnership, however, that the National Association of Counties, one of the partners, is hosting and the partners are proceeding with the meeting on their own. I just did not realize that was the case. Let us all hope that, one day, these shutdowns will be a thing of the past that is no longer an acceptable practice.
Miki, at right, prior to dinner that included a retirement roast.
Posted on Facebook 1/15/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade I am not done singing the praises of Digital Coast nor of expressing my gratitude to outstanding staff of that program. If I had an opportunity to nominate someone for Liaison of the Year, someone with an outstanding sense of customer relations, it would surely be Susan Fox, who actually works with the Baldwin Group on behalf of NOAA, and has served for several years as a Digital Coast liaison with the American Planning Association. I had the honor to work with her while managing APA’s Hazards Planning Center into 2017. She is enthusiastic, positive, very well-organized, and incredibly supportive. Just like Miki Schmidt, about whom I wrote yesterday, she is a pillar of the Digital Coast program. Thank you, Susan, for all you do.
Susan in Manhattan for dinner during APA National Planning Conference, 2017.
Posted on Facebook 1/16/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade
Continuing with my tributes to Digital Coast staff, I must now know mention the invaluable Josh Murphy, who works from NOAA’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Josh was the creative soul who helped negotiate a HUD-funded, NOAA-sponsored project led by AECOM but involving Digital Coast partners (APA, NACo, ASFPM) to work with two pilot communities (Brevard County, FL, and San Luis Obispo County, CA) to help operationalize concepts for integrating resilience and hazard mitigation priorities into the local planning process. This is rather advanced stuff and requires some real skill to manage, but we all did it together, advancing the frontiers of planning. And we had Josh to thank for making it all possible. He is one of NOAA’s truly valuable assets.
Courtesy of Shannon Burke
Posted on Facebook 1/17/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade As I complete this round of gratitude to Digital Coast staff, I wish to make clear that there are many others at NOAA for whom we should all be grateful beyond those I have highlighted. But I do want to close by mentioning the remarkable Lori Cary-Kothera, whose consistent demonstrations of enthusiasm, high intelligence, and dedication have also helped the partners to succeed in their efforts both to support the Digital Coast program and to advance their own respective projects and services to coastal communities. Lori is one of those rare people you can count on for positive advice and support. She is also a welcome beacon of warmth and humanity.
Today’s late-night
entry has no photo because I have none from so long ago, certainly not
digitized, anyway–or easily found. That makes Lynn Saunders’s contribution to
my career no less seminal or memorable. An English teacher at Brecksville High
School, she was the willing and required faculty member who became the adviser
to our budding Writers Club, a new entity in 1967 that was the brainchild of a
handful of aspiring student writers, including me as I entered my senior year.
With her encouragement, we produced our own literary journal, “The Tenth
Muse Recently Discovered in Brecksville.” We young literati were probably
not the most popular types in our Ohio school, but we may have been among the
most visionary. I have spent the last half-century refining those writing
skills, and for this foundation I express today’s moment of gratitude.
Posted on Facebook 1/6/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade
Shhh. I’m waiting
until she goes upstairs so she doesn’t see this now and can be surprised in the
morning.
It is hard to find a
more devoted mother and grandmother than my wife, so here’s to Jean Schwab. Whatever parenting mistakes we
made, individually or combination, like every human being out there, Jean
nonetheless remains committed wholeheartedly to the welfare of her family. Over
time, she has learned how to make the tough decisions and say the tough things
to say when we needed to, all while making clear she is doing it out of love.
Most people who know
us know that we adopted children out of foster care. This was mostly because
Jean expressed early in our marriage the feeling that we had too much to share
not to reach out to children who needed a home. I am not sure either of us
envisioned that future when we married, but it became a big part of what we will
leave behind. And we have learned so much along the way. We have embraced the
challenge. Here’s to the future, and a salute to my life partner.
Jean with grandson Emanuel James, aka EJ Schwab
Posted on Facebook 1/7/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade
Tonight I was in downtown Chicago at the Harold Washington Public Library for a Society of Midland Authors presentation of women authors writing about the Vietnam war. Their interesting perspectives caused me to think about my own experiences during that time. I attended Cleveland State University from 1968-1973, the heart of one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history.
I started college with a student deferment just before President Richard Nixon introduced the draft lottery. My number was 135, but the year I gave up my student deferment they went to 125, and so I was out of the draft forever. Fighting a war I did not respect was not part of my future. But it does not mean the events did not affect me.
Tonight’s tribute is to someone I have not seen in 45 years. I have no idea if he is alive or dead, or where he is living, but I would not mind hearing from Peter Damok. By 1970, I think, I had founded the first student environmental group at CSU, right after the first Earth Day. Peter, a Vietnam veteran attending college on the GI Bill, joined us at some later point. This was during a time when Vietnam veterans often returned to an uncertain welcome. Peter, I think, was drawn in part to my lack of judgment, open mind, and willingness to listen and learn. He had much to share.
One thing I distinctly remember made a permanent impression on
me. There were often anti-war marches down Euclid Avenue, past the CSU campus,
in downtown Cleveland. I joined more than a few (though I seldom shared that
information with my more conservative parents). Peter, who hoped to become a
journalist, had some friends in the news media and joined some in watching one
of the demonstrations from the upper stories of one of the buildings along the
march route. Later he told me that one of his reporter friends scoffed at the
protesters and asked, “How many of them have ever been to Vietnam?”
Peter stopped him cold in his tracks. “How many more do you
want to send over there before you listen to them?” he asked.
I learned to separate service in the military from the automatic
assumption that a veteran supported the war. Many came home embittered by what
they saw and determined to end the madness. And I learned it straight from the
mouth of one veteran–Pete Damok.
Posted on Facebook 1/8/19
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade There are those who quietly do the less glamorous tasks that make things run. Being the secretary/treasurer of a member division of the American Planning Association is among those tasks. As the chair-elect of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, thrust into an acting chair position because of Chair Allison Hardin’s unfortunate accident, I have come to appreciate the value of Jennifer Ellison, a Polk County, Iowa, planner who is also our secretary/treasurer. We have responsibilities to hundreds of members who work at making our communities safer and helping them recover from disasters, but Jennie makes sure the bills are paid, the dollars add up, and the proper reports are filed, all without asking for any special attention or credit. But I couldn’t do it without her, and so she is tonight’s focus of gratitude.
When I first met Richard Roths, he was a planner working for FEMA. As I recall, he was detailed to southern Ohio for flood recovery sometime in the late 1990s, and I was completing work with my team on Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction, a path-breaking FEMA-supported guide published by the American Planning Association in 1998 as a PAS Report. I learned that Rich was among dozens of FEMA personnel asked to review it, many of whom were similarly on duty away from home and living out of a suitcase in a hotel room. Rich was doing his reviews, he told me, while washing his clothes in the laundromat each week. Other people might have idled the time with a good book, watching television, but not Rich.
It did not take long with further encounters back in Chicago for us to team up teaching a graduate course on hazard mitigation and disaster recovery in the spring semesters of 1997 and 1999 at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s urban planning program, part of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. Over subsequent years, Rich attended a number of my infamous backyard barbecue parties, usually bringing some beer to help out. It is amazing to think we have known each other now for well over 20 years. During that time, Rich moved on to URS Corp. as a consultant and then retired. He is now active as a volunteer with the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, of which I am Chair-Elect. In that role, I recruited and organized the division’s Professional Development Committee.
Sure enough, Rich has become a leading player in the committee’s endeavors. When Kehla West was unable to take on the role of interviewer for a series of podcasts on recovery in major recent disasters, Rich stepped up and did a fabulous job. He has completed three since last fall and is not done yet. These are all now on the APA website as part of APA’s Resilience Roundtable series. Rich is also heading up an effort to develop a program of outreach from the division to university planning schools. In his semi-retirement, he has carved out a meaningful role that has made the rest of us proud. He is a model of productive volunteerism in retirement.
Richard Roths in the APA broadcast booth recording his first podcast.
Posted on Facebook 1/11/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade
I have lost the name of my sixth-grade teacher in the mists of time and do not
wish to ask anyone to search the archives of the elementary school to find it.
Her name is beside the point. What matters is what I and others learned.
The school year was 1961-1962. Unlike other teachers at that level at that time, she believed that young people our age could understand and digest more than her contemporaries thought. During reading time each day, she introduced us to the works of Dr. Tom Dooley about Vietnam and Indochina. I am well aware of the mixed and ambiguous history of Dooley before his untimely death of cancer. He may well have exaggerated descriptions of Viet Minh atrocities and fed intelligence to the CIA. But when one student questioned whether some of Dooley’s stories were propaganda, our teacher concede the possibility.
Still, we gained a vivid mental image of a
part of the world that soon would dominate the news of the 1960s, yet of which
most Americans had only minimal awareness. The moral ambiguity of the mess that
became the Vietnam War was illuminated in my teenage and then college-age mind
by the memory of what she had read to us. It took some courage and imagination
to think we could digest all this and that somehow, within a few years, it might
deepen our perspectives on the world. Her own views may have been equally
ambiguous, for all I know, and I will probably never know. But I can be
grateful that her audacity at the time left an indelible impression of the
importance of learning about faraway places and the moral and developmental
challenges they face–and which we face along with them.
Okay, call me a copycat. If an idea is good enough, why not copy it proudly? On New Year’s Day, I read in a Chicago Tribune column by Heidi Stevens about a woman, Jen Kramer, who began a daily effort on Facebook a year ago as #yearoflove. Every day she posted about someone who meant something.
It occurred to me that we all have many people for whom we should be grateful, and we may not always do a good job of saying so. I thought hard about whether I could sustain a daily effort for a year as Kramer did, and then I thought, you’re a professional writer. How hard can one paragraph a day be? So I decided to take the plunge, starting that day, with #gratitudeonparade. Friends will begin learning why I am grateful and to whom. Some of it may be random, and some may be well planned. It’s a daring commitment, so I’ll see how it goes. But I have a feeling I may learn much about myself by trying.
Once a week, I will compile these short entries into a composite blog post to expand the audience. So, if you miss the daily feed on Facebook, feel free to visit www.jimschwab.com/Hablarbooks.
Posted on Facebook 1/1/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade Gratitude should start in the most logical places. My mother, Hazel Schwab, who has outlived almost all her peers, would probably prefer that I not state an age on Facebook (she does not own a computer and has never used the Internet), but I want to state that she has shown me and three siblings the power of determination and the will to live and resilience many times over. She and my father early on made sure that we were in a good school district and encouraged education, even though they finished high school but never attended college. When I moved to Iowa, later married in Nebraska, and ended up in Chicago, I knew she would rather I had stayed in Cleveland. Reluctantly at first, however, she learned pride that I had spread my wings and soared professionally, even if she never fully understood exactly what I did–it was a bit esoteric by her standards, not easy to explain to her friends. (Even my wife wondered what an urban planner was when she first met me.) But she was tough of mind, and if we did not always agree on some things, we learned to disagree. But by now I have watched her survive and surmount so many challenges, it is hard to escape the conclusion that I owe some of my own dogged persistence to my mother. Thanks, Mom. You get the first tribute.
With my brother, Jack, his son, Kyle, and Kyle’s two young sons, Ryan and Dylan, at Christmas.
I suffered a disappointing discovery yesterday while
composing my blog
post. Long-time friend and former University of Iowa professor
Michael F. Sheehan had died on May 30. I
was mentioning his role in my career and searched for an appropriate link only
to find a May 30 obituary. He was 72. A physically fit ex-Marine, I expected he
would live longer, and the obit does not say how he died. I had not talked to
him in a long while, but I still felt a loss. He was the pivot point in a vital
decision that changed my life.
In late 1981, I was pursuing options for graduate school
after two and a half years as the executive director of the Iowa Public
Interest Research Group. Mike was a fierce advocate for the environment and
knew me in that role. At lunch one day, I mentioned that I had just explored a
Ph.D. program in the University of Iowa’s political science program, but had a
disappointing conversation in which I had told the head of the department’s MPA
program that I had lobbied in Des Moines in my Iowa PIRG role. He responded,
“That wouldn’t be relevant here. If you had done a study of lobbying . . . .”
Mike reacted to this curt dismissal of real-life experience
by simply asking, “Why don’t you apply to our urban planning program? We love
people like you.” I did, and the rest is history, so to speak.
But it was more than that turning point. In his classes,
Mike had high expectations for me and tolerated no flimsy excuses if I fell
short. That was of a piece with his approach to life. He never hesitated to be
a thorn in the side of polluters, the powerful, and the pompous. By the time I
completed my degree, he was entering law school so that, as they say, he could
“sue the bastards.” The advocate in his soul triumphed over the academic.
Several years later, still in his needling mode but living in Oregon (where he
remained), he joked that I was the best of a “mediocre lot” in my class. But
this time, I was ready with a verbal ambush. My first book was out, and the reviews
were appearing.
“Do mediocrities get their books reviewed in the New York Times?” I asked.
I could hear the chuckle over my one-upmanship. “You know, I’ve been bragging on you, Schwab,” he replied. It was like that with him, and it was always fun. Today’s tribute of gratitude may be too late for Michael Sheehan to read, but it is owed nonetheless. Here’s to the man who guided me into a career I have never regretted.
Yesterday, I offered tribute to Michael Sheehan, who persuaded me to try a career in urban planning. Today’s honoree gets to enjoy reading his tribute, fortunately. University of Iowa Professor John W. Fuller followed closely on Mike’s heels by quickly hiring me as a research assistant as soon as I was accepted into the program. I worked with him year-round for more than three years in the Institute for Urban and Regional Research and in the Legislative Extended Assistance Program, neither of which remains extant. The latter produced policy studies each year from four-year colleges and universities for the Iowa legislature at the request of its leaders. In my final year of graduate study in both Urban and Regional Planning and Journalism, John sold those leaders on my combination of writing and analytical skills to produce what he promised would be a plain-English assessment of the farm credit crisis, arguably the biggest issue facing the state as the 1985 legislative session commenced. John knew I could also draw upon research I was doing for my master’s project in journalism, an oral history of the farm credit crisis, to humanize the report’s conclusions.
As the due date in February 1985 approached, I was so
grateful for this remarkable opportunity that I pulled an all-nighter in the
LEAG office at the Oakdale Campus in order to ensure that the 100-plus-page
report could be printed and delivered to Des Moines on time. As for that
master’s project, it eventually became a book—Raising Less Corn and More Hell—published by the University of
Illinois Press in 1988. Just a few months later, he and Kathy regretted missing
our wedding in Omaha because they were on an academic exchange at Universidad
de los Andes in Venezuela, but later that summer they returned with a beautiful
Andean marital blanket as a wedding gift.
But John was never done manufacturing opportunities. Two
decades later, when the 2008 floods were swamping Iowa and the School of Urban
and Regional Planning was seeking expertise to add some hazards training to the
curriculum, it was John who spoke up and asked, “Why don’t we bring back Jim
Schwab?” That was the beginning of an ongoing relationship that has allowed me
to teach and mentor my own crop of students ever since then as an adjunct
assistant professor, teaching an annual course on hazard mitigation and
disaster recovery.
John and Kathy have offered their own home as a place to stay when I visit. This is not at all unusual. He and his wife, Kathy, have hosted and housed innumerable international visitors, students, and others for decades. They are among the most generous people I know. John is a profile in professional dedication and has been a powerful asset for the students he has taught for nearly four decades.
John Fuller (left) with me at his daughter Libby’s wedding near Cedar Rapids, April 29, 2017.
Last night, I failed to post my daily installment of
Gratitude on Parade, but I will make up for it. My excuse is that a groin muscle
strain flared up late in the day, making it uncomfortable to continue working,
so I sat back and watched television instead. Jean was watching the Joy Reed
town hall on MSNBC with Nancy Pelosi, so I joined her.
When such days occur for me, and they are rare, I think about people with much more serious illnesses or injuries, and how they demonstrate personal resilience. They all have lessons to teach the rest of us—to be grateful for their examples, and for our own generally good health. One of those people, who I know thinks the gratitude should run the other way because I have filled in for her as acting chair of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division for much of the year, is Allison Hardin. Allison, a planner for the city of Myrtle Beach, SC, was doing fine as the real chair through April, had the misfortune of nearly being killed in a serious auto accident in which a young man drove into the sports car Allison’s son Robert was driving, and in which she was a passenger. A long string of examinations, surgeries, and treatments has followed for both, and Allison has shown great courage in moving from wheelchair to walker to her own two feet while nurturing her son back to health as well, with the help of her husband. Through it all, she has coped with mountains of delayed e-mail on her job, tough decisions about her own future, and the usual major insurance and medical issues that accompany such a calamity. Allison has occasionally reminded me that she is aware that, while we planners talk about community resilience, it really all starts at a personal level.
I remain happy to be her “acting chair” of HMDR because,
frankly, I have never faced a predicament like hers, hope I never do, and have
no clear idea how well I would handle it But at least I have an example if I ever
need one.
Allison, second from right, after presenting me with my “retirement” t-shirt at the HMDR reception at the APA National Planning Conference in New York, May 2017. Miki Schmidt and Susan Fox of the NOAA Digital Coast staff are to our left and right.
As a New Year arrives, perhaps it was the gift-giving season and the story of Christmas that prompted this blog post. Or, perhaps, it was simply lurking in my subconscious mind, awaiting the appropriate opportunity to emerge into the light of conscious deliberation. These are not, of course, mutually exclusive possibilities. Almost any experienced writer can attest that ideas have a way of burrowing into our minds and fermenting through periodic reflection and creative thinking. This one, I confess, has had an especially long period of germination, but I am finally prepared to shape it and share it. (I have no apology for my mixed metaphors.)
In my twenties and early thirties, I traveled what I would now consider a rather tortuous route to finding a definitive purpose in life. Many people would not regard that as unusual. Finding a purpose is not easy, and it often evolves considerably. After bouncing through some unsatisfactory jobs, and then a very satisfying one that paid very modestly, I decided that my next move was to apply to graduate school, which led me into a double Master of Arts degree program in Journalism and Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Iowa, beginning in January 1982. Despite a mid-year entry into this customized arrangement (I learned I was the only UI student doing it), I gained a financial life raft when Professor John Fuller in the planning program offered a half-time research assistant position. Typically, these were offered only at the beginning of an academic year.
When I decided to return to school after more than a six-year gap, I was not sure what to expect or how to make ends meet. I had been told to expect lower entrance exam scores after such a hiatus from academia. I took the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) and ordered the transcripts and then patiently awaited the results, which back then took several weeks. One day, my notice arrived with the GRE scores: 740 Verbal, 680 Math, 660 Analytical. To me, it was like winning the trifecta for graduate admissions, much better than I had allowed myself to imagine. It apparently caught professorial attention, which helped prompt the offer. I have rarely shared these numbers since then, but they are relevant to this story. They were within the top one percent for those taking the test.
I have not shared those scores much over the past 36 years in part because I don’t think they prove much, certainly not as much as some people thought at the time. Yes, they show aptitude in those three categories, and particularly for verbal and math skills, my highest and the basics of the original GRE. But those are only partial ingredients for success in life. People can also have high aptitudes for music, have outstanding natural athletic talent, or in my father’s case, mechanical skills. Intelligence comes in many forms. Some people show amazing relational skills in dealing with other people, as is often the case with excellent teachers. The best politicians also have outstanding people skills, although often focused differently toward amassing power or achieving policy goals. My gifts, at least at that time, simply happened to be those that college admissions tests were designed to measure. But that at least promised a good start toward academic achievement, at least if I were willing to use those skills aggressively. Not everything was as easy as this might make it seem. There were times when I had to work very hard and fight for my grades. That was a good thing; it meant that I had to learn persistence, patience, and determination.
I have had and still have plenty of weak points, and I have had to learn how to exploit the strengths and shore up the shortcomings as needed, to use teamwork, and to spend my time and talents wisely. None of that was tested on the GRE, in my estimation. Tests are blunt instruments for self-assessment, and we often need sharper tools that are honed through experience. The most valuable experience, in turn, is often gained through courage and honesty and a willingness to test one’s limits. At times, experience breeds humility, which often becomes its own kind of strength.
In that first semester, however, those scores attracted the attention of Mensa, an international society designed to serve the needs of those deemed to be exceptionally bright, which invited me to join. The combined basic GRE score of 1420, I was told, automatically qualified me for membership in this exclusive club. Always willing to pursue options that might open doors, I accepted the invitation and attended some local meetings in Iowa City.
Any group that aims to include only those in the 99th percentile on IQ tests is not going to be huge, even in a college town. I don’t remember a meeting with more than maybe 20 people, but I won’t swear that my memory is entirely accurate. Given the transitory nature of university students at any level, the group was undoubtedly fluid from year to year. However, the entire group was noticeably lacking in faculty, or in anybody much beyond 30 years old, as I recall. Being what I now call a compulsive extrovert, I tried to engage my fellow Mensans in conversation. That was not hard. But I quickly learned that some lived at home with parents, not clear on what they wanted from life, and others had a disappointing sense of their own destiny. What they mainly seemed to share was an artificially generated awareness of being unusually intelligent. There may well have been other members who were too busy to attend, but those I met often seemed satisfied with this status without feeling any compelling obligation to any greater good.
At the few meetings I attended, that bothered me. It had not really occurred to me before that it was possible to let IQ scores feed a low-grade narcissism. In the blue-collar world from which I had emerged, achievement was everything, and aptitude was merely an advantage, albeit one that needed to be exploited. I was attracted to urban planning in part because one professor, Michael Sheehan, who knew of my environmental activism at local and state levels, suggested I apply because “we love people like you.” He convinced me that urban planning was a way to develop and apply skills that would produce the progressive change that had energized my life in recent years. In other words, he was promising that the program would help me fulfill my own sense of purpose. Yet, I was meeting people for whom mere proof of intellectual aptitude seemed sufficient to sustain their self-esteem. I have always felt that I needed to be contributing something. I did not always need to succeed, though that helps, because I could always learn a great deal from failure. Learning to overcome obstacles is only partly a function of intelligence, and mostly a function of grit and creativity.
That grit and creativity, seasoned with perspective and a sense of humor, has been the larger part of what led to the high points in my own career, which in my opinion are connected less with titles and positions than with outcomes, such as influencing the role of natural hazards in the urban planning profession, seeing students from my University of Iowa classes make a difference, and being able to move audiences because of the ideas I espouse and my ability to articulate them in a way that conveys genuine concern for others. Smug satisfaction that I was somehow smarter than other people would have smothered and strangled those accomplishments in their cradles.
It took only a few months for me to abandon those meetings and focus my precious time and energy on those goals, and on learning everything I could within the two programs that had adopted me. I bear no ill will toward Mensa; its membership undoubtedly has included some wonderful people. But my experience was that it fostered what I deemed some morally skewed priorities. The emphasis on the importance of high IQ breeds a sense that brilliant people need and deserve special attention that perhaps would be better focused on learning to help others instead. I also learned that helping others is an opportunity to learn from others, if undertaken in the right spirit. It is an opportunity to learn that most people in this world have some sort of gift that needs to be nurtured, whether or not it is recognized by some organization with lofty claims. My wife, for instance, like most teachers, has better gifts than I for relating to and working with children, some of whom have later attributed at least some part of their fondness for learning to their experience with her as their teacher. I lack musical skills, in part for lack of opportunity at an early age, but I can appreciate what others contribute to my life because of their talents. I never excelled athletically, but I have learned the value of physical fitness. I would never claim to be in the 99th percentile of moral leadership, but I am a better person for knowing those who are, or for reading about the examples of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, and Mohandas Gandhi, among many others. I could go on in this vein, but I suspect you get the idea.
Contributions need not be big or visible to matter greatly in the lives of others.
My bottom line is this: Either you contribute something meaningful to the greater good of humanity, or you don’t. It need not even be noticed by anyone important. It can just matter to the people who benefit. Not everything is about who is the smartest, the swiftest, the strongest, or the most talented. You can move the needle ever so modestly, ever so slowly, but move the needle. And trust that your contribution matters.
